“It only makes sense to talk about restoration when deforestation is controlled.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/20/long-read-deadly-mission-amazon-rainforest-dom-phillips-bruno-pereira
#Australia #Amazon #rainforests #deforestation #crime #cattle #extractivism #IndigenousPeoples #restoration
Wood for the trees, Jonathan Green, November 2023
https://www.themonthly.com.au/november-2023/essays/wood-trees
#biodiversity #ecosystems #NativeForests #IndigenousPeoples #wildlife #EPBCAct #SamuelReview #extractivism #degradation #LoggingIndustry #mining #harm
When you hear someone say that "AI is the future of search" as if it is a great thing, and a foregone conclusion, what they are actually saying is that the doors to any individual blog or website or resources are closing. The digital waypaths to finding sourced content directly are being shuttered and boarded up. That human search via multiple methods utilising various recommender systems is being removed. In favour of a single gateway to pre delivered materials all owned by private monopoly companies. And we are expected to react as if this is a good thing, the "future".
#ai #ChatGPT #GenAI #openai #extractivism #academia #archives #internet #KnowledgeEquity #knowledgecommons #search
Queensland government cuts Environmental Defenders Office funding despite pre-election promise for support
"The service that we provide is sometimes inconvenient for powerful vested interests...There were countless examples of free legal advice the EDO had provided to individuals, landholders, First Nations groups and community groups to help them combat the interests of developers, mining companies and governments."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-15/environmental-defenders-office-funding-cut-queensland-government/105293462
https://www.edo.org.au/the-latest/
#environment #conservation #law #EDO #ToondahHarbour #PurlingBrookFalls #water #BottledWater #Santos #extractivism #VestedInterest
Another happy story from the world of extractive techno-capitalism.
National Environmental Standards
Create new, legally enforceable national environmental standards to deliver better environmental protection or continue with the big quarry model this term?
"Nature doesn’t negotiate. Nature is a system of systems, and if we take too much from it those systems begin to break down – usually irreversibly."
>>
https://theconversation.com/its-a-hard-job-being-environment-minister-heres-an-insiders-view-of-the-key-challenges-facing-murray-watt-256465
Samuel Review
https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/epbc/epbc-act-reform/standards
#EPBCAct #BiodiversityCrisis #Biodiversity #Ecosystems #FirstNations #restoration #nature #extractivism #harm #LoggingImpacts #mining #water #extraction #FossilFuels #ClimateDisruption #destruction #governance
Today our friends in the National Anti-Mining Front in #ecuador and CONAIE have launched the “People’s Against Extractivism” initiative which we are proud to have signed on to. Predatory extractive industries exploit people and the planet all over the world and requires an international response against each stage of this system.
More information is available in the link here https://antiextractivismo.org/
NSW forestry agency should be shut down for repeatedly breaking law, critics argue
"Professor David Heilpern, a former court magistrate, claims the NSW Forestry Corporation is no longer fit for purpose and should be disbanded. A former magistrate and one of Australia’s most experienced scientists have launched an extraordinary attack on the New South Wales government’s logging agency, describing it as effectively a “criminal organisation” that should be shut down after a string of court convictions."
"The corporation has been convicted of more than a dozen environmental offences, including a judgment in the land and environment court last year that found the agency was likely to reoffend and had poor prospects of rehabilitation.They get caught, investigated, prosecuted, a criminal conviction, a fine – which the public pays – and they carry on and do it all again."
“There is just no integrity, accountability or justice in this model of operation.”
“For the Forestry Corporation, breaking the law and harming the environment and wildlife has become like a game of charades played under the protection of the state."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/11/nsw-forestry-agency-called-criminal-organisation-by-critics
#LoggingImpacts #LoggingIndustry #NSWLogging #BellingenLogging #SaveTuckersNob #crime #harm #biodiversity #wildlife #conservation #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #governance #accountability #extractivism
"The experiment begun in 1492 was accompanied by a new relationship with the world and with each other, based on the novel idea that the prosperity of human societies lay in the submission of a wild and free nature to the rational act of exploitation. From then on, the entire living world was put to work, and in this first planetary empire, people, plants and animals became commodities circulating from one corner of the hemisphere to the other."
wrote Sylvie Laurent in her book "Capital et race : Histoire d'une hydre moderne"
#wilderness #progress #SylvieLaurent #capitalism #extractivism #capture #appropriation #grabbing #marchandization #Discovery #encounter #ChristopheColomb #Colomb #plantations #Antilles #America #Americas #history #slavery #agroBusiness #agriculture #NewWorld #quote #quotes #beliefs #belief #labour #technoCriticism
Koalas face death, attacks and mass starvation from monoculture plantations
Cost-effective management techniques for Australian wildlife
"...Displaced animals were sometimes still up in trees that were felled and ended up with broken bones, or were orphaned babies left behind. Others were attacked by cows or dogs."
"A 2023 study of reported wild koala deaths in south-east Queensland found vehicles were responsible for about half (1,431) of all fatalities."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/11/koalas-face-death-attacks-and-starvation-as-blue-gums-chopped-down-in-victoria
#biodiversity #wildlife #koalas #LoggingImpacts #LoggingIndustry #harm #pets #Livestock #roads #vehicles #RoadTrauma #KillingZones #plantations #monoculture #extractivism #governance #Australia #extinction
Remember the Urunga wetlands waste tailings rich in antimony, arsenic, lead and cyanide?
"For five years in the 1960s and 1970s, antimony and other heavy metals leached from an ore processing plant into the melaleuca wetlands. The wetlands used to open up into a moonscape of light grey sand with not a single bit of vegetation."
>>
https://www.crownland.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-07/Urunga-Wetlands-fact-sheet.pdf
https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=SSD-5357%2120190227T035916.488%20GMT
Now they want to go for Wild Cattle Creek 'high-grade and high-tonnage' antimony-gold mining >>
https://www.listcorp.com/asx/tmg/trigg-minerals-limited/news/acquisition-of-globally-significant-antimony-project-3091939.html
A Clarence Catchment Alliance community meeting
is being hosted by the Bellingen Environment Centre,
with Blicks River Guardians and Lock the Gate Nambucca,
from 2pm on Friday May 31 at 16 Cudgery St, Dorrigo.
>>
https://clarencevalleynews.com.au/clarence-catchment-alliance-community-meeting/
#NSW #Dorrigo #Urunga #remediation #CoffsHarbour #mining #antimony #gold #extractivism #harm #WildCattleCreek #WCC #water #contamination #wetlands #rivers #waterways #freshwater #MarineWater #platypus #biodiversity #BellingenShire
"Recently, the notion of artificial intelligence for development (AI4D) has been mobilized by various actors in the global South and North. We identify five analytical categories to help us understand the different and often contested perspectives on AI4D. They are (a) a developmentalist framework that emphasizes discourses around modernity and progress through a technoliberal lens of ‘catching up’; (b) an economic development framework taken up by African states, private sector and civil society, highlighting a positive and more future-looking outlook on AI's potential for development; (c) an international policy framework tied to globally agreed on policies such as the Sustainable Development Goals; (d) a colonial and extractivist framework that articulates how AI4D reinforces old processes of oppression in new ways; and (e) decolonial AI discourses grounded in Latin American, African and Indigenous approaches. Our critical review of literature on AI4D and related expressions shows that while the notion applies broadly to the global South, the majority of publications use the term in reference to AI development on the African continent. This commentary enriches our understanding of the plurality of meanings, where they come from, what they do, and what they leave unaddressed."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517241304678
#AI #AI4D #GlobalSouth #Africa #Developmentalism #Decolonialization #SustainableDevelopment #Extractivism
Mass aerial culling of koalas
The mindset of culling everything in this country is a colonial mentality.
"In the weeks leading up to the 2025 Federal Election, the Victorian Labor Government's approval of a barbaric slaughter by helicopter shooters, which killed 1,100 koalas, was comprehensively ignored. Mainstream media failed to report the killing, raising major censorship issues, which need to be addressed."
"I went to one small area of a cleared plantation, with about 30 eucalypts left and around 20 koalas clinging to the branches. This is the scene after harvesting, koalas trying to survive in little pockets of trees."
"There’s no excuse for Australia not to get it right. You can’t treat the environment like this. The mindset of culling everything in this country is a colonial mentality. Wildlife is suffering from our neglect. We have given nothing back to wildlife for all the good things they have done for us."
"Experts have suggested retaining 30% of the plantation blue gums, ensuring corridors for koala movement. The extent of current laws, plans and guidelines in place to protect koalas in Victoria can best be described as completely ineffective, whether they are forests, plantations or urban development habitats."
>>
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/labors-election-win-hopefully-a-turning-point-for-environment,19707
#biodiversity #wildlife #extractivism #plantations #LoggingImpacts #harm #EPBCAct #koalas
Bulldozing the habitat of endangered species in NSW
"The Australian Conservation Foundation is alleging thousands of hectares of endangered species habitat has been illegally cleared in south-west New South Wales between 2021 and 2025."
"Experts say land clearing rates are unlikely to be reduced without education and effective enforcement..A lot more land is being cleared than grown back or restored which is unusual for a wealthy, developed country like ours."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-04/mallee-land-clearing-conservation-foundation-endangered-species/105098584
#biodiversity #EndangeredSpecies #NSW #LandClearing #farmers #landholders #crime #wildlife #birds #ClimateBreakdown #EPBCAct #regulation #enforcement #CostofDoingBusiness #extractivism
Despite us being over three months into Trump 2.0, I still periodically still find it breathtaking how much unhinged cartoon villain bullshit they can cram into any given exercise of power. This story for example touches on the way the Klepto Kaiser is using the Department of Justice as his personal legal team to further the objectives of his donors, Trump's attempts to seize power for the presidency from other government bodies, and Downmarket Mussolini's fake "national emergency" scheme to do blatantly illegal shit because Pam Bondi thinks it walks.
This week the Department of Justice filed complaints or lawsuits against four states, New York, Vermont, Hawaii, and Michigan, to stop them from enforcing their own state climate laws and mechanisms to hold the fossil fuel companies killing us all, financially accountable for their crimes against humanity.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-phony-energy-emergency
Trump's 'Phony Energy Emergency' Used by DOJ to Target State Climate Laws
"On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed complaints against New York and Vermont over their climate superfund laws, which empower states to seek financial compensation from fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate mitigation. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of human-caused global heating.
Separately, the DOJ also sued Hawaii and Michigan "to prevent each state from suing fossil fuel companies in state court to seek damages for alleged climate change harms."
As the article mentions, Bondi's maneuvers here stem from Trump's April 8th sweeping executive order in which the president claims the authority to erase any law at any level of government that might impede the fossil fuel companies that put Trump into power; because he also declared a fake national energy emergency. Like most of Der Leader's executive orders, the dictate is vague and broad enough to essentially empower Trump to bulldoze anyone or anything he doesn't agree with, which is pretty much all climate or fossil fuel extraction legislation or regulations. The order is also almost certainly illegal; whatever that actually means in a burgeoning fascist dictatorship where the regime is openly ignoring a number of court orders as we speak.
It's hard to really drill down here and find the greater problem with all of this because virtually everything about this executive order is itself an existential crisis. The planet is literally on fire, climate crisis is real, and billions of (mostly poor) people's lives hang in the balance; the last thing anyone needs is for Trump to empower extractivist mass murder companies to rip more fossil fuels we shouldn't even be burning out of the ground because they're greedy, and Trump wants to pretend he can drive gas prices down and create an American economic utopia by drilling more oil as the world turns to ash. Secondly, to our great shame Trump was elected President of the United States, but he was not made King of the realm and he does not have the power to override the authority of every State government in America on a whim; nor should any president have that authority, as winger fascist "states rights" debate bros have been reminding us all for six decades. If Trump wants to dismantle state climate laws and regulations, his Big Oil donors are going to have to take it through the courts just like everyone else; and yet here's Trump trying to bully their way across the finish line on the cusp of being sued by Hawaii, with one signature.
In my mind however the most shameful and egregious part of all this is the way Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice to fight the legal battles of extractivist corporations and donors who helped him become president. Not only does it make clear the reality that Trump perceives the Justice Department as the president's own private cadre of lawyers who exist to prosecute his grievances and manipulate the law to further his fascist objectives, but it's also a pretty clear example of quid pro quo and bribery. The message here is if you donate enough money to Trump, you get Trump's lawyers to work for you and those lawyers happen to be the literal Department of Justice; and there's not a lotta wiggle room to argue otherwise, quite frankly. Obviously none of this is how either the Justice Department or presidential power is supposed to work, but as usual the Klepto Kaiser and his bootlicking Attorney General, Pam Bondi, don't seem to care.
#Fascism #ClimateCrisis #Trump #PamBondi #DoJ #Hawaii #Michigan #Vermont #NewYork #ClimateSuperfund #BigOil #FossilFuels #Extractivism #Capitalism #Bribery #ExxonMobil #Chevron #BP #Shell
Native forest regeneration failure
Logging devastated Victoria’s native forests – and new research shows 20% has failed to grow back
"Following the end of native logging in Victoria on January 1 2024, the state’s majestic forests might be expected to regenerate and recover naturally. But our new research shows that’s not always the case. "
"These degraded areas no longer hold the value they once did and they cannot provide the same level of ecosystem services such as carbon storage, water purification, or habitat for wildlife."
"With no current government restoration plan, these landscapes will remain degraded indefinitely. Our research suggests leaving nature to its own devices would mean losing a fifth of the forests logged over the past 40 years. Bringing the trees back has multiple benefits and would be well worth the investment."
>>
https://theconversation.com/logging-devastated-victorias-native-forests-and-new-research-shows-20-has-failed-to-grow-back-254465
>> original
A significant increase in forest regeneration failure following logging is driven by climatic and management factors
https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0301479725011454
#biodiversity #wildlife #NativeForests #LoggingImpacts #LoggingIndustry #extractivism #clearfelling #degradation #regeneration #failure #ClimateBreakdown
Protecting Australia's unique ecosystems or extractivism as usual ?
"With one of the highest rates of extinction in the world and more than 7.7 million hectares of threatened species habitat destroyed since 2000, Australia is considered by many to be in a biodiversity crisis...The agenda is entirely geared towards fast-tracking development."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-05-01/federal-election-2025-nature-laws-environmental-policies/105203334
#BiodiversityCrisis #EPBCAct #Biodiversity #ecosystems #conservation #NaturePositive #NatureNegative #EnvironmentalLaws #FossilFuels #koalas #LoggingImpacts #NSWLogging #governance #failure #extractivism
One of the most frustrating things about explaining the origins of climate catastrophe in a free market fundamentalist society is getting people to understand that when I say "capitalism is causing climate crisis and will kill billions of people if we don't end it," I'm speaking quite literally. The evidence that capitalism itself, not just fossil fuels (although to be fair, capitalism and the wealth of the ruling class already depends on fossil fuels far more than you've been told) is the driving factor is all around us, it's just rarely reported in focus and with the level of concern it deserves in corporate media; which for both professional and class reasons, are pretty married to capitalism and free market fundamentalist ideology.
Take for example this recent Dartmouth University study demonstrating that just 111 large corporations are responsible for 28 trillion (with a t) dollars worth of climate damage to our shared biosphere.
"In a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature last week, Dartmouth University researchers find that the global economy would be $28 trillion richer if extreme heat caused by climate emissions from the top 111 carbon majors had never happened. This is nearly the equivalent value of a year’s worth of all goods and services created in the U.S., as The Associated Press points out.
Ten top fossil fuel companies, including entities like Chevron, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco, are responsible for half of those losses, the study finds.
The study authors say that their goal is to provide a scientific linkage between individual companies and financial losses due to their emissions, in hopes of bolstering efforts to hold polluters accountable for the climate crisis amid a growing wave of climate lawsuits and as more states and lawmakers pursue “polluter pays” laws."
Look, I don't want to give people trying to do something useful to help achieve climate justice a hard time; this study is extremely revealing, even if it does adopt a capitalist framework to describe what is quite frankly mass fucking murder in slow motion. In my experience studies like this have a rather large blind spot towards the human cost of conducting capitalism on a boiling planet where everything, including our governments, is owned by billionaire nazis, so it's likely that these folks are actually underestimating the climate costs of "doing business" for the top corporations they studied.
The larger point here however is that as a society we have already amassed oodles of definitive proof that capitalists are burning the planet and threatening billions of lives for profit, and that evidence is typically only worth a paragraph-long notice in our corporate media publications. Rich people are killing us, billions of us, they're just doing it slowly; that's not a metaphor, and I am being dead serious with you when I say that either capitalism goes, or a planet that can support 8 billion people does. Clearly the free market fundamentalists who run our society on behalf of an obscenely wealthy billionaire ruling class aren't coming to the rescue because the rich people who own them have already made their choice. They're going to slaughter billions of people to keep doing capitalism; the question then becomes - do we as a species intend to let them?
#ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #FossilFuels #Corporations #Extractivism #Environment #Media #Genocide #Anticapitalism #EcoSocialism
Not satisfied with scouring national monuments and poisoning our air, Trump has signed an executive order giving the green light to extremely dangerous and environmentally damaging deep sea mining operations in an unhinged scheme to compete with China in the critical minerals industry; a task which, stop me if you've heard this one before, Trump has declared a "national emergency."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-deep-sea-mining
Trump Signs Executive Order to Advance 'Deeply Dangerous' Deep-Sea Mining
"Deep-sea mining is opposed by over 30 countries as well as academics and advocacy groups worldwide. Among them is Greenpeace USA, whose campaigner Arlo Hemphill said Thursday that "authorizing deep-sea mining outside international law is like lighting a match in a room full of dynamite—it threatens ecosystems, global cooperation, and U.S. credibility all at once."
"We condemn this administration's attempt to launch this destructive industry on the high seas in the Pacific by bypassing the United Nations process," Hemphill declared. "This is an insult to multilateralism and a slap in the face to all the countries and millions of people around the world who oppose this dangerous industry."
While the article goes on to note that this executive order in no way guarantees extractivist corporations will be able to successfully mine in the deep sea, I think we all understand that these greedbag sociopaths can do a fuck lot of damage to our oceans, a resource shared by the entire human species, while failing to profitably mine critical minerals. Furthermore, this order must be understood as part of a much larger environmental strategy by the Trump regime that from out here, sure as shit looks like letting the regime's billionaire supporters loot the till while the house burns down.
#Trump #ClimateCrisis #Fascism #DeepSeaMining #Extractivism #Environment #Capitalism #ForeignPolicy #China #Corruption #NationalEmergency #USPol
Read our latest newsletter, in your inbox or here: featuring IIED's contextual urban resilience toolkit, publications on #extractivism and mining, and a bunch of news and picks from us and our community
https://mailchi.mp/eadi/nl2april2025
