Politics & law

“A misuse of treaties”: Russian oligarchs are using investor-state disputes to sue Ukraine

At least eight ISDS cases have been brought against the Ukrainian government since 2022, a Land and Climate investigation has found.

Bioenergy, Politics & law

Drax’s US environmental violations now total over 18,000 incidents

A new investigation by Land and Climate Review and The Sunday Times has uncovered an additional 6,000 breaches by the UK power company in Louisiana.

Bioenergy, Politics & law

Drax biomass led to disabling health conditions, say unions and workers

The UK's largest power plant is facing worker lawsuits after the national health and safety regulator dropped criminal charges over biomass dust in 2023, a Land and Climate Investigation can reveal.

Agriculture, Politics & law

La loi Duplomb: a gift for the French agro-industrial complex?

How a proposed farming law sparked one of the largest political mobilisations in modern French history.

Politics & law

A longstanding battle: Māori efforts to protect the Whanganui River

In an excerpt from their new book, Dana Zartner, Fabian Cardenas, and Mohammed Golam Sarwar reflect on the most famous case of nature being granted legal personhood.

Fossil fuels, Markets, Politics & law

How Exxon is using international law to sue the Dutch government

Exxon owes the people of Groningen millions in compensation for damage caused by gas extraction. Thanks to a legal instrument, it could be the residents of the province that end up compensating the fossil fuel giant.

Fossil fuels, Markets, Politics & law

“Shocking and sad”: how corporations use investment agreements to block decarbonisation in the Global South

Camille Corcoran talks to experts about investor-state dispute settlements, which allow fossil fuel companies to bring multi-billion dollar lawsuits against countries that pass green policies.

Bioenergy, Politics & law

Drax-owned facilities broke environmental rules more than 11,000 times in the US

Drax “must be held accountable,” says US Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen, after The Times and Land and Climate Review reveal the bioenergy company violates US regulation an average of five times per day.

Bioenergy, Forests

What are Drax’s plans on the West Coast?

A new investigation by Land and Climate Review and The Intercept has found that Drax broke regulations while constructing a new pellet mill in Washington State.

Bioenergy, Politics & law

Drax fined again over pollution: “I’m afraid to go outside,” say residents

This month, the British power company has been issued another fine in Mississippi, with additional penalties expected in Louisiana. In collaboration with The Intercept, Land and Climate Review talk to experts and locals about Drax's operations in the US Southeast.

Agriculture, Economics, Politics & law

Why was organic policy blamed for Sri Lanka’s financial crisis?

Academic research offers a different story from news media on Sri Lanka's short-lived ban on agrochemicals. Bertie Harrison-Broninski explores what really happened, and whether there's a future for national-scale organic policy.

Carbon capture

The curious case of emissions dumping down under

Camille Corcoran breaks down the implications of Australia's landmark ban on carbon capture and storage projects in the Great Artesian Basin.

Bioenergy, Forests

Drax’s pellet mills violated environmental law 189 times in Canada

The UK’s largest power station began importing wood from Canadian pellet plants 12 years ago. The mills, bought by Drax Group in 2021 & 2022, have breached environmental regulations 189 times.

Adaptation, Culture

Seeing the storm ahead

Adaptation is not only about finance and technology - it is about visualising change. Bertie Harrison-Broninski reads John Vaillant's 'Fire Weather' and Stephen Robert Miller's 'Over the Seawall'.

Big Tech, Markets, Mining

Is corruption and slavery the cost of a mobile phone?

Guinean bauxite is the source of aluminium in everything from our office buildings to our cars - but the bauxite supply chain is a black box of human rights issues.

Mining

Sacrifice in the salt flats, for a greener future

Dr Camila Vergara sifts through the politics of lithium extraction in Chile.

Big Tech, Mining, Politics & law

Will the EU Battery Regulation change anything?

Land and Climate Review breaks down the basics on the big battery law.

Agriculture, Plastics, Textiles

Sick of smelly, plastic clothes? Blame oil and industrial farming.

Bertie Harrison-Broninski explores sustainable fashion in a review of Lucianne Tonti's book, 'Sundressed: Natural Fibres and the Future of Fashion'.

Mining

Cobalt mining kills. Who is sorting it out?

Siddharth Kara's deep dive into Congolese mining is diligently researched, but suffers from old-fashioned and clichéd writing, says Lauren Sneade

Culture, Mining

Poetry: “Mine Mine Mine”

Lauren Sneade reviews Uhuru Portia Phalafala's epic poem about South African gold mining.

Culture

What will happen to the tiger widows when the world ends?

Simon Mundy's voyage round 26 countries in 'Race for Tomorrow' brings the climate debate back down to earth.

Culture, Wetlands

When is the time to mourn?

Reading 'Fen, Bog, Swamp: a short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis' by Annie Proulx.

Plastics, Waste

There is so much to say about plastic pollution. Why are we not talking about it?

In a review of Matt Simon's book 'A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies', Bertie Harrison-Broninski asks whether plastic pollution gets enough attention.

Big Tech, Carbon capture, Markets

The Emperor’s new carbon credits? Silicon Valley’s non-existent offsets

Experts expect more than half of the voluntary carbon market to be carbon removals by 2030. The sales are happening already - but the removals are not.

Carbon capture, Politics & law

What are the European Commission’s plans for negative emissions?

Rosie Nurse explains 2022 policy developments around BECCS, DACCS, carbon farming and enhanced weathering.

Carbon capture, Culture, Forests

Who are you calling barren?

Lauren Sneade reads Rosetta Elkin's "Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation" and asks a controversial question: is the very concept of afforestation rooted in colonial violence?

Geoengineering

Do-or-Die: Should we be talking about geoengineering?

As keeping global heating to 1.5°C looks increasingly unlikely, some academics are suggesting we use aerosols or salt to block out the sun. Are they right, or risking everything?

Carbon capture, Culture

Do ad-men dream of electric trees? Greenwash at the Science Museum

What does the future look like? According to the UK’s Science Museum, and by implication Shell, the oil and gas giant sponsoring this exhibition, it looks like a corporate expo.

Carbon capture

What does the IPCC say about carbon removal?

We break down the analysis around carbon dioxide removal in Working Group Three’s 6th Assessment Report.

Adaptation, Agriculture

Paddy farming below sea level – how traditional knowledge could save the future

Climate adaptation should not be approached with universal solutions. Designed primarily by and for affluent communities, the solutions considered best practice are often examples of “maladaptation,” causing more problems in the long term than the challenges they are trying to solve.

Culture

If we don’t know what nature is, how can we save it?

'A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey Through an Endangered Land' is a touching elegy for nature lost to consumerism, says Lauren Sneade.

Culture, Geoengineering

Is climate dystopia inevitable? Reviewing ‘Half Earth Socialism’ by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass

Part utopian fiction, part political philosophy, and part climate policy analysis: Bertie Harrison-Broninski reviews the ambitious new work from Verso books.

Forests

Back to the future: is wood really that good?

As timber becomes more widely-used in the construction industry, our assistant editor compares new timber materials to concrete and steel, asking the question 'is wood good?'

Carbon capture

Capturing and storing problems

In the last entry in our series of long reads explaining CCS, Bertie Harrison-Broninski investigates the reasons carbon capture projects have such a ropey track record.

Carbon capture, Steel

Rock stars: the academics answering the construction sector’s hardest question

Our assistant editor talks to the PhD students on a mission to crack low carbon cement.

Carbon capture

Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money

In the second article in our CCS series, Bertie Harrison-Broninski explains why CCS has a different status to other saviour tech: its place in climate modelling.

Culture, Politics & law

Is Rio a blueprint for urban climate action in the Global South?

Lauren Sneade takes a look inside Rio's City Hall at the team tackling the climate crisis in a city where development is as crucial as climate action.

Carbon capture

What is happening with Carbon Capture and Storage?

In the first in a new series of long reads explaining CCS, Bertie Harrison-Broninski digs into how the tech works, whether we're on track with deployment, and what we can learn from CCS's track record.

Politics & law

Should rivers have rights?

Polluted with waste and chemicals, and threatened by sprawling urbanisation, our rivers are dying. Some countries are giving them legal personhood for protection - will it work?

Culture, Waste

Laying waste to waste

The Design Museum in London's 'Waste Age' exhibition shows that we cannot afford to wait to transition towards a circular economy, says Lauren Sneade.

Mining

Central Asia’s minerals offer hope for the clean energy transition

Roman Vakulchuk of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs discusses his research into untapped minerals in Central Asia that could be used for the global clean energy transition.

Carbon capture, Culture

Rethinking net zero: why Holly Jean Buck’s ‘Why Net Zero is Not Enough’ is not enough

There are a lot of issues with the net zero framework - Holly Jean Buck's new book could go further in imagining alternatives, says Bertie Harrison-Broninski.

Culture

Follow the science: but whose science, and to where?

Reading 'Science Fictions' by Stuart Richie, our Assistant Editor Lauren Sneade delves into what happens when academia and the media promote problematic research.

Culture

Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s ‘Anthropocene Unconscious’

Our assistant editor reviews Mark Bould’s new book, 'The Anthropocene Unconscious', and questions whether we will be able to solve the climate crisis in time, and with time.

Culture, Wetlands

Swamplands: Edward Struzik’s bog book is a call for cultural change

Launching our new culture section, our Assistant Editor reviews the new book on peatlands from Island Press.

Politics & law

Good COP, bad COP: the geopolitical tensions of the Glasgow summit

Our Assistant Editor sets out the diplomatic backdrop to COP26: will international relations be the big stumbling block for global climate policy?

Forests

Reforesting Europe would increase rainfall

Elizabeth Lewis (Newcastle University), Edouard Davin and Ronny Meir (both of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) discuss new research on reforestation.

Agriculture, Markets, Politics & law

Food and the struggle for Africa’s sovereignty

Jihen Chandoul argues that post-independence clarity on the link between food self-sufficiency and sovereignty offers lessons for today.

Wetlands

Peat bogs: restoring them could slow climate change – and revive a forgotten world

Professor Ian Rotherham (of Sheffield Hallam University) explains why restoring peat bogs is so important for combating climate change via carbon recovery.

Agriculture, Politics & law

The development of Common Agricultural Policy

Professor Wyn Grant assesses the historic influence and changes in Europe's CAP including its evolving attitude to climate change.

Carbon capture

Examining technical and nature-based options for greenhouse gas recovery

Most integrated assessment models seeking to develop emissions pathways for the world to stay under a global average temperature rise of 1.5˚C rely on the removal of significant concentrations of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by 2050.

Agriculture, Politics & law

A window of opportunity for biocontrol

The EU's new Biodiversity Strategy contains a vision of ecologically sustainable farming. This provides a window for biocontrol products.

Analysis & Investigations

Longform features by Land & Climate journalists and freelancers.