The Land & Climate Podcast

With India kicking off 2025 with an historic space-docking experiment, and Elon Musk's growing power in the US government raising questions over the future of his spacecraft and satellite companies SpaceX and Starlink, we may be at the dawn of a new era for space exploration.Unlike the 20th Century Space Race, however, it will likely be private companies that cross new mildstones - not public agencies. But who will regulate mining on the moon and tourism in space, and what are the environmental implications? Bertie talks about these issues with D. Raghunandan, Director of the Delhi Science Forum, as well as discussing the positive contributions of the space sector towards climate and environmental science. Further reading: 'Indian Space Sector on a High This Year', News Click, February 2025'Mining the moon for minerals could be worth billions, but astronomers warn it's bad news for science', Business Insider, February 2025'India File: Jostling for position in the space race', Reuters, January 2025'How Elon Musk’s partnership with Trump could shape science in the US — and beyond', Nature, December 2024'Donald Trump’s approach to US space policy could throw up some surprises, especially with Elon Musk on board', Durham University, November 2024'The dark side of SpaceX’s flight of innovation', People's Dispatch, November 2023Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

Alasdair speaks to journalist Margot Gibbs about her investigation into a US government-funded PR firm that profiled pesticide scientists. Last autumn, Lighthouse Reports - in collaboration with media partners across Europe - published an investigation into v-Fluence, a US-based PR firm that worked to discredit anti-pesticide scientists and campaigners.Alasdair speaks to Margot Gibbs, a journalist who led the investigation, about its findings and what it reveals about the agro-chemicals lobby.Margot Gibbs is an investigative reporter at Lighthouse Reports focusing on money trails and food systems reporting. Before joining Lighthouse she was a reporter for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Finance Uncovered.  Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.Further reading:'US-funded ‘social network’ attacking pesticide critics shuts down after Guardian investigation', The Guardian, February 2025'Poison PR', Lighthouse Reports, September 2024'How the US agrochemical lobby is meddling in the future of Kenyan farming', The New Humanitarian, September 2024'Secret files suggest chemical giant feared weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease', The Guardian, October 2022'"Monsanto papers": the pesticide giant's war against science', Le Monde, June 2017Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, 2010Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked global energy markets, and changed the EU's long and short-term plans for decarbonisation. But how have three years of conflict changed Ukraine's own policies and plans around energy security and net zero? Bertie discusses this issue with Ukrainian economist Maksym Chepeliev, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Global Trade Analysis, Purdue University, USA. Read Professor Chepeliev's research: 'Net-Zero Transition in Ukraine: Implications for Sustainable Development Goal 7',  Aligning the Energy Transition with the Sustainable Development Goals, 2024'Can Ukraine go “green” on the post-war recovery path?', Joule, 2023'What is the future of nuclear power in Ukraine? The role of war, techno-economic drivers, and safety considerations', Energy Policy, 2023'The role of bioenergy in Ukraine's climate mitigation policy by 2050', Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021See our previous episodes on: nuclear power and net-zero, in which we discuss security concerns about Zaporizhzhiamilitary emissions, in which we discuss the carbon cost of the Russia-Ukraine Warthe future of Russian oil, from 2022Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

In a recently published report, “Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests”,  Dr. Oscar Berglund and his colleagues identified four key mechanisms through which climate and environmental protests are repressed: the introduction of new anti-protest laws, the broadening use of existing legislation, excessive policing and killings and disappearances of activists. Alasdair and Oscar discuss the findings of the report and the ways in which the clampdown on climate protest represents a threat to both democracy and net zero targets. Oscar Berglund is Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. He is an expert on climate change activism and civil disobedience.Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.Further reading:Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests, University of Bristol, 2024Civic Activism in an Intensifying Climate Crisis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2024 Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action, Columbia University Press, 2024Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

“The capitalist system is necessarily built on creating ecological crises.” Bertie speaks to Ståle Holgersen about his new book Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World, in which he argues that, contrary to popular economic thought, economic crises are not triggered by ecological ones but instead the capitalist economy benefits from ecological crises. Bertie and Ståle discuss the ways in which crises are defined, the drawbacks to arguments for degrowth and the potential solutions to the climate emergency. Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University and a member of the Zetkin Collective, an ecosocialist group of scholars and activists primarily working on the political ecologies of the far right.Against the Crisis was published last month and is available to buy from Verso here.Further reading:Read an extract from Against the Crisis on Land and Climate Review. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism, The Zetkin Collective, 2021Searching for “Solutions” to Crisis: A Critique of Urban Austerity and Keynesianism, Uppsala University, 2018Destroy what destroys the planet: Steering creative destruction in the dual crisis, Uppsala University, 2016Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

One month ago, Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as the new president of Indonesia. An investigation by The Gecko Project has revealed that Subianto has invested in or owned companies involved with rainforest logging, coal mining, palm oil production, and industrial fishing - but many of the companies appear to be inactive. Do these investments representing potentially concerning conflicts of interest, or are they par for the course? Are his own claims of enormous wealth accurate or exaggerated? Alasdair speaks to the author of the Gecko Project research, Margareth Aritonang, who is also the Pulitzer Center's 2024 Rainforest Investigations Fellow for Indonesia. Further reading: Read Margareth's reporting here. 'Activists fear supercharged ‘business as usual’ under Indonesia’s new president', Mongabay, November 2024The 'Indonesian environmental activists keep dying in suspicious circumstances', Gecko Project, September 2024 Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

This year, Land and Climate Review’s first investigative series has documented more than 11,000 breaches of environmental law at North American wood pellet mills. Alasdair MacEwen speaks to Camille Corcoran, whose recent reporting was published with The Times in the UK, and Bertie Harrison-Broninski, who normally co-hosts with Alasdair, but here discusses Land and Climate Review’s Canadian investigations, which were featured on BBC Newsnight. They discuss the process of uncovering environmental violations at wood pellet mills owned by Drax Group, which operates the UK’s largest power station, and how residents in Mississippi and British Columbia say they have been affected by the pollution from the mills. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski and Podcast House. Read the investigations: ‘Drax-owned facilities broke environmental rules more than 11,000 times in the US’, Land and Climate Review, November 2024‘The Dirty Business of Clean Energy: The U.K. Power Company Polluting Small Towns Across the U.S.’, The Intercept, September 2024‘Drax’s pellet mills violated environmental law 189 times in Canada’, Land and Climate Review, May 2024‘Drax faces penalty after Canadian biomass plant fails to submit pollution report’, The Independent, October 2023Related episodes: Are Canada’s sustainable forestry claims accurate? - with Richard Robertson from Stand.EarthDoes bioenergy increase CO2 emissions more than burning coal? - with John Sterman from MITWhat is BECCS and what does it mean for climate policy? - with Daniel Quiggin from Chatham HouseSend us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

As the UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to María Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest People’s Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia. A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the region’s wetlands have been drained in order to plant sugar cane, resulting in Afro-descendant peoples being displaced from their ancestral lands and stripped of vital resources.Bertie and María discuss the report’s findings and how international summits such as COP16 present key opportunities to protect the rights of Indigenous people that live in biodiversity hotspots.Further reading: Read the full report: The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley, October 2024The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia, June 2021'Colombia’s cane industry efficient but potentially damaging', Mongabay, March 2017Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

“In 2022, Indonesia only consumed about 70,000 tonnes of wood for electricity. In 2023, we consumed almost half a million.”Alasdair speaks to Timer Manurung, Chairman of the Indonesian NGO Auriga Nusantara, about a new report he worked on with five other environmental charities. Titled Unheeded Warnings, the report warns that the Indonesian government’s plans for biomass power risk harming 10 million hectares of untouched primary forest, and "the deforestation of an area roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta — resulting in CO2 emissions almost five hundred times higher than current levels.”Alasdair and Timer discuss the investigation process, the scale of these potential impacts, and the Indonesian Government. To see photos from Timer's investigation, click here. Further reading: Read the full report, which includes maps outlining the threatened and logged forest areas: Unheeded Warnings: Forest Biomass Threats to Tropical Forests in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Auriga Nusantara, October 2024'Rush to Burn Wood for Energy Threatens Indonesian and Southeast Asian Forests & Communities', Auriga Nusantara, October 2024'The President's new clothes', The Gecko Project, October 2024Bioenergy Explained, Land and Climate Review, 2022Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.

Bertie speaks to Sherri Goodman about her new book, Threat Multiplier:Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security. From 1993-2001, Sherri Goodman served as the first US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, making her the Pentagon's Chief Environmental Officer. She then went on to help deliver influential reports that helped to establish climate change as a national security threat in the US.  Threat Multiplier documents key environmental and climatic challenges during her career, such as negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and managing geopolitical risk in the Arctic as melting permafrost changes the ocean landscape.Goodman is now Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center.  Further reading: Click here to buy Threat Multiplier from Island Press. 'A career spent trying to make the military care about climate change', The Washington Post, August 2024'The US Department of Defense’s Role in Integrating Climate Change into Security Planning', New Security Beat, May 2024'Changing climates for Arctic security', The Wilson Quaterly, 2017National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007Send us a textClick here for our website to read all our most recent Land and Climate Review features and pieces.