This Week on Earth: Apr 2-9

Credit: Unsplash

Chicago

Chicago developers have gentrified neighborhoods such as Logan Square by funding expensive “eco friendly” building projects near transportation stops, in an effort to reduce emissions linked to car usage.

Urban planners call this kind of development “Transit Oriented Development,” where developers profit from pricing out low-income, working class residents and bringing in wealthier, predominately white tenants.

In Logan Square, an area that once had a majority working-class Latiné population, only three of the 60 new housing developments are considered affordable; a single family home can cost over $1 million.

Activists like Christian Diaz in Logan Square want to make TOD accessible to all residents, so that families who have lived there for generations are not pushed out.

“The irony is that in the pursuit of more walkable cities, we’re actually making it so that people of color in general have to be more reliant on cars,” Diaz said.

In order to build communities around public transportation stops, transit networks need to be improved and spread all across the city, and there needs to be increased participation from the local Chicago government to reduce inaccessible, private-sector development projects. 

Worldwide

New data reveals that just 57 companies were responsible for 80 percent of global emissions since 2016.

The study, compiled by Carbon Majors Database, revealed that leading corporate emitters released more fossil fuels in the seven years after the Paris agreement than in the seven years prior.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron were the largest investor-owned polluters––no surprise there. All four of these companies also have net zero emissions goals, which they have routinely failed to achieve.

The database tracks emission records dating all the way back to 1854, which showed just 122 entities linked to 72 percent of all historic emissions since the Industrial Revolution. 

New Zealand

Māori, Cook Islands, and other Pacific leaders have granted legal personhood to whales in a historic new treaty.

The treaty, “He Whakaputanga Moana,” meaning “Declaration for the Ocean,” is a groundbreaking legal document for Indigenous communities.

Rooted in the significance of “tohorā,” or whales, to Polynesian communities, He Whakaputanga Moana establishes tohorā rights to freedom, including the growth of their populations, cultural development, language, a healthy environment and the right to migrate freely.

The treaty also allows the use of “mātauranga Māori,” or Māori knowledge, which will be used to establish marine protected areas.

Whale populations face significant threats from climate impacts, air pollution and ecosystem degradation, as well as ship strikes––which have claimed the lives of nearly 10,000 whales each year.

Conservation areas have failed to improve these circumstances since it is impossible to impose boundaries on whales, who move throughout the entire ocean.

Legal personhood from this treaty creates a large incentive for shipping companies to evade tohorā through anti-collision technology; given the amount of carbon dioxide that whales remove from the atmosphere, they are worth an estimated two million dollars in fines if hit. 

Ultimately, He Whakaputanga Moana is rooted in Māori self-determination and cultural sovereignty, as Pacific leaders are able to legally affirm the agency and importance of  non-humans in accordance with their Indigenous worldviews.