In 2022, the Swedish government granted an exploitation concession to Jokkmokk Iron Mines AB — a subsidiary of British company named Beowulf Mining — to develop an open-pit iron mine in Northern Sweden. The decision has been opposed by both Indigenous and environmental activists, who have expressed concerns about the mine’s impacts on Saami communities and the surrounding ecology. Bertie speaks to Tor Tuorda about the long history of extraction and exploitation in the region, the erasure of S...

Nearly half of the global agriculture market is controlled by four companies. This level of concentration - driven by decades of mergers and poor regulation - has allowed agribusiness “titans” to dominate the farming sector. Alasdair talks to Dr Jennifer Clapp, author of a new book about corporate domination of the farm sector and why it matters. Alasdair and Jennifer discuss how and why mass-merging has led to market distortions and high prices, and what solutions could improve the st...

It is becoming common for the fossil fuel industry to sue governments that attempt to decarbonise over “lost future profits.” They do so via an obscure part of international law called international-state dispute settlements (ISDS) that can allow them to extract billions in public money. Alasdair speaks to Eunjung Lee, a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G. The two discuss how ISDS began, how the international treaties came to being predatory, and what measures countries should take...

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 environmen...

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-chemical...

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 Uk...

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 clim...

“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...

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 exaggerate...

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 e...

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 ancest...

“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 ...

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 cl...

Last week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report “Fast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghana”. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites.Bertie speaks to the report's author, Sam Quashie-Idun, about his findings, who is responsible for t...

In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this target, with the hope that temperature levels can be brought back down in later decades. Temperature overshoot models are now the default, but also a cause of scientific concern, as the devastating impacts of crossing this threshold may not be reversible. In...

Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues. But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine at 175 million tonnes, and day to day military operations - not including conflicts - at a sta...

Alasdair speaks to Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far. Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisation policy. Further reading: 'Leading with Industrial Policy: Lessons for Decarbonization from Swedish Green Steel', Roosevelt Institute, 2024'Phase-in and phase-out policies in the global steel transition', Climate Policy, 2024'Building a stronger ...

Bertie speaks to fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back. Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks with chemicals modern clothing is often treated with, and whether there has been enough research and regulation on the issue.Further reading: Buy To Dye For from Penguin Random House. Visit Alden's website, EcoCult, for more reporting on these issues. 'Hitt...

Alasdair speaks to former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis. They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine, and her current campaign work with the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). Further reading: Tax Wars, ICRICT'Global minimum tax on multinationals goes live to raise up t...

Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets can’t be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector. The Price is Wrong&nb...