Must-read recap: The New Lede's top stories

An impending COP15 agreement, PFAS in tribal drinking water, abandoned gold mine dangers, arsenic-laden drinking water, and a conversation about climate resilience and the food system.

After two tense weeks, world awaits COP15 plan to save Earth’s species

The clock is ticking in Montreal, Canada as representatives from over 190 countries wrap up two tense weeks of negotiations over a framework to reverse Earth’s extinction crisis. The United Nations meeting, known as COP15, is set to conclude Monday.

Clashes over how to finance the plan, among other obstacles, have led to uncertainties about the meeting’s prospects for success. However, yesterday COP15 president Huang Runqiu, China’s Minister of Ecology and Environment, announced he would release a text of the final framework on Sunday.

The convention’s timing couldn’t be more critical. Human activities such as deforestation, overfishing, and agriculture have driven an estimated one million species to the brink of extinction.

“It’s a really, really important meeting in which, in a way, the future of the planet is at stake,” said Patricia Balvanera, a professor at the Center for Ecosystem Research at the National University of Mexico.

COP15, which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, centers around finalizing the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, an ambitious document designed to steer the world towards its 2050 vision of “living in harmony with nature.” The first draft contains 21 targets to be completed by 2030, which include protecting 30% of global land and oceans (the 30×30 initiative), restoring 3 billion hectares, and halting species extinctions. The framework would replace the failed Aichi targets set in 2010 and comes on the heels of the COP27 climate change conference that took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November.

While the US has never ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, the 1992 agreement on which COP15 and previous meetings are based, the US committed to a 30×30 target in 2021 and has sent representatives to Montreal.

Stuart Pimm, an environmental scientist at Duke University, believes COP15 negotiators will agree on a plan for protecting biodiversity. He only hopes it will be an effective one. (Read the rest of the story.)

EPA fails to adequately test tribal drinking water systems for PFAS, study finds

A federal testing program designed to monitor water systems for “forever chemicals” and other harmful contaminants is failing to equitably include US tribal populations, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The study analyzed data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013 to 2015 through a federal program that monitors unregulated contaminants in drinking water, and found that only about 28% of the people served by tribal drinking water systems were included in the testing for PFAS. In contrast, almost 80% of the population served by non-tribal drinking water systems was included.

The EPA tests looked for 21 different contaminants, including six types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).  The analysis of the EPA data focused on water monitoring for PFAS, in particular, and how much testing was done of systems serving tribal populations.

Scientists say exposure to PFAS is associated with a range of health problems, including a heightened risk of developing cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, decreased immunity, hormone disruption and a range of other serious health problems.

The authors of the study noted in their paper that tribal nations in the United States are disproportionately burdened by diseases and experience lower life expectancy compared to non-Native individuals.

“We’ve been looking at issues of PFAS contamination and the unevenness of testing for years, and still these [findings] were surprising in terms of how big the discrepancy was,” said Alissa Cordner, co-director of the PFAS Project Lab at Northeastern University and an author of the study.

“Unfortunately, what tends to happen with PFAS is a lack of data is translated as a lack of a problem,” added Cordner. “Just because a place hasn’t been tested for PFAS doesn’t mean the PFAS aren’t there.” (Read the rest of the story.)

Climate change brings new urgency to threats posed by abandoned California gold mines

On the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California sits the small town of Nevada City, a historic Gold Rush community where prospectors once mined for riches in the creek that ran alongside town. Today, it’s a popular tourist destination known for its easy access to the picturesque Yuba River and the region’s famed ski resorts.

Belying the welcoming charm of Nevada City, just a few miles to the south lies a different sort of legacy – a 30-acre plot of toxic desolation known as the Lava Cap Mine where arsenic-laden waste from decades of gold and silver mining has contaminated area soils and water. In 1997, a log dam built to contain the debris collapsed in a winter storm and roughly 10,000 cubic yards of mine waste – enough to cover almost five football fields – washed through creeks and into a nearby lake.

For more than two decades now, the site has been on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund list, one of thousands of locations designated as posing “unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.” Clean-up efforts are still in progress at Lava Cap.

Lava Cap is among many abandoned hardrock mines strewn through what Californians call “Gold Country.” State and federal officials estimate that there are almost 50,000 such mines in California and more than 160,000 overall across the western United States. Not all are contaminated, but those that are continue to leach out toxic substances, experts say.

Cleanup of these sites take years and cost millions of dollars. But now, climate change is creating new urgency amid fears that more frequent and volatile flooding and out-of-control wildfires will further spread the toxins.

“There’s been decades of research about remobilizing of mine waste by floods,” said Sheila Murphy, a hydrologist with the US Geological Survey (USGS) who has studied the impacts of extreme weather on mine-contaminated watersheds. “One of the issues is when these big floods then move the sediment into streams or reservoirs,” she said. “It’s just sitting there vulnerable to being remobilized over time.”

Murphy is just as concerned with fire as she is with floods. Changes to the soil, ash buildup, and the burn-off of vegetation after a fire means that fire-scarred lands are more prone to floods and mudslides, not just for a single season, but potentially for several years after a fire. (Read the rest of the story.)

Arsenic-laden drinking water drives antibiotic resistance, studies says

Exposure to arsenic through drinking water has long been recognized as a serious risk to human health. This month, two studies underscore the extent of the ongoing threat, presenting fresh evidence regarding how arsenic exposure contributes to antibiotic resistance, and how the overall health risks are disproportionately borne by Hispanic and American Indian communities.

“Reducing exposure to arsenic is important given the numerous health effects,” said Ana Navas-Acien, a professor of environmental health at Columbia University and an author on a new study identifying racial and ethnic inequalities associated with arsenic pollution.

Arsenic is naturally occurring in the earth but is highly toxic in its inorganic form. It has been used for decades for a range of industrial purposes. Long-term exposure to the chemical is associated with some cancers as well as developmental problems, an increased risk of diabetes, pulmonary disease and other diseases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

An estimated 140 million people in at least 70 countries have been drinking water containing arsenic at levels above the WHO provisional guidelines, the organization states.

Looking at arsenic exposure and antibiotic resistance, authors of a new study published in PLOS Pathogens analyzed water samples from rural Bangladesh and stool samples from women and children living there, finding that those exposed to high levels of arsenic also had a higher occurrence of antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria.

The findings warrant “redoubling efforts to reduce arsenic exposure,” the authors wrote. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a public health concern since diseases caused by such bacteria, which can be deadly, are harder to treat. Individuals infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria often have higher medical costs, longer hospital stays, and worse health outcomes. (Read the rest of the story.)

Interview: “Transformational change” is needed as severe climate change impacts loom

Last month, Cornell University professor Rachel Bezner Kerr traveled to Egypt where she addressed scientists and political leaders gathered from around the world at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 27).

Bezner Kerr is a co-director of graduate studies for Cornell’s Department of Global Development and one of the three lead coordinating authors of a chapter about food, fiber and “other ecosystem products” for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Bezner Kerr believes that time is running out when it comes to options for preventing severe climate change impacts on people and nature.

Among her observations, Bezner Kerr is calling for a systemic transformation across the agricultural industry, which is responsible for approximately 33% of carbon emissions, including those associated with nitrogen-based fertilizers.

The New Lede (TNL) spoke with Bezner Kerr upon her return from COP 27 about her views on how and why a food system transformation is needed for climate resilience. The following is an edited and condensed account of the conversation:

TNL: When we think of climate change, why do we also need to think about a sweeping change to our current agricultural system?

Bezner Kerr:  That is a key message coming out of the IPCC report–that we need transformational change and for multiple reasons. One, in terms of the food system, right now the way we produce food is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. It’s not something that you can just address one component and then your food system is set.  (Read the rest of the interview.)

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