Asian countries with some of the world’s largest yearly tropical forest losses have either not joined a new global pact to halt forest loss by the end of the decade or sparked doubts about their commitment after signing up.   

More than 120 countries joined the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use on November 2 at the United Nations’ COP26 climate conference in Scotland.   

The non-binding agreement commits them to “working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation” — a major cause of global warming — by 2030, with some $19 billion in public and private financing in the works to help developing countries follow through. 

Collectively, Southeast Asia hosts nearly 15% of the world’s tropical forests, prized by climate activists for the volumes of world-warming carbon they can lock up. But most countries in the region have yet to join the COP26 pact, including Laos and Malaysia; both ranked among the top 10 countries in the world for primary tropical forest loss last year, according to the World Resources Institute, a U.S. research group. Cambodia, 11th on WRI’s list, has also not signed up. 

Malaysia signals 

After drawing rebuke from local opposition parties and rights groups for its absence from the pledge, Malaysia announced Friday it will be joining the deal, but did not say when.   

After the declaration was announced without Malaysia on November 3, a local lawmaker, Charles Santiago, called the country’s absence a “tragedy” in a Twitter post. Speaking with VOA, he said it was crucial that the government now make good on its promise to sign up, blaming the country’s mounting forest losses for amplifying the damage from recent floods and robbing endangered wildlife of their habitat.

Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia are the world’s two largest producers of palm oil, a cash crop that takes up vast tracts of land, often over cleared forest and peatland, another rich carbon sink. WRI data show they lost a combined 343,000 hectares in 2020, an area more than twice the size of greater London.   

Santiago said Malaysia’s powerful business interests were all but sure to block the country from meeting the declaration’s 2030 target, assuming it does join. But he argued that Malaysia should sign up regardless to give the country something to aim for and to tap into the international financing that could unlock. 

“As a country, we have to make a decision … whether we should continue with the way we are doing it or [whether] we need to really put some control over deforestation, especially in dealing with oil palm [and] construction,” he said. 

Indonesia wavers 

Environmental groups fear business interests may end up undermining the declaration in Indonesia as well.   

The sprawling archipelago also features on WRI’s top-10 list and cleared more primary tropical forest in 2020 than Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia combined.   

President Joko Widodo signed the country up to the COP26 pact in Glasgow on November 2. A day later, though, Indonesia’s environment minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, called a commitment to zero deforestation by 2030 “inappropriate and unfair,” casting doubt on the nation’s intentions to abide by the deal. 

“Forcing Indonesia to zero deforestation in 2030 is clearly inappropriate and unfair,” she said in a Facebook post.   

“The massive development of President Jokowi’s era must not stop in the name of carbon emissions or in the name of deforestation,” she added, referring to the president by his common nickname.   

In a statement the next day, conservation group Greenpeace called the minister’s remarks “profoundly disappointing.”   

“For Indonesia to have a minister for environment who supports large-scale developments with clear potential for environmental destruction is deplorable. Rather than ensuring we protect the planet for future generations, this is doing the opposite,” the head of the group’s Indonesian forest campaign, Kiki Taufik, said. 

On Friday, though, a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told The Guardian newspaper that Indonesia’s stated goal of net zero forest loss by 2030 — replacing yearly deforestation with just as much or more new forest — was actually consistent with the COP26 pact. 

Mahendra Siregar, Indonesia’s deputy foreign minister, explained the country’s net zero forest loss goal in statement Thursday.   

Mixed messages   

Arief Wijaya, a senior manager for WRI Indonesia, told VOA that all the back and forth was creating some confusion about what the declaration actually commits countries to.   

He said the Long-Term Climate Strategy that Indonesia submitted to the United Nations in July commits the country not to net zero forest loss, but to net zero emission from forest and land use by 2030. That will let it clear more forest and peatland than it replaces or restores by the end of the decade, so long as what it replaces and restores captures at least as much carbon as what it gives off.   

Arief said that will require Indonesia to make sharp cuts to its forest loss rates over the coming years and at least points the country “in the direction of the COP26 pledge” and puts it on a “trajectory toward zero deforestation.” 

Indonesia and Malaysia have been bringing their annual forest losses down for the past few years. That’s not the case for all of Southeast Asia. Cambodia’s losses stayed roughly steady in 2020 after rising the year before. Losses in Laos have been rising for the past two years and were at their highest yet in 2020 since WRI started keeping track in 2001. 

With research suggesting that Southeast Asia’s tropical forests on the whole are a major carbon source, Arief added, every country had a role to play. 

“If we believe that the continental Southeast Asia … is actually a tropical forest belt, and it’s important for the global climate, temperature and so forth, then any country should actually commit and contribute to reduce deforestation and to manage their forests sustainably,” he said.   

Laos’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment. 
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The World Food Program says it is seeking $65 million to ease food insecurity in Zimbabwe. The U.N. agency says its assessment shows that more than 5 million people in the southern African nation are looking at food shortages in coming months. 

Belinda Popovska, the WFP Zimbabwe spokeswoman, told VOA on Monday that the U.N. agency had started looking for funds to import food for those in need. 

“The latest 2021 rural Zimbabwe vulnerability assessment committee rural report indicates that 2.9 million people in rural areas – that’s 27% of rural households – continue to be food insecure during the peak lean season between January and March 2022. In urban areas up to 2.4 million people are expected to be food insecure according to the latest 2021 urban livelihoods assessment,” Popovska said.

The government says Zimbabwe experienced a bumper harvest this year, but the lack of food in rural areas indicates the harvest was in fact disappointing.  

Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa says Zimbabwe’s perennial food shortages will end with more production in the farms in the coming 2021/2022 season, which is expected to start anytime now.  

She says the government will make sure farmers have the supplies and money they need to meet national requirements for both human consumption and industrial use.   

“The strategy will result in more area being put to crop production as evidenced by the proposed increases of the following crops: maize, sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, soybeans and tobacco. The financing of the summer cropping and livestock will be through the private and public sector as well as development partners,” Mutsvangwa said.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of the region, has for years been facing food shortages, forcing it to rely on humanitarian organizations such as World Vision, USAID and the WFP to feed the people.  

The government blames the problems on recurring droughts, but its critics point to a chaotic land reform program which started in 2000 and displaced experienced white farmers from their land.   
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Former U.S. President Barack Obama told the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on Monday that most nations failed to meet their commitments made in the 2015 Paris Climate Conference agreement and the world is nowhere near where it needs to be in confronting climate change.

Speaking during the second full week of the talks — known as COP26 — Obama said that while the Paris conference and subsequent agreement showed what is possible and created a framework from which to address the challenges of the climate crisis, most nations failed to be as ambitious as they needed to be.

“The escalation, the ratcheting up of ambition that we anticipated in Paris six years ago has not been uniformly realized,” Obama said. He called it “particularly discouraging” that the leaders of China and Russia — two of the largest emitters — declined to even attend the conference, and both nations have demonstrated what he said “appears to be a dangerous lack of urgency” on climate change.

China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter. Its president, Xi Jinping, last week called on other nations to “step up cooperation” and act on climate targets. Xi, however, offered no new commitments. The comments came in a statement to the conference.

Obama said advanced economies like the United States and Europe need to be leading on this issue, but so do China, Russia and India. He said, “We can’t afford anybody on the sidelines.”

Addressing young people, Obama encouraged them to “vote like your life depends on it, because it does.” Obama said he understood their cynicism about politics, but that governments around the world will not act unless they feel pressure from voters.

The 26th U.N. climate conference — or Conference of the Parties, or COP — is Obama’s first since he helped deliver the 2015 Paris climate accord, when nations committed to cutting fossil fuel and agricultural emissions fast enough to keep the Earth’s warming below catastrophic levels.

Climate summits since then have been less conclusive, especially as the U.S. under President Donald Trump dropped out of the Paris accord. President Joe Biden has since rejoined. Last week, Biden announced ambitious change commitments as he attended the Glasgow conference. The U.S. is the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter after China.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. 

 
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More than 100,000 climate-action activists from across the world gathered in Glasgow Saturday to protest the agreements and promises made so far at the COP26 climate talks.

According to protesters, the new pledges made during the summit — to cut carbon and methane emissions, end deforestation, phase out coal and provide more financing for poorer countries most vulnerable to extreme weather — are just “eye candy,” falling far short of what’s needed to curb global warming. 

 

Teenage activist Greta Thunberg has described the two-week summit as more “blah blah blah” and called it a “failure.” She told clamorous youth protesters outside the venue that the conference has turned into “a global North Greenwash Festival.”  

Others worry, though, that in the rush to make climate-action pledges, Western governments may be going too fast with decarbonizing and risk losing the support of their own populations by failing to take into account the economic impact of the monumental shifts being envisaged.

Opinion polls suggest that across the globe, overwhelming majorities of people see climate change as an emergency requiring dramatic action. But some polls in recent weeks have also suggested that when people are told what the costs might be for them to help curb global warming, they are reluctant to shoulder the financial burden.

A survey in Britain published Sunday suggested that less than half of the British population are willing to pay thousands of pounds to make their homes greener to help meet net-zero emission goals outlined by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Those polled were asked their opinions on green policies to slash emissions before and after hearing about the estimated upfront costs to insulate their homes and switch from natural gas boilers for heating to heat pumps. In the survey conducted for British think tank Onward by pollster J.L. Partners, 50% backed the idea of better insulation for homes, double glazing and switching to heat pumps. But when they were provided with the estimated cost of $11,000 per household, support trailed away, with just 26% agreeing.

“Millions of voters, broadly supportive of the ‘cleaner earth’ agenda, are wondering how much of the burden of transitioning to a low-carbon, low-emission economy will fall on them, when they’re already struggling to make ends meet,” economist and newspaper columnist Liam Halligan wrote Monday in The Telegraph. 

How to green the planet and fund the transition away from fossil fuel dependency to renewable, sustainable energy, and how to finance projects to make countries more resilient to extreme weather, have been key themes at the summit. The discussion of costs and how to share them between governments (via taxation), consumers, households and the private sector have also been featured.

Last week, major banks, investors and insurers pledged trillions in green funding in a coordinated commitment to incorporate carbon emissions into their investment and lending decisions.

The United Nations’ Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, made up of more than 450 financial institutions across 45 countries and managing assets valued at $130 trillion, have committed to its program to cut carbon emissions and fund investments needed for new greener technologies.

Unveiled last week by U.N. climate envoy Mark Carney, the funding can take the form of bank loans and investments by venture capitalists, private-equity firms, mutual funds, endowments and other big investors that buy stocks and bonds. They would still earn profits while shifting funds toward investments that help reduce carbon emissions.

“These seemingly arcane but essential changes to the plumbing of finance can move and are moving climate changes from the fringes to the forefront and transforming the financial system in the process,” said Carney, a former head of the central banks of England and Canada. “The architecture of the global financial system has been transformed to deliver net zero,” Carney said.

“The gap between what governments have and what the world needs is large,” in order to finance a global energy transition and reach the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in Glasgow after the announcement of the finance measures. “And the private sector needs to play a bigger role.”

Climate activists have decried the pledge, saying it is just another big promise that won’t be observed.

“Global leaders can no longer trust financial institutions to regulate themselves,” Veronica Oakeshott of Global Witness, an international nongovernmental organization, said in a statement.

Some industry analysts and economists say the private sector plans are far from concrete, and significant problems remain on how to measure the carbon footprint of investment portfolios and align those measurements across international financial markets. Who will verify the accuracy of what banks and investors report?

Others worry that financial firms are there to maximize profits for clients and shareholders and risk losing customers or breaching their fiduciary obligations if they fail to maintain good returns. It remains unclear at this stage how profitable green investments will be.

There are also worries that the fossil fuel sector will see further divestments by lenders and investors eager to reduce their carbon footprint, which will boost energy costs for consumers as global demand for natural gas and oil continues to rise. Fossil fuel investments are already insufficient to meet future energy demands.

That, in turn, has contributed to the current global energy crunch and record-high energy prices for households and businesses, say industry commentators. 
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At least 89 people, including 17 children, have tested positive for the Zika virus in a surge of cases in the Indian city of Kanpur, its health department said on Monday.

First discovered in 1947, the mosquito-borne virus Zika virus reached epidemic proportions in Brazil in 2015, when thousands of babies were born with microcephaly, a disorder that causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.

“There has been a surge in cases of the Zika virus and the health department has formed several teams to contain the spread,” Dr. Nepal Singh, chief medical officer of Kanpur district in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.

“There is one woman who is pregnant, and we are paying special attention towards her.”

Cases have been reported in several Indian states in recent years, though Amit Mohan Prasad, Uttar Pradesh’s top government bureaucrat for health and family welfare, told Reuters this was the first outbreak in the state.

The first Zika case in the industrial city of Kanpur was detected on Oct. 23 and the number of cases has increased over the past week.

“People are testing positive because we are doing very aggressive contact tracing,” said Prasad. Authorities were increasing their surveillance of the outbreak and eliminating breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that transmit the virus, Singh said.
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A study by Monash University researchers in Australia has found that moderate drinking of alcohol is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and a lowering of death from all causes — when compared to zero alcohol consumption.

More than 18,000 people over the age of 70 in the United States and Australia took part in the research. It is the first study to investigate the heart health implications of drinking alcohol. 

It found that the consumption of modest amounts of alcohol was associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. Robyn Woods is an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.    

“Taking or consuming five to ten alcoholic beverages a week, which is quite modest gave better outcomes than those who were completely teetotal. It seemed to be associated with a reduced cardiovascular disease risk and also of all-cause mortality,” Woods said.

Researchers have said their findings should be interpreted with caution because participants in the study were healthy with no previous heart or other severe diseases.They could also have been more physically and socially active than the wider ageing population.  

Exactly how modest alcohol consumption can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and other causes of death is unknown.   

Associate professor Woods says more research is needed. 

“There is some evidence that modest alcohol intake has vascular properties that could be beneficial. But there is also the potential for social benefits. So, you know, consuming alcohol with friends, family, etcetera may well have a benefit,” Woods said.

The Monash University, Melbourne, research is published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.   

Guidelines from the Australian Drug and Alcohol Foundation, a leading public health organization, advise that both men and women should consumer no more than 10 standard drinks per week. A standard drink in Australia contains 10 grams of alcohol. 
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Medically assisted dying is now legal in New Zealand. The End of Life Choice Act has come into effect one year after almost two-thirds of New Zealanders voted in favor of it. 

Supporters believe the assisted dying laws will give New Zealanders who are “suffering terribly at the end of their lives” choice, compassion and dignity.    

To be eligible, a person must have a terminal illness that is likely to end their life within six months. They must also be able to make an informed decision.  

The legislation came into force Sunday, a year after a binding referendum.   

Brooke van Velden is the deputy leader of the small ACT New Zealand party, which promoted the voluntary euthanasia law. 

She told Radio New Zealand the measures will benefit the South Pacific country of 5 million people.  

“This weekend New Zealand became a kinder, more compassionate and humane society for allowing people who are struggling and suffering in those last few days with their terminal illness choice and compassion on how and when they go,” Velden said.

However, some critics insist that patients with chronic conditions might feel obliged to use euthanasia to avoid being a burden on their families.  

They also believe that “inadequate palliative care services” need to be better resourced, so that terminally ill patients receive better care.  

Some senior Church leaders have said that while they oppose the “deliberate taking of human life,” they would still offer care and advice to those who choose “assisted dying” under the new laws. 

The government has appointed three experts, including a medical ethicist, to monitor the legislation. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she voted “yes” in the referendum last year on voluntary euthanasia and the legalization of recreational cannabis. 

New Zealand joins a small group of countries, including the Netherlands and Canada, which allow euthanasia.  
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Wang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country’s space station.  

Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station’s main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station’s robotic service arm, according to the China Manned Space agency.  

The third member of the crew, Ye Guangfu, assisted from inside the station, CMS said on its website.  

Wang, 41, and Zhai, 55, had both traveled to China’s now-retired experimental space stations, and Zhai conducted China’s first spacewalk 13 years ago.  

The three are the second crew on the permanent station, and the mission that began with their arrival Oct. 16 is scheduled to be the longest stretch of time in space yet for Chinese astronauts.  

The Tianhe module of the station will be connected next year to two more sections named Mengtian and Wentian. The completed station will weigh about 66 tons, much smaller than the International Space Station, which launched its first module in 1998 and weighs around 450 tons. 

Three spacewalks are planned to install equipment in preparation for the station’s expansion, while the crew will also assess living conditions in the Tianhe module and conduct experiments in space medicine and other fields.      

China’s military-run space program plans to send multiple crews to the station over the next two years to make it fully functional. 
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Workplace mandates requiring vaccination against COVID-19 continue to be controversial in the U.S. The Biden administration is expected to respond this week to a recent federal court decision to temporarily halt federal vaccine mandate rules for large employers. Michelle Quinn reports.
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High wind off the Florida coast have prompted SpaceX to delay the return of four space station astronauts who have been in orbit since spring.

The U.S., French and Japanese astronauts were supposed to leave the International Space Station on Sunday, with their capsule splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday morning. But with gusts exceeding safety limits, SpaceX bumped the departure to Monday afternoon, with a nighttime return to conclude their six-month mission. 

The good news is that their trip home will now last eight hours, less than half as long as before. The toilet in their capsule is broken, and so the four will need to rely on diapers while flying home. 

SpaceX still is aiming for a Wednesday night launch, at the earliest, of their replacements. This flight also has been delayed by bad weather, as well as an astronaut’s undisclosed medical issue. The issue, described as minor, should be resolved by launch time, officials said. 

Last week, SpaceX and NASA flipped the order of the launch and landing because of the deteriorating weather and the looming deadline to get the capsule back from the space station. SpaceX capsules are certified for a maximum 210 days in orbit, and the one there now is approaching 200 days. 
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Poland’s Health Ministry issued instructions Sunday to doctors confirming that it is legal to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health or life is in danger, a directive that comes amid apparent confusion over a new restriction to the country’s abortion law. 

The document addressed to obstetricians comes in reaction to the hospital death of a 30-year-old mother whose pregnancy was in its 22nd week. The woman died in September but her death became widely known this month. Doctors at the hospital in Pszczyna, in southern Poland, held off terminating her pregnancy despite the fact that her fetus lacked enough amniotic fluid to survive, her family and a lawyer say.

The doctors have been suspended and prosecutors are investigating. 

Angered Poles held massive nationwide protests over the weekend, blaming the woman’s death on Poland’s restrictive abortion law. Women’s rights activists say it has a chilling effect on doctors in this predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

The ministry stressed it is in line with the law to terminate a pregnancy when the woman’s health is in danger, even more so in case of threat to her life. It included guidance in case of premature loss of the amniotic fluid.

“It should be clearly stressed that doctors must not be afraid to take evident decisions. stemming from their experience and the available medical knowledge,” the ministry said.

Until a year ago, women in Poland could have abortions in three cases: if the pregnancy resulted from a crime like rape, if the woman’s health or life was at risk, or in the case of irreparable defects of the fetus. That last possibility was eliminated a year ago, when the Constitutional Tribunal ruled it went against Poland’s law. 
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Jesse Readlynn, a father of two from Rochester, New York, breathed a huge sigh of relief this week. “My children getting coronavirus was one of my biggest fears,” he told VOA.“Finally, this worry and uncertainty I’ve been living with can begin to relax.”

Readlynn’s relief comes after last week’s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation that children 5-11 years old be vaccinated with a pediatric version of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine. The guidance makes 28 million American children eligible for a vaccine that has proved overwhelmingly effective in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

For many parents like Readlynn, the development is highly welcome news. When his 7-year-old receives his first dose of the vaccine next week, and his 4-year-old receives a version of the vaccine in a clinical study, Readlynn is hopeful life can return closer to what it was in the years before the coronavirus pandemic.

“Playdates, having real birthday parties, eating inside restaurants, going to museums,” he listed as things he’s looking forward to doing once his children are vaccinated.“Visiting family we have to fly to and just exploring the big, wide, exciting world again! It’s going to bring a normalcy to our lives that we haven’t had in two years.”

Uncertainty for some

According to an October survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly three in 10 parents (27%) are eager to get a vaccine for their child, 5-11 years old. A slightly higher number (30%) said they will definitely not get the vaccine for their child, while a full third of respondents said they will wait a while to see how the vaccine is working.

“It’s honestly the most difficult decision I’ve had to make for my child,” said Kerri Paino of Hauppauge, New York, mother of a 7-year-old now eligible for the vaccine and a 4-year-old who is not.

Like so many parents over the last two years, Paino said she and her husband, both vaccinated, have had to make seemingly constant and uncomfortable decisions about what is and isn’t safe for their unvaccinated children. Everything from an afternoon trip to the mall to a full family vacation caused uncertainty and second-guessing.

“We took a trip to Mexico this summer and we had to take a COVID test to get back home,” Paino said. “My 7-year-old daughter wailed so loud in the lobby, it was embarrassing. But I also feel bad because this all must be so uncomfortable and strange for her. I just want it to be over.”

Still, Paino said she is worried about the long-term effects of the vaccine and isn’t ready for her daughter to get hers yet.

“We’re still on the fence,” she said. “I don’t want to make a decision that could negatively affect her future without her being able to make a conscious choice along with me.”

 

Other parents trust the safety of the vaccine but are still in no hurry to have their children vaccinated. As the number of coronavirus cases drops throughout the country, many don’t feel the same urgency they might have felt earlier in the year.

Hillary Sardinas of Albany, California, said her eldest child is eligible for the vaccine. While she’s confident in the science behind the vaccine, she doesn’t feel pressured to have her son get vaccinated immediately.

“Maybe it’s a luxury, but we feel comfortable with the protocols at his school and live in an area with high vaccination rates,” Sardinas told VOA. “My son has a fear of shots, and so I thought knowing his friends got it, and waiting to do it in our pediatrician’s office where he’ll feel more comfortable, is a good thing for him.”

While Sardinas is sure she’ll have her son get the vaccine before the end of the year, Paino isn’t nearly as confident.

“I feel like the debate around the vaccine has become so political,” she said, “and it has made me lose trust in where I’m getting my information from. I want to trust science, but I feel like I don’t know what the truth is. You have doctors arguing both sides.”

To trust or not to trust

“The only ‘experts’ arguing against vaccines right now are rogue doctors, rogue scientists, and conspiracy theorists,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the most notable vaccine experts in the United States.

COVID-19 cases have been less widespread among children than adults, though the number of children and adolescents admitted to the hospital with the virus increased nearly fivefold this summer as the delta variant surged.

In the U.S., more than 8,300 children aged 5-11 have been hospitalized with serious illness caused by the coronavirus. An additional 5,200 children and teens have developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a condition linked to COVID-19 that often leads to hospitalization.

The CDC trial found the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine is effective in protecting children from the worst effects of the disease.

“The science on this is very clear,” Offit said. “The CDC-approved vaccine is effective in keeping children safe from coronavirus.”

Despite consensus among scientists, nearly one in three parents remain opposed to having their child receive the vaccine.

“I’m not against vaccinations,” said Janelle Witten of Gastonia, North Carolina. Witten has a son who is eligible for the pediatric vaccine, and she also is pregnant. “But I’m not willing to risk the health of my children on a vaccine that doesn’t have data on its long-term health effects.”

Alberto Perez of Blairsville, Georgia, has similar concerns for his children.

“If this was a virus killing 3% to 5% of children, I would have my kids get the vaccine immediately,” he said, “but that’s not what this is. I don’t feel coronavirus is as big a threat as the unknown odds of long-term side effects caused by the vaccine — fertility issues, for example.”

The concern over future fertility issues was repeated by several parents interviewed, but Offit said it should not be a reason for concern.

“It’s a false notion that science can disprove,” Offit said. “Clinical trials included pregnant women with no issue. This is an example of those against the vaccine throwing things against a wall to see what will make people scared. Because when people are scared it’s difficult to unscare them.”

Offit said those who get the vaccine should feel confident that long-term side effects will not surface.

“When you get a vaccine, you have what is called ‘immune response’ almost immediately,” he said. “It doesn’t crop up years from now, it peaks within 7-10 days. That’s the response, and we know that because we’ve seen how other similar vaccines work.”

Some parents will likely wait additional weeks or months, making sure their kids’ classmates are vaccinated without issue, before letting their own children get the COVID-19 vaccine.

However, Jesse Readlynn said he’s done waiting.

“The chance of a child getting seriously sick from coronavirus is low,” he acknowledged. “But they’re still much more likely to get sick from COVID than from the vaccine. I’m hopeful this turns out to be the light at the end of the tunnel for my children as we exit this uncertainty and get back to a normal life.” 
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When a rotten egg smell rises from the mangrove swamps of southeast Mexico, something is going well. It means that this key coastal habitat for blunting hurricane impacts has recovered and is capturing carbon dioxide — the main ingredient of global warming.

While world leaders seek ways to stop the climate crisis at a United Nations conference in Scotland this month, one front in the battle to save the planet’s mangroves is thousands of kilometers away on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Decades ago, mangroves lined these shores, but today there are only thin green bands of trees beside the sea, interrupted by urbanized areas and reddish segments killed by too much salt and by dead branches poking from the water.

A few dozen fishermen and women villagers have made building on what’s left of the mangroves part of their lives. Their work is supported by academics and donations to environmental groups, and government funds help train villagers to organize their efforts. 

The first time they came to the swamp for seasonal restoration work was more than a decade ago with Jorge Alfredo Herrera, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the Mexican Polytechnic Institute in Yucatan. He told them the mangroves needed a network of interlaced canals where fresh and salt water would mingle.

To dig them was a hard work and paid only $4 a day. Men from Chelem, a fishing village of Progreso, turned down the job but a group of women took it on, believing they could accomplish a lot with little money.

Recently, after an intense rainy season, the women worked to finish the second part of the restoration process: planting young mangroves in a swamp near this port city. Under the sun, they chuckled, remembering the time they encountered a crocodile and barely managed to run away.

Then they placed 20-inch mangrove seedlings into mounds of mud held together by mesh, creating tiny islands about a yard (meter) square.

“The happiest day is when our plants take,” said 41-year-old Keila Vázquez, leader of the women who now are paid $15 a day and take pride in putting their “grain of sand” into the planet’s well-being. “They are like our children.”

GLOBAL THREAT TO MANGROVES

This mangrove restoration effort is similar to others around the globe, as scientists and community groups increasingly recognize the need to protect and bring back the forests to store carbon and buffer coastlines from climate-driven extreme weather, including more intense hurricanes and storm surges. Other restorations are underway in Indonesia, which contains the world’s largest tracts of mangrove habitat, Colombia and elsewhere.

“Mangroves represent a very important ecosystem to fight climate change,” said Octavio Aburto, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

While the tropical trees only grow on less than 1% of the Earth’s land, he said, “on a per-hectare basis, mangroves are the ecosystem that sequesters the most carbon … They can bury around five times more carbon in the sediment than a tropical rain forest.”

Yet around the globe, mangroves are threatened.

From 1980 to 2005, 20% to 35% of the world’s mangrove forests were lost, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

From 2000 to 2016, the rate of loss declined as governments and environmental groups spotlighted the problem, but destruction continued — and about 2% of the world’s remaining mangrove forests disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery.

In Mexico, as in much of the world, the largest threat to mangroves is development. The region near Cancun lost most of its historic mangroves to highways and hotels starting in the 1980s.

Tracts of mangroves on the country’s southern Pacific coast also have been cleared to make room for shrimp farming, while oil exploration and drilling in shallow waters off the Gulf of Mexico threatens mangroves there, said Aburto.

Mexico began to protect some of its mangroves only after the excessive tourism development of the 1980s. And although Mexico took steps to establish a climate action plan in 1998 and was one of the first developing countries to make voluntary commitments under the Paris Climate Accord, its commitment to the environment began to backslide in 2015, said Julia Carabias, a professor on the science faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

In the past six years, Mexico has cut resources for environmental conservation by 60%, according to Carabias.

And that, combined with increasing government support of fossil fuel energy and ongoing infrastructure and tourist projects in the region, is sounding alarms.

Despite the country’s monitoring system, local researchers say that for every hectare (2.5 acres) of mangrove restored in southeast Mexico, 10 hectares are degraded or lost.

EFFORTS TO SAVE SWAMPS

The halting efforts in Mexico to protect and restore mangroves, even as more are lost, mirror situations elsewhere. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency estimated in 2007 that 40% of Indonesia’s mangroves had been cut down for aquaculture projects and coastal development in the previous three decades.

But there have been restoration efforts as well.

In 2020, the Indonesia government set an ambitious target of planting mangroves on 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of degrading coastline by 2024. Key ministries are involved in restoration efforts that include community outreach and education.

Yet there have been some setbacks. Precise mapping and data on mangroves is hard to come by, making it difficult for agencies to know where to concentrate. Newly planted mangroves have been swept out to sea by strong tides and waves. Community outreach and education have been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Mexico, successes exist, even if they are slow in coming.

Manuel González, a 57-year-old fisherman known as Bechá, proudly shows off recovering mangroves in the seaside community of Dzilam de Bravo, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Progreso. He walks through mud, avoiding the interlaced mangrove roots that burrow into it. Some trees are already 30 feet (9 meters) tall.

In 2002, Hurricane Isidoro devastated this area, but after a decade of work, 297 acres have been restored. The fisherman says that now storms don’t hit the community as hard. And the fish, migratory birds, deer, crocodiles and even jaguars have returned. 

But the mangroves face a new risk, as stumps scattered among the trees attest.

“In 10 years, you have a very nice mangrove for someone with a chainsaw to come and take it,” González said. “That’s something that hurts me a lot.”

Cutting mangroves has been a crime since 2005, but González says authorities shut down and fine projects, only to have them later reopen.

The Yucatan state government said it is aware of complaints of illegal logging yet the harvest has only grown.

While more funds are needed for protection and restoration, some communities prefer to think about how to make conservation a profitable activity.

José Inés Loría, head of operations at San Crisanto, an old salt harvesting community of about 500 between Progreso and Dzilam, thinks the way to make the local mangrove part “of the community’s business model” is using the new financial tools such as blue carbon credits.

Those instruments, already in use in Colombia and other countries, allow polluting businesses to compensate for emissions by paying others to store or sequester greenhouse gases.

Some in Mexico say credits are still not well regulated in the country and could invite fraud and scams. But Loria defends them. “If conservation doesn’t mean improving the quality of life of a community, it doesn’t work.”
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The astronauts who will depart the International Space Station on Sunday will be stuck using diapers on the way home because of their capsule’s broken toilet.

NASA astronaut Megan McArthur described the situation Friday as “suboptimal” but manageable. She and her three crewmates will spend 20 hours in their SpaceX capsule, from the time the hatches are closed until Monday morning’s planned splashdown.

“Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges,” she said during a news conference from orbit. “This is just one more that we’ll encounter and take care of in our mission. So we’re not too worried about it.”

After a series of meetings Friday, mission managers decided to bring McArthur and the rest of her crew home before launching their replacements. That SpaceX launch already had been delayed more than a week by bad weather and an undisclosed medical issue involving one of the crew.

SpaceX is now targeting liftoff for Wednesday night at the earliest.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who will return with McArthur, told reporters that the past six months have been intense up there. The astronauts conducted a series of spacewalks to upgrade the station’s power grid, endured inadvertent thruster firings by docked Russian vehicles that sent the station into brief spins, and hosted a private Russian film crew — a space station first.

They also had to deal with the toilet leak, pulling up panels in their SpaceX capsule and discovering pools of urine. The problem was first noted during SpaceX’s private flight in September, when a tube came unglued and spilled urine beneath the floorboards. SpaceX fixed the toilet on the capsule awaiting liftoff but deemed the one in orbit unusable.

Engineers determined that the capsule had not been structurally compromised by the urine and was safe for the ride back. The astronauts will have to rely on what NASA describes as absorbent “undergarments.”

On the culinary side, the astronauts grew the first chili peppers in space — “a nice morale boost,” according to McArthur. They got to sample their harvest in the past week, adding pieces of the green and red peppers to tacos.

“They have a nice spiciness to them, a little bit of a lingering burn,” she said. “Some found that more troublesome than others.”

Also returning with McArthur and Pesquet: NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. SpaceX launched them to the space station on April 23. Their capsule is certified for a maximum 210 days in space, and with Friday marking their 196th day aloft, NASA is eager to get them back as soon as possible.

One American and two Russians will remain on the space station following their departure. While it would be better if their replacements arrived first — in order to share tips on living in space — Kimbrough said the remaining NASA astronaut will fill in the newcomers. 

 
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