Testing the power of $500, and the tool tracking global emissions

1. United States

Scientists have figured out a way to break down the tough plastic in fishing nets. By mass, 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of nylon fishing nets and ropes, according to a 2018 study. Nylon 6 is also used to make carpets and other common products, but it’s incredibly inefficient to recycle and releases harmful gases when burned.

“Fishing nets lose quality after a couple years of use,” said Liwei Ye, the lead author of a new paper from Northwestern University. “They become so water-logged that it’s difficult to pull them out of the ocean. And they are so cheap to replace that people just leave them in the water and buy new ones.”

Dr. Ye and other chemists at Northwestern designed a lab reaction that breaks down nylon 6 to its basic, recyclable components, without leaving behind any toxic byproducts. When metallic chemical elements are applied to heated nylon 6 samples without using a solvent, the catalyst also specifically targets this kind of plastic. According to the November 2023 study, this could mean nylon 6 products wouldn’t have to be sorted through a burdensome recycling process before being broken down.

The reaction has only been tested in the lab, but the researchers have filed a patent and say they hope to see the process broadly implemented by the recycling industry.
Sources: Northwestern Now, Our World in Data

2. Brazil

A community-led effort is restoring the Caatinga, a semiarid forest sprawling across 10% of Brazil in the northeast. Home to hundreds of endemic species and 28 million people, the biome is threatened by desertification in large part by an overpopulation of grazing animals. But fundo de pasto (“back pasture”) communities – which practice collective land management – and the Regional Institute of Appropriate Small Farming and Animal Husbandry (IRPAA) are restoring degraded land and supporting the local way of life.

Instead of fencing in the goats and sheep living in the region, the Recaatingamento project fenced off 3,700 acres of woods to protect them from grazing. The group designates areas for sustainable livestock herding after calculating the number of animals an area can support. The IRPAA also encourages economic activities to reduce dependence on livestock production, including beekeeping, rainwater harvesting, and popsicle-making using local fruits.

“The children born here have chosen to stay because they can see it’s possible to stay, to raise their own families here,” said José Moacir dos Santos, president of the IRPAA. It’s a community that believes in the semiarid, that has the potential ... to find the means, technology and paths to live here and take care of the Caatinga.”
Source: Mongabay

3. Kenya

People in 195 Kenyan villages are getting a boost from a universal income initiative, part of the world’s largest study of basic income. Affecting some 23,000 individuals, the initiative by nonprofit GiveDirectly provides monthly installments of about $20 over either two or 12 years, or a $500 lump sum. Though recipients reported disparate benefits depending on whether they received monthly or lump-sum payments, early results released in December 2023 show that such programs can make a sizable dent in poverty.

Lump-sum recipients tended to experience the greatest financial gains: starting businesses more often, earning more money, and spending more on education. Still, among those receiving payments over the longer term, nonfarm business ventures increased by a quarter and profits nearly doubled. Long-term monthly recipients also reported more happiness and better mental health, which researchers attributed to the stability created by people forming groups to pool savings and make withdrawals from the shared account.

The study has found no evidence that the payments discouraged work or increased alcohol consumption, common criticisms of universal income programs. U.S. states and cities are trying out their own basic income projects. In Flint, Michigan, mothers of an estimated 1,200 newborns this year will receive a lump sum of $1,500, and $500 a month for the first year of their child’s life.
Source: Vox, The Economist, Michigan Advance

4. South Korea

South Korean K-dramas are featuring more multidimensional female characters than ever before, even as gender inequalities persist across society. On the country’s major networks, almost half of K-dramas aired from 2017 to 2021 featured female main characters, who are now more independent and complex, say producers. Older K-dramas fit women into a predictable mold – working-class “Candy girls” who were en route to marriage. Today, female characters include free-divers (“Our Blues”) or female lawyers with autism (“Extraordinary Attorney Woo”). Shows feature LGBTQ+ people or romance between older characters.

Observers partly attribute the shift to an increase in the number of women working in the film industry, and to the influence of foreign media. K-dramas and other entertainment in the Korean language have increased in international popularity since the 1990s.

Better representation on-screen heralds some changes in daily life in South Korea, which among developed nations still ranks low for gender equality: 105th of 146 countries as measured by the World Economic Forum in 2023. Feminism and pushback against it was a prominent issue in the 2022 presidential election.

By 2019, “you started to see a lot more women with jobs, women solving problems that had nothing to do with men,” says Joan MacDonald, a journalist who covers K-dramas. “I’m not sure it completely reflects what’s going on in Korean society – but dramas certainly are leading the way.”
Sources: BBC, CNN, NPR, World Economic Forum

World

A coalition of nonprofits is measuring more than 350 million sources of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, paving the way for broader accountability. To meet the challenge of pinpointing where emissions are occurring and how much is being produced, Climate TRACE tracks an expanding range of sources including power and manufacturing facilities, cattle raising and rice paddies, and shipping and aviation.

The group’s third release of data since 2020 again found that emissions were underreported by many countries at the United Nations’ COP28 last year. The unreported amount is estimated to be about 5% of the global total. The United States missed 400 million tons, largely from the oil and gas sector.

The public database combines artificial intelligence with information from 300 satellites and thousands of remote sensors. Major companies such as Boeing and General Motors have signed on to use the tool to evaluate suppliers. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who co-founded the coalition, hopes that the database will be integrated into the U.N.’s greenhouse gas reporting process for countries, and it hopes to provide emissions estimates for developing countries for free.
Sources: Science, Bloomberg, NPR