For the first time this year, Saudi authorities required all pilgrims to wear identification on a “Nusuk Card” around their neck, allowing security forces to check they had the Hajj visa. Banners and phone messages warned against attending Hajj without this visa and many breaching these rules were deported.

A government-controlled Youtube channel said before the Hajj that the Nusuk Card “enables access to urgent medical care” and one survivor told Climate Home that, despite feeling tired and dizzy, he felt unable to ask for medical help for fear of punishment and deportation because he only had a tourist visa.

Temperatures in Mecca reached 51.8C this year, an unusually high figure which Climatemeter scientists have said was “mostly exacerbated by human-driven climate change”.

Over 1,300 people died during the heatwave and more than four-fifths of them were without official permits, according to Saudi Health Minister Fahad Al-Jalajel. Foreign governments have largely blamed travel agents for facilitating these irregular pilgrimages, while the Saudi authorities and climate change have mostly escaped blame.

One of those without a permit was Ibrahim, a retired Egyptian head teacher. To dodge visa checks, he walked 19 km in the baking heat to Arafat, a sacred hill near Mecca. He told Climate Home that he had asked buses carrying pilgrims with permits to stop and take him “but no one stopped, no one helped us”.

#No_Hajj_without_a_permit because services are directly linked to it, and accessing the Holy Sites without a permit is a violation that merits legal consequences.#Makkah_and_Madinah_Eagerly_Await_You#No_Hajj_without_a_permit#Hajj_1445H pic.twitter.com/aapODeC018

— Ministry of Hajj and Umrah (@MoHU_En) May 22, 2024

Fahad Saeed, a Pakistani climate scientist with Climate Analytics, told Climate Home: “The Hajj pilgrimage is a profound reminder to every Muslim of equality in the eyes of God. Yet, the disparity in the safety of pilgrims based on their financial means starkly contradicts this spirit of equality.”

Two-tier system

The city of Mecca is where the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, was born and lived most of his life. One of the religion’s five central pillars is that all believers should, if they’re healthy and can afford it, visit the city at least once on a pilgrimage known as Hajj and carry out a series of rituals.

Since Muhammad’s time, Islam has expanded across the globe and is now the religion of about a quarter of the world’s people. As the Hajj takes place for a single five-day period each year, there are far more people wanting to take part than the city can handle. Over 1.5 million pilgrims arrived in Mecca for the event last June. 

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Official visas to enter Mecca during the Hajj are rationed through a lottery system, working with specialist travel agencies. But some travel agents also advise pilgrims on how to enter Mecca without an official visa.

That was how Ibrahim, who had been saving up for the Hajj for thirty years, got to Mecca. He did not want to reveal his second name out of fear of the Saudi government’s punishment.

He told Climate Home that he couldn’t afford an official visa 500,000EGP ($10,000). He entered Saudi Arabia with a normal tourist one and, with the help of a tourism company, he was able to bribe his way through checkpoints into Mecca.

He found accommodation in the suburb of Al-Aziziyah but authorities quickly raided the area before the start of Hajj. Many pilgrims without official visas were fingerprinted and deported but Ibrahim was just driven out of the city towards Jeddah.

For 1,000 Riyals ($267), he found a taxi to take him back to Al-Aziziya where he hid until the first day of Hajj. This is the pilgrimage’s most important day when pilgrims spend a day next to Mount Arafat, where Prophet Muhammad delivered his Farewell Sermon. There, they pray and ask for forgiveness.

Most pilgrims get buses from Mecca to Arafat but, worried about soldiers searching these buses, Ibrahim and his companions made the 19 km journey on foot. When he got there, the area was crowded and the temperature reached nearly 50C (122F).

The 62-year old said he began to feel exhausted and dizzy even though he was not fasting that day. “My foot, which had undergone three surgeries before, felt like a piece of fire. I could not walk”, he said.

Standing up in the heat lessens the blood flow to the brain, which can cause fainting but also heart or kidney failures, explained Mike Tipton, a British professor who advises athletes and soldiers on heat.

Muslim worshippers make their way to cast stones as part of a symbolic stoning of the devil ritual on June 18, 2023. (Photo: Medhat Hajjaj/apaimages)

Ibrahim said that getting water for him was difficult and that he did not want to ask the clinics along the road to Arafat for medical help because of his lack of visa. “We saw the bodies of pilgrims on the road in need of help,” he said, “some of them were dead, some were suffering from heat exhaustion and no one was helping them”.

The claim that irregular pilgrims were denied help has been made by many, including the official spokesperson for pilgrims from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region Karwan Stoni, who told Agence France Presse they could not access air-conditioned spaces that the authorities had made available.

Ibrahim survived, completed his Hajj and returned to Egypt. But Jordanian cousins Tariq, 48, and Hossam Al-Bustanji, 52, were not so lucky. Their cousin Ahmed told Climate Home that their companions told him they died after walking about for seven or eight hours without any services.

“They fell and pleaded for water but no one helped them”, he said. “Their bodies were buried in Mecca and were not sent to Jordan despite our requests”.

Pilgrims receive a spray of water from volunteers in Mecca on June 17, 2024 (Photo: Arab World Press)

While irregular pilgrims had it worse, even those with official visas suffered and some died in the heat. Jordanian Rania Bassam told Climate Home her brother and his family went to Mecca, where he volunteered as a doctor. 

She said they complained to her about the services provided and the extreme heat. Bassam’s brother later died in Arafat. “His body was identified by his fingerprint but we were prevented from seeing him and saying goodbye”, she said.

Tipton said that, while many of the dead were likely to be over 65-years old with existing heart problems, the heat can kill healthy young people too from heat stroke. 

Without getting bodies into cold water, heat stroke can be a “runaway route to hypothermia with death occurring at [a core temperature of] 40-44C”.

Safer Hajj

Campaigners are appealing to Saudi authorities to take measures that would reduce the risk of mass deaths, especially as the situation is expected to get worse as the world warms.

A 2021 study published in Environmental Research Letters found that if the world warms by 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, heat stroke risk for pilgrims on the Hajj will be five times greater.

Heat expert Mike Tipton said that they should encourage people to sit down when they can, reduce any stress, fan people and cool their hands, feet and bodies down with cold water. But, he said, it’s difficult to look after so many people.

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Limiting numbers would help, he said, and that’s the route the authorities have been going down. Government reactions in Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world have been to prosecute and crack down on travel agents who encourage pilgrims to evade visa laws.

But that has not been enough to dissuade Ibrahim’s wife. Despite her husband’s ordeals, she is keen to follow in his footsteps next year, performing Hajj unofficially.

But speaking in their Giza home, Ibrahim warned her against the idea. “You will not be alive again if you go unofficially – either you go on an official Hajj or not at all”, he said.

(Reporting by Eman Muhammed and Joe Lo, editing by Joe Lo and Matteo Civillini)

The post Saudi visa crackdown left heatwave-hit Hajj pilgrims scared to ask for help appeared first on Climate Home News.

The energy ministry told state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco not to go ahead with a planned increase of its production cap from 12 to 13 million barrels a day, the company announced on Tuesday.

In a brief and unexpected statement, the world’s biggest oil firm gave no reasons for the move. But some analysts speculated that the Saudi government’s faith in ever-growing oil demand may be declining.

Saudi Arabia currently produces around 9 million barrels. A million barrels is just over 1% of the world’s oil production and equivalent to that pumped out by medium-sized oil producers like Angola or the United Kingdom.

Writing on the wall?

Oil Change International campaigner Romain Ioualalen said the decision shows Saudi Arabia “is starting to realise that the world meant it when it committed to “transition away from fossil fuels” at Cop28″.

Linking it to the US decision last week to pause new gas export terminals, Ioualalen said “the era of unchecked fossil fuel expansion is over and we’re entering the era of renewable energy”.

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Peter Wood, a strategist for oil producer Shell, said on X that “the market doesn’t need more oil production capacity right now” but with oil wells coming to the end of their lives “that can change, even if oil demand [growth] slows”.

But, while climate campaigners celebrated the signal, energy geopolitics researcher Francesco Sassi said Saudi Arabia may just be trying to push up the oil price to balance its budget.

Sassi also pointed out that over the last five years, Saudi Arabia has been burning less of its oil for electricity domestically, as it ramps up gas and invests in renewables. That leaves it more to export.

Carbon Tracker analyst Guy Prince pointed out that the new cap is still three million barrels above its current level so the country still has plenty of space to increase production.

But he added that, if Saudi Arabia is serious about restraining oil production, that would be a good move for the country.

“Considering that they’re looking to diversify their economy away from fossil fuels in the long term, it doesn’t make any sense to expand their existing production capacity,” he said.

Opec vs IEA

For years, the Saudi-led Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has clashed with the International Energy Agency (IEA) over whether oil demand will decline or not.

The IEA predicts that, over the next five years, oil demand growth is “set to lose momentum…as the energy transition gathers pace, with an overall peak looming on the horizon”.

On the other hand, Opec claims oil demand will keep growing to 2045 and perhaps beyond.

Prince said it was “hard to see” Opec’s forecast panning out when there is “such a rapid rollout of renewable technology” and the possibility of governments stepping up climate action.

The differences in predictions are most acute for road transport. The IEA says oil demand for petrol will fall by 2028 as electric vehicle sales “soar” but Opec predicts it will keep growing strongly, although it accepts there are “high levels of uncertainties” because of the rise of electric vehicles.

Despite most major developing countries having net zero plans, Opec expects the developing world to be using more oil in 2045 than they do now.

It says this growth will be led by the world’s most populous country India, where it claims oil demand will double by 2045 as more gasoline and diesel are used.

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Recent reporting from the Centre for Climate Reporting revealed Saudi Arabia has been taking measures to prop up oil demand across Asia and Africa, by investing in oil-guzzling technologies.

In the run-up to Cop28, the OPEC and the IEA clashed publicly. The IEA said that the oil and gas industry faces a “moment of truth” and “must choose between fuelling the climate crisis or embracing the shift to clean energy.

The head of Opec responded with a blog post, accusing the IEA of “unjustly villif[ying] the industry as being behind the crisis”.

At Cop28, Opec warned its members that “pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences”.

But after governments agreed to “transitioning away from fossil fuels in enegy systems”, the Saudi energy minister played down the decision.

Two weeks after the summit, he claimed that this was optional. This claim was labelled “incredibly misleading” by E3G analyst Tom Evans.

The post Saudi Arabia cancels plan to raise oil pumping cap appeared first on Climate Home News.

Every day that passes, I try to put words to paper, as others have before me, to offer a tribute to this very special friend and partner.

But writing about Khalil, rather than writing with Khalil, is devastating. Writing about Khalil is impossible to do without him and without his words – words that defied those that tried to silence him and keep us apart.  

I lit the Jewish ceremonial memorial candles last weekend in memory of Khalil, his family, and others who have been killed in this incomprehensible violence.

I recalled a message Khalil sent me on my birthday this year: “As they say, don’t count your candles, but see the light they give.”  

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As I write this in disbelief, I know that Khalil would be comforted that his partners are holding on closely to his words as a source of light, and as a source of hope for a just future, and a climate resilient future, in all of this.  

I first met Khalil in the summer of 2021. As regional climate specialists, Mor Gilboa and I were setting out to write an investigative report on the effects of climate change on life in Gaza.

While Mor is a long-time Israeli climate and environmental justice activist, and I had spent years working on water security in Gaza, it was clear from the start that we could not do justice to this issue without the guidance and partnership of a local expert.

A friend of mine suggested we reach out to Khalil, a passionate and curious student and researcher from Gaza.

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At that point, Khalil had been connected to friends and political activists across Israel and abroad through solidarity efforts with Gaza’s Great March of Return protests. 

Khalil agreed to be a part of our reporting team. This decision was not a simple one – publishing with Israel-based co-authors was a major risk for Khalil.

Our initial conversations were spent getting to know each other, learning about our political outlooks, understandings of justice, and goals for this report.

We began a relationship building process that was made near-impossible by the barriers that prevented us from knowing each other in the first place.   

Over the next six months, Khalil, Mor, and I began researching and writing. We wanted to understand and articulate what climate breakdown in Gaza looks like.

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We scheduled meetings based on when Khalil would have electricity access, while we wrote about the chronic instability of electricity supply in Gaza and how it affects the availability of essential services, including health, water, and sanitation.

Very quickly, we understood how deeply the very same barriers that made it difficult for us to know each other and work together  – particularly the decades-old siege on Gaza and relentless cycles of Israeli bombardments – were also fundamentally changing the way Gazans can build climate resilience.  

Under Israel’s uncompromising restrictions on the movement of people and materials in and out of Gaza, the most basic life-supporting infrastructure, including clean water and continuous electricity, have been under threat for years.

These resources are also the most susceptible to climate breakdown and are fundamental in building climate resilience.

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The blockade on Gaza, which has been maintained by Israel and Egypt since 2006, along with frequent rounds of  violence, has fueled an economic and humanitarian crisis in Gaza for the past fifteen years. Gaza can barely ensure livable conditions at present, let alone in an increasingly uncertain climate future. 

While Mor and I would try to meet together to co-write about this crisis from our homes in Tel Aviv/Jaffa – a city far more equipped to deal with climate breakdown than the Gaza Strip, we could only dream of meeting Khalil.

Meeting online was also challenging: his limited access to the internet reduced our ability to work efficiently, hold stable zoom calls, or co-work on the same document. But we made up for it in dozens of voice notes and messages.    

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Khalil’s voice notes always started the same: “Hi Natasha! Hi Mor! How are you? I hope you are doing well.”

He would offer us a range of wishes, always attuned to whatever developments in our life we had shared with him.

He congratulated me on my sister’s wedding, he wished me a speedy recovery when I had Covid-19 while we were working to meet a writing deadline. 

 “I wanted to ask about you.” He said to me in one voice note, “I hope you are ok and that you are fighting this Corona. I am really very worried about you and thinking about you. I know it’s maybe a bit difficult to fight this Corona, but I also know that you are up to the task. Please, if you want anything, just don’t hesitate, just ask me. Regards, and sending love.” 

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 Our process of writing together in many ways was an act of resistance to the systems we were writing about.

We built a friendship, first and foremost, and we also got to shed light on the situation in Gaza through our reporting.

Reflecting over these last couple of weeks, Mor reminded me about one of the conversations we had with Khalil while we were working together.

“During one of our video calls, I was sitting outside on a bench in Jaffa. Khalil shared about his grandmother who fled from Jaffa to Gaza in 1948, and how much he would like to come visit here. He asked me to show him the area around me on video. I remember his great excitement and also his desire to come and see Jaffa.” 

 “I was also excited to meet him,” Mor continued, “and in general to research climate and environmental issues in Gaza. This has interested me for many years, but is almost inaccessible to me as an Israeli… Getting to know him was a point of light in a very large and lasting darkness.”   

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I felt like we were defying the odds in building this partnership. In one of the tributes to Khalil published last week, Maya Rosen and Erez Bleicher reflected on Khalil’s belief in the radical potential of friendship, and how Khalil – whose name means friend in Arabic – reminded them that borders could be overcome and that the systems keeping us all apart could be broken.    

 “Khalil understood that a just solution must be found for everyone who lives here,” Mor shared with me. “Even as someone who lived for over two decades under blockade, poverty and oppression, his heart was wide, loving, open and optimistic.” 

Khalil deeply embodied this in our work by showing curiosity, offering love and support, and letting us into his own experience. He shared openly when he was frustrated or upset in the process, inviting us to do the same, and through this we built a radical friendship that lived beyond our reporting. 

Our report was published in +972 Magazine in January 2022. Through the voices of residents across Gaza, who Khalil took great efforts to meet and interview, we offered an analysis on the bleak future for Gaza.

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We called it “a climate change hotspot within a hotspot that is being denied both its basic humanitarian needs, and the capacity and resources to prepare for and minimize the impacts of climate breakdown.”  

Since we published the article, we kept closely in touch. We exchanged birthday wishes, photos, and other life updates, but also exchanged reflections on developments in our research.

Khalil would update me and Mor on things like Gaza experiencing the first day in a while of having 24-hours of electricity across the Strip, when a new water desalination plant was constructed but didn’t have the fuel to operate fully, or when he saw our article being posted or shared in networks he was connected to. 

Over the past month, we also stayed connected. But we didn’t talk about the intersections of the climate crisis with the ongoing bombardment.

We didn’t talk about how safe water supplies are almost entirely inaccessible, how frequent electricity blackouts have devastated Gaza’s ability to provide essential services, or how toxic white phosphorous bombs are being used indiscriminately across the Strip.   

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It is near impossible to think about the climate crisis amongst this much death and destruction; but the reality is, this last month has set Gaza even deeper into a humanitarian crisis, and its two million residents are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than ever.

With severely limited access to food, water, energy, and health services, and with the devastation to homes and shelters across the Strip, the population has very little capacity to cope with any major climate event or disaster.

On top of this, the increasing restrictions on Gazan movement or humanitarian support is barring their access to key adaptation strategies, such as migration or adaptive agriculture.

Plainly, whatever the end of this violence brings, Gaza will need to prioritise reconstruction and restoration over advancing climate resilience.  

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Khalil understood this, and in the messages I received from him before he died, he still held onto his vision for an alternative future.

He sent wishes of safety. He shared updates on his family and his efforts to escape the bombings.

Khalil shared his thoughts and reflections on this hope for something different. “I believe that my voice will hopefully change something,” he wrote, “to make people move or, at least, speak truth to power.”

Even with the barriers and systems that divided us higher than ever before, he also continued to share his love. 

“I hug you deep inside my heart,” Khalil wrote to me. It was his last message to me before he was killed.   

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Over ten thousand Gazans have been killed since October 7, and I keep asking myself how many other people like Khalil did we lose to this violence, who we never had the opportunity to meet, to work with, or to love.

In the same way that Khalil understood his own mortality as a Gazan, especially in these last few weeks, I also know that he believed that safety, justice, and freedom for all people was possible.

I hope that I, and the many others he inspired, will continue to be rooted in his optimistic yearning and unwavering commitment to solidarity and justice. Rest in power, Khalil. 

Natasha Westheimer is researcher and practioner in the fields of climate change and water governance in Israel/Palestine

The post ‘I hug you deep inside my heart’: In memory of Khalil Abu Yahia appeared first on Climate Home News.

Major oil and gas producers like the USA and Saudi Arabia, along with most of Asia, want the proposed treaty to be “bottom-up” like the Paris Agreement on climate change. This means countries can make their own plans and set their own targets.

A “high ambition coalition” covering roughly a quarter of UN member states including several European countries is calling for a top-down treaty that binds all to certain measures. This could include bans on certain types of plastics.

Nations are split on whether to emphasise recycling and waste management or whether to reduce the production of plastic. A key tactical debate concerns how much voting power the EU should get.

Neil Tangri, from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, said: “The US is calling for a treaty with no binding obligations and no requirements to achieve its goal, such as bans on toxic polymers or a reduction in overall production. Every country just does what it wants to. I think that’s a terrible idea.”

He added: “It’s not going to get us where we need to go. It’s not going to restrain plastic production. It’s not going to get the toxics out of plastic. It’s not going to arrange a just transition for workers especially waste pickers. It’s going to be a lot of fancy words with no substance.”

The US is not one of the members (light blue) of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution (Photo credit: High Ambition Coalition/Screenshot)

Big Oil’s plan B

As well as polluting land and sea, plastics are responsible for an estimated 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions through their lifecycle. They are made from oil and gas, potentially offering a lifeline to the sector as climate action cuts demand for hydrocarbons as a fuel source.

But awareness of plastic pollution is rising and in March, governments agreed to negotiate a legally binding UN treaty on the issue. They aim to land a deal by 2024 and, in Uruguay this week, held their first official committee meeting on the scope of the talks and the rules of procedure.

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At the start of the week, Saudi Arabia launched an impassioned defence of plastic in the plenary hall in Punta del Este. Its negotiator said: “We cannot deny the importance of plastics for humanity. Plastics have contributed to development and global commercial and economic prosperity, promoting the achievement of the [sustainable development goals].”

He added: “Plastic products are part of every part of our lives. They are present in manufacturing as well as renewable energy and food security. Plastics also play an important role in socioeconomic development in several countries and therefore the instrument must ensure that no-one is left behind by focusing on the priorities of developing countries”.

Bahrain’s negotiator said “plastics play an important role in our society” and are important for “sustainable development” while the Asia-Pacific group argued “our task is ending plastic pollution, not necessarily plastics themselves”.

The high ambition coalition, which counts the EU, Australia, Canada, small islands and a handful of African and Latin American states among its members, argued for an agreement which covers the whole lifecycle of plastics. That includes their production.

Antigua and Barbuda’s negotiator Asha Challenger, speaking on behalf of small islands, said that old models of international agreement are “not up to the task”.

EU mandate

In UN climate talks, the EU negotiates as a bloc on behalf of its 27 member states. Under the rules of procedure drafted by the UN Environment Programme (Unep), they would do the same in the plastics treaty talks.

While UN climate talks work on consensus, meaning any country can block an agreement, Unep proposed a voting system, under which numbers matter.

At a preliminary meeting in Dakar, Senegal, in June, the EU’s mandate to vote on behalf of all its members was questioned. In one alternative proposal, each member state would need to have a representative in the room for their vote to count.

On Friday in Punta del Esta, that question had not been settled. In the absence of an agreed voting procedure, decisions require consensus, which campaigners warned could lead to weaker outcomes.

At the Cop27 climate talks last month, a call by more than 80 countries to phase out fossil fuels was not put to open debate because a handful of oil and gas producers objected. At Cop26 the year before, the US denied developing countries – the overwhelming majority of parties – a steady flow of income to adapt to climate change impacts.

Carroll Muffett, CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, told Climate Home: “Thirty years of experience with the [UN climate change talks] demonstrates the critical importance of parties to these negotiations having the ability to vote on complex issues, take a decision and move forward.”

The post Battle lines drawn in talks on new plastics treaty appeared first on Climate Home News.

The government provided emergency relief to help people cope in the aftermath of the floods, but migrants told Climate Home News they are concerned about more flooding and extreme weather in the future in a country that is ill-equipped to deal with heavy rainfall.

Heavy rains began on 27 July, resulting in flash floods across the UAE. Seven people died in the floods, all of them Asian migrants. Five of the seven who died were Pakistani citizens, according to Pakistan’s embassy in the UAE. Neither the UAE or Pakistan have shared more details about the victims.

Sharjah, the UAE’s third most populous city, and the emirate of Fujairah, on the Gulf of Oman, were among the worst hit.

“At first we were enjoying the rain but then it got dangerous quickly,” said Amir Bukhari, a migrant from Pakistan who works in sales and lives in Sharjah. “Roads started collecting water. I live on the ground floor and the water started coming inside and that was scary.”

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“I didn’t need to evacuate and there was not too much damage,” Bukhari told Climate Home.  “I cannot afford to buy new furniture or move somewhere.”

Two-thirds of UAE’s residents do not have home insurance. Almost 90% of the UAE’s population is made up of migrants, who often have difficult living and working conditions.

“I am worried about those who are very vulnerable, the migrant workers and undocumented migrants,” said Natasha Abaza, an urban designer and planner of Arab origins, who is now based in the UK and works at the architecture firm Prior + Partners.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think they are any resilience plans to prepare urban cities in the Gulf for flooding. They have money so they can help with the damages but I think that is the whole plan right now,” she said. “There is no resilience because of, well, racism.”

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UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) told local press that climate change is responsible for the increased frequency of heavy rains, which can cause flooding – especially in the mountainous areas of the northern Emirates.

Such extreme weather events “may be even more impactful in a warming world” in the southeastern Arabian peninsula, according to a study by Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, in partnership with the UAE’s NCM. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour, meaning extreme events last longer, the study notes.

Faizal E, who would not give his full name as he fears “offending the government”, was forced to leave his home in Fujairah, with his wife and two children, along with hundreds of other families, when floods hit the region in July. The NCM issued a code red alert, signifying that “hazardous weather events of exceptional severity are forecast.”

“We stayed in a government facility for a few days but now I am back home,” he told Climate Home. “The government was very helpful and worked hard to rescue us.”

“Red Crescent and other charities have been providing free hot meals to [everyone], no questions asked,” he said. Over 500 volunteers are working in coordination with organisations such as the Emirates Red Crescent. “There was a lot of damage…the UAE is not a country that sees a lot of rain.”

Faizal praised the authorities for “quick and successful restoration efforts” but is concerned about similar outcomes if heavy rains occur again.

“I think heavy rains show the country’s strongest and weakest points,” he says. “They are so capable of offering help and saving people but there are no plans to prepare for this type of weather, which is rare but happening more and more now.”

Faizal is no stranger to heavy rains because he is a migrant from Kerala, India, which experiences monsoon rains for several months each summer.

“I think my town in Kerala sees this much rain usually during the summer but that is just how the weather is there,” he said. “The UAE does not see this type of rain. It is built better in many ways but it is not built to handle such weather.”

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Many of the large cities in Fujairah are located in valleys and have drainage systems that are not able to cope with heavy rainfall or dams to protect people from flash floods.

Large and expensive development projects are often built on flood-prone areas because the “likelihood [of severe floods] is very unlikely,” said Abaza.

“They know it, of course. They have access to this data, [but] they don’t care,” she said. “I am not talking about the UAE specifically, [but] about the region in general.”

The wealthiest cities of UAE boast record-breaking infrastructure, including some of the tallest buildings in the world. This might be part of the problem.

“Everything that has been built there has been built against nature. And nature will fight back,” said Abaza. “Over-engineering to fight these floods is never the solution.”

Instead, more drainage, ending developments in flood-prone areas and landscape restoration should be prioritised, she said.

A report from Khalifa University recommends the following infrastructure investments: “Drains need to be up to the job, or the roads will flood. Dams need to protect from flash flooding, especially in dry river bed wadi [valley] areas. Airport runways need to slope, so the rain runs off into the drains (which must work).”

The UAE was not the only country in the Arab Gulf to experience severe flooding. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia also witnessed heavy rainfall last month, something the arid region has not seen during the summer in over 30 years.

The UAE government did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.

The post Deadly flash floods in UAE highlight need for resilience investment appeared first on Climate Home News.

First, electrification and renewable energy for most consumer needs. Second, a big ramp up of the hydrogen economy to replace fuels used by industry. Third, mechanisms surrounding a high carbon price designed to lessen the economic impacts of the transition for countries and communities that will be most impacted.

None of these pillars are simple to achieve, but the hydrogen segment is the most shaky. The EU has achieved 24% emissions reductions by 2019 compared to 1990 levels, but heavy transport emissions actually increased during that period and industrial decarbonisation efforts have largely plateaued since 2009.

Studies projecting European hydrogen demand vary, but all show massive increases. Even at the low end, there is more than 700% projected growth by 2050. Europe will need as much hydrogen as it can get its hands on. A sizeable amount will be imported as domestic production is unlikely to scale fast enough to meet this rapid increase in demand.

Sources: Guidehouse, European Hydrogen Backbone 2021, DNV Pathway to Net-Zero 2021 and CATF Europe Decarbonisation Pathway Analysis 2022

Europe has only seven and a half years to leap from 24% to 55% emissions reductions, so there is absolutely no time to lose.

Fundamentally, difficult-to-electrify sectors – such as heavy industry and heavy transport – will require a new set of  low-carbon fuels like hydrogen and ammonia to replace the fossil fuels in use today, as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS) to eliminate leftover emissions. Hydrogen and ammonia are relatively simple to swap into fuel-focused processes. They contain no carbon molecules, so are considered ‘zero-carbon’ at the point of use.

The major climate challenges come with the production of these fuels.

Upstream emissions and the risks of carbon capture

Within the EU, hydrogen produced by electrolysers powered with renewable energy remains the primary focus. This is a laudable strategy that deserves enthusiastic backing, but it isn’t a quick fix.

Europe is in a race to build renewables fast enough to decarbonise the electricity grid, so may not have the additional renewable electricity needed to produce meaningful volumes of ‘green hydrogen’ in the near term. Europe’s largest port estimates it will be importing 20Mt per year in 2050, more than double Europe’s current total consumption.

There are many challenges associated with the alternative option: producing hydrogen from fossil gas with carbon capture and storage, often referred to as ‘blue hydrogen’.

First and foremost, there is the potential for a significant amount of upstream emissions in the form of methane. Scientists estimate that methane can dominate the emissions associated with blue hydrogen, even at high carbon capture rates, as you can see from the chart below.

Impacts on climate change associated with the production of natural gas based hydrogen (Photo: Bauer et al/Sustainable Energy and Fuels)

Methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 and is leaked and vented throughout the fossil gas network, as our colleagues at CATF have shown. Cleaning up methane emissions is perhaps the single most pressing climate action of this decade. Happily, leading research shows that significant reductions are attainable with technologies that are already available, at low or negative costs. This has to happen whether or not fossil gas is being used to produce blue hydrogen.

Second, there are inevitable CO2 emissions involved when extracting hydrogen from fossil gas which must be accounted for. To solve this, blue hydrogen plants need to adopt technology that prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere and then permanently store it in geologic formations.

CCS technology has been working safely and effectively for almost 50 years, and hydrogen production facilities achieving 90% overall carbon capture or more can be built today using commercial technology.

With much lower methane leak rates and advancing carbon capture units with high capture rates, it is possible to produce hydrogen that results in about an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to directly using fossil fuels.

However, such capture rates have yet to be proven on a large scale. As with any other new climate technology, there are risks that the promised emissions reductions will not materialize, and many groups have resisted attempts to bring CCS into the technology mix because of said risks.

This links to a major reason we are yet to see such capture rates at scale: we haven’t really tried it yet.

Just 0.6% of the fossil fuel derived hydrogen produced today is done using carbon capture technology. Without policy pressure to increase the production of low-carbon hydrogen, producers have no reason to cut the emissions for the ‘grey’ hydrogen produced from fossil fuels which we overwhelmingly use today.

Where the European Union needs to take action

Getting to scale is a huge concern when it comes to the low-carbon hydrogen economy.

The EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans recently stated that “Europe is never going to be capable of producing its own hydrogen in sufficient quantities” in a speech aimed at potential low-carbon fuel producers in neighbourhood countries.

A combination of blue and green hydrogen is likely necessary to meet European and global hydrogen demand at least up until mid-century – the IEA’s flagship Net Zero by 2050 report shows a 62/38 percent split between the two even in 2050.

However, hydrogen can only be considered a viable option for Europe with appropriate climate controls such as strong methane management and significant carbon capture and storage.

To an extent, this is already reflected in European policy. The term ‘low-carbon hydrogen’ is included in the EU’s Hydrogen Strategy and the Gas Package, but the details are lacking. It’s crucial that the Gas Package, in particular, lays out the terms to ensure that hydrogen imports will be climate beneficial.

There is currently no certification system in place for low-carbon hydrogen and the Commission is only planning to introduce one in 2024. That’s far too late. Many member states have already secured import deals and are in the process of adopting their own schemes, which will inevitably lead to confusion among producers. Furthermore, these certification schemes fail to take into account adequate life-cycle analyses, ignoring upstream and transport-related emissions which must be addressed. The EU must step in.

The lack of clarity has delayed investment from potential hydrogen producers in the Middle East and North Africa. These are countries that have long been energy partners with Europe and possess knowhow and resources to ramp up much needed hydrogen production, but they are under the impression that only green hydrogen will be accepted by importers in Europe. Producing blue hydrogen means significant infrastructure investments – these will not happen overnight.

The longer Europe takes to lay out its vision for hydrogen imports, the longer it will take for both regions to transition away from the status quo of continued extraction, transport and consumption of unabated fossil fuels.

As the EU builds new energy relationships around the world, it must seek win-win solutions that address the scale and speed needed to hit climate goals, while also addressing energy security challenges.

Olivia Azadegan is Clean Air Task Force’s energy transition director for the MENA region

Magnolia Tovar is Clean Air Task Force’s global zero-carbon fuels policy director

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An international policy advisor at the energy ministry and former Saudi Aramco employee, Shasly has been a prominent figure representing Saudi Arabia for years: at the UN climate talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as a board member of the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

He served as chair of the powerful Arab group for a decade, taking on the role in January 2012. 

Albara Tawfiq, an international policy advisor at the energy ministry and policy advisor at oil giant Saudi Aramco, confirmed that Shasly is not attending interim climate talks in Bonn this month. Tawfiq is chairing the Arab group’s meetings in his absence.  

“We don’t have a clear direction of the chairmanship of the group,” Tawfiq told Climate Home, adding that his role as chair was “not yet officially permanent”. He added that Shasly was still working on climate issues and may return to international forums.

In March, the Asia-Pacific regional group informed the GCF secretariat that Shasly would be replaced by Tawfiq on the board with immediate effect. One source suggested this was due to health issues.

Shasly and Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.

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Shasly has played a critical role in shaping the Kingdom’s negotiation style at the UN climate talks. 

One former climate diplomat described Shasly as “deliberately obstructive” and “sneaky” in pushing Saudi Arabia’s agenda in the negotiations. Others saw him as an ally in defending the principles of equity and historic responsibility.

Shasly stepping back from the process is unlikely to alter the Arab group’s and the Kingdom’s positions, but it may impact their attitude in the negotiations.

“[Tawfiq’s] style is markedly less confrontational in language, while still on target on substance,” one veteran climate observer told Climate Home.

Unusually, Arab youth activists were invited to attend the group’s coordination meeting last week. They welcomed the development and called for further chances to participate.

Albara Tawfiq at the Cop24 climate talks in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018 (Photo: IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth)

Tactics used by Saudi Arabia to block and delay international climate action have challenged the consensus-based approach of the climate negotiations – often offering cover for laggard nations less keen to make their views public.  

In 2018, Saudi Arabia was one of four oil producers to block the welcoming of the IPCC’s special 1.5C report which lays out the differences between 1.5C and 2C of warming – a matter of survival for many small island states. Under Saudi pressure, discussion of the IPCC report in formal negotiations was shut down.

Discussions on the issue were so heated that civil society observers lodged a formal complaint against one Saudi negotiator for “bullying” a female co-facilitator during the talks. The name of the negotiator was never revealed.  

The 1.5C target poses a threat to the Kingdom’s oil revenues, which fund fuel subsidies, free healthcare and education. While Saudi Arabia is attempting to diversify its economy, oil rents still account for around a quarter of its GDP.

“We need time” to end the use of fossil fuels, Shasly told Carbon Brief in a rare interview in 2018. “Now, that could be within the next 15, 20, 30 years. It’s just a matter of supply/demand.”

More recently, Saudi Arabia adopted a 2060 net zero target, which doesn’t include an oil exit plan, and pledged to plant 10 billion trees to combat desertification and reduce emissions.

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After a visit to the Jordan river which divides Palestine’s West Bank region from Jordan, Robert Habeck posted on Instagram about his support for the EcoPeace NGO and its proposed “Green Blue Deal for the Middle East”.

In particular, he supported the plan by an Emirati company to build a solar farm in Jordan to power a desalination plant in Israel. “The idea,” he said, “is to include the Palestinians and the Gaza strip in this regional water-energy community.”

 

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A post shared by Robert Habeck (@robert.habeck)

A related proposal is to build a solar farm in the West Bank to power a desalination plant bringing water to Gaza’s two million people.

But for Palestinians to benefit from these projects, Israel will have to be persuaded to allow them to go ahead and to limit the amount of water it takes for its own population.

Israeli control of Palestine’s scarce water supplies has been a driver of the long-running conflict and climate change has made this problem worse.

Average monthly rainfall in the West Bank is expected to decrease 8-10 mm by the end of the century and Israeli companies and illegal settlements control much of that increasingly scarce water.

While Palestinians in the West Bank struggle to grow crops and collect rainwater in black containers on their roofs, neighbouring Israeli settlements often enjoy swimming pools, gardens and water-intensive agriculture.

The average Israeli uses over three times more water than the average Palestinian which has led to resentment.

Amnesty International researcher Kristyan Benedict told Climate Home: “Israel’s control of water resources and water-related infrastructure in the [West Bank] has resulted in striking inequalities between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.”

Based on EcoPeace's proposals, a UAE-based company plans to build solar panels in neighbouring Jordan and export the electricity generated to a desalination plant in Israel which will turn sea water into drinking water. No company has promised to build that plant yet but the idea is that the drinking water will be sold to Jordan. Habeck said this project is "an example of how some Arab states are now beginning to cooperate with Israel".

While this water is unlikely to go to Palestine, EcoPeace's founder Gidon Bromberg said it would improve relations between Israel and Jordan. For Palestine, he said that desalination technology means that water is "no longer a zero sum game". Negotiations on water have been fraught for decades because allowing Palestinians to have more water means less water for Israeli farmers, he said.

But desalination and the treatment of sewage water so that it can be used on crops have increased the total amount of water available. "Water is no longer a difficult issue to solve," Bromberg said. "Palestinians can get their fair share of natural water which means Israel needs to reduce its pumping of sheer groundwater but Israel can replace that source at competitve prices by mostly increasing desalination".

A map of Israel (blue) and the West Bank's military-controlled (green) and more Palestinian-controlled (grey) areas. (Photo: Wikicommons)

Asked why Israel would give up groundwater to the Palestinians, Bromberg said: "An agreement needs to be reached so Israel would have to sign it and agree so." He added: "There will be an expectation that also as part of the agreement that the sewage from mostly the Palestinian side would be prioritised to be treated and not flow untreated into shared water basins."

The other aspect of EcoPeace's plan relates to the Palestinian region of Gaza, an enclave ten times the size of New York's Central Park which houses two million people.

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Unlike the West Bank, it is not occupied by the Israeli military but is under siege with Israel and Egypt controlling who and what can enter. Gaza suffers from water scarcity made worse by climate change and by Egypt and Israel's restrictions on materials needed to repair its water infrastructure.

To fix this water crisis, EcoPeace wants a 55m cubic metre desalination plant in Gaza powered by renewable energy from the West Bank. They discussed this proposal with Habeck and with the president of the European Investment Bank, Bromberg said.

Under EcoPeace's plans, the solar farm would be run by a Palestinian company and the desalinated water would be used by the people of Gaza. But the proposal is still at an early stage.

One obstacle is that the area of the West Bank on which they want to build solar panels is the part most stringently controlled by the occupying Israeli military, known as "area C". So they need the Israeli Ministry of Defence's permission. "We're hopeful that this is going to move forward," Bromberg said.

As the West Bank and Gaza are geographically separated by Israel, the electricity that connects the solar farm and the desalination plant would have to run through the Israeli grid and could be cut by the Israeli government. "But the track record is that everyone understand it's not in anyone's interest to stop the flow of electricity or stop the flow of water," said Bromberg.

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Benjamin Pohl, head of Adelphi's climate diplomacy and security programme, said the Israeli government would be under pressure to extract concessions from the Palestinians in return for allowing this project to go ahead.

"There's a long history of, for example, border crossings into Gaza, being used as a lever to try to get political developments into a certain direction," he said. On the other hand, he said, "from a very cynical perspective, Israel has an interest in not increasing desperation in Palestinian territories because that would be a huge challenge to Israeli security."

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Energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman told the online World Economic Forum this week the kingdom was pursuing blue, green and pink hydrogen development, the colours representing the way it is made – some cleaner than others.

He said the EU was interested in green hydrogen, made with renewable electricity, and joked that pink – to be generated with planned nuclear power plants – was of particular interest to women in the industry.

“We are recruiting, by the way, young Saudi ladies that are happy to see the pink coming along,” said bin Salman. “We have started being very conscious of taking care of our female new recruits and new cadets. We’re becoming an extremely well emancipated society.”

However the bulk is likely to be blue, made from methane gas and emitting carbon dioxide in the process, some of which may be captured and stored.

“We will have a field day with blue hydrogen because again, we’re the cheapest cost producer of gas,” bin Salman said. “We’re doing a huge investment in shale gas in Saudi Arabia and we will be dedicated to have that gas to be used for producing blue hydrogen.”

Likely future importers of hydrogen are in yellow with exporters in blue (Photo: Natural Earth)

Hydrogen can be burned to power processes like steel-making or propel planes and ships. While it’s currently expensive and not widely used, many analysts see it as a clean fuel of the future, particularly for applications that cannot be easily electrified. How clean depends on how it is made.

By 2050, the global trade in hydrogen is expected to be worth more than global trade in oil, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Europe and East Asia are likely to need more hydrogen than they can produce and Gulf nations are well-placed geographically to export through ships or pipelines.

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Bin Salman said that he had discussed exporting green hydrogen to the EU with the European Commission’s vice-president Frans Timmermans. Saudi Arabia is developing a $5bn green hydrogen plant in its new megacity of Neom, which is due to start running by 2025.

E3G hydrogen analyst Lisa Fischer said the EU is developing guidelines on what constitutes “low-carbon” hydrogen and blue hydrogen, particularly if it comes from fracked shale gas, is likely to be excluded.

The other big hydrogen market is East Asia, which is more likely to accept blue hydrogen. Saudi Arabia is in hydrogen talks with South Korea and Japan.

Saudi Arabia’s electricity has always come almost entirely from oil and gas but it is now planning to ramp up renewables and to build two large nuclear power reactors for power and smaller ones to power taking salt out of sea-water.

The cost of producing green hydrogen. Red is the cheapest and blue is the most expensive (Photo: International Energy Agency)

With its abundant gas reserves and sunshine, the kingdom is well placed to produce both blue and green hydrogen cheaply. Its competitive advantage in nuclear power is less clear.

While women have won more freedoms in Saudi Arabia in recent years, notably permission to drive cars, in 2021 the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index ranked Saudi Arabia 147 out of 156 countries.

There are no female government ministers in Saudi Arabia, women take up just 7% of managerial roles and earn a quarter of a man’s income on average, the report found.

Green hydrogen creates jobs in production of renewable energy and electrolysers, and can support industries like fertiliser production.

Those jobs would help Saudi Arabia transition away from oil and gas while keeping its public on side, Fischer suggested. “If you don’t have that many rents any more from your fossil fuels then you need some other way of keeping people happy, to manage the politics.”

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The country’s environment minister Yasmine Fouad, a climate scientist, will be Cop27 “ministerial coordinator and envoy”.

Their appointments were announced in a joint statement with the UK after they met with Cop26 president Alok Sharma.

While Shoukry has no significant experience or expressed interest in climate change, Fouad was lead author on a chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on desertification in 2017 and co-chaired finance talks at Cop26 in November.

Congratulations to Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on his appointment as #COP27 President Designate

Excellent discussion with Minister Shoukry and Minister Yasmine Fouad on joint UK-Egypt working this year on climate

⁦@MfaEgypt⁩ ⁦@EGY_Environment⁩ pic.twitter.com/VyNfuPMMIb

— Alok Sharma (@AlokSharma_RDG) January 15, 2022

Fouad has worked for UN organisations, NGOs and universities and is a veteran of the environment ministry, having become the deputy minister in 2014 and promoted to the top job in 2018.

Of the 26 Cop summits, 21 have been chaired by men. At every summit, there have been more male delegates than female.

Shoukry is a career diplomat who worked his way up to become then-president Hosni Mubarak’s ambassador to Washington in 2008, a job he held on to until 2012 despite the Arab Spring uprisings.

After Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power to become president in 2014, he brought Shoukry back into government as foreign minister.

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In 2008, the US ambassador to Geneva Warren Tichenor described Shoukry, then his Egyptian counterpart, as being “aggressive”, “heavy-handed”, “curt and rude”.

In a confidential message later revealed by Wikileaks, Tichenor said Shoukry had an “activist and at times aggressive approach to Geneva multilateral diplomacy, in pursuit of goals the US does not support”.

Writing to his successor in the job, Tichenor said Shoukry spoke excellent English and some Spanish, “can be charming” and a “gracious host” who “reminisces fondly about his years in grade school in the Washington DC area”.

But “even in his personal comportment, he reveals moments of heavy-handedness, as in the derisive way in which he treats his driver” and being “curt and rude” to visitors to his office brought by the US mission.

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After being chosen as Cop27 host by the African Group, Egypt promised to make resilience and adaptation to the effects of climate change its priority.

In a climate plan submitted to the UN in 2017, Egypt outlined the country’s vulnerability to heatwaves, flooding and water scarcity from climate change. It did not quantify an emissions target.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries were supposed to raise the ambition of their climate plans by 2020. Egypt has yet to do so.

A 2020 Ipsos Mori poll found that awareness of climate change is lower in Egypt than in other North African countries.

Just 26% of Egyptians said climate change “exists and is mostly caused by human activity”. In Morocco, which has hosted two Cop summits, that figure was 71%.

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In its latest climate plan submitted to the UN this week, Qatar’s government said: “For the past several decades, Qatar has maintained a pioneering role in the international efforts to tackle climate change & promote sustainable development through the export of natural gas and its derivatives to the world’s energy market.”

It continued: “These fuels are cleaner & efficient energy sources compared to conventional fuels. They contribute to both, CO2 emission reduction & improvement of air quality conditions.”

Clean Air Task Force researcher Jonathan Banks told Climate Home News: “Sending gas around the world doesn’t make you a climate leader. It is a misleading statement for sure.”

Burning gas produces less carbon dioxide than burning coal – but emissions from the production process can sometimes cancel out these benefits.

“Best estimates on a global basis show gas as being better than coal,” said Banks, “but that’s not really the debate that we are having these days. We are trying to get to zero and we know that gas is not zero.”

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Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency said the world must stop investing in new fossil fuel exploitation if it is to limit global warming to 1.5C by 2050.

Qatar’s gas production has grown rapidly in the last 20 years. It is now the world’s fifth-largest producer and the biggest supplier of LNG, gas which has been turned into a liquid to make it easier to transport. Its main customers are in Europe, India, China, Japan and Korea.

Maria Pastukhova, an energy diplomacy adviser at E3G, said LNG was more emissions-intensive than non-liquified gas. “Without emissions disclosure certificates it is never clear how much ‘cleaner’ is LNG compared to coal,” she said.

Earlier this year, state-owned Qatar Petroleum signed a deal that would increase national liquified natural gas (LNG) output 40% a year by 2026.

Gas is expected to be responsible for 22% of the world’s CO2 emissions in 2021.

Qatar’s gas production has shot up in the last twenty years (Photo: International Energy Agency/Flickr)

Moiz Bohra, a Geneva University researcher who has studied Qatar’s energy transition, told Climate Home News: “The government has decided to double down on its expansion of the natural gas industry, which it claims is a transition fuel.”

He continued: “Advances in renewables, energy storage and increasingly, green hydrogen, strongly challenge this narrative. Throughout the world, countries are finding it cheaper to switch directly from coal to renewables (see the growth of renewables in India, for example), so gas may not be needed as a transition fuel after all.”

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In its previous climate plan in 2015, Qatar refused to set an emissions reduction target at all, saying it would harm the economy. The updated version says Qatar will cut emissions 25% below business as usual in 2030, but does not disclose what those business as usual emissions are projected to be.

In its submission, Qatar claims to be a “low [greenhouse gas] emitting country”. Relative to its population, it is the highest emitting country in the world.

Pastukhova said: “Overall, the way Qatar portrays itself in the NDC – as a developing country and a small-emitter – is a misleading and a dangerous one. It is a high-income country, its GDP per capita is… higher than that of Germany, Canada and many others. It has the means to take rapid actions to decarbonize own economy.”

The oil and gas sector is responsible for the greatest share of the country’s emissions.

The government says Qatar Petroleum has committed to eradicate “routine flaring”, where gas is burned as a waste product, by 2030.

Banks said this was a good ambition to have but “2030 is a long way out” and the “key word in there is routine”.

He said companies and countries often inaccurately classify flaring as not routine but “emergency” or “safety” flaring, allowing them to keep burning the gas.

A map of gas flares near Qatar. The ones in Qatar or its waters are in blue, other countries in orange. (Photo: Capterio)

Mark Davis, CEO of flare capture and tracking company Capterio, said: “Flaring has been coming down [in Qatar] over the last decade, and substantially since the early 2000s… that said, there are some major source  sources of flaring, the largest is North Dome field.”

Davis said Qatar’s flaring intensity, relative to its production, is 65% less than the global average. But the gas it flares could be worth more than $160m a year if it was captured and sold.

Along with the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Norway, Qatar has joined the Net Zero Producers Forum. This group of fossil fuel producers aims to discuss ways to reduce emissions released into the atmosphere during the production, but not the consumption, of fossil fuels.

As its climate plan highlights, Qatar is vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels bring floods and higher temperatures bring heat exhaustion.

Hotter weather and increasingly frequent dust storms threaten the country’s tourism industry, the climate plan says.

As the country relies heavily on imports, droughts in other countries threaten its food security.

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While this is an improvement in ambition on its 2015 plan, in which the target was 2%, Oman will remain one of the highest emitters per capita in the world.

Around half of Oman’s planned emissions reductions are conditional on international finance.

Oman has been hit by low oil revenues during the coronavirus pandemic, running a budget deficit of $2.3 billion in the five months to May. The Covid-19 outbreak “has plunged the national economy into an unprecedented recession,” according to the document.

The sultanate is less wealthy than Gulf neighbours like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with roughly the same GDP per capita as Poland.

“If the international financial support doesn’t happen to Oman, I don’t think climate action will be a priority,” said Aisha Al-Sarihi, a researcher at Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

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To reduce its exposure to volatile oil prices, Oman has a Vision 2040 strategy to diversify the economy away from fossil fuels and invest in renewables. It aims to reduce oil’s share of its GDP from 39% in 2017 to 8.4% in 2040.

In 2015, renewables’ share of Oman’s electricity generation was 0%. The government aims to increase this figure to 20% in 2030 and 35-39% in 2040 by investing in solar and, to a lesser extent, wind power.

Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi are targeting 50% renewable electricity by 2030 while the United Arab Emirates aims for 50% by 2050.

To try and cut the budget deficit, the government has proposed cutting subsidies for electricity, which disincentive energy efficiency.

Al-Sarihi said that these proposals had sparked a backlash from lower and middle income people concerned about their cost of living.

Although some subsidies have already been lifted, she said, the target to remove all subsidies by 2025 is under review because of this backlash.

This article was amended to correct the headline target. An earlier version mistakenly interpreted the previous target as the current target.

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Iran’s water resources have been depleted by a lack of rain, the building of hydro-electric dams and farming of water-intensive products like rice, wheat and sugar cane. Farmers hit by water shortages are fleeing their villages to live in precarious settlements on the outskirts of cities.

Protests against these water shortages began two weeks ago in the south-western province of Khuzestan, inflamed by a heatwave with temperatures of up to 50C. Unrest has spread to other cities including the capital Tehran.

“Some villagers just do not have water to drink. They have to go and get water from small puddles on the ground. Its not right for animals to drink water like this,” Ali Nazemi, an Iranian hydrologist, told Climate Home News. “In big cities, they’re consuming bottled water for a number of years because the water that comes from the pipes is coloured and smelly.”

Experts say a lack of capacity and coordination between government agencies has allowed the problem to get worse and a comprehensive overhaul of regulations in multiple sectors is needed.

“Climate change is a player here,” said Nazemi, who researches at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, “but environmental problems in general and water problems in Iran in particular are multi-faceted issues.”

Protests began in Iran’s hot south-west. Graph shows the 95th percentile of historical maximum daily air temperature from 1980 to 2004. (Vaghefi et al)

According to Iran’s meterological agency, the country’s average temperature has increased by 2C since the 1960s, rainfall has decreased 20% in the last 20 years and October 2020 to June 2021 was the driest period in 53 years.

A recent Nature study found that this trend is set to continue. Compared to 1980-2004, 2025-2049 is going to have more frequent and severe heatwaves, droughts and floods.

Over 90% of Iran’s water is used for agriculture. Due to international sanctions, the government wants the country to be self-sufficient and has encouraged farmers to grow water-intensive crops like wheat, rice and sugar cane.

“Iranian officials have acknowledged that outdated agricultural and irrigation systems, as well as poor water management policies in the past three decades, have contributed to nationwide water shortages,” Banafsheh Keynoush, an expert in the region’s geopolitics, told Climate Home News.

Rice paddies like this one in Isfahan use a lot of water. (Ninara/Flickr)

Water shortages have been made worse by the building of hydro-electric dams like those on Khuzestan’s Karun river, the biggest in Iran. The water collects in reservoirs and evaporates due to the intense and worsening heat.

The authorities have released water from these dams to ease the scarcity in response to the protests, Keynoush said, and 33 new water and sewage projects are under construction in the province. But some water resources are left untapped or sent to other parts of Iran.

“There is no comprehensive nationwide water management plan, or inter-agency coordination, although there is a lot of talk about the need to have them,” she added.

One ecosystem under particular strain is the Hur al-Azim wetland, on the border of Iran and Iraq. Since the 1980s the marshes have been dried out by the effects of upstream dams and opened to oil exploration. While researchers studying satellite images found some revival since 2000, the wetland covers just over half its former area.

Nikahang Kowsar is an Iranian geologist who has worked in Khuzestan. He told Climate Home News that herders, mainly from the Iranian Arab community, were struggling to keep their buffalo alive.

In other areas of Iran, Kowsar said that farmers do not have enough water to grow their crops and that the over-use of aquifers has led to subsidence and sinkholes.

“If you don’t have water, you have to leave and in the last few decades, millions of villagers have left their homes behind and migrated to slums and shanty towns,” he said.

A similar process in the north of Syria led many farmers to move to cities in the 2000s. Lukas Ruettinger, senior adviser at Adelphi, told Climate Home News this had played a part in the protests which led to the ongoing civil war.

Ruettinger said that the Iranian protests were  “one example of how climate change and weather extremes can increase the pressure on a dysfunctional government which is then not able to manage the pressure peacefully”.

Tehran citizens join #IranProtests, holding a protest rally in Jomhouri St, chanting “Neither Gaza, Nor Lebanon, Long Live Iran”
They also chant Down with Dictator pic.twitter.com/eyZEphPziP

— Reza Khaasteh (@Khaaasteh) July 26, 2021

Disagreement over how increasingly scarce water should be used can be managed peacefully though, he said. Although California’s water supply is drying up and there is resentment towards big agriculture, this tension has not spilled over into violence.

The post Drought and water mismanagement spark deadly protests in Iran appeared first on Climate Home News.

In comments reported by the government-affiliated Saudi Press Agency, Bin Salman said the climate crisis had increased desertification, dust storms and air pollution in the Kingdom, damaging the Saudi economy and its citizens’ health.

In response, the Saudi Green Initiative aims to transform one of the world’s top oil producers into “a global leader in forging a greener world”. This is part of efforts to diversify the economy away from its oil dependence.

The Saudi Press Agency said the crown prince recognised the Kingdom’s share of responsibility in advancing the fight against the climate crisis.

“We reject the false choice between preserving the economy and protecting the environment. Climate action will enhance competitiveness, spark innovation, and create millions of high-quality jobs,” he said.

The statement was welcomed by Saudi Arabia’s Gulf allies, Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan, UN Climate Change chief Patricia Espinosa and the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Am delighted to learn of “Green Saudi Arabia” & “Green Middle East ” initiatives by my brother, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman! Have offered our support on these as there are many complementarities with our “Clean & Green Pakistan” & “10 Billion-Tree Tsunami. pic.twitter.com/ExHSS8DUVh

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) March 29, 2021

But the government did not say whether it would produce and export any less oil while powering its own economy with cheap solar power.

Tanzeed Alam, a climate change consultant based in the United Arab Emirates, described Saudi Arabia’s renewable ambition as “huge”.

“Coming from the world’s largest oil producer, it’s a pretty bold statement,” he told Climate Home News.

Renewables made up just 0.02% of Saudi Arabia’s final energy consumption in 2017, according to the IEA. Neighbouring United Arab Emirates aims to reach the 50% target by 2050 while its capital Abu Dhabi wants to reach it by 2030.

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Although some mountainous regions have wind power potential, Alam said the majority of this renewable energy would come from solar power generated by huge farms in the desert. The scale of the projects and the power of the sun make solar power in Saudi Arabia cheaper than anywhere else, he said.

In a December 2020 report, the International Energy Agency said: “Solar PV [power], if deployed at large scales and under favourable climatic conditions, can be very cost competitive.”

But Alam added that the Saudi government had “a lot of work to do” to achieve its 50% goal, particularly by investing in energy storage. Currently, only Iceland and Norway get more than 50% of their primary energy from renewables.

He added that investment would come from both the government and the private sector.  The government’s Public Investment Fund puts down the risk finance that supports a competitive tendering process, he said.

As well as renewables, the government said they would pursue “clean hydrocarbon” projects to make fossil fuels less polluting. Chatham House analyst Valérie Marcel said this was likely to include carbon capture and storage, cutting methane leaks and the use of renewable energy to extract fossil fuels.

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Experts told Climate Home News that while Saudi Arabia’s tree-planting ambition was welcome, it isn’t clear how they plan to plant 10 billion trees in the third-driest country on earth.

According to the Saudi Press Agency, 10 billion trees will be planted across the Kingdom “in the upcoming decades” and an additional 40 billion will be planted across the Middle East.

Currently, just 0.5% of Saudi Arabia is forest and the Middle East’s tree cover is mainly limited to the Mediterranean coast.

Environmental economist Kenneth Richards told Climate Home News: “It is not unprecedented for massive tree planting to experience high mortality rates due to local conditions. Given the potentially harsh climatic conditions in the regions that these two initiatives appear to be targeting, it is not difficult to imagine a similar problem.”

But Tanzeed Alam, a climate change consultant based in the United Arab Emirates, said areas prone to desertification had once supported vegetation. “You think about Saudi and you think ‘OK, it’s just a desert’. It’s not. There’s a lot of areas which are quite fertile and have been increasingly desertified.”

In the 1950s, the Saudi Arabian state abandoned a traditional sustainable land management system called Al Hima, Alam added. Instead, the government took control of tribal land and encouraged crop cultivation, which strained water resources.

I congratulate Saudi Arabia for the new Saudi Green Initiative and the Green Middle East Initiative that aim at planting 50 billion trees in the region.

We need #climate action from all in the. I look forward to seeing these efforts reflected in ambitious #NDCs.

— Patricia Espinosa C. (@PEspinosaC) March 30, 2021

Nina Lindstrom Friggens, a soil ecologist who has researched tree planting in Scotland, told Climate Home News the Saudi government had to consider the wider implications of a massive tree planting initiative on local water resources and ensure the project is managed sustainably.

“It is always encouraging to see governments discussing climate mitigation but it is important to understand that there are no simple solutions, and a holistic approach, which takes into account not just carbon sequestration but also land and water resources, biodiversity and livelihoods will be the key to sustainable mitigation,” she said.

Alam suggested that the Arab peninsula’s iconic ghaf trees would be a good choice, as they live a long time, don’t use much water and support biodiversity.

He said the Al-Baydha restoration project could be an example of sustainable land restoration. This was a project led by scientist Neal Spackman, and praised by the Saudi government for reversing desertification by harvesting rainwater and planting drought-resistant date palms.

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Typically, nearly two million Muslims visit Mecca for the annual pilgrimage, a pillar of the Islamic faith. Another 1.8 million come throught the year for smaller pilgrimages (umrah). Covid-19-related restrictions are creating a gap in what is one of the most important sources of revenue, besides oil, for Saudi Arabia.

“We haven’t had a guest since March,” said a hotel manager for a four-star hotel in Mecca, who asked not to be named. “Both Ramadan and hajj, which are our most profitable times, have been spent more or less in a lockdown.”

The collapse of religious tourism is a blow to Saudi plans to diversify the economy away from oil. At the same time, a slump in the oil price shows the risks inherent in continuing to rely on fuel exports for revenue.

Analysis: This oil crash is not like the others

With the International Monetary Fund predicting a 7.6% shrinkage of the overall Gulf economy this year due to the coronavirus outbreak, Riyadh has several reasons to worry.

“Indeed, the imposition of state lockdowns to lessen the spread of Covid-19 led to a great deal of travel and mobility restrictions; consequently contributing in part to reduced global oil demand and oil prices, which in turn has negatively affected Saudi oil revenues,” says Matthew McIntosh, a political risk analyst for the Atlas Institute for International Affairs.

The decline in oil prices, combined with slowdowns in both domestic and global economic activity due to Covid-19 containment policies, caused the Saudi economy to contract by 1% in the first quarter  of 2020. Q2 numbers are not expected to be any better.

And with oil exports dropping by 41.2% in May, Saudi Arabia is now said to be “considering all options” to support its economy.

Finance minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan outlined some of the measures under consideration during a virtual forum organized by Bloomberg last week.

Plans include the possibility of privatizing state-held assets in the healthcare, education, and water utility sectors. That could raise as much as $13.3 billion over the next five years, said Al-Jadaan, who also hinted that the country might introduce an income tax.

Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf states, has traditionally been tax-free for individuals and thus an attractive haven for foreign workers. Government sources categorically denied having any plans to change that.

“Income tax is not, at all, being discussed at any of the government councils or committees,” an official in Riyadh, who was not authorised to speak on the record, told Climate Home News.

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These financial challenges are raising concerns among experts on whether Saudi Arabia will continue to work on its “Vision 2030” diversification plan. The plan is meant to create new industries and jobs in the kingdom, with entertainment and tourism one of the focus areas.

While both sectors enjoyed a temporary boom after tourist visas were launched in 2019, travel restrictions are creating a dent in the non-oil sector growth projections.

Investments announced last year to build leisure and entertainment complexes for tourists face an uncertain future.

“Economic diversification is an expensive initiative – even during times of economic prosperity, as government capital can be directed towards diversification projects. Yet, with this economic contraction and a reduction in oil revenues, the country’s budget is certainly challenged,” added McIntosh.

A BNN Bloomberg analysis of an Okaz newspaper report indicated that $8 billion is being cut from Vision 2030, meaning that various projects could be delayed or cancelled.

Lola Vallejo, director of the climate programme at French think tank Iddri, however, said the dramatic fall in the global demand for crude oil should “hit home that relying on oil for nearly three-quarters of government’s revenues makes Saudi Arabia dangerously vulnerable economically and socially”.

“It is vital for Saudi Arabia to deploy economic diversification policies, in order to tackle structural issues such as youth unemployment,” she said. “Logically, this should cause Saudi Arabia to ramp up plans to diversify its economy and follow the international momentum to put clean energy at the center of the economic recovery.”

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The move seems to go against a 2009 commitment by the club of major economies to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption”. Leaders have reaffirmed this pledge at every summit in the past decade.

Sources close to the G20 preparations told Climate Home News the Saudi authorities were uncomfortable with the term “subsidy” and asked for the word to be removed from policy proposals.

Instead of “fossil fuel subsidies” ­– an established concept in the energy literature – they inserted “fossil fuel incentives” – a term with no commonly agreed definition.

The edits came in the final stages of Think20, which engages researchers and academics from the international community to thrash out policy recommendations on a range of G20 priorities. Their work is meant to be independent from national governments.

Researchers expressed concern the term “incentives” would muddy the waters at a time when countries need to move away from supporting coal, oil and gas and accelerate the transition to clean energy.

“The word incentives takes the idea of fossil fuel subsidy in a very different direction,” one person close to the process told CHN. “Let’s make sure that we are not defining loopholes for the continued use of fossil fuels.”

A spokesperson for the G20 secretariat told CHN the “independent participation of engagement groups in G20 discussions is important for the Saudi G20 Presidency and we are fully committed to an independent, open, transparent and inclusive process”.

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Last week, UN secretary general António Guterres ramped up his rhetoric urging leaders to end fossil fuel subsidies and use the recovery to the pandemic to accelerate the clean energy transition.

“Fossil fuels are increasingly risky business with fewer takers,” he said during an International Energy Agency conference. “We need to stop wasting money on fossil fuel subsidies and place a price on carbon.”

Although definitions of what constitutes a “subsidy” varies between global institutions, the term “fossil fuel subsidy” is widely used to describe any government support for oil, gas or coal activities that lowers the price paid by consumers, raises the price received by producers or lowers the cost of production.

“The definition of a subsidy has always been a problem for Saudi Arabia,” Tom Moerenhout, an associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) told CHN.

As the world’s largest oil exporter, with low production costs, Saudi Arabia has been able to sell its oil below international price benchmarks.

At home, the Kingdom provides cheap energy to its citizens as part of a social contract whereby Saudis cannot choose their leaders but benefit from generous welfare provision.

The Kingdom denies subsiding petrol, arguing it is selling its oil at an “internal price” above production costs.

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In recent years, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salaman has been leading efforts to diversify the economy and move the country away from its oil dependency. To pay for an ambitious economic programme known as “Vision 2030”, Riyadh has embarked on an energy subsidy reform, raising energy prices closer to world market prices.

“Saudi Arabia has always been concerned not to destroy oil demand and keep its market share,” said Glada Lahn, a senior energy and resources research fellow at Chatham House. Saving a major domestic crisis, “their easy-to-produce oil has a longer shelf life than most”.

As G20 host, Saudi Arabia has been using its platform to promote the idea of a “circular carbon economy” which would reduce emissions but still allow for fossil fuel production by using technologies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage, and hydrogen.

Lahn described it as an attempt to “clean up the image of oil and gas”. “There is going to be much more scrutiny on the support for fossil fuels globally and the Saudi government is desperate for foreign investment,” she said. But the plan should not be promoted as a one-size fits all, she added.

In the 10 years since the G20 promised to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, limited progress has been made to meet the goal. The latest expert stocktake shows G20 countries subsidised coal, oil and gas to the tune of $150 billion in 2016, including both production and consumption subsidies.

In 2019, government support for fossil fuels totalled $478 billion in 77 countries, according to more recent analysis by the OECD and the IEA. While consumer subsidies had fallen slightly, the data showed a 38% rise in support for the production of fossil fuels across 44 advanced and emerging economies compared with 2018.

Big nations aid fossil fuels more than clean energies amid pandemic, researchers find

And despite talks of a “green recovery”, the coronavirus pandemic has done little to reverse the trend. A study by 14 research groups found G20 nations collectively spent at least $151 billion on supporting fossil fuels in their Covid-19 recovery packages, with only 20% of the relief conditional on green requirements.

In contrast, the world’s richest economies committed $89 billion to clean energy. The findings will be regularly updated on the Energy Policy Tracker, which launched on Wednesday.

As part of efforts to weather the economic impacts of the pandemic, Riyadh announced a $240 million package to provide electricity price relief for commercial, industrial and agricultural sectors.

“Money is not going in the right direction,” said Ivetta Gerasimchuk, an energy expert at IISD who led the Energy Policy Tracker project.

“The Covid-19 crisis and governments’ responses to it are intensifying the trends that existed before the pandemic struck. National and subnational jurisdictions that heavily subsidised the production and consumption of fossil fuels in previous years have once again thrown lifelines to oil, gas, coal, and fossil fuel-powered electricity.”

The story was updated on 15/07/20 to include the findings of the Energy Policy Tracker. 

The post Saudi Arabia censors fossil fuel subsidy discussion as G20 host appeared first on Climate Home News.

It was the first sitting day of the new parliament. We had over 500 students marching and shouting slogans in front of the prestigious Knesset in Jerusalem.

We had Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis participating together. We have multiplied our following on social media and we have started to plan social media campaign with celebrities. We have also been asked to do a bunch of television and newspaper interviews.

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We formed our movement in December and it has been now going on for almost half a year. But despite our growth we have struggled to convince the Israeli people, who are focused on our domestic political problems.

In our national group, the Israelis and Palestinians are not allowed to mention the political situation. We feel that in order to defeat something much bigger than us, we must put the unfortunate hatred aside and focus on what actually matters the most: saving the world from an ongoing climate breakdown.

This article is part of a collaboration between Climate Home News and the global student climate strike movement. Read why we are offering a platform to young people here.

In Israel, society prioritizes political conflicts over action against climate change. Because of this, our school system teaches us practically nothing about the threat the climate poses. An overwhelming majority of teens don’t even know that by their thirties they are going to face a point of no return.

So even though we had three times more people gathered this week, even though we have countries announcing climate emergencies for the first time in history and even though one Knesset member Miki Haimovitz supported us in her first speech to parliament, we cannot rest nor celebrate.

We have 300,000 more teens to reach in Israel, and more than 190 countries that need to declare the emergency as well. We’ve got 119 more Knesset members to convince, 119 members to show that our future is precious, 119 to show that we matter. Because apparently in the prestigious building they do not think that we matter enough.

Our message that we have been trying to channel now for months is if the government truly prioritises security over social services, education and anti-poverty policies, it simply cannot turn its back to climate breakdown.

Until Russia allows us to rise together, I will strike for the climate alone

Climate change is an urgent crisis not just from a biological, ecological and environmental perspective. It will also cause humanitarian and especially economic distress.

In Israel, we face extreme weather conditions, mainly drought. Agriculture will suffer. The lack of water will increase when the temperature rises and heat waves arrive.

Low income families will struggle with prices, spending will decrease, real estate business will become harder, hyper-inflation will arrive, not only in our country, but across the Middle East.

If I could ask one question to the prime minister of Israel it would be: How many protests and strikes do we, the children, need to arrange until a crisis science has warned about becomes important enough to act against?

One of the so-called arguments I tend to hear a lot in the news is that climate change is too pricey to act against. To answer them I would have to quote scientist Bill Nye: “The earth is on FUCKING FIRE… There is a lot we can do to put it out, are any of them free? No of course not! Nothing’s free you idiots, grow the fuck up.”

As Greta Thunberg said our house is on fire. If your house was on fire and your family inside that house, would you sit quietly and worry about the price of the bucket of water? Obviously you wouldn’t be that foolish.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

The evidence of climate change is all around us and scientists’ warnings are increasingly scary. I personally feel that unfortunately, we are in a ideological war against people that don’t trust scientific facts. But I also know that the single most precious weapon that we have in our little teenage hands is the truth. In the UN’s IPCC reports, the scientific consensus and thousands of pages of scientific journals, we have the truth.

Thus, on behalf of strike4future Israel, I would like to urge the readers of this article to use that truth in order to spread the word, help us to win this war and save ourselves. Help us to put the fire out. Help us to reach the 119 remaining parliament members in Israel. Help us to advocate and strike until Israel will become 100% renewable.

Michael Bäcklund is 16 years old and the global outreach director of strike4future-Israel. If you wish to help the Israeli strikers, you can contact them on @strike4future_israel. You can also email strike4future.israel@gmail.com.

The post ‘This is bigger’: Palestinian and Israeli teens strike together for the climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

The state oil producer netted $111 billion in 2018, more than tech giants Apple and Alphabet combined, it revealed in a bond prospectus.

It is aiming to raise funds to buy petrochemical company Sabic, as part of Saudi Arabia’s strategy to diversify its economy away from crude oil.

Saudi Aramco will continue to be “significantly impacted” by the international oil price, the document noted, warning: “Climate change concerns and impacts could reduce global demand for hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon-based products and could cause the company to incur costs or invest additional capital.”

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Climate policies such as renewable energy mandates, carbon pricing and energy efficiency standards are expected to dampen demand for fossil fuels, it said. Trends in electrification of transport and clean energy prices will also be critical.

Meanwhile the company faces legal challenges over the role of its products in causing climate change. On 2 July 2018, US state Rhode Island sued oil and gas companies including Motiva, an Aramco subsidiary, for damages to coastal infrastructure. “Claims such as these could grow in number,” the note said, and “litigation could result in substantial costs”.

Peter Barnett, a climate lawyer with ClientEarth, agreed. “Climate litigation is gathering pace as citizens, cities, states and shareholders seek accountability for continued reliance on fossil fuels as the impacts of climate change are increasingly acutely felt,” he said. “As Saudi Aramco’s prospectus underscores, climate litigation is now of mainstream financial concern to fossil fuel-exposed companies and their investors.”

Saudi Aramco dismisses peak oil demand ‘hype’, touts carbon efficiency

These caveats did not stop agencies Fitch and Moody’s giving the company a solid A+/A1 credit rating, judging it a fairly safe bet for investors.

Saudi Aramco’s relatively low cost oil production makes it better placed than many competitors to weather the global transition to clean energy.

To meet the goal of the Paris Agreement to hold global warming below 2C, oil will ultimately need to be phased out. In the short term, though, climate models allow a budget for its continued role in the energy mix.

Less than 10% of Saudi Aramco’s capital spending to 2025 falls outside that 2C budget, analysts at Carbon Tracker judged in a 2018 ranking of 72 oil companies. That compares to 20-30% for Exxon Mobil, Total and Petrobas, or up to 60% for US-based Energen.

Saudi Arabia also wastes less energy in the extraction process and through gas flaring than most oil-producing countries, a 2018 study in Science found.

For all these advantages, Saudi Aramco is not immune from pressure on the sector to shift investment into renewable energy. At a conference in February, its chief Amin Nasser described a “worrying and growing belief among policy makers… and many others that we are an industry with little or no future”.

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2016 proposed floating part of the company on the stock exchange. If that ever comes to pass, it will only bring more scrutiny on its carbon and financial accounting.

Shareholder resolutions on climate change have become a regular feature of AGM season for publicly listed companies. Several oil majors have bowed to calls to disclose what the 2C warming limit means for their business. The next ask is to set emissions reduction targets in line with the Paris Agreement goal – a proposal Exxon Mobil is trying to block.

Another focus for activists is the mismatch between companies’ climate-friendly rhetoric and covert support for lobbying against climate policies. Shell revealed on Tuesday it was quitting the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers over its climate stance – but staying in the controversial American Petroleum Institute.

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Far from representing a change of heart towards cars from consumers, the ghost-like foreign section of 2019’s Tehran car show indicates the exodus of innovation from the country since Donald Trump’s US reimposed sanctions in November.

“As companies from developed countries leave the market, we are worried about one thing: what will happen to Iran and the region, once the polluting industry has replaced the modern one due to US sanctions?” Ghazi told Climate Home News.

France’s Renault, Japan’s Mazda, and South Korea’s Hyundai are among the car manufacturers to have pulled out of the Iranian market. Gone are the fuel-cell cars promised by Toyota and Hyundai in 2018, or the deals struck between Iranian car-makers Iran Khodro (IKCO) and Saipa with the French PSA Groupe’s Peugeot and Citroen brands.

Instead photos circulated on Twitter show a straggle of Chinese four-by-fours standing alone, while Saipa is showcasing only one new model – a mid-sized sedan named Roham. The event is a flop.

https://twitter.com/DanielsBazaar/status/1082615917652127744

But the need for new, cleaner technologies is desperate. There are 35,000 deaths from air pollution in Iran every year, according to the government.

“When sanctions are imposed and car manufacturers such as Peugeot and Renault leave, we have to fall back on engines produced locally and of subsequently poorer quality,” Iran’s vice-president Issa Kalantari told AFP in October.

Roughly 127,000 vehicles 35-plus years old are still on the roads, according to roads minister Abbas Akhoundi.

“Dilapidated trucks in Iran are estimated to produce 30 times more harmful emissions than new models,” Rasoul Mohammad-Sadeghi, head of Saipa Diesel Company, the trucks and trailers division of Iran’s second carmaker SAIPA, told the Financial Tribune.

The same goes for fuel. Under pressure from sanctions, the country has had to turn its petrochemical factories into oil refineries to produce its own petrol. Iran cannot import the higher quality additives necessary for cleaner fuel, which forces it to rely on homemade cocktails.

Other sectors key to a green transition have also taken a hit. Faced with such a pollution crisis, Iran has been trying to increase the share of renewably-produced electricity in its energy mix. It hopes to achieve 5 gigawatts by 2022.

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But the sanctions could dent that effort. In August, British renewable energy investor Quercus announced that it was ditching the construction of a €500 million solar power plant. Norway’s Saga Energy has also had to suspend plans to build 2GW of new solar capacity in Iran by the end of 2018, while energy giants like Siemens said that they simply couldn’t consider new deals with Iran.

“The most difficult problem that the market is facing right now is that, yes, there are people willing to invest in the renewable sector, but there are no materials,” said Morteza Sabbaghzadeh, a business consultant at solar firm Arias Solar who has worked in Iran’s renewable sector for ten years.

“Iran already has five companies producing solar modules, but that’s not enough to run a power plant,” he says “You need the investors, you need the technology, you need the installation equipment and cables.”

Left to their own devices, Iranian companies can design and install renewable plants of up to 1MW, said Sabbaghzadeh. In the past, larger power plants larger have been installed by foreign companies from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia.

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Sanctions also affect money transfers. “There are Iranian investors who are willing to invest, but they’re not capable to buy the products, or transfer the money. This has been more difficult after Trump announced the last sanctions,” said Sabbaghzadeh.

In June, before the resumption of sanctions, more than 250 companies had signed agreements to install and sell power from about 4GW of new renewables in the country. Only 602MW of this has been set up, according to Reuters.

It is less than four years since the country looked to be opening a new chapter of broader relationships when they agreed with the US, EU and other partners to limit their nuclear research programme. But Shirin Hakim, a PhD student at Imperial College London studying the impact of US sanctions on Iran’s environment, said the environmental sector was now suffering a brain drain.

“It is really such a shame, so many of my friends [working in the environmental sector] had to pull out of the Iranian market,” Hakim said. “They were so hopeful with the nuclear deal and many people were moving back to help facilitate business with the West.”

Sanctions also jeopardise international lending earmarked for environmental projects. A recent report on the impact of Iranian sanctions by the US Congress Research Service noted that “Iran’s efforts to deal with environment hazards and problems might be hindered by denial of World Bank lending for that purpose”.

Over the years, the US has prevented development funds such as the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) from supporting Iran. The country reportedly opposed more than $7.6 million-worth of environmental projects in 2014, including schemes to boost biodiversity and assist the country to carry out environmental assessment.

Contacted multiple times, the Gef did not respond to a request for comment on whether the resumption of sanctions may have affected current projects. The US state department also did not reply.

Sanctions ultimately will have a heavy impact on Iran’s national climate pledge, known in UN jargon as Nationally Determined Contribution, according to the national government.

In the document submitted to the United Nations in 2015, the government committed itself to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 4% by 2030. That figure jumps to 12% “subject to termination and non-existence of unjust sanctions”.

The Iranian delegation used a recent UN conference in Katowice in December to urge other countries not to follow the “country addicted to withdraw[ing] from international agreements”.

“No political pretext or excuse should be used to block allocation of financial flow, knowhow, technology, [or] support to developing countries as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran” diplomat Naser Moghaddasi told the UN plenary on 12 December.

This outreach has found traction. One of the key architects of the 2015 nuclear deal, the European Union has been among the first to explore mechanisms to bypass sanctions.

Among a number of initiatives, the block is pushing for member-state organisations to partner with Iranian stakeholders in order to “contribute to enhancing Iran’s self-reliance in the areas of addressing water pollution and integrated water resources management, air pollution, waste management and soil degradation.”

The move follows an EU-Iran framework for technical cooperation on the environment signed by Iran’s vice president for environment Masoumeh Ebtekar and EU environment commissioner Karmenu Vella in Brussels in September 2016.

An EU proposal for a ‘special purpose vehicle’ to facilitate humanitarian transfers to Iran presents further optimism that the block is willing to trade with the country, said Hakim.

That gives Iranians some hope, said Sabbaghzadeh: “The last sanction came, it was like: boom! A slap in the face. It was so strong. After a while, people were like: this is not new. We’re going to get around, some way or the other.”

The post Empty car shows and stalled solar as sanctions keep Iran dirty appeared first on Climate Home News.

After a heated debate on Saturday night failed to adopt the conclusions of a scientific report on the effects of warming the planet by 1.5C, Saudi Arabia’s chief negotiator said scientists had painted a picture that ignored the historical responsibility of major polluters.

In an interview with Carbon Brief, Saudi Arabia’s lead negotiator Ayman Shasly said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – released in October – “shows that [halting warming at 1.5C] is achievable, it’s doable, let’s all do it together, which is not fair. What is the equity in this? Where is history in this?”

He said responsibility for constraining the use of fossil fuels should not fall on developing countries, including Saudi Arabia, but on the largest, richest countries with long histories of emitting carbon, which include the US, Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan.

“They are the one in question, not us. They are the one who should really make the space for all of us, as developing countries, to at least develop to something closer to the level of development that is enjoyed by the industrial world,” said Shasly, whose country is the second largest oil producer in the world.

Indigenous peoples gain foothold in climate talks

But during the debate on Saturday night, which revolved around whether countries would “note” or “welcome” findings the IPCC released in October, it was developing countries that spoke most loudly in favour of the science.

In a speech to the UN body on Wednesday, Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama will also call for the report to be welcomed.

“Let me make this perfectly clear. Fiji welcomes the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees. And we thank the thousands of scientists who contributed to it,” he will say. “We must all accept the science, which is irrefutable. We accept science in virtually every single other form of human endeavour. So simple logic dictates that we must do it when the evidence of human-induced warming is so conclusive.”

All would pay a price if the the science was ignored, Bainimarama said on Tuesday: “If you think you’re safe in your environment, if you’re not vulnerable, you will be vulnerable if we do not follow what the scientists told us.”

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Costa Rica’s environment minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez told Climate Home News that Saudi Arabia’s resistance, which it shared with Kuwait, Russia and the US, had marked it out from other developing nations, which negotiate at climate talks together under a 134-country bloc known as the G77 and China.

“This is where I think we have the big difference with some of the G77 members,” Rodríguez said. “I’m not that surprised that once more countries have expressed little commitment to comply with the scientific recommendations… there shouldn’t be any possibility to question the information.”

The IPCC concluded climate-related risks would continue to worsen with a temperature rise of 1.5C, but remain lower than at 2C. Impacts would disproportionately impact “disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, some indigenous peoples, and local communities dependent on agricultural or coastal livelihoods” the report said. It also found the economic growth of countries in the tropics and southern hemisphere subtropics – a region almost entirely made up of developing countries – would be most impeded.

Climate science on 1.5C erased at UN talks as US and Saudis step in

But it also found that rapid transformation would be required in every country, with fossil fuel use effectively ended by mid century.

This pressure offers developing countries “the opportunity to leapfrog into this century”, said François Martel, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Development Forum. “You don’t see any issues in relation to this report from India, from China, from south America and Africa. Because it’s not a question of economy, it’s a question of survival.”

Melchior Mataki, the Solomon Islands’ head of delegation, said the Saudi position was “akin to saying ‘OK, we can just continue to face the negative consequences of climate change, and probably even lose our economies as well’”.

Mataki said the Solomon Islands would be pushing for the Polish presidency on the UN summit to include a passage welcoming the report in the final declaration of the meeting. An EU source said they were also lobbying the presidency for “welcome”, and others are expected to join in.

Shasly told Carbon Brief that Saudi Arabia had asked for a final decision that would “note” the report.

That sets the stage for a political showdown on Friday night when the meeting is scheduled to end and where the adoption of a rulebook for the Paris Agreement is the main point of order.

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The Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Agency (GCCIA) is studying the feasibility of a cable – which would pass through currently warn-torn Yemen – as part of efforts to reduce reliance on oil and gas for power generation.

Connections with Africa and Europe, as well as homegrown renewable energy projects, will help to save petroleum for export, GCCIA chief executive Ahmed Ali Al-Ebrahim told Climate Home News.

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“We are rich in energy, we are dependent on fossil fuels, on gas and oil in the GCC countries,” he said. “But we cannot continue to rely on oil and gas for our energy production because it is also one of our main income sources.

“There is a general approach to diversify our power resources. That is why we are looking at renewable energy, nuclear energy and even hydropower in this case.”

A high-level delegation from Saudi Arabia visited the construction site of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in 2016. In May, Ethiopia’s new prime minister Abiy Ahmed made Riyadh his first calling point after African neighbours Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti.

With a capacity of 6.45 gigawatts, Ethiopia’s mega-project is set to be the largest hydropower dam in Africa. Building could be completed as soon as 2019. The reservoir will take another 5-15 years to fill.

The cable being explored would pass under the Red Sea and through Yemen to connect the resource to Saudi Arabia, said Al-Ebrahim.

Riyadh and its allies in the GCC are involved in the war in Yemen, having killed thousands of civilians in air strikes, according to the UN.

“At the GCC we believe this conflict will end eventually, it is just a matter of time,” said Al-Ebrahim. “When the conflict finishes then there will be a big need for electric power in Yemen and beyond… We are hoping that by that time we will be ready with our plans and designs for this project.”

The feasibility assessment will take around two years, he added. The GCCIA is also considering electricity interconnectors with Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, and through them Turkey and Cyprus or Greece.

Ethiopia’s hydropower is attractive because it could balance intermittent generation from solar plants and stabilise the grid, Al-Ebrahim explained. Meanwhile a link to Europe could switch between import and export according to seasonal demand.

The Ethiopian megadam is politically sensitive, with Egypt in particular raising concerns about the impact on river flows down the Nile. Its chief engineer Simegnew Bekele was shot dead in July, prompting scenes of public mourning.

Researchers have warned that many dams under construction in eastern and southern Africa are at risk of disruption from drought, as climate change makes rainfall more variable.

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In a report, published on Wednesday, the agency suggested climate risks could derail development gains, such as the decrease in infant mortality and the achievement of near universal primary education.

Mourad Wahba, director of UNDP’s regional bureau for Arab States said that the over the past decade cycles of drought, “the frequency and severity of which are beyond anything seen for hundreds of years in the region”, had contributed to “famine and food insecurity, loss of livelihoods and life, and the displacement of millions”.

The report found this could disrupt efforts to bring peace to the region. “Climate change with its direct impact on decreasing water and food security is feeding armed conflict,” the UNDP paper concluded.

The Arab region has 14 of the world’s 20 most water-stressed countries and 90% of the region lies in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones.

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From 2006 to 2011, Somalia suffered a prolonged drought that may have been made more likely by climate change, which led to the displacement of four million people.

Similarly, a drought in Syria from 2006 to 2010, which has been attributed in part to human interference in the climate system, led to a mass migration of 200,000-300,000 people from farmlands to urban centres, according to the UNDP.

Rising levels of conflict across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) has resulted in it housing the world’s largest population of refugees and displaced people. 

“Security and resources go hand in hand in the Mena region. The uprisings and political instability were mainly to demand equal resources, that includes energy, basically in the form of electricity and water,” Safa Al’ Jayoussi, a climate change expert and environmentalist based in Jordan, told Climate Home News.

“Political leaders in the countries are diving into fossil fuels with all the uncertainty around it and removing subsidies without giving the people any other alternative,” she added.

“In Jordan, especially with the current wave of protests where we went out to the streets calling for solutions to the price hikes, [the government] is still struggling to see the shining future of climate change solutions,” Al’ Jayoussi said.

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The renewal of US sanctions after Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal has raised questions about a number of major energy initiatives. Companies are concerned Iranian ties could incur penalties from the US.

On Friday, European commissioner for climate change and energy Miguel Arias Cañete flew to Iran. He will meet ministers from the petroleum and energy departments and well as foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on a three day visit to the capital.

“The objective of my visit is to continue to strengthen energy relations with Iran, most importantly now against this new challenging background of president Trump’s announcement,” Cañete said in a statement on Friday.

The EU’s trade with Iran grew 60% between 2016 and 2017 – after the signing of the nuclear deal – said Cañete. “The European Union is fully committed to ensuring that this continues to be delivered on.”

In the past week, French company Total has announced that, unless it gets a sanctions waiver from the US, it will withdraw from the South Pars 11 oil project in Iran.

Earlier this year, the European Commission said it was looking to open talks with Iran regarding gas supply to the continent through the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), a huge pipeline under construction.

BP is the major shareholder in the SGC, which will carry gas from Iran’s neighbouring Azerbaijan to Italy. A spokesperson for the company told Climate Home News: “We take great care to ensure we always comply with applicable sanctions.”

“There is no entry point into the SGC at present that would allow Iranian gas to enter the system. All initial flows of gas will be from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan. Shah Deniz operates in full compliance with all US sanctions,” said the spokesperson.

The SGC is Europe’s largest fossil fuel project, is deeply unpopular with climate NGOs and has attracted billions of dollars in public finance. Cañete backs it as a way to diversify Europe’s gas supply away from Russia. US sanctions raise questions about the option to diversify with Iranian gas.

The talks in Tehran come a day after the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker deepened Europe’s war of words with the US over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and proposed tariffs on European goods.

Speaking on Thursday, Juncker said if the US exempted the EU from import tariffs, the bloc would consider buying more liquefied natural gas from the US. Otherwise it would look elsewhere for energy supplies, he hinted, saying the commission may use a 1990s law to ban European companies from complying with US sanctions on Iran.

“The American sanctions will not be without effect. So we have the duty, the Commission and the European Union, to protect our European businesses,” said Juncker.

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A major intergovernmental funding body has ignored routine requests for assistance, and follow-up communications, from the Palestinian government since June 2016.

A chain of communication spanning 20 months and involving two UN agencies, seen by Climate Home News, shows the Global Environment Facility (Gef) refused to answer persistent appeals from Palestinian officials for funding to which the country is entitled under UN conventions.

The Gef, which is headquartered in Washington DC, has distributed more than $16 billion over three decades to efforts to stop the degradation of biodiversity and the ecological systems that support humanity. The US, which has threatened to stop payments to organisations that accept Palestinian membership, is its largest donor.

CHN understands there has been no direct intervention in the Gef’s relationship with Palestine by the Trump administration, or its predecessor. But intergovernmental organisations have been put on notice by a hardening of US global aid policy, in particular the US decision to withdraw from UN cultural body Unesco over its recognition and support of Palestine.

Palestine has been a full member of the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) since March 2016. Under the convention, developing countries are required to report on their greenhouse gas emissions and their efforts to curb them. Rich countries, through the Gef, cover the costs of preparing these reports.

On 18 July 2016, the chair of the Palestinian Environmental Quality Agency (EQA) Adalah Atteerah contacted CEO and chair of the Gef Naoko Ishii requesting access to this funding, noting that “as other countries”, Palestine had already begun these surveys.

The Gef’s guidelines make clear “all non-annex I parties” – the term used to differentiate between developed and developing states – to the UNFCCC are eligible to receive up to $852,000 to help prepare their regular reports to the climate process. But neither Ishii, nor any Gef official, formally responded to Atteerah.

Palestine faces severe threats from climate change. Israeli occupation makes the population more vulnerable, in particular to water shortages. Palestinians have access to just 73 litres per day for domestic use and personal hygiene. The World Health Organization recommended minimum is 100. (Photo: Muhammad Sabah/B’Tselem)

Later that year, Palestine’s UNFCCC representative Nedal Katbeh-Bader met with officials from the UNFCCC secretariat on the first day of the 2016 climate conference in Marrakech to discuss Palestine’s difficulties with the Gef. After that meeting, one of the officials, Alejandro Kilpatrick, emailed Katbeh-Bader.

“Also wanted to inform you that I have contacted Gef colleagues and transmitted your concerns as discussed. They indicated they will contact their headquarters in Washington and will come back to us,” Kilpatrick wrote.

As talks in Morocco came to an end, Katbeh-Bader emailed Kilpatrick again, this time to ask him to broker a meeting with Gef chair Ishii. Kilpatrick said he had passed the message along. But no meeting came of it.

Almost a year after the original letter there was still no reply. Atteerah tried again. In a letter to Ishii, dated 22 June 2017, he said: “I would like to kindly remind you with [sic] the letter sent to you on 18/7/2016.” A Palestinian official delivered the letter via email to a Uruguayan diplomat who is secretary to the Gef council, William Ernest Ehlers. Ehlers promised to “follow up”. But there was no official response to Atteerah’s letter.

The Palestinians’ problems with the facility have not been isolated to UNFCCC-related funding. Atteerah had written another letter to Ishii in June 2016, requesting help to meet Palestine’s obligations to the UN Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), to which it also belongs. Again, the Japanese diplomat did not reply.

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Palestine’s representative to the Gef, Ahmed Abu Thaher, told CHN via email: “We sent to Gef CEO several letters, especially after Palestine became a party in CBD and UNFCCC. But unfortunately we did not receive official answers. Although we receive from their side notification that they received our letters. Moreover I met Gef representative[s] personally but therein no results achieved.”

CHN made multiple attempts to contact the Gef regarding this story. They did not respond. The Gef has been a sponsor of CHN for several years. A few days after CHN’s initial enquiry, a Gef official contacted CHN’s publisher requesting their logo be removed from this website as a matter of urgency. The official did not say that their call was related to this story.

Palestine’s travails continued into 2017. In July, searching for allies, climate representative Katbeh-Bader wrote to the executive secretary of the UNFCCC Patricia Espinosa. He attached Palestine’s previous communications to Ishii and the Gef.

“State of Palestine would like to draw your attention that Gef is not responding to continued requests from Palestine,” wrote Katbeh-Bader. “In this regard, we highly appreciate your active engagement in dealing with this alarming and unacceptable lack of response of [the] Gef.”

Espinosa did not respond to the appeal. UNFCCC spokesman Nick Nuttall confirmed receipt of the letter. Asked whether Espinosa, or any UNFCCC officials, had contact with the Gef about Palestine’s communications, Nuttall would not comment.

“The issue of responsiveness to the funding requests of Palestine has been discussed at UNFCCC meetings over the past year and a half, including at the last conference of the parties in Bonn, Germany in November 2017,” said Nuttall.

The 2017 Bonn talks produced a resolution directed at the Gef, noting “the importance of providing timely responses to the requests of developing country parties”. This was adopted by consensus, with no objection from the US.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) was chosen by the Palestinians to oversee its Gef-funded projects. A spokeswoman told CHN that the Jerusalem-based Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People (PAPP) had been coordinating with the Palestinians on this matter since they received a request on the same day in 2016 that Atteerah originally wrote to Ishii.

The spokeswoman said: “The State of Palestine, as a non-annex I country to the UNFCCC, is eligible to access these GEF resources, as all other developing countries… UNDP/PAPP is ready to support the Environment Quality Authority and the Palestinian government to prepare these reports, upon request, and meet its obligations as a member to the UNFCCC.”

She said the UNDP had not communicated with the Gef directly about the Palestinian requests.

A non-exhaustive survey of the hundreds of approved applications for reporting assistance listed on the Gef website shows the time between the application being received and initial funding being approved is typically a few months.

One application for funding, submitted by a group of 25 developing countries, made on 11 March, 2016, was approved by the time the Palestinian government first wrote to Ishii, on July 18.

Palestine toasts full membership of UN climate body

The revelation comes at a critical time for the Gef, which is in the final stages of a two-year process to refill its coffers. This will define what the body can achieve over the coming four years.

In the last funding round, which covered 2014-2018, the Gef received $2.4bn in new contributions. By far the largest donor was the US, which contributed $362m, 14% of the total.

But US funding is increasingly uncertain. In 2017, in a draft executive order published by the New York Times, US president Donald Trump indicated be was planning to slash overseas support. If the order is signed, it will also mandate a cessation of funding to UN affiliates and other international organisations that grant full membership to Palestine.

US law prohibits the country from funding UN bodies that recognise Palestine. The US has withheld funding from the UN’s cultural body Unesco since it admitted Palestine in 2011. In 2017, the US and Israel withdrew from Unesco altogether, citing anti-Israel bias. Trump’s first budget proposal cut funding for the UNFCCC, giving similar reasons.

The Gef, which is headquartered just two blocks west along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, is not a UN body and therefore not affected by the law. But Trump’s draft order, which references “other international organisations”, would include the Gef.

In Trump’s 2019 presidential budget proposal, released in February, annual funding for the Gef was slashed by more than half, to $68m.

Even before Trump’s election, realpolitik appears to have lead the Gef to blur its relationship to Palestine. The country’s status within the Gef is not made clear on the organisation’s website. It was not on a list of member states published during its council meeting in November 2017. National representatives, or focal points, to the Gef are listed on the organisation’s website. Palestine’s focal point, Thaher, is not among them.

Thaher told CHN that this dates back almost a decade: “Before 2006, Palestine focal points were presented on the list of GEF focal points and after that GEF deleted the Palestinian focal points from the list.”

Palestine is also not included in a list that carries profiles of the countries the Gef has lent money to. That is despite the fact that Palestine has been a recipient of Gef funding on several occasions. After the Palestinian Authority was created by the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, Palestine was included in six regional Gef projects, worth a total of $27.23m. But after 2005, two similar projects were cancelled. No more have been proposed.

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“Anti-Israel bias” was one reason given by the state department on Thursday for its decision to withdraw from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

Unesco, which oversees national management of world heritage and protects freedom of expression around the world, admitted Palestine as a full member state in 2011. The US reacted by suspending payments to the organisation.

Another major UN treaty organisation to which Palestine has been accepted as a full member is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the treaty under which the Paris accord was signed.

Palestine joined the UNFCCC in 2016, just after the Paris conference. It was previously an observer to the convention.

On Thursday, in response to questions over whether the Unesco withdrawal set a precedent for US non-cooperation with bodies that recognise Palestine, including the UNFCCC, a state department spokeswoman said: “We do not speculate about possible future actions of the department.”

“This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects US concerns with mounting arrears at Unesco, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at the organisation,” said the spokeswoman.

Palestine’s representative to the UNFCCC Nedal Katbehbader told Climate Home that he was not convinced Palestine’s membership was the reason for the Unesco withdrawal as the state was not specifically named by the US when it announced its reasons for leaving.

“I never saw anything that said they are withdrawing because the Palestinians are members of Unesco. They are talking about fundamental reform of Unesco in general,” said the ministerial advisor.

He defended Palestine’s participation in the UN climate treaty and noted they had been active members since joining, despite their limited resources.

“We have shown that we are very committed to the global consensus to find a solution to climate change,” he said. “We can’t speak on behalf of the US and we can’t understand what is behind their decision.”

Last year, Palestine withdrew a submission to the UNFCCC asking members to recognise Israel’s occupation had made the state more vulnerable to climate change.

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The US has already said it wants to withdraw from the Paris climate deal. That will take until 2020 under the agreement rules. But if the US were to cut ties with the UNFCCC it could do so within a year, simultaneously leaving the Paris accord.

Republicans have long used Palestine’s UNFCCC membership to argue that payments to the body, and to the associated Green Climate Fund, are illegal. The Republican presidential platform enshrined this as policy in 2016.

Katbehbader noted that Obama administration lawyers had found that payments to the UNFCCC were legal under US law.

Israel’s stance towards the cultural body has hardened since Unesco anointed the city of Hebron, within the occupied territories, as a Palestinian world heritage site.

Unesco director general Irina Bokova expressed “profound regret” at the announcement, calling it “a loss to both the organisation and the US”.

Later on Thursday, it was reported that Israel would join the US in leaving the body.

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If humans continue to burn fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate, then rainfall will diminish by 30%, average temperatures will rise by 4.5°C, and the flow from the Jordan’s most important tributary could fall by 75%. The frequency of droughts will increase threefold, to recur almost every year.

And since the kingdom of Jordan – wedged between Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iraq – is already one of the most water-poor nations of the world, the future is challenging.

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Scientists in California report in Science Advances journal that they took a look at future conditions for one of the world’s political hotspots, and focused on the problems for one state in the region.

Pressure on water supplies has been exacerbated by population growth, economic development, dramatic increases in irrigated farming, and abstraction of groundwater from the aquifers that once filled wells and topped up desert oases. Jordan also houses the world’s second largest number of refugees per head of population.

In 1946, a Jordanian citizen could count on 3,600 cubic metres of water a year. Right now, this supply has dropped to 135 cubic metres – way below the 500 cubic metres a year set by the United Nations as the threshold for “absolute scarcity”.

The scientists looked at rates of water use between 1981 and 2010, and then fed in climate scenarios – including the notorious “business-as-usual” one in which humans go on burning fossil fuels – for the decades between 2011 and 2100.

They thought about drought in different ways, such as lower rainfall, higher temperatures, greater evaporation, changes in the way land is used. The changes could happen in Jordan itself, or upstream, in territories controlled by other nations.

The Jordan River is celebrated in three of the world’s great religions, but it is now a modest stream. It rises on the slopes of Mount Hermon, on the border between Syria and Lebanon, flows south through northern Israel, through the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), whose waters are at their lowest level in a century, then meanders down a 200km valley and ends in the Dead Sea.

It runs through a region already cruelly hit by drought and by the civil war in Syria that itself may have been precipitated by the same drought.

The Jordan is just one of the world’s 278 waterways that flow across national boundaries or that divide nations – that is, rivers that deliver water to more than one set of peoples. So the study has wider lessons.

Researchers have already identified future problems connected with the Nile, one of the other great rivers of biblical history.

But the Nile, for most of its history, has flowed and has delivered annual floods. The River Jordan was never famous for its floods, and its flow is likely to diminish as less water falls in the uplands, and as more people compete for more water from the trickle that is left.

The end of the Syrian civil war upstream could mean a return to farming and even more demand for water that would otherwise flow into the Jordan.

“The ability of the Jordan to satisfy future urban and agricultural water demands will be stressed by cascading effects on its freshwater supply,” says one of the report’s authors, Steven Gorelick, the Cyrus Fisher Tolman Professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stamford University, California.

“These impacts are from increasingly severe droughts and eventual agricultural land-use recovery in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war.”

This article was first published on Climate News Network.

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As Western-backed Iraqi forces re-take territory, the fundamentalists appear to be adopting scorched earth tactics, leaving a trail of environmental devastation.

Following the recapture of Mosul last month, US defence chief Jim Mattis visited Iraq on Tuesday. The next battleground is Tal Afar, some 50 kilometres to the west.

Five oil fires (photographed below in 2015 and 2017) have been blazing since August 2015 to the east of Baiji oil refinery. Several more in the Qayyarah oil field, south of Mosul, burned for eight months before firefighters extinguished them in March.

(Photo: Sentinel Hub)

The scene recalls the first Gulf War in 1991, when more than 600 oil wells in Kuwait were set alight. Subsequent analysis estimated that conflagration released 133 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air. That is more than a year’s worth of CO2 emissions for a medium-sized country such as the Philippines, Belgium or Nigeria.

Meanwhile sulphur dioxide emissions from Al-Mishraq sulphur mine, torched last October, were bigger than those from any volcanic eruption in 2016, according to NASA.

A fireman confronting the oil fires (Photo: Wim Zweijnenburg/Pax)

Wim Zwijnenburg from Dutch NGO Pax, who just returned from a trip to the oil fields near Mosul, warns that this environmental damage brings an untold health cost to the area’s inhabitants.

“All these people are concerned about their health because they are being covered in soot. People are complaining about a lot of respiratory issues because of the oil fires,” he told Climate Home.

“It is a warzone, so there is a lot of trauma care need for people affected by the conflict. Traditionally, environmental health risks tend to get low priority, which is to some extent understandable. But the downside is that it has never been picked up or properly researched.”

(Photo: Wim Zweijnenburg/Pax)

Zwijnenburg’s photos, shared with Climate Home, show the scale of the destruction on the ground at Qayyarah oil field.

Pax is calling for environmental remediation to be incorporated into reconstruction efforts. That means boosting governance of the oil industry as it restarts production, to crack down on polluting practices, as well as putting out fires.

The Kuwait oil fires focused international attention on how to mitigate the environmental impact of war, but it has proved a sensitive issue.

“You can’t always establish who is responsible for damage during an armed conflict,” explained Marie Jacobsson, a Swedish lawyer who until last year led the International Law Commission’s work on environmental protection in relation to armed conflicts. “The actions you may have taken as a combatant may have been perfectly legal at the time you did them, and then who is responsible for the consequences?”

Rather than try to apportion blame, the legal effort has focused on promoting cooperation to rehabilitate conflict zones. Jacobsson said: “You need solutions. States should have a responsibility to share information so they can assist each other in managing problems like this.”

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The hospital, which was not named to protect staff from attacks, was exclusively relying on diesel generators after six years of conflict destroyed much of the electricity grid.

Frequent diesel shortages and price spikes was putting lives at risk, according to a statement, not least those of premature babies in the facility’s six incubators.

Medical charity UOSSM, which is behind the project, estimates that the 480 solar panels installed will save 7,000 litres of diesel a month and cut energy costs by 20-30%.

It is planning to roll out solar panels to another five hospitals.

“We believe that this type of projects brings hope,” said Tarek Makdissi, project director of UOSSM’s Syria solar initiative. “Our dream is to see every medical facility in Syria running on clean, sustainable energy.”

Anas Al Kassem, war surgeon and chairman of UOSSM-Canada, said he was “overjoyed” to see the project up and running.

“The majority of the electrical infrastructure in Syria was either bombed, dismantled or destroyed,” he said. “Many patients have died from simple power outages. The solar project was desperately needed.”

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That’s rich. In the North Sea oil fields, Britain is propping up a dying industry. Multi-billion tax breaks, supplemented in the 2017 budget, are given at the expense of diversifying the economy towards lower-carbon energy sources. In 2016, the UK’s oil and gas industry not only failed to bring in any tax revenue, but generated a net cost of £396 million to the government.

May could learn a thing or two from the Saudis about the strategy behind sunsetting the petroleum sector.

As long ago as the 1970s Sheikh Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister and one of the OPEC masterminds said: “The stone age did not end for lack of stones, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.” Saudi Arabia’s leadership well understands the fundamental shift in energy markets due the plummeting cost of renewables and other innovations.

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The consequence is the “green paradox”, a phenomenon described by the German economist Hans-Werner Sinn. An anticipated transition away from fossil fuels provokes their producers to accelerate the extraction of oil, gas and coal. This is exactly what happened over 2015-2016 when Saudi Arabia, with its world’s lowest cost production, chose to flood the market with cheap oil in competition with Iran and US shale gas over market share.

In doing so, Saudi Arabia drained its tax revenues – and those of all other oil-producing nations from Iran to the UK. This led to an unprecedented budget deficit for the country, estimated at 12% of GDP in 2017.

Saudi Arabia took important steps and used the budget deficit as a context for phasing out fossil fuel consumer subsidies, estimated at $71.3 billion in 2014. For decades, Saudi Arabia’s consumer prices for energy were among the lowest in the world, distorting the level playing field for renewables and making them uncompetitive.

The new fiscal pressure created the sense of urgency for this much-needed change that would otherwise be stifled by the political economy. In 2015 Saudi Arabia raised retail gasoline prices by about 50% and is considering further price increases in 2017.

Into the abyss: oil states face turmoil as climate policies bite

Saudi Arabian leaders more and more frequently speak about “leaving oil behind” and diversifying into the new economic activities including new energy technologies, particularly solar. In 2016 Saudi Arabia launched its Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Programme that deserves praise for a focus on renewables.

Prime Minister May’s programme of meetings with King Salman and other counterparts in Riyadh included a pitch for Britain’s strategic role in advising Saudi Arabia on implementation of the Vision 2030 and “tax and privatisation standards” for the initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest petroleum company.

It is not difficult to imagine what kind of tax advice can come from the UK experts: more tax breaks. Indeed, at the end of March 2017 Saudi Arabia cut the corporate income tax rate from 85% to 50% – which is estimated to have boosted Aramco’s capitalisation by roughly $1 trillion.

Whereas UK tax cuts have come in the context of falling revenues to government from oil and gas, the Saudi cut will allow the government to raise much more money (at least in the near term) from the IPO.

Report: Indian oil majors prepare for electric vehicle boom

Unfortunately, both types of subsidies to fossil fuel production unlock “zombie energy”, encouraging oil consumption worldwide and driving more emissions. A recent study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Overseas Development Institute estimated that a complete removal of subsidies to fossil fuel production globally would reduce the world’s emissions by 37 Gt of CO2 over 2017-2050, equivalent to global aviation emissions over the same period.

It is high time the UK stops trying to export its “expertise” on subsidising oil and gas production around the globe and rethinks how to use public resources for the low carbon future. The question is not if the oil age will end, but when, and how disruptive this end can be.

A much more useful avenue for UK’s cooperation with Saudi Arabia and other petroleum-producing nations would be to agree on a plurilateral plan to manage the fossil fuel industry’s decline in a just, transparent and predictable way. The first step should be elimination of tax breaks for the petroleum industry and other fossil fuel subsidies.

Ivetta Gerasimchuk and Peter Wooders are energy experts at the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Shelagh Whitley leads the climate and energy programme at Overseas Development Institute

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On Sunday, Climate Home reported that president Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom and Saudi Arabia had agreed a massive development project would be placed on Faafu atoll.

The former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed and foreign policy experts raised the prospect that the move was aimed at installing a permanent Saudi presence along that country’s vital oil trade routes to China.

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On Tuesday, the president’s office issued a statement that said: “The Administration categorically rebuts allegations that the atoll has been ‘sold off’ to a foreign entity…

“The Government of Maldives’ plans to develop Faafu atoll, and other regions for the country, is focused on delivering positive outcomes for Maldives and its people. Foreign investment is not out of the ordinary in this region, or for that matter anywhere else.”

President Yameen said: “Much like our friends in both the East and West, we remain an open and valued player in the global economy, and should be afforded the ability to expand our economy to propel more and more Maldivians towards middle income status.”

Few details of the government’s plans have been released to the public. Yameen has said the entire investment spend will be US$10 billion – three times the Maldives GDP. He said last week that the proposal would be made public “once the negotiation process was completed”.

That scale of investment was welcomed by some Maldivians, while others decried the prospect of such a dominant Saudi influence. Protests were held on Faafu last week.

Report: Saudis make Maldives land grab to secure oil routes to China

The Maldives government has a history of corruption surrounding land sales. Last year, Al Jazeera revealed a racket that saw cash from foreign land investors disappearing – some of it was traced to Yameen’s personal bank account.

Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked the country 35 out of 100 – below the global average.

Speaking to Climate Home in London last week, Nasheed said the Saudi investment, coupled with an effort to spread Wahhabism in the islands, was part of a strategy to protect Saudi supply lines to the far east.

“One of the issues with these kind of hidden deals is that it encourages corruption and through corruption you can subvert states,” said Nasheed.

Yameen’s official statement did not specifically address the lack of transparency.

“All infrastructure projects strictly adhere to regulations and boundaries set out by the Maldivian constitution,” it said. The statement also said environmental laws would be respected as the atoll was developed.

The post Maldives president defends Saudi atoll deal, but reveals no detail appeared first on Climate Home News.

The move could prefigure a Chinese military expansion into the heart of the Indian Ocean, one observer said.

The economic future of the Saudi petro-kingdom is bound to the sale of oil, gas and other goods to China. The supply lines for that trade run through the Indian Ocean, where terror is a growing concern and vessels are shadowed by piracy.

The ships also pass by the Maldives – an 820km-long chain of atolls southwest of the tip of India. In this small country, with its growing Wahhabist majority and autocratic government, the Saudis have found – or, according to the Maldivian opposition, created – a pliant ally where few questions are asked and fewer are allowed.

Last week, unconfirmed reports emerged that the Saudi government intended to buy one of the atolls, Faafu – a collection of 19 low-lying islands 120 kilometres south of the capital Malé and home to 4,000 people.

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President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom has denied the entire atoll will be sold to the Saudis, but said plans for a “mega project” worth US$10 billion – three times his country’s GDP – would be disclosed “once the negotiation process was completed”.

Former-president and opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed said the reported sale of Faafu, which has been subject to no public tender process, was “disturbing”.

“[The Saudis] want to have a base in the Maldives that would safeguard the trade routes, their oil routes, to their new markets. To have strategic installations, infrastructure,” he said.

On Friday, worried Faafu locals mounted a protest on the island of Biledhdhoo, under a heavy police presence. Earlier in the week, the Maldives Independent reported that two of its journalists in the atoll had been detained overnight by police.

Maldives police had issued a written warning against any demonstration that might embarrass a visiting foreign leader. Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz and his entourage are set to spend two weeks in the Maldives at the end of March, as part of a tour of Asia.

People of Faafu Biledhoo protesting against sale of faafu atoll to the Saudi King. #SaveFaafu pic.twitter.com/h1JvsoORAx

— Shauna Aminath (@anuahsa) March 3, 2017

Ahead of #Saudi King Salman visit, #Maldives police warns strongly against any/all forms of expression that may ‘belittle’ visiting leaders https://t.co/o40Fb1RXyS

— AzraNaseem (@Manje) March 1, 2017

At a briefing for international journalists in Malé, housing minister Mohamed Muizzu said he hoped it would be a big investment: “We don’t want to move slowly; we want transformational change. That is the whole mentality of this government. We want to bring better living conditions to this country on a large scale, in a small period of time.”

Protests against the deal were “not in the best interests of the country,” he added. “A responsible opposition would always give support to the government and the people for whatever project that is beneficial to the country. That has been the case in all the other democracies as well.”

Opposition MP Eva Abdulla – a cousin of Nasheed – told Climate Home: “With Faafu or any other project, we are told there will be a trickle-down effect. That is not what we have seen. It is government MPs and their cronies who get all the benefits.”

Nasheed was the nation’s first democratically-elected president and was removed in what his supporters describe as a “coup” in 2012. He now lives in exile in London, where he met Climate Home at a hotel restaurant.

He said scholarship programmes for young islanders to study in Medina or Mecca have facilitated the spread of Wahhabism, the founding faith of the Saud dynasty. This cultural campaign laid the groundwork for an “unprecedented” land grab.

The view from Malé

At the city beach on Saturday, children splash about in a small enclosed section of lagoon. Mohamed is with his wife and sister-in-law, who retreat to a bench five metres away when asked questions.

A member of the Maldives military, Mohamed asks not to use his full name because he has seen people lose their jobs for criticising the government. A wrong word could also jeopardise his chances of getting a new apartment in Hulhumale, the reclaimed island next to the airport.

“In my opinion, that is not good to give too much long term… it is the Maldivian property,” he says of the rumoured Faafu atoll sale.

Roughly half the population of the Maldives lives on tiny, overcrowded Malé. (Photo: Shahee Ilyas)

He describes approvingly a shift towards conservative Islam in recent years. “Mixed dancing with short clothes” is no longer accepted. “If it is in resorts then it will go well, [but] normal people cannot see that… Little boys and girls, they get a bad image.”

One of his wife’s sisters got a scholarship to study business administration in Saudi Arabia and religious experts visited during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting.

“Nowadays, people are well educated, many religious people are there and because of this, people know what is in the religion. When I was my son’s age, I don’t know what is religion, I just follow my mum and dad.”

Khathma, a school teacher visiting Malé for the weekend from Himmafushi, 17km away, has heard about protests on Faafu even though they were not on the TV news. “It is not a good thing, right, because that is our islands, Maldives islands,” she says.

Not everybody opposes the deal. Firushan and Fathun sit toying with their smartphones under a palm tree. They met on Facebook and hope to get married soon.

Firushan does not like overcrowded Malé, where he shares a small room with a friend – “it is a bad dream” – but has been obliged to come here for rehabilitation from a marijuana habit. They will stay until Fathun has completed her training to be a nursery school teacher.

A billboard, featuring president Yameen, advertises the government’s green development plans. (Photo: Megan Darby)

He points at the China-Maldives “Friendship Bridge”, one of the biggest infrastructure investments in the country. “We have seen it, it is a good investment here, so I guess as well it [the Saudi investment] is a positive…

“I don’t see any harm in it. If the country goes forward, then everybody should be happy. If my islands are getting that kind of investment, I would appreciate it. Every atoll is competing with Malé.”

In the fish market, standing over a slab of gleaming local tuna, Adnan Siraj says he trusts president Yameen to get a good deal for the Maldives. He speaks in Dhivedi and Moussa Afeef, a self-appointed guide who runs a nearby souvenir shop, translates.

Dried fish seller Abdulla Youssef shakes his head emphatically when asked about the Saudis. “I don’t like,” he says in English. He has nothing against the people – good Muslims – but is not happy about ceding territory to foreigners.

Ibrahim Thoufeg, who sells sweet potatoes and carrots imported from Sri Lanka as well as Maldivian bananas and chili peppers, takes a similar view. “Saudi is good, the country is good,” interprets Afeef, but “he is not really happy to sell to any other countries these islands.”

“[The Saudis] have had a good run of propagating their worldview to the people of the Maldives and they’ve done that for the last three decades. They’ve now, I think, come to view that they have enough sympathy for them to get a foothold,” said Nasheed.

In February, the Saudi embassy in Malé was criticised for handing out sealed envelopes filled with cash to local Maldivian journalists at an event. The embassy described them as “gifts”. On Saturday, it was reported that the Saudi national airline was doubling the number of flights from the kingdom to Malé.

Foreign land ownership was illegal in the Maldives until 2015, when the Yameen government passed an amendment to the constitution. Nasheed compared Saudi acquisition of Faafu to China’s building of military facilities on islands in the South China sea.

“This is far more devious, because they hide inside you and they come out when they want to,” he said.

In exile: former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed sought asylum in London after he was allowed to leave prison in the Maldives to receive medical treatment. (Photo: Karl Mathiesen)

Dr Theodore Karasik, senior advisor to Gulf States Analytics in Washington DC said the motivation for the Saudis was unlikely to be militaristic.

“Saudis are not going to set up bases anywhere else. Saudi uses allies and proxies to try to achieve strategic and tactical goals… [Their intention is] to build up a network of allies that form a logistical chain from the Gulf to east Asia and back,” he said.

US imports of Saudi oil have steadily declined since a 2003 peak, falling 40%. Growing demand in China offers a new opportunity for the kingdom. But it is not without competition. In 2016, Saudi Arabia was overtaken by Russia as China’s largest source of oil.

Last year, the kingdom unveiled an economic restructuring plan called “Vision 2030” that points towards deeper economic ties with east Asia. Karasik says the Indian Ocean supply chain is “absolutely critical” to the success of the plan.

King Salman is on a tour of the countries along that supply chain, striking deals and announcing investments in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Japan, China and finally the Maldives.

“Saudi partnership with other countries will be required to ensure that freedom of navigation remains and that piracy and terrorism doesn’t occur,” said Karasik.

Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz (Photo: Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo)

The employment of the Maldives as a strategic anchor for future oil trade rubs against the country’s vulnerability to climate change. It is the lowest-lying country on earth, with a high point of just 2.4m, meaning even small rises in sea level could be devastating. (Nasheed rose to international prominence for his advocacy on the issue as president.)

According to the International Energy Agency, oil demand in China must peak within a decade for the 2C temperature goal of the Paris climate agreement to be met – even more radical cuts will be required for survival of communities in the Maldives according to the government’s own statements.

Though the physics of climate change are inexorable, geopolitical forces are also overwhelming these islands. In August 2015, Salman and Chinese premier Xi Jinping signed a cooperative agreement on China’s One Belt, One Road initiative – the cumulative term for the New Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road that China has outlined as its key strategic supply lanes (see figure below).

This has coincided with a widening of Chinese interests in the Maldives. The Chinese premier, Xi Jinping visited the islands in 2014, announcing the construction of a US$210 million “Friendship Bridge” connecting Malé to its airport island. China is also financing an extra runway at the airport and intends to develop a port on Laamu atoll, which lies south of Faafu. The Maldives, once tied to India for its economic survival now owes 70% of its external debt to China.

Chinese-owned or financed port locations (existing and proposed) along the Maritime Silk Road. Maldives marked with red rectangle. (Source: Institute for the Analysis of Global Security)

Cleo Paskal, associate fellow at Chatham House and author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map, said the Saudi purchase of Faafu could lay the foundation for China to extend its military reach in the Indian Ocean, securing Saudi and Chinese interests.

“China is on record as wanting a base in the Maldives,” she said. “It was a big issue in 2015. It already has or is working on ‘commercial’ ports in several countries along the route from the Indian Ocean to China and recently opened an overtly military naval base in Djibouti. Saudis are unlikely to build anything like that for themselves, but may facilitate the construction of some sort of ‘resupply’ installation built by China that would likely have dual use capacity.”

She said this would raise concerns in Delhi, which has courted its neighbours. It would also place the Chinese military very close to the US base at Diego Garcia. The US state department did not respond to requests for comment.

Ankit Panda, senior editor of The Diplomat, cautioned against ascribing long term strategic motivations to the Faafu deal – should it eventuate. He said the purchase was clearly part of the Saudi programme to diversify its economy from oil, but that the Maldives may be playing a longer game.

“The geopolitical layer to this, in my view, is more on the Maldivian side for now. The Saudis are looking primarily for a strategic investment opportunity,” said Panda. “The [Maldives’] leadership understands its strategic location in the Indian Ocean and sees a Saudi outpost there potentially paying dividends in the future.”

It was also likely, said Karasik, that the Saudi visit would be accompanied by the announcement of an investment in the country’s newly-created national oil company, MNOC. A UK company, Zebra Data Sciences, has been linked to further exploration after the government announced that initial prospecting had found deposits of oil and gas in the atolls.

Energy and environment minister Thoriq Ibrahim told Climate Home: “What the country needs now is to use the resources we have. We don’t know yet [whether there are viable oil reserves]. There was a research team here.”

All of this investment, said former president Nasheed, was happening without transparency. This was particularly problematic given the Yameen government’s history of corruption. Last year, an Al Jazeera documentary revealed a land deals racket that saw cash from foreign buyers going missing – some of it ending up in Yameen’s personal bank account.

“One of the issues with these kind of hidden deals is that it encourages corruption and through corruption you can subvert states… This is fairly unclear territory we are going into,” said Nasheed.

Megan Darby’s travel to the Maldives and accommodation was paid for by the Maldives government.

Note: an amendment was made to correct the date of the end of Nasheed’s presidency and to clarify Eva Abdulla’s familial relationship to Nasheed. A quote from Muizzu was extended to reflect that he felt the opposition should support the interests of the country.

The post Saudis make Maldives land grab to secure oil routes to China appeared first on Climate Home News.

The judge cited its impact on the ancient Aeolian city of Kyme, a nearby archaeological site that has yet to be fully excavated. Three other coal power projects in the Aliaga region have been shelved or cancelled in the face of local opposition.

It is part of a wave of litigation campaigners hope will stop Turkey’s dash for coal in its tracks. Straddling Asia and Europe, the country has around 70 coal plants in planning and construction, the world’s third biggest pipeline after China and India.

“It gives us hope,” said campaigner Ozlem Katisoz of the ruling. “It is good to see that the experts have started to see the negative impacts of the coal plants and draft their reports accordingly. It is a sign of change.”

Report: Turkey coal surge an ‘historic error’ say economists

Last Friday’s court decision is not the end of the story for Izdemir power plant. Izdemir Enerji may appeal the court ruling or re-run the environmental impact assessment. The company could not be reached for comment.

But the suspension of an operating plant should give pause to anyone betting on Turkey’s coal expansion, argue green groups.

“This is a message to the major investors and companies,” said Elif Gunduzyeli, Turkey expert with Climate Action Network Europe. “If companies decide to go ahead with their investments, they might later on have problems.”

Turkey gets about a quarter of its electricity from coal and the government is backing an expansion to meet rising energy demand.

The official target touted by Turkey’s investment agency advertises is 30GW of coal generation capacity by 2023. But CoalSwarm tracks 70GW worth of projects that have been announced, permitted or started building.

Energy minister Berat Albayrak emphasised use of domestic resources at an industry event in Istanbul this week. Turkey has significant lignite resources, a low quality type of coal with higher emissions.

From the archives: an anti-coal demonstration in the 1990s (Courtesy of 350.org)

That sits uneasily with international efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. Analysts say more than 80% of the world’s coal is unburnable if global warming is to be held below 2C, the upper limit set by world leaders in the Paris Agreement.

Developments across Turkey also have a long record of opposition from community groups, whether motivated by protecting farmland, cultural heritage or air quality.

Katisoz, who works for TEMA, a Turkish NGO focused on conservation of soil, forests and natural resources, listed some of the key battlegrounds: Amasra, on the Black Sea coast; 21 proposed plants around Iskenderun Bay, in the southeast; lignite mines in mid-Anatolia.

“Coal is a very problematic issue in Turkey,” she said. “It is not the fuel of the future.”

The post Court forces Turkish coal plant to suspend operations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Asked about the chances of the US quitting the Paris Agreement, Al-Falih said “I don’t know about this,” and added: “I think he wants a mixed energy portfolio that includes oil, gas, renewables and make sure the American economy is competitive. We want the same in Saudi Arabia.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qco2OWcEMSA

The post Saudi oil chief hails Trump’s ‘realistic’ energy plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

HSBC, JP Morgan Chase and Credit Suisse are among the banks vying to help the oil-rich Kingdom start its transition towards a low carbon future.

“First investments under the plan could occur this year,” reported Bloomberg, which broke the news that Riyadh planned to diversify away from oil and gas back in 2015.

Current Saudi clean energy targets include 10 gigawatts from wind, nuclear and solar by 2023. By 2030 the government wants  to secure 30% of power from low carbon sources.

Analysis: Can Saudi Arabia’s regime survive in a greener world?

The post Saudi Aramco planning $5 billion clean energy binge appeared first on Climate Home News.

Shortages have lead to protests and violence. The military has expanded its powers to take over, among other things, the food supply in what some observers are calling a “slow motion coup”. A recent Amnesty International mission found the country on the brink of a “catastrophic humanitarian crisis”.

Venezuela’s collapse has caught the eye of security specialists and military personnel from around the world. How has this happened in a state so epically endowed? The answer – an over-reliance on oil coupled with a fragile state – has profound consequences in a world that is seeking to rid itself of fossil fuels.

“You have a rapidly changing economic structure and a world that has had 200 years of an economy purely based on fossil fuels,” Alexander Verbeek, founder of the Planetary Security Initiative told Climate Home. “And then you go and change it. You will get a lot of positive changes. But you have to keep your eyes open if there are risks for instability.”

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According to World Bank data, the global average GDP to come from oil rent is 2.5%. In Venezuela, that fraction is one quarter. In some Gulf states, it approaches 50%. In Russia, oil and gas together make up 25% of GDP.

Oil prices are predicted to revive this year, but security experts have told Climate Home that the past 24 months sounded a warning that must not be ignored.

The world is ever more committed to shaking the carbon monkey from its back. At 2015’s landmark Paris summit, 195 governments effectively agreed to phase out fossil fuels during the second half of the century, unless they come with an emissions abatement technology attached.

While US president-elect Donald Trump may want to reverse the trend, other leaders reaffirmed that commitment last November in Marrakech. As demand for oil and gas is curbed, could other countries follow Venezeula into the abyss?

Students protest in Caracas in 2014 (Photo: Jsnake17/Commons)

“We must be very careful, so that the mistakes of the people at the top do not result in popular uprisings due to suffering of the masses,” says retired major general ANM Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change.

The idea of a carbon bubble has gained traction in recent years as one of the major economic risk factors associated with climate change. If leaders are serious about winding down carbon emissions, reserves from which oil companies derive their value will become worthless. Proponents of this analysis, which include the International Monetary Fund and Bank of England governor Mark Carney, warn that shareholders in oil companies could be holding onto toxic assets.

In the past two years, the oil price crash has exposed a similar weakness across the petroeconomies of the world. The companies with the biggest oil and gas reserves on earth are owned by states, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Iran. Many of these countries have borrowed heavily against the value of these reserves.

In Venezuela, the oil price drop aggravated a multi-faceted failure of governance, but the value of its single major export halving was a sledgehammer blow.

Since the late 1990s, income from this wealth has been used to secure the popularity of the Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro governments. Venezuelans had grown used to the subsidisation of products; from oil more than 100 times cheaper than water, to rice and toilet paper, and luxury items such as DVD players and cars.

To service these programmes, the government bought in huge debts, underwritten by the seemingly unending value of the country’s huge oil reserves. All this meant that by 2014, the oil price required by Venezuela’s budget to break even was well over US$100 per barrel – one of the highest of all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec).

Source: Chatham House

“The characteristics of the countries who are fossil fuel suppliers, partly because they are fossil fuel suppliers, means that they have some really deep structural instabilities and the governments were planning on much higher long term oil prices,” says chief executive of the E3G consultancy Nick Mabey.

The subsequent collapse has not been immediately replicated across the oil-producing world because other countries don’t have the in-built decrepitude of the Chavist economic model. But many are vulnerable to a longer term downturn.

For reasons both chicken and egg, many oil-rich states are ruled over by regimes that tend towards authoritarianism. These states lack the buffers against unrest provided by democracy.

“The dynamics are very simple,” says Mabey. When oil prices are high, governments have little incentive to diversify their economies. Alternative income sources are squeezed out. This is known as “Dutch disease”, coined to explain why a huge 1950s gas discovery in the Netherlands destroyed that country’s manufacturing industry.

Governments ride the bubble of an appreciated currency. In many countries, they use the economic bump to placate unhappy or disenfranchised parts of their population by subsidising basics, providing welfare payments or large public works projects.

“Now when prices fall,” says Mabey, “there is a high risk of instability because you’ve squeezed out other alternatives for them to move to.”

War gaming the climate: How global warming could trigger nationalism

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund can last eight years with low oil prices, the country’s former lead climate negotiator Mohammad Al Sabban told the BBC last year. In a future of electric vehicles and hyper-efficiency, what happens when those cash reserves peter out?

“It is a non-trivial security threat,” says Mabey. “Imagine Saudi in 15 years time with a lot of disgruntled young men and Isis and Al Qaeda running around fomenting threats against the regime and they can’t afford to pay for such an elaborate security apparatus as they have now.”

During the build up to (eventually catastrophic) UN climate talks in 2009, al Sabban provoked international scoffing by claiming that the oil-soaked kingdom needed support to ease the pain a new climate deal would cause. The talks were, he said, “a matter of survival” for the country, “we are among the most vulnerable countries, economically”.

Verbeek says that time may prove al Sabban correct. “In a way you could say that they raised [this issue],” he says. But experts on Saudi Arabia have told Climate Home that the transition there is making its first, faltering steps. We discuss it in more depth here.

The protests in the Middle East and North Africa that lead to the Arab Spring were closely correlated to rising food prices. Which occur in countries where oil revenue plummets (Source: Lagi et al, 2012)

With its huge wealth in natural gas in particular, Russia has also been shaken by the downturn. But Vladimir Putin remains publicly bullish about the future for his major export.

“We are moving towards clean energy and renewable energy resources but we cannot say gas consumption is going down,” Putin told the World Energy Congress Summit in Istanbul in October.

Mabey’s think tank can and does say that – in Russia’s primary export market, at least. The EU’s official line is that gas demand will continue, but E3G reckons that is based on a set of faulty assumptions, particularly around efficiency measures that the union has mandated.

“[Russia] are completely dependent on European [gas] revenues; they cannot diversify their revenues. They are doubling down on investing in pipelines, including in China, of which many won’t pay off because they will be made obsolete by other technologies,” says Mabey.

Profile: Mark Carney, the unlikely climate champion

Some commentators, including Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal, have noted echoes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was sped along by oil price falls during the 1980s.

“The loss of that wealth threatens to scramble the world’s geopolitical order, though there are no signs of that yet,” wrote Ip in 2015.

Efforts to diversify the Russian economy have foundered whenever the gas price has risen, says Ivetta Gerasimchuk, a lead of sustainable energy supplies at the Institute for Sustainable Development.

“There are efforts in Russia to genuinely diversify. But it doesn’t work. The oil and gas industry sucks up capital and labour, because it just gets higher returns,” she says.

Could a failure to address these problems now lead to disorder in the future? On the one hand, in the hard-bitten Russian psyche, recent sanctions and downturn have served to increase rather than diminish Putin’s popularity. “People still remember very difficult economic times, so that whatever is happening now is not that critical,” says Gerasimchuk.

This sentiment was echoed recently by Sergei Guriev in the New York Times who explained Putin’s 80% approval rating during crippling recession thus: “Mr. Putin has rewritten the social contract in Russia. Long based on economic performance, it is now about geopolitical status.”

This may help, in part, to explain Putin’s latest foreign wars, which Mabey suggests are a deeply troubling development looking forward at a long decline for Russia’s gas economy.

Gerasimchuk disagrees, arguing that there are a wide range of factors for Putin asserting himself overseas and “it is not justifiable to describe Russia’s future in black and white”.

“Of course low oil prices and economic meltdown are more likely to trigger change. But what kind of change is difficult to say,” she says.

Obama’s last climate play: US, Canada agree Arctic oil ban

Other countries, with far weaker economies, are more likely to stumble and perhaps fall á la Venezuela. In August, the oil downturn sent Nigeria’s economy into recession for the first time in 25 years. A recent E3G report notes how it has fed economic instability in Algeria, Libya, Azerbaijan, Colombia and Brazil.

According to E3G, petrocentrism in emerging economies is encouraged by foreign investors. Between 2003 and 2012, the Middle East and North African region’s fossil fuel and non-tradeable sectors received twice as much foreign investment that the non-fossil fuel and commercial sectors.

New oil countries are also tying their future to the lead balloon. Myanmar, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana and some Caribbean countries are opening up fields, pouring government revenues into oil-bonded futures.

This is setting up a disaster, says Glada Lahn, resource and energy research fellow at Chatham House. “For some countries, the implications are very serious because they borrowed a lot of money based on expectations of higher commodities prices. That debt will define politics and international relations over the next decade.”

Often these moves are backed by international development finance or export-import banks. A recent Columbia University/Guardian investigation found the US’ export bank had made loans or guarantees of almost $34bn to overseas fossil fuel projects since 2009.

Banks are increasingly taking climate and environmental concerns into consideration, but Mabey says they are unlikely to consider the security threat of a severe and sustained oil price slump when deciding to give public money to countries to develop fossil fuel infrastructure.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but most of our current policies don’t take this into account,” says Mabey.

Strength in diversity

And yet the disaster, like climate change, is entirely avoidable. Especially in the Gulf, says Verbeek. “It could just as well work the other way around. If they realise this threat and start to diversify the economy and use their massive created wealth for clever, creative investments in new aspects of the economy that could lead into a more diversified and more stable country.”

There is time, says Muniruzzaman, because even the most radical scenarios acknowledge the global wind-down of fossil fuels will stretch into the middle of this century.

“The process of decarbonisation, it is not going to happen overnight. It is going to be a fairly slow process. So they still have sufficient time to think of ways of diversifying and adapting their economy,” says Muniruzzaman.

The Bangladeshi general’s own country is a growing target for oil and gas investment, despite being a poster child for climate vulnerability. This, he says, requires leadership and wise investment from countries that are further along the transition pathway. Because oil investments are initially massive, fiscal windfalls tempting and the pay back comes over decades, decisions countries make now will prepare or condemn them for a future with lower fossil fuel demand.

“There is no dialogue that is happening between fossil fuel dependent economies and countries and the people who are in the forefront of the transformation,” says Muniruzzaman.

Despite the fogginess of the crystal ball and even though they may be an uncomfortable side-effect of the fight against climate change, these security implications for oil-producing countries should not be ignored.

The prospect of seeing the dictators and oligarchs who control the global supply of oil overthrown by their citizens may seem like a positive outcome but Verbeek warns that “the results of the ‘Arab Spring’ should be a warning against too much optimism about popular uprisings”. Rather, he says, this creates an opportunity to break their grasp slowly, democratising and diversifying societies that have been corrupted by oil and oil politics.

The post Into the abyss: oil states face turmoil as climate policies bite appeared first on Climate Home News.

For an article published on Wednesday, Climate Home spoke to concerned security specialists about the serious challenge this poses to countries that currently rely on the commodity to pay for everything from their armies to their food supply.

Here we profile Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest producer of crude.

The country’s US$600bn sovereign wealth fund has provided a buffer for the national budget, which has suffered deficits since the recent oil price crash that the Saudis helped precipitate in an effort to kill US production. But that fund is dwindling, with one senior government advisor warning it would run out in less than a decade at current oil prices.

Fundamental for all petrostates will be finding new ways to maintain prosperity. In Saudi Arabia’s case, that raises deep questions about who the wealth is meant for.

The younger generation “are asking for something different”, says Glada Lahn, a resource and energy research fellow at Chatham House. There is great hope vested in the reforms promised by 31-year-old deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, who has cult status among young Saudis of a certain economic class.

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Meanwhile, says Lahn, Saudi citizens are aware that they are surrounded on all sides by conflict and potentially dangerous enemies.

This means relative acquiescence to the regime both spending huge amounts on its military as well as cutting some of the benefits associated with oil wealth.

However, she says: “If one of the justifications for legitimacy crumbles then you’ve got the potential for descent into instability.”

This is a “non-trivial security threat”, according to E3G executive director Nick Mabey, who raises the prospect of disenfranchised Saudi youth becoming targets for radicalisation.

In a report released last month, professor Paul Stevens, Lahn’s Chatham House colleague, wrote that since the Arab Spring, Gulf states have “come to consider an inability to buy off domestic political discontent arising from lower spending as potentially representing an existential threat”.

He noted that there was widespread acceptance among the regimes that to stop their kingdoms falling to popular uprisings they must find other ways to keep citizens happy.

Report: Saudi Arabia working on plan to boost climate target

Progress has been fitful. Solar energy has long been touted as a beneficial industry for the sun-bathed country, but big plans to meet a target of 50% renewable energy by 2040 were slashed last year to 10% in favour of a pivot towards natural gas.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia announced plans for a partial privatisation of state oil entreprise Saudi Aramco – the world’s largest company. This was, said al-Saud, part of his plan to cure a country that was “addicted to oil”.

With 44% of GDP and 89% of revenue derived from the country’s oil fields and a population kept under tight state control, diversification can’t come fast enough. Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE have all made similar gestures toward privatisation of oil assets.

But the Saudi sovereign wealth fund that will take over the running of the company has been criticised for being the least transparent on earth.

Privatisation without meaningful democratic reform is unlikely to be the panacea for Gulf states seeking to divest from oil, according to Stevens. In fact, it may reinforce problems of patronage and corruption without doing anything to draw down on the ruling elite’s commitment to oil.

This could, he says, actually aggravate their people who will see the money from public offerings siphoned away into the same networks of obscure wealth as always. Instead, Stevens says, Gulf states should open up their oil markets to competition and begin the process of democratising their countries.

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Long regarded as an obstacle to a UN climate agreement, the Arab Kingdom has mollified its tone in recent years under pressure from the US and other developed countries.

With President-elect Donald Trump threatening to axe the Paris climate agreement, many assumed the Saudis could follow suit, but a representative insisted they will toughen carbon cuts.

“We are looking at it right now – we are re-evaluating our programmes to see those areas where we are advancing so we can meet our targets as soon as possible,” the source said.

“I think every country should challenge themselves… on an annual basis we are really challenging our different sectors to do more.”

Report: One week to save UN climate change talks from Trump

In a plan submitted to the UN in 2015, Riyadh said it would reduce its annual emissions from business as usual by up to 130 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

Analysis by independent body Climate Action Tracker rates the Saudi pledge as “inadequate” and says plans to move away from fossil fuels are too slow.

“If most countries followed Saudi Arabia’s approach, global warming would exceed 3–4C,” the CAT team say.

“The proposed abatement of 130 MtCO₂e/year is still far from what could be deemed a fair contribution by Saudi Arabia to limiting global warming to 2C.”

Under its “Vision 2030” plan the government aims to deploy nearly 10 gigawatts of renewables by 2020 and diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons.

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Outside the conference centre in Marrakech, a field of flag poles is guarded around the clock by four armed police.

When asked why no-one is allowed to walk beneath the eight metre tall flagpoles, a guard said it was out of “respect” to all the flags. A journalist with state media told Climate Home that they were watching for attacks on the Israeli flag.

The raising of an Israeli standard on Moroccan soil was a symbol of “normalisation”, said a local NGO in a statement declaiming the “Israeli presence on Moroccan territory”.

The National Working Group for Palestine said it was “opposed to all forms of normalisation [of relations] with Israel under any pretext whatsoever; opposed to the provocation of Moroccans’ feelings and the violation of the nation’s sovereignty and dignity; and opposed to supporting terrorism, criminality and racism,” Middle East Monitor reports.

Guards will not allow anyone to walk beneath the flags – out of “respect”, they said (Photo: Karl Mathiesen)

On Tuesday, the Moroccan foreign minister Salaheddine Mezouar, who is is president of the COP22 climate talks, responded to the criticisms by defending Israel’s right to join the other nations of the world in Marrakech.

“Climate change is a global fight. It is a fight that concerns all of mankind. It is a fight in which all the governments are involved,” he told a press conference.

“Morocco is compliant with the UN rules. There is no politics here. I would like the people who would like to exploit this situation to be reasonable. The fight is elsewhere today,” he said.

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But he also had a message for Israel and other critics of Palestine’s involvement at the talks – including the US Republican Party.

“I would like to remind you that Palestine is present in this conference and that Morocco has supported the entry of Palestine as an observer member within the UN,” said Mezouar. “It is a well-known fact it is the first and prime defender of the Palestinian cause and we working in close collaboration with the Palestinians in order to serve this great cause.

“So I consider that Morocco has no lessons to receive from anybody about our commitment to fight and denounce the unacceptable position of Israel… Morocco remains and will always remain the prime defender of the Palestinian cause and we shall always support the Palestinian claims for an independent state and the resolution of this problem once and for all.”

The Israeli delegation did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment on the minister’s statement. For their part, Palestinian negotiators were unwilling to offer much in the way of a reconciliatory word to Israel.

“No they don’t welcome us and we don’t welcome them,” said Nedal Katbeh-Bader, Palestine’s lead climate negotiator. Although he added: “We are not against them attending.”

Report: Western Saharan delegate barred from Marrakech climate talks

Palestine was granted full membership to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Paris climate conference last year. It was previously an observer state.

In Palestine, no issue can be detached from the context of the Israeli occupation. So it is with climate change. “The occupation is a multiplier and makes everything much worse,” said Katbeh-Bader.

But the fact of the occupation means that Israel and its supporters are mortified that their contributions to the UN climate process and funding bodies could end up reaching Palestine. Because of this, the US Republican Party platform on which Donald Trump was just handed a mandate specifically promises to pull funding from the UN climate convention and its associated scientific and finance bodies.

Palestinians had every right to be part of the solution, said Katbeh-Bader: “We are part of this world. If we are excluded, this is underestimating our humanity. So this is our right to be part of this international community. This is the minimum. We are suffering from climate change. We’ve never been the cause of this climate change.”

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Agreed by 195 countries in the French capital last December, the Paris climate deal sets out a target of zero net emissions from fossil fuels and other sources in the second half of the century. It entered into legal force on Friday.

But speaking at an event in London hosted by Chatham House, Al-Naimi dismissed the notion this meant a slow but certain demise of the oil and gas sector, which underpins the Saudi economy.

“We need to work hard to eliminate emissions but there is nothing wrong with fossil fuels,” said the 81-year-old, who led the Saudi delegation at UN climate talks from 1995-2015.

Al-Naimi pointed to Saudi investments in technologies that capture carbon dioxide and inject it into oil wells to extract more hydrocarbons as evidence the industry was adapting to a low-emission future.

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The remarks underline the deep challenges facing governments as they prepare for a two-week UN climate summit in Marrakech next week, where implementing the deal is a priority.

Al-Naimi said the oil-rich kingdom supported last year’s Paris climate summit, but admitted he had to fight off “nonsensical” efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground to prevent dangerous warming.

“Work on emissions but don’t talk about fossil fuels in ground, that would be a tragedy. We should eliminate emissions but if we [eliminate] fossil fuels we will go back to the stone age.”

“I am a believer in solar – I believe it is making great strides today and we are going to see major breakthroughs hopefully soon, but that doesn’t take away anything from fossil fuels,” he added. This year, Saudi Arabia cut its renewable energy targets from 50% to 10%, protecting demand for oil and gas.

Leading oil majors are expected to announce plans for a renewable energy fund and new efficiency measures at an event in London later on Friday.

Some are already making initial investments in clean energy technologies, although this week the CEO of Total Patrick Pouyanne told investors the solar sector was facing a “new winter” due to over-capacity and low demand.

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That was revealed by energy minister Khalid Al-Falih in a foreword to the summit, on a website dedicated to the Kingdom’s role in the negotiations.

“It is encouraging to note that the Paris Agreement has achieved the threshold for entry into force, and Saudi Arabia is determined to see it implemented,” wrote the minister.

“In fact, we are updating our environmental plan to ensure timely implementation and we have managed to complete our ratification process of the Agreement before COP 22 in Marrakech.”

Saudi prince: From 2020, we can survive without oil

The Middle Eastern petropower will need to file its paperwork with the UN to officially join the deal, having completed its domestic procedures. It does not yet appear on the list of 192 signatories and 87 parties to the Agreement maintained by the climate secretariat.

While it does not explicitly refer to coal, oil and gas, the Paris Agreement implies a global phase-out of fossil fuels. To hold global warming below 2C, as countries agreed to do, analysts say more than two thirds of proven reserves need to stay in the ground.

As the world’s largest oil exporter, reliant on hydrocarbons for half its GDP, Saudi Arabia has often argued against ambitious climate goals. Yet as momentum built towards the deal last year, the Kingdom was keen to show a more constructive side.

Its contribution to the historic carbon-cutting pact focuses on economic diversification. Moves to reduce reliance on one volatile commodity will have “mitigation co-benefits” of avoiding up to 130Mt of CO2 emissions by 2030, the plan said.

Deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is spearheading economic reforms he says could see the country survive without oil as early as 2020.

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