Thousands of country representatives have spent the last two weeks in Germany at the UN Bonn Climate Conference, marking the mid-year point to the biggest climate summit of the year: COP29. 

But despite being a core milestone each year for global climate discussions, there is troublingly little to show for it. And with less than six months before COP29 – and after years of negotiations – there has been a shameful lack of commitment on delivering for those on the frontline of the climate crisis.   

Climate finance and adaptation play imperative roles in ensuring communities are able to thrive in the face of unpredictable and unforgiving weather patterns. And while both topics have been heavy on the Bonn agenda, finance negotiations so far have failed to really consider those living with climate uncertainty right now. 

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WaterAid has been on the ground at the Bonn talks, calling for robust water, sanitation and hygiene indicators to flow directly through key climate adaptation frameworks, especially the Global Goal on Adaptation and the Loss and Damage Fund – both of which will change the course of the future for those living on the frontlines of the climate crisis. 

Support lacking for those on the frontline

Yet countries at Bonn have hit a roadblock on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), with discussions struggling to go beyond a shared acknowledgement of the value of including the support of experts to progress on areas of concern. Progress on GGA targets remains stagnant as parties grapple over country-specific concerns instead of coming to a collective outcome, with less than two days left of the conference. 

Meanwhile, the most recent talks on the Loss and Damage Fund failed to consider the urgency of the escalating climate crisis at hand and the scale of financing needed to ensure frontline nations can recover and rebuild from impacts of climate change. 

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The new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) – a new and larger target that is expected to replace the current $100bn climate finance goal – is also high on the Bonn agenda. Many core elements of this new climate fund goal are yet to be agreed.

WaterAid is calling for the NCQG to have sub-goals for adaptation and loss and damage, as well as for the finance pot to have a direct channel to vulnerable communities so they can be involved in ensuring the funds go to where the support is most needed.  

Too much or too little water

Whilst conversations at Bonn have been lukewarm, the climate crisis has remained red hot. Right now, countries around the world are watching it unfold in real time. From flooding and cyclones to drought and deadly heatwaves, communities are dealing with the terrifying reality of living with too much or too little water.  

Southern Asia is being exposed in particular to a dangerous and chaotic cocktail of unpredictable weather, making life unbearable for those on the climate frontline. 

In late May, Cyclone Remal hit coastal parts of southern Bangladesh with gale speeds of up to 110km/h causing devastation across the country for 8.4 million people, leaving many without power, damaging crops and making tube wells and latrines unusable.  

Meanwhile, record temperatures were recorded in Bangladesh through April and May where temperatures soared above 43 degrees Celsius, scorching 80% of the country and leaving thousands without power. 

At the same time, Pakistan witnessed its wettest April since 1961, with the south-western province of Punjab experiencing a staggering 437 percent more rainfall than usual, fuelling the malnourishment of 1.5 million children and damaging 3,500 homes.  

Water infrastructure key to adaptation

Water, sanitation and hygiene equip communities like those across South Asia with the ability to adapt to climate change, protecting livelihoods and farms. These basic essentials ensure people are not subject to the spread of waterborne diseases while preventing families from being forced to migrate due to sea level rises.  

From flood defences to drought resistance, water also acts as a guiding light as to where donors should direct climate finance, ensuring long-term support reaches the people who need it most. Investment in water-related infrastructure in low and middle-income countries is expected to deliver at least $500 billion a year in economic value, protecting countless lives and boosting economic prosperity. 

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Now is the time for global leaders to put pen to paper and set plans in motion to ensure that we see real progress on how we achieve the GGA targets at the grassroots and that the necessary level of climate funding reaches those who need it most, without further delay.  

This truly is a matter of life and death – and prioritising action on water, sanitation and hygiene across global adaptation goals may be our only hope to prevent climate change from washing away people’s futures.  

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This week, the UN climate change body (UNFCCC) confirmed that this year’s Regional Climate Weeks will be cancelled until further notice due to lack of funding.

The update comes shortly after UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell made an urgent plea at the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial last week to plug the body’s funding gap, stating that it is facing “severe financial challenges” – putting a rising workload at risk due to “governments’ failure to provide enough money”.

The suspension of the Regional Climate Weeks is hugely disappointing news.

It means that a vital platform to express the concerns of people and communities most affected by climate change has been taken away.

UN’s climate body faces “severe financial challenges” which put work at risk

The climate weeks are a vital opportunity to bring a stronger regional voice – those who are footing the bill in developing countries for a crisis they have done the least to cause – to the international table in the lead-up to the UN COP climate summits.

Last year we saw four regional climate weeks: Africa Climate Week in Nairobi, Kenya; Middle East and North Africa Climate Week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Latin America and the Caribbean Climate Week in Panama City, Panama; and Asia-Pacific Climate Week in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

These attracted 26,000 participants in 900 sessions and brought together policymakers, scientists and other experts from the multiple regions, with fundamental contributions feeding into the COP28 agenda. 

At Africa Climate Summit alone, over 20 commitments were made by African heads of state – commitments and announcements that equated to a combined investment of nearly $26 billion from public, private sector and multilateral development banks, philanthropic foundations and other financing partners.

This is the right way forward because, while extreme weather events affect all of us, we know their impacts are not felt equally.

Shrinking water access

Extremes of both drought and floods are threatening people’s access to the three essentials they need to survive – clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene – as boreholes run dry, floods wash away latrines, and supplies are contaminated by silt and debris.

Around the world, ordinary people – farmers, community leaders, family members – are doing everything they can to adapt to the realities of life on the frontlines of climate change.

They’re working together to monitor water reserves, conserving supplies to make every drop last. They’re sowing crops that can withstand droughts, and planting trees to protect them from floods. And they’re building with future threats in mind, raising homes and toilets off the ground and making them safe from floodwaters.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Each Regional Climate Week provides a vital platform for those shouldering the heaviest burden of the climate crisis – such as women and girls, people experiencing marginalisation, and Indigenous communities – to share their experiences, expertise, and unique perspectives.  

The climate crisis is a water crisis, and the people on the frontlines of this crisis are vital to solving it. 

With leadership and participation from those vulnerable communities and groups, we are all better equipped to adapt to our changing climate – and to ensure that everyone, everywhere has climate-resilient water, sanitation and hygiene.

Each and every UN climate conference matters. We urgently need global governments to fuel their words with action, open their wallets and prioritise the voices, experiences and solutions of those most affected by the climate crisis. If not, we’ll continue to see climate change wash away people’s futures.

Dulce Marrumbe is head of partnerships and advocacy at WaterAid’s regional office for Southern Africa.

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Earlier this week, the factory – which employs around 12,500 people and produces 1,000 EVs per day – was reconnected to the electricity grid after a costly power outage caused by a March 5 arson attack on a nearby pylon, claimed by far-left activists. 

 Now it faces protests from around 80 climate campaigners belonging to the “Tesla Stoppen” (Stop Tesla) initiative who set up a camp in late February inside 100 hectares of state-owned forest land that Tesla wants to buy and clear for its expansion.  

Annika Fuchs, a mobility expert with German climate justice group Robin Wood, told Climate Home she and others occupying the Grünheide forest – who could face eviction from Friday onwards – support local residents’ rejection of the factory expansion in a February referendum.  

“We want to make sure that we reduce the amount of cars that we have here in Germany, and really focus on public transport as the solution for the future,” she added.  

Both Tesla Stoppen and Grünheide inhabitants issued statements condemning the sabotage of the pylon by the leftist “Volcano Group”, but the incident caught the attention of the German media and has fuelled debate around the potential for EVs to fight climate change.   

On the day of the pylon attack, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns: “Stopping production of electric vehicles, rather than fossil fuel vehicles, ist extrem dumm” [is extremely stupid]. 

This week, Musk visited the factory after operations had resumed there, wearing a black T-shirt that read “We are (Giga) the future”, and shouting “Hey, Deutschland rocks! Dig in Berlin for the win!” as he headed back to his car.  

Tesla did not respond to a request from Climate Home for comment on opposition to its factory expansion plans. 

Water and mineral wars  

Tesla’s German gigafactory has been a controversial project even before it began operations in early 2022. Key political figures, eager to bring jobs and tax revenue to the area, have supported the company but local people and climate activists are more sceptical. 

Arguments on both sides highlight the contested nature of “green capitalism”. Backers of EVs see them as the best way to cut emissions from fossil fuel-driven transport, while critics decry their energy-intensive production process and the negative environmental and social impacts of battery supply chains for minerals and metals like lithium.  

The factory is located five kilometres south of Grünheide, a small town about an hour southeast of Berlin by train. Concerned about its impacts, residents formed a citizen’s initiative that monitors Tesla’s actions in the region. 

A general view shows the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, March 20, 2022. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

German newspaper Stern reported last month that local water authority officials warned Tesla repeatedly that phosphorus and nitrogen levels in the wastewater from its factory released into the nearby River Spree, which flows through Berlin, were found to be six times higher than permitted limits. 

Tesla has suggested that concentrations of pollutants in its wastewater are higher because the company reuses water. Tesla’s VP of public policy and business development, Rohan Patel, responded to the claims on X by pointing out that Tesla recycles “up to 100%” of its industrial water, and that the gigafactory uses 33% less water per vehicle than the industry average. 

Locals in Grünheide also fear that their drinking water sources may become contaminated if groundwater levels drop too low.   

Grünheide is surrounded by lakes and waterways, but as in large swathes of Central Europe, droughts in recent years have left groundwater levels at record lows. Tesla, meanwhile, has become one of the region’s biggest water users. According to German newspaper Tagesspiegel, Tesla used just over 450,000 cubic metres of fresh water last year – although this is less than a third of the amount it was allotted in an agreement with the local water board.   

Opponents of the proposed gigafactory expansion note that it would extend the factory into in a water protection area.   

At the entrance to the Tesla Stoppen camp, a tall banner hanging from the trees reads “Water is a human right”. Activists at the site told Climate Home that securing the region’s water resources is a key concern – one that also applies further afield. 

Photos of South American lithium salt flats hang in the Tesla Stoppen protest camp in the Grünheide forest, Germany, March 10, 2024 (Photo: Paul Krantz)

Photographs of South America’s lithium salt flats are hung around the camp, flagging how lithium mining drains water resources from arid regions in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.  

“We see that water injustice and climate injustice are caused by the same reasons. It’s big companies exploiting resources,” said protestor Lamin Chukwugozie.  

Stephen Musarurwa, a climate justice advocate from Botswana, said in a speech delivered at a Tesla Stoppen demonstration on Sunday that conflict and environmental damage in the Democratic Republic of Congo is being exacerbated by mining for EV battery components.   

“We have communities that don’t own a single electric car, but the amount of destruction is beyond humanity,” he said.  

Climate activist Lamin Chukwugozie plays piano at in the Tesla Stoppen protest camp in the Grünheide forest, Germany, March 10, 2024 (Photo: Paul Krantz)

Climate protesters ‘repressed’  

The protest camp at Grünheide was initially given permission to remain until March 15, after which local police could move in to evict its occupants.  

A police spokesman told the German Press Agency (DPA) it was considering how to deal with the camp but did not say when a decision was expected. Tesla Stoppen is organising workshops to prepare activists on how to respond to an eviction should it happen. 

Many of the camp’s members have also been involved in other environmental direct-action movements in Germany, such as the occupation of the site of a lignite coal mine in Lützerath, which attracted Greta Thunberg and other high-profile youth activists in early 2023 and ended in clashes as the site was cleared by riot police and bulldozers. 

Here, and before that at the Hambach Forest, campaigners living in tents and treehouses spent years resisting police evictions to stall the expansion of brown coal mines in west Germany – winning a commitment in early 2020 that the Hambach Forest site would not be developed.

In both Lützerath and Hambach, activists reported widespread and brutal police violence used against them. According to a report released this week by global civil society alliance CIVICUS, climate activists face growing restrictions in Germany – as in many other industrialised nations.   

“Germany has a reputation of being a country with high protest freedoms, but what we’ve noticed is that not all protests are being treated the same,” Andrew Firmin, who leads climate activism research for CIVICUS, told Climate Home. “Climate protests in particular are being targeted and repressed with excessive force.”  

Resistance growing   

In Grünheide, as the sun set over the forest after Sunday’s demonstration, Sulti, a Kurdish refugee who did not want to give their full name, admired a wooden platform they and other activists had suspended in a tree about six metres off the ground. Sulti planned to sleep up on the platform, which would be given walls and a roof in the coming days. 

Sulti said protestors had come to Grünheide aiming to abolish companies that exploit natural resources and defend shared commons like the forest. “We are trying to build a utopia, and to show people that it’s possible to live in a collective, and to not let the capitalist system push us all into individualism,” the activist said.  

Kurdish refugee and protest camp participant Sulti poses in front of a banner at the Tesla Stoppen protest camp in the Grünheide forest, Germany, March 10, 2024 (Photo: Paul Krantz)

Sulti is not afraid of potential confrontation with the authorities, saying: “We are the seed, we are the soil, we are the land, and we will keep growing and growing.”   

Chukwugozie pointed to how the climate justice movement has shown it can learn and rebuild after struggles like Lützerath, in which he also participated. “We come back in different places and continue to fight from the ground up,” he said. 

Editor’s note: On March 19, an administrative court in Germany rejected a police application to end the camp’s right to legal assembly which had asserted the tree-houses built by protesters were dangerous. After the court decision, the activists said they plan to remain in the forest until at least May 20, DPA reported.

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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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