Sheinbaum, an energy engineer who worked unpaid on two major reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will take control of the world’s 14th biggest economy on December 1, for a term due to last until 2030.

While IPCC climate scientists have been appointed as environment ministers in countries like Chile and Egypt, Climate Home was unable to identify any who have served as a national leader.

As Sheinbaum courted votes across the country of 127 million grappling with a drought, heatwave and smog, she promised to invest nearly $14 billion in clean energy and boost electric buses and trains. 

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“We have to speed up the promotion of renewable energies,” she told a group of Mexican businessmen in April. “We are working on the national energy plan not only through 2030, but to 2050”.

Deep scepticism

But some fellow Mexican climate scientists and political analysts told Climate Home they were sceptical about whether she will deliver on her green promises.

They criticised her record as mayor of Mexico City, a position she held from 2018 to 2023, and said her climate ambition would be held back by her close ties to current pro-fossil fuel President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) and her ideological aversion to private-sector energy.

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Political risk analyst Carlos Ramirez, a partner at Integralia Consultants, told Climate Home that “there is no question that her commitment to climate change is real”, adding “that is a welcome shift from what we have seen so far [under the current government]”.

But, he said, “there will be López Obrador ghosts haunting her – his legacy will mean that she cannot move much from what we are seeing now, and the people who surround him will be watching her closely.”

If she did opt for bigger green changes, “she would have to pay a political price for that,” he noted. “So far she has not given any evidence that she will do so.”

Emissions expert

Sheinbaum grew up in Mexico City with scientists for parents. She signed up to study physics herself, earning undergraduate and masters degrees at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

In the early 1990s, she spent four years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, doing a PhD on energy emissions and environmental problems in Mexico City’s transport sector before joining UNAM’s staff.

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Following a stint as the environment secretary of then Mexico City Mayor López Obrador, she returned to UNAM and helped write the emissions reduction sections of the flagship IPCC assessment reports in 2007 and 2014. Her research on Mexican manufacturing and cement emissions was cited and – like all IPCC authors – she worked long hours unpaid.

Mexico City Mayor

Sheinbaum then went back into politics with López Obrador’s new left-wing party MORENA and was selected as its candidate for mayor of Mexico City in 2018, a position she held until she resigned last year in order to run for the national presidency.

As mayor, she promoted solar power. But UNAM climate scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota said she had seen no sign of Sheinbaum attempting to solve the city’s serious air pollution problem.

Another UNAM climate scientist, Xochitl Cruz Núñez, who worked with Sheinbaum on the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, told Climate Home that Sheinbaum’s climate work as mayor was “minimal”.

Greenpeace activists protest with mariachi musicians and a cake with bicycle lanes, outside Mayor Sheinbaum’s office in March 14, 2019. (REUTERS/Henry Romero)

Cruz Núñez criticised the city’s diesel-powered bus system, water scarcity and increased urbanisation under Sheinbaum’s leadership, saying it had caused “uncontrolled” construction in surrounding conservation areas.

AMLO’s legacy

Mexico previously enjoyed a reputation as a front-runner on climate action, passing one of the developing world’s earliest climate change laws in 2012. But some of that progress was reversed during López Obrador’s presidency.

The outgoing president dismantled climate policies and institutions and promoted energy sovereignty through domestic fossil fuel production, putting power back into the hands of state-owned companies: electricity utility CFE and oil and gas giant PEMEX.

His government invested billions of dollars into oil and gas infrastructure, and blocked private investment into renewables. Today, Mexico is one of only two G20 countries without a net zero emissions target and has watered down its 2030 emissions reduction goal. 

Sheinbaum became MORENA’s candidate for the presidency largely because of López Obrador’s support for her, winning the national election on Sunday partly thanks to his track record as the country’s most popular modern president.

Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum before a manifesto presentation on November 20, 2017. (REUTERS/Henry Romero)

Political analyst Ramirez said Sheinbaum’s political alignment with López Obrador hinders the chances of her pursuing more ambitious climate action.

“Sheinbaum is speaking loudly about bringing renewables back into the system but at the same time – and here is where the problems begin – she wants to give continuity to the energy policy of López Obrador,” he said.

“She has a strong ideological view that [state-owned] CFE and PEMEX should lead the energy transition,” he added. “This is a contradiction. I think it will be a very slow process and eventually fail.”

Cruz Núñez noted that Sheinbaum intends to maintain state stewardship over oil and electricity, while mobilising public resources for renewables, but questioned whether this alone could work. “My opinion is that private investment is required if renewable energy is to be introduced at the level needed for Mexico to fulfill its promises under the Paris Agreement,” she added.

Despite her alliance with AMLO, Sheinbaum has disagreed with him in the past. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, she promoted mask-wearing, testing and vaccinations in Mexico City while the president played down the risks. 

Cruz Núñez expressed hope that, having won the election, Sheinbaum will take advantage of her new independence from López Obrador to establish a clear programme for cutting Mexico’s emissions and adapting to climate change.

“I believe she knows enough about climate change and the need to solve it,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague, editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Mexico elects a climate scientist as president – but will politics temper her green ambition? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Sheinbaum will run against senator Xóchitl Gálvez, who was named candidate of the opposition coalition last weekend and who is also pro-renewables.

One of them will almost certainly succeed current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is unable to run again. Sheinbaum, who comes from the same left-wing party as López Obrador and will benefit from his popularity, is the favourite.

During his time in office, López Obrador prioritised “energy sovereignty”, which has manifested in support for Pemex, the most indebted state oil company in the world, while building a $15 billion oil refinery in Tabasco and closing off options for private investment in renewable energy.

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Wind and solar are  particularly cheap in Mexico, but private investment has slumped since López Obrador took office in 2018.“Energy is energy,” said María José de Villafranca, an analyst at the New Climate Institute.

“They could invest public money in renewable energy and this wouldn’t take away from the sovereignty. But we haven’t seen this from the government. It’s a missed opportunity.”

Net zero?

Mexico is one of only two G20 countries not to have set net zero emission targets, and the climate plan it announced last year at Cop27 was criticised by Climate Action Tracker for being worse than its previous one.

There is some hope that Sheinbaum, given her contributions to reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on tackling climate change, could take a different approach as president.

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“She has been very careful not to go against the current president’s vision, but she has suggested that her vision for renewables energies is somewhat distinct,” said Carlos Ramírez, a political analyst. “And this has created some hope that her policies as president would be different.”

As mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum promoted rooftop solar and cycle and public transport infrastructure.

As president, she says she would accelerate the development of renewables, with state investment in lithium extraction and solar plants in Sonora, a state in northern Mexico.

But she has also defended López Obrador’s fossil fuel policies and shares his belief that Pemex and CFE, the state electricity company, should be architects of the country’s energy policy.

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“I think she will try to do something in between, giving more weight to renewables while also maintaining the policies around Pemex and CFE,” said Ramírez. “What will become of this Frankenstein, I’m not sure.”

The opposition

On the other side, Gálvez has made the shift to renewable energy a central part of her pitch for the presidency.

She says she will end “the addiction to fossil fuels” while opening the way for the private sector to sell cheap clean energy.

Private investors would likely heed the call if Gálvez came to power, not least because of the near-shoring boom that is rerouting US supply chains from Asia to Mexico.

According to manufacturers, one of the main limiting factors on this phenomenon is the lack of readily available clean energy, which many need to fulfil their environmental commitments.

“Both [Sheinbaum and Gálvez] will use the flag of renewable energies,” said Ramírez. “They already have, in many interviews. Because they know that it’s something that really matters, particularly for young people. It cuts through.”

Whether that talk turns into action once the election is decided is another matter. “And in the case of Sheinbaum, there will be a lot of political pressure to continue on the same path as López Obrador.”

The post Mexico’s ruling party picks climate scientist for presidential run appeared first on Climate Home News.

American entrepreneur Luke Iseman said the sulfur dioxide in the balloons would deflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere, a controversial climate strategy known as solar geoengineering. Mexico said the launch violated its national sovereignty.

Iseman said he does not know what happened to the balloons. But the unauthorized release, which became public in January, has already had an impact: setting off a series of responses that could set the rules for future study of geoengineering, especially by private companies, in Mexico and around the world.

The Mexican government told Reuters it is now actively drafting “new regulations and standards” to prohibit solar geoengineering inside the country. Mexico also plans to rally other countries to ban the climate strategy, a senior government official told Reuters.

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While the Mexican government announced its intention to ban solar geoengineering in January, its current actions and plans to discuss geoengineering bans with other countries have not been previously reported.

“Progress is being made… to prepare the new regulations and norms on geoengineering, that is, to advance an official Mexican standard that prohibits said activity in the national territory,” Mexico’s environment ministry said in a written statement to Reuters.

The backlash from Mexico arrives as growing numbers of scientists and policy makers are urging further study of solar geoengineering, arguing that emissions cuts alone will not limit dangerous climate change and that additional innovations may be needed.

While calling for further research though, many of these scientists recognise the dangers of geoengineering. Professor James Haywood of Exeter University told Climate Home that putting sulphur into the atmosphere in large quantities was likely to affect winter rainfall patterns in Europe.

Global geoengineering ban

Climate policy experts said Mexico is in a position to help set the rules for future geoengineering research.

“A country like Mexico could start pulling together other countries and say: ‘Let’s work on this together and see how we can ban it together or make it happen properly together,’” said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G), which advises on governance of solar geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies.

The Mexican environment ministry statement said it would explore using the Convention on Biological Diversity’s call for a moratorium on “climate-related geoengineering activities” to enforce its ban.

Agustin Avila, a senior environment ministry official, told Reuters Mexico will also try to find common ground with other countries on geoengineering at the Cop28 summit in the United Arab Emirates in December.

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The Mexican government said Make Sunsets’ balloon launch highlighted the ethical problems of allowing private companies to conduct geoengineering events.

“Why is this company, located in the United States, coming to do experiments in Mexico and not in the United States?” said Avila.

Iseman told Reuters in an email he chose Mexico because “most researchers report that particles launched into the stratosphere near the tropics will create more cooling by staying up longer.” Also, he had a truck and camper in Baja and thinks the region is beautiful, he wrote.

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Stunt makes headlines

David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard University who has dedicated much of his research to solar geoengineering, called Iseman’s launch a “stunt.”

Iseman has a background in business, not science, but said he consulted with climate scientists. Other innovative startups were ridiculed in their early days, he said. “If the ‘responsible experts’ were solving the problem, we wouldn’t have to,” he said in an email.

Until Mexico’s dispute with Make Sunsets, solar geoengineering had been gaining attention from policy makers and scientists as a possible solution to climate change, and limited research funding.

The strategy, also known as Solar Radiation Management, seeks to mimic the natural cooling effects of volcanic eruptions when ash clouds reflect back enough sunlight to reduce the warming of the earth by using planes or balloons to disperse tiny particles in the stratosphere.

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Research needed?

Last month, 60 scientists including former NASA climate scientist James Hansen signed a letter in support of further research.

The Degrees Initiative, a UK-based non-government group, awarded $900,000 for research into the impacts of solar geoengineering on weather patterns, wildlife and glaciers to scientists from Chile, India, Nigeria and other countries.

The U.N. Environment Program in late February also recommended further study of geoengineering.

Yet some scientists remain opposed to further research, arguing that large-scale interventions in the atmosphere risk triggering extreme and unpredictable weather changes, including major droughts that would severely impact agriculture and food supply.

In 2021, the Swedish government grounded a study led by Harvard’s Keith which planned to spray calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight after indigenous Saami people accused researchers of lacking respect for “Mother Earth.”

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No rules

Frances Beinecke, a veteran environmental activist and board member of the Climate Overshoot Commission, a think tank focused on developing strategies to reduce the risk of overshooting 1.5 C in warming, said the Make Sunsets episode underscores the urgency of developing a regulatory framework that would allow further study of geoengineering and set safe and equitable rules for its use.

“The Mexico example illustrated to us that it’s not only governance to consider whether or not to utilise it, but you need governance in the research phase,” she said. “People can’t just go all over the world and launch field experiments without some kind of oversight.”

Iseman said he would welcome clearer regulation but that the international community is moving “too slowly.”

Mexico has not set a date for implementing its ban, a spokeswoman for the environmental ministry said.

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And it’s unclear what effect a ban might have. Keith argues a ban is unenforceable. “You can’t write legislation that says you can’t put sulfur in the stratosphere since every commercial flight does that,” he told Reuters.

Crossing the border

Others note that a ban on geoengineering on Mexico’s territory would offer no protection from the planet-scale impact of future experiments by any of its neighbors.

“It could happen literally next door. In terms of impacts on the world, it’s the same,” Pasztor said

Meanwhile, Make Sunsets said in a February 21 blog post it had performed three additional launches near Reno, in the US state of Nevada.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Make Sunsets did not report the launches. “The Weather Modification Act requires that any activity performed with the intention of producing artificial changes in the composition, behavior, or dynamics of the atmosphere be reported to the NOAA Weather Program Office before the commencement of such project or activity,” NOAA told Reuters.

Iseman said he did seek clearance from the Federal Aviation Authority, but did not disclose the balloons contained sulfur dioxide. “As far as I can tell, there isn’t any rule that would require us to do so – or even anyone who it would be relevant to notify,” he said.

The post Mexico launches global push for geoengineering restrictions appeared first on Climate Home News.

Representatives of countries from an array of different regions, including Africa, Asia, Latin America and small island states, pushed to be singled out as particularly vulnerable.

Tanzania and Timor-Leste asked that the world’s poorest countries, known as least developed countries (LDCs), be added to a list of impacted communities, according to a report of the meeting by think-tank IISD.

Africa and small island developing states (Sids) were nearly cut out of one section on vulnerabilities, the IISD report says, and replaced by a reference to “developing and least developed countries”.

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But there was a strong push from many delegates to retain them, particularly as most of those regions’ representatives had already left the talks to approve the report, as they had to catch flights home from Switzerland.

Mexico and Chile wanted to add Latin America to the list of regions that are particularly vulnerable while India wanted Asia included, according to IISD’s report.

The final document lists Africa, Sids, LDCs, Central and South America, Asia and the Arctic as particularly vulnerable.

The benefits of vulnerability

What makes some communities more vulnerable than others is not just physical factors like sea level rise but also social factors like poverty, governance, building standards and infrastructure.

This makes naming specific parts of the world as vulnerable a politically sensitive topic.

The inclusion of the Arctic as one of the most climate vulnerable places in the world, for example, was significant because it came just days after the US approved the hugely controversial Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope.

There are various reasons for wanting to be named as vulnerable, including global recognition and better access to climate finance.

Last year’s Cop27 climate talks agreed that a new fund for climate victims should be targeted at countries who are “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.

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Samoan ambassador Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, who chairs the alliance of small island states (Aosis), said making specific note of the risks to these islands was “imperative in the context of climate justice”.

“The fact is that we are already facing devastating losses and damages of great magnitude, and funds we should be investing into sustainable development initiatives must be diverted to help us cope with climate change impacts,” he said.

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But recognising growing impacts also gives states the responsibility of acting on them.

Jörn Birkmann researches climate vulnerability at the University of Stuttgart in Germany and was coordinating lead author of one of the underlying IPCC reports.

He told Climate Home: “It seems like governments fear that if their country is not mentioned, they could receive less support (e.g. global adaptation funds),”

He added: “Or vice versa; if they are mentioned it might lead to a stigmatisation or might raise questions about the role of governance.”

Measuring vulnerability

Birkmann said studies on human vulnerability all point to the same global hotspots, particularly Africa.

But even though many governments acknowledge this, there are significant tensions when measuring and mapping human vulnerability.

“It is still difficult in [a summary for policymakers report] to name specific global regions that are more vulnerable than others,” he said.

“The synthesis report is mentioning some regions, but it seems to be much easier for governments to agree on general sentences, rather than pointing to areas or countries where such deficits are evident.”

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Although it misses a lot of nuance about who is vulnerable, Birkmann welcomes the fact that the report recognises global hotspots, “since the success of adaptation and resilience building also depends on the starting point communities and countries have”.

He believes adaptation strategies should not just focus on physical phenomena and climatic hazards such as storms, but also on structures and interventions that reduce human vulnerability, such as poverty reduction, education or fighting corruption – the latter being “a very controversial topic in the political arena”.

Furthermore, when new financial mechanisms for loss and damage agreed at Cop27 are being put into practice, he said it would be helpful to define adaptation goals, not just those on emission reduction.

“These goals should also take into account the very different starting points of regions/countries/communities to build resilience,” he said.” The level of human vulnerability might be such a benchmark of the different starting points.”

The post Nations fight to be called climate vulnerable in IPCC report appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Mexican government said it will develop a strategy to ban future experimentation with solar geoengineering, which will also include an information campaign and scientific reports. However, the government did not announce more specific actions.

“Mexico reiterates its unavoidable commitment to the protection and well-being of the population from practices that generate risks to human and environmental security,” said the government in a statement.

Geoengineering refers to the act of deliberately changing the Earth’s systems to control its climate.

One theoretical proposal has been to spray sulphur particles to cool the planet —which has been documented to briefly happen after volcanic eruptions.

A recent United Nations report found that this practice, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), “has the potential to reduce global mean temperatures”.

But, it found, it “cannot fully offset the widespread effects of global warming and produces unintended consequences, including effects on ozone”.

The UN convention on Biological Diversity established a moratorium on geoengineering in 2010, in the absence of enough scientific data and regulations.

Rogue experiment

In 2022, the US startup Making Sunsets launched an unauthorised experiment from two sites in the northern Mexican state of Baja California. The company claims it launched balloons injected with sulphur dioxide particles into the atmosphere, which were not monitored nor recovered.

The company’s co-founder Luke Iseman said he conducted the experiment in Baja California because he lives there.

The Mexican government said the experiment was carried out “without prior notice and without the consent of the Government of Mexico and the surrounding communities”.

Making Sunsets is already selling “cooling credits” for future balloon flights with larger amounts of sulphur dioxide for $10 each.

“Your funds will be used to release at least 1 gram of our ‘clouds’ into the stratosphere on your behalf, offsetting the warming effect of 1 ton of carbon dioxide for 1 year,” the company claims on its website.

Lily Fuhr, deputy program director at the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel), said in a statement that by offering a “cheap and easy quick fix” to the climate crisis, the company “plays into the hands of the fossil fuel industry”.

“Solar geoengineering is too risky and ungovernable to pursue. We support the Mexican government in their plan for a ban and call on them to immediately stop the new flights that ‘Make Sunsets’ has announced for January 2023,” Fuhr said.

Side effects

James Haywood is a professor of atmospheric science at Exeter University and co-wrote the recent UN report on SAI.

He told Climate Home that Make Sunsets experiment was not dangerous as the amount of sulphur was so small.

“It is more of a [public relations] stunt,” he said, adding “it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference”.

But putting larger amounts of sulphur in the atmosphere can be dangerous, he said.

While many of the side-effects of SAI can be avoided if it is done properly, he said, some are very difficult to avoid.

For example, he said, putting large amounts of sulphur into the atmosphere is likely to increase winter rainfall over northern Europe and reduce it over southern Europe, particularly in Spain and Portugal.

Speaking before the Mexican statement, Haywood said that at the moment there “is no government, no governance” of geoengineering and that he wasn’t aware of any governments proposing regulations.

Ciel called on more governments to announce bans on the practice.

The post Mexico plans to ban solar geoengineering after rogue experiment appeared first on Climate Home News.

With very few governments updating and improving their climate plans in 2022, the Mexican government’s initiative was celebrated at Cop27, with US climate envoy John Kerry even saying the document was “one of the most outstanding contributions among the G20 countries”.

During a public event with the Mexican delegation, Kerry called it a “huge significant shift from where Mexico was even last year at Cop26 in Glasgow” and later told the closing plenary that the country is “significantly strengthening its 2030 target”.

But a new analysis from Climate Action Tracker (CAT) now suggests the plan will still lead to more emissions than the previous government’s nationally determined contribution, which was published in 2016.

Political risk analyst Carlos Ramirez told Climate Home that the country’s foreign affairs minister, Marcelo Ebrard, was trying to position himself as climate-friendly in order to try and secure his party’s nomination for the next presidential election.

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Mexico, a country of 130 million, and Indonesia are the only two G20 countries not to have set net zero targets. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies have favoured state-owned oil company Pemex over private renewables companies.

Accounting trick

CAT analyst Maria Jose de Villafranca Casas told Climate Home that the new plan was “slightly better” than a 2020 version, also published under Obrador’s government.

But the 2020 version was revoked by a judge for being less ambitious than the 2016 version. The judge ruled that, as Mexico has enshrined the Paris agreement in its domestic law, each plan must be more ambitious than the last.

The new 2022 plan is still less ambitious than the 2016 one, de Villafranca Casas said.

At first glance, it looks more ambitous. The 2016 one targets a 22% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The new one aims for 30-35% cuts. Both reductions are against an estimate of what emissions would be if no action was taken, called a ‘business as usual baseline’.

But the baselines are different. The 2016 one targets emission cuts from a lower baseline. This makes it harder to reduce emissions compared to it.

In absolute terms, the 2016 plan aims for lower emissions than the new one. The old target was 757 MtCO2e by 2030 while the new one is 786–863 MtCO2e. Both plans envision emissions rising from today’s levels until at least 2030.

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Da Villafranca Casas also accused the government of “creative accounting”. She said the new plan leaves forests, which suck in carbon, out of its baseline. This makes it higher. But it allows these forest carbon sinks to be included in its emissions figures. “While technically allowed, this approach is not transparent,” she said.

She said there was “a good possibility” that the new climate plan will be challenged in the courts like the 2020 one was.

Bid for popularity

Political risk analyst Carlos Ramirez told Climate Home that foreign affairs minister Ebrard was promoting “propaganda” to increase his popularity.

“[Ebrard] went to [Cop27 to] promise a seires of goals which look great on paper but when you come back to Mexico and see what they are doing, there’s no action”, he said.

“The president doesn’t care about climate change. He doesn’t care about the environment. He’s an old guard politican who sees oil as the main energy source and has basically cancelled all options for renewables”, Ramirez added.

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Kerry has made several visits to Mexico to push climate action. Cop26 president Alok Sharma has also been to Mexico to call for it to improve its climate plan. “Kerry can come 100 times,” Ramirez said, “at the end of the day, what I’ve seen is nothing on climate change”.

There is a presidential election in 2024. Current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is very popular. He is not allowed to run again but his chosen successor is likely to win.

The two front-runners, Ramirez said, are Ebrard and the mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum. She is a physicist and contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. In Mexico City, she has promoted rooftop solar and cycle and public transport infrastructure.

Ramirez said Sheinbaum may make Mexico more devoted to climate action. But it would be difficult to overturn Lopez-Obrador’s pro fossil fuel policies, particularly as he will remain popular and powerful even after stepping down as president.

The post Mexico’s new climate plan is worse than its old one, analysts say appeared first on Climate Home News.

Denmark and Costa Rica jointly launched the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (Boga) at last year’s Cop26 climate summit along with six other core members. This “group of first movers” committed to phase out or rule out fossil fuel development in their countries. Historically, this topic has been taboo at the UN climate negotiations.

After a change in government in early 2022, the alliance is not a priority for Cop27, said Franz Tattenbach, the Central American country’s newly appointed environment minister. 

“Costa Rica will not be very active in Boga… I don’t think this is a great example. Costa Rica will not lead by saying ‘we are in Boga’. Costa Rica has much more to teach (the world) than by saying ‘we are banning this’,” said Tattenbach during a press briefing on Tuesday.

“It’s more interesting to stop deforestation in the Amazon, in tropical Africa and in Latin America in general. That can do more to stop climate change and it serves us better. That doesn’t mean we will exit Boga, but we won’t have a leading voice.”

China, India set to snub Cop27 leaders’ climate summit

Denmark, on the other hand, arrives at Cop27 after a general election on 1 November renewed support for Mette Frederiksen’s centre-left bloc. Frederiksen’s government banned new fossil fuel exploration in the North Sea and committed to phase out production by 2050.  

Mattias Soderberg, chief advisor at the humanitarian Danish NGO DanChurchAid, said the election results would not affect Denmark’s stance on climate. “Boga is a priority for all parties apart from two small right wing parties,” he told Climate Home News.

The founders recruited three national governments — France, Sweden, Ireland —  and three subnational governments – Quebec, Greenland and Wales as core members. Six others tentatively joined as “associate members” or “friends of Boga”.

Energy crisis

While the Glasgow Pact made an unprecedented call for a coal power “phasedown”, oil and gas have never been explicitly named in official UN climate negotiation outcomes. Boga sought to start that conversation, former Costa Rican environment minister Andrea Meza said during the alliance’s launch. 

Since Boga’s inception, Russia’s war in Ukraine sparked an energy crisis in Europe, prompting nations to look for alternatives to Russian imports. Along with 16 gas-exporting countries, Cop27 host Egypt vowed to push fossil gas as a “perfect solution” to the energy crisis.

In response to the “upended” oil and gas markets, Boga issued a statement calling for governments to keep their climate commitments at Cop27 and for “greater financial and technical capacity” from developed countries to support developing nations in their energy transition.

“We accept that limited increases in production from existing oil and gas capacity may be necessary in the current context. But issuing new oil and gas licenses for fields that will take years to come online will do nothing to solve the current crisis,” reads the statement.

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A recent report by the International Energy Agency projected that fossil fuel demand is likely to peak this decade thanks to rising gas prices and accelerated renewable energy rollouts.

Adrián Martínez, director of Costa Rican NGO La Ruta del Clima, argued the change in government priorities was a missed opportunity.

“Costa Rica depends on other countries with large hydrocarbon reserves and on their decision to stop using them and leave them on the ground. Not fomenting this action puts us in danger, given we’re in one of the most climate vulnerable regions in the world,” Martinez said. 

Costa Rica banned fossil fuel exploration and extraction in 2002 by executive order and subsequent governments extended the ban until 2050. Tattenbach said his administration currently has no plans to change this, but has previously suggested it could be an option.

The post Costa Rica backs away from leading oil and gas phaseout coalition appeared first on Climate Home News.

But if hurricanes don’t discriminate, people do. How easy it is to rebuild your life when your home has been destroyed depends on your wealth, your gender, your level of education and the colour of your passport.

For the hurricane-hit corn farmers of El Cubulero in Honduras, options are limited. Without insurance, staying put and rebuilding their life and livelihood from scratch is tough. Many look to the US for new opportunities.

Without an easy route to a visa, moving north often means a difficult and dangerous journey, particularly for women. Despite early promises of support for resettling climate migrants, Joe Biden has done little to help.

In Florida, more people have access to insurance to help them rebuild. But intensifying storms and projected sea level rise mean insurance companies increasingly won’t touch the state’s property market with a barge pole. Or at least they won’t without a huge premium.

So poorer Floridians are on the move too, although without the dangers most Hondurans must endure.

In the jargon-filled world of UN Climate Change, this is known as “loss and damage”. Funding to address it will be a key demand of developing countries at Cop27.

The Alliance of Small Island States has been refining its demands. Its lead negotiator told Climate Home this week that the group will call for a ‘response fund’ based on regular, voluntary, fundraising rounds. Read about how the fund might work here.

But, as South Africa is finding out, relying on rich countries’ generosity will often lead to disappointment.

While president Cyril Ramaphosa said last year that the much-trumpeted $8.5bn “just energy transition partnership” would be mostly grants, insiders told Chloé Farand grants made up only around 3% of the package.

This week’s stories…

• Hurricane Ian could push insurers out of Florida
• Joe Biden’s abandoned climate migrant reforms leave hurricane victims stranded
• South Africa approves $8.5bn energy transition investment plan
• Small island states to propose ‘response fund’ for climate victims at Cop27
• Thanks to fossil fuel crisis, wind and solar payback time drops to one year

The post Storms don’t discriminate, people do – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Shortly after coming to power, Joe Biden ordered his national security adviser Jake Sullivan to put together a report on “options for protection and resettlement” for those displaced by climate change.

But eight months later, the report was released. Its most concrete recommendation was to form an interagency working group on climate and migration. This group has yet to meet.

In September 2022, the leaders of 14 US NGOs called on Biden to give a priority status, known as P2, to hurricane and drought victims from Honduras and Guatemala. But his administration has so far ignored these calls.

Two weeks ago, the urgency of providing climate migration routes was reinforced when tropical storm Julia hit Central America.

It killed at least 54 people and affected nearly a million. With their homes destroyed, many of these people are looking for a new life. While most move within their country, some have headed north towards the US.

Helder López is a lawyer from the Honduran village of El Cubulero in a poor, usually dry part of the country. He told Climate Home that about a quarter of the village had flooded.

A flooded home in El Cubulero (Photo: Helder López )

When the storm hit, he and his family sheltered on the top floor of their house along with neighbours who didn’t have a second floor.

Downstairs, everything flooded. The night felt long and darker than usual, he says, as a result of the electricity blackouts, which are still ongoing in several places.

Not everyone was as lucky as him, he says. Hundreds fled to shelters as their homes flooded. At least 200 of the village’s cows were killed. Entire fields of corn, which would have been turned into tortillas, were destroyed. 

Fields of corn were destroyed by the storm. (Photo: Helder Lopez)

“These losses are huge”, López said, “getting back up again will have to happen slowly, the impact on the local economy is high. Frankly, it’s worrying. Now that [the villagers] capital was reduced, they’ll have to adapt and find how they can get back up again”.

Many times, getting back up means leaving, he says. In El Cubulero, job opportunities are scarce and, with their crops ruined, many residents leave for the US and send back money to help their families.

In Central America, this is common. In Honduras, about 26% of the GDP is from Hondurans sending money from abroad. The figures are similar for El Salvador and Guatemala.

But both getting to and staying in the US is difficult and dangerous. Without high levels of wealth or education or family in the US, the main legal route is through temporary work visas.

Small island states to propose ‘response fund’ for climate victims at Cop27

This year, the US opened 65,000 new temporary work visas for “unskilled workers” -with 20,000 reserved for Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

But Lopez said it’s difficult for people in his village to access these visas. “How are they asking for a person in a rural village, where there’s high illiteracy, to speak English? It’s incongruent”, he said.

Without (and sometimes with) visas, many Central American migrants, particularly women, face a dangerous journey to the US. Human rights organizations estimate that between 60 to 80% of women face sexual violence as they migrate.

If caught at the US border, they face detention by US authorities. Ricardo Pineda, director of the climate NGO Sustena Honduras, told Climate Home that “even now” these detention facilities are “similar to concentration camps”.

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Pineda said that Biden’s promise to resettle migrants affected by extreme weather was “very valuable”, but added “it’s getting late” to attend the needs of Central American climate refugees.

The Biden administration “is falling behind with this urgent matter,” Pineda said. “Attending to climate migration will require larger compromises and larger investments to increase resilience among countries. That will require more cooperation,” he added. 

Kayly Ober, from the US-based NGO Refugees International, told Climate Home: “Our team was just in Guatemala this past week and people that had family abroad to send remittances after [hurricanes] Eta and Iota faired better than those that didn’t.”

She added: “We’re hoping that the Biden administration will make good on their promise to explore pathways in the context of climate change, although we have yet to see much movement on that front. ”

The Biden administration is about to make a decision on whether to extend “temporary protected status” to Hondurans in the US.

If they don’t, around 60,000 Hondurans who have lived in the US for more than 20 years will have to leave the US or be deported, Ober said.

The post Joe Biden’s abandoned climate migrant reforms leave hurricane victims stranded appeared first on Climate Home News.

The programme aimed to reverse deforestation by paying Haitians to plant trees and by teaching them skills like beekeeping to diversify their income so they are less pressured to chop down trees to make charcoal, which is used for cooking.

Haiti lost 9% of its tree cover in the last 20 years with trees destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and chopped down to be turned into charcoal or to create space for farming.

As well as worsening climate change, this deforestation makes Haitians more vulnerable to the floods and landslides which global heating has made more frequent. Trees suck up rain water and hold the soil together.

To try and reverse this, USAID launched a reforestation programme in 2017, aiming to plant four million trees. The US aid agency outsourced the project to a company called Chemonics, which is headquartered near the White House and is known in the development industry as a ‘Bingo’ or big international non-governmental organisation.

On its website, Chemonics talks about the project in glowing terms. It says it “takes a holistic, community-based approach” and “will cultivate trained and empowered local communities and authorities”.

But a May 2021 report authored by consultants from Social Impact Inc found a host of problems, including that the project’s environmental and social benefits are unlikely to continue when the funding runs out.

The report found that trees planted on private property which contribute to people’s income, like fruit trees, “are likely to be protected”. But “trees planted on public land where animals roam freely are not likely to survive”.

Jean Wiener, a Haitian environmentalist who planted trees for the USAID-funded programme, told Climate Home News that wild, feral or grazing cows and goats “are going around and pretty much mowing the country”.

Wiener said Haiti has laws that state animals should be fenced in but these are not enforced. Instead, farmers let their animals roam to graze which is easier than fencing them in and bringing them food. Theft is discouraged by violent vigilante reprisals, he said. The USAID programme aimed to enable farmers to produce hay for their livestock to stop them roaming.

But the audit report found that “most resilience activities are not likely to be sustainable, given the short project timeline, lack of resources among farmers, and many project delays”. “Pursuing new and unproven techniques is a lot to expect from people who are already food insecure and cannot take the risk of a potential lost harvest, even if there is the possibility of increased income using new techniques,” it added.

Wiener said that international donors needed to provide “longer term commitments” than five years so that organisations can “build their capacities and grow their results over the long term”. But, he said, “I know that there are political cycles and that is a major hindrance.”

The project created several management plans for different areas with committees made up of local community members to oversee them. The report found these plans “may have some small benefits to the communities” but “the committees are unlikely to continue to function without support”.

Without an entity financing the committees’ activities, organising meetings, and paying travel and per diem costs, “the committee members themselves stated that they would not be able to continue to do anything after the project ends,” the report added.

Asked if the trees will survive, a USAID official speaking on condition of anonymity, told Climate Home: “That’s our hope. We realise that these kinds of programmes where we want to build sustainability into institutions take a long time and we do have to be realistic about what is the capacity of the Haitian government.”

A “lesson learned” is to include local government, NGOs and the private sector early on in the programme’s design, they said.

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One key issue was that USAID paid local tree-planting groups only when they had achieved a certain milestone. The report said this “may not be a feasible approach in a resource-poor place like these targeted regions of Haiti”.

Despite becoming more common, Wiener said the practice “can be a serious issue” for organisations that don’t have a lot of resources to invest upfront.

The USAID official agreed paying on part-delivery “isn’t appropriate in all cases”. “Perhaps, in a project like this, where we are giving grants to very small local-based organisations, it might not be the best method,” they said.

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Other shortcomings identified in the report include a perception that it was “too long and difficult” for Haitian NGOs to obtain grants, equipment was delivered late or not at all, private companies didn’t engage with the scheme and not enough trees had been planted.

Wiener’s organisation, the Foundation for the Protection of Marine Biodiversity (FoProBim), has worked on similar projects before but USAID, he explained, “does have very strict and very strong processes in place for approving grants”.  In contrast, the Haitian grantees lacked the structures to provide the necessary information required in the accounting processes.

Delays with delivery of material were so common, it suggested a “systemic issue with project procurement procedures,” the report found.

The USAID official accepted this “was a problem” and told Climate Home the report had been useful for “course corrections”.

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The official added that during the project Haiti had experienced a string of difficult situations including Covid-19, currency fluctuations, insecurity, fuel shortages and the assassination of the president. This all “impacted the programme,” they said. “It was complicated”.

Currency fluctuations scuppered a deal with an exporter of ackee fruit which was going to pay farmers to grow the crop. A cruise company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, was going to pay farmers for eco-tourism until the pandemic hit their revenues.

The USAID official said that reforestation would continue to be a priority of the agency’s work in Haiti and that the project had achieved “a number of successes” including the planting of 4.5m trees – 500,000 above target.

Building the capacity of civil society would become a priority, they said, and USAID will focus on “smaller rather than bigger” both in terms of the amount of money the agency gives out per grant and on the geographical area it covers.

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Gas and oil are commonly found together and the gas can either be captured and sold, burned as waste (known as flaring) or allowed to leak (known as venting). All these options lead to greenhouse gas emissions. Oil producers flare and vent gas when they don’t think capturing and selling it would be profitable.

In 2015, then Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was one of 31 world leaders to promise to end routine flaring by 2030. Three years later, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected on a promise to support Mexico’s state-owned oil industry and World Bank data shows flaring has shot up 67% from 3.9 billion cubic metres a year in 2018 to 6.5 billion cubic metres in 2021.

Mexico’s flare volumes have risen while oil production declined (World Bank)

The World Bank described this as a “worrying increase”. In its annual gas flaring report, the bank said: “Mexico’s focus over the last few years has been on energy security, however the increase in gas flaring has occurred while Mexico has also steadily increased natural gas imports, highlighting the potential flare gas recovery could play in its energy independence.”

This increase in flaring took place “despite oil production declining” the World Bank said. Mark Davis, CEO of flaring analytics company Capterio, said the rise was “due to higher poorer operational performance with much higher ‘flaring intensity’ (flaring per barrel of production)”.

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According to Capterio’s analysis, two oil fields stand out with dramatically higher flaring in 2021 – the Perdiz/Ixachi field in Veracruz and La Venta in neighbouring Tabasco. Both are on Mexico’s oil-producing Caribbean coast and are operated by state-owned Pemex.

Perdiz (left blue dot) and La Venta (right blue dot) are both in Mexico’s oil hub. (FlareIntel Pro by Capterio)

“What’s particularly striking is that the flaring at the Perdiz flare changed from regularly flaring less than 5 million [cubic feet] a day in 2020 to regularly flaring around 100 million [cubic feet] a day from late January through to late November in 2021”.

The reduction in flaring from 28 November, Davis said, appears to have coincided with bringing online a new plant which conditions the gas so it can be sold for power or cooking. There has been no such drop in flaring at La Venta.

The La Venta flare is visible from Google Earth and just a few hundred metres from peoples’ homes.

Globally, flaring volumes have risen and fallen with levels of oil production over the last few years. Progress in reducing flaring in countries like Nigeria, Kazakhstan and the US has been cancelled out by setbacks in Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

If the world is to eliminate routine flaring by 2030, Capterio analysis suggests it needs to be reduced by 44% a year from 2022 onwards. Progress so far has been “woefully inadequate”, Capterio says.

The World Bank says there has been “mixed progress” and signatories like Russia, Iraq and Mexico have “tremendous opportunities for improvement” as their flare volumes and flare intensity has increased.

But some environmentalists criticised the World Bank’s “problematic” framing of capturing gas as a climate solution. Friends of the Earth’s Luisa Abbot Galvão told Climate Home: “The [bank] frames the issue as gas being ‘needlessly’ flared, but bringing gas to market and potentially expanding countries’ gas infrastructure still contributes to climate change.”

She added: “Yes we need to reduce this pollution, which is harming frontline communities first and foremost, but the [bank] should be helping countries do this in the context of supporting their equitable phase-out of oil and gas more broadly.”

Galvão criticicised the bank’s energy director Demetrios Papathanasiou for suggesting that oil and gas production can be “decarbonized”. She called this a “dangerous narrative”.

Pemex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Mexico’s oil gets even dirtier as flaring continues to soar appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Q’eqchi’ community of Agua Caliente is demanding the Inter-American Court of Human Rights voids the permits of an open-pit nickel mine, in the town of El Estor, for which it says it was never consulted.

Under international human rights standards, states have the obligation to consult indigenous communities and obtain their free, prior and informed consent over projects affecting their lands and resources.

But indigenous communities in Latin America have denounced constant violations of this right.

The case is one of a growing number of lawsuits brought by indigenous peoples to compel governments in the region to respect their right to veto extractive projects affecting them.

Lawyers in this suit, which opened last week, are going a step further. They argue that the court should recognise the rights of indigenous people to permanent sovereignty over their natural resources as a principle of public international law.

“We believe consultation is not enough, consent is not enough. But the court has never said anything about the rights of communities to their natural resources,” Leonardo Crippa, an attorney with the Indian Law Resource Center representing the community, told Climate Home News.

If successful, the lawyers argue it could set a “historical” legal precedent for other communities in Latin America and become “fundamental” to advance climate action in the region.

The case comes amid a growing recognition of indigenous peoples’ critical role in addressing the dual climate and biodiversity crisis.

Indigenous people are estimated to protect 80% of global biodiversity. In recent years, a ballooning body of studies has shown that indigenous territories have lower or similar levels of deforestation to other protected areas.

At the Cop26 climate talks, governments recognised “the important role” of indigenous peoples “in addressing and responding to climate change” and agreed “to respect, promote and consider” their rights.

Rodrigo Tot is an indigenous leader in Guatemala’s Agua Caliente, who was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for his efforts to protect his community against mining. He told Climate Home he hoped the case will bring peace to his community, which has lived in fear of intimidation and violence for opposing the mine.

“When it comes to protecting forests, it will not be up to the government who has failed, but to us — this is what we have been fighting for, for the right to continue to protect our lands,” he said.

For Crippa, guaranteeing indigenous people’s sovereignty will further “alleviate extreme poverty” and help meet sustainable development goals by allowing communities to reap the benefits of projects they have agree to.

Rodrigo Tot speaking to households in Agua Caliente, Guatemala, about their rights to land (Photo: Goldman Enviornmental Prize)

The case comes hot on the heels of a ruling by the Constitutional Court in Ecuador, the country’s most powerful judiciary body, which called for stronger protection to guarantee the right of indigenous communities to consent to any oil and mining activities affecting their land.

Legal observers say it gives Ecuador one of the most powerful legal precedents in the world on the rights of indigenous peoples right to consent.

They say this deals a blow to Ecuador’s president Guillermo Lasso’s ambition to double the country’s oil production to one millions barrels per day and expand mining activities. Indigenous land covers 70% of the oil and mineral-rich Ecuadorian Amazon.

The court ruled that if an indigenous community refuses a project, the government can still move forward in “exceptional cases” but that “under no circumstances can a project be carried out that generates excessive sacrifices to the collective rights of communities and nature”.

The indigenous rights movement in Ecuador maintains that any oil or project in their ancestral territories taking place against their will implies unreasonable sacrifices, according to NGO Amazon Frontlines.

Last month, a ruptured oil pipeline contaminated water that supplies indigenous communities in a protected area of the Amazon’s rainforest.

“This ruling is monumental. It’s a game-changer in the balance of power between the extractive interests that the state represents and indigenous peoples,” said Brian Parker, of Amazon Frontlines.

The Coca River, which is a source of water for indigenous communites, was contaminated following an oil spill in eastern Ecuador (Photo: Alianza Ceibo/Emilio Bermeo )

Kevin Currey is programme officer at the Ford Foundation, a member of the alliance of governments and private funders that committed to provide $1.7bn to support indigenous advance their land rights by 2025 during the Cop26 talks.

The alliance has committed to fund activities that strengthen and protect indigenous peoples’ land resources rights and “strategic litigation may be one important avenue for securing and defending their rights,” he said.

“These recent cases should be a wake-up call, not just in Ecuador and Guatemala, but around the world that ignoring indigenous rights generates enormous reputational, financial, and legal risks.”

Lawyers in the Guatemala case hope the court decision will push international financiers and investors not to support projects where indigenous peoples’ rights have been violated.

A 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that conflict with local communities was costing large-scale mining projects $20 million per week in delayed production.

The post Indigenous peoples in Guatemala demand sovereignty over oil and mining resources appeared first on Climate Home News.

The National Hurricane Centre has said Elsa could develop into a category two hurricane over the next few days. It has broken the record for the earliest fifth-named storm of the year, likely heralding a busy Atlantic storm season.

After the devastating impacts of hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Maria in 2017, Caribbean countries have invested heavily in resilience to weather extremes.

When Matthew hit Jamaica, it caused severe flooding, destroyed roads and cut off entire communities, said Lehome Johnson, who leads the country’s climate data and information project, which was launched in 2015 to improve forecasts for extreme events such as hurricanes. 

Five years on, despite enormous pressures created by the pandemic, he said the country is better prepared for such major storms. 

“The country is in a better place to be able to act more quickly,” Johnson told Climate Home News. This is partly because of more reliable weather forecasts and early warning systems, but also the government prioritising insurance schemes to cover extreme weather damage.

“We are waking up to the fact that we are in this hurricane belt and becoming more aware of what we have to do,” said Johnson.

With #Elsa on the board, the 2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season is now ahead of not just 2020’s record named storm formation pace — but also well ahead of the 1991-2020 climatology. pic.twitter.com/YRrl9ZlanK

— Steve Bowen (@SteveBowenWx) July 1, 2021

This month the Jamaican government is expected to launch a catastrophe (CAT) bond to increase its financial resilience to climate shocks. 

Catastrophe bonds are financial instruments used by the insurance industry to transfer extreme risks from disasters to capital investors.

Facilitated by the World Bank and funded by the UK, Germany and US, the CAT bond will help cover economic losses in the case of a major catastrophic event, such as a hurricane. According to financial news outlet Artemis, the launch of the CAT bond is “imminent.”

In recent years “Jamaica has put a lot of thought into developing a disaster risk financing strategy and financial mechanisms that will help protect the country in the case of an extreme event,” Anaitee Mills, a climate consultant with the Jamaican government, told Climate Home News. 

A member of a USAID-DART team surveys damage from Hurricane Matthew in Bag Bay in eastern Jamaica (Photo: Flickr/USAID-DART)

Financial support to help island states recover from climate-linked disasters is urgently needed, Mills said. 

“Many Caribbean countries find themselves in a vicious cycle of climate impacts and debt,” she said. After disasters, many countries take out loans, plunging them into more debt. “Then when another event happens, they cannot access the resources they need to recover.”

The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated this situation, causing tourism revenues to plummet and debt to skyrocket in the Caribbean. 

Small Caribbean states are excluded from a debt repayment holiday, which G20 nations have agreed to extend until December 2021, because they are designated middle-income countries. They have called for more support, arguing that the twin crises of coronavirus and climate change have left them “squeezed on all sides.” 

Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Foundation, has said debt relief should be extended to  countries that are highly vulnerable to climate shocks. 

Without it, most Caribbean governments are not in a position to prioritise long-term investments in resilience. “They are very reactive to what happens – that is all they are able to do,” said Mills.

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But that is starting to change. Since category 5 hurricane Maria pummeled the Caribbean in 2017, many island states have got serious about resilience planning. 

“2017 marked a big turning point and was really important in terms of changing mindsets,” said Emily Wilkinson, a senior researcher at the UK Overseas Development Institute who specialises in global risks and resilience.

Before hurricane Maria hit, most Caribbean countries were primarily focused on emergency responsiveness, ensuring that evacuation routes and shelters were set up, Wilkinson told Climate Home News. 

“The focus has shifted towards looking at the long term and securing the viability of these islands,” she said. “Finance ministers now see the issue of resilience and reducing disaster risk as critical to their economic strategies.” 

One of the Caribbean nations worst hit by hurricane Maria was Dominica. The small island state, which has just 70,000 residents, lost the equivalent of 226% of its GDP following Maria. Over 90% of homes were destroyed or damaged.

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Dominica’s government was determined to prevent future devastation of a similar scale. In 2018, it passed the Climate Resilience Act and set the goal of becoming the world’s first climate resilient nation, which is able to withstand hurricanes and other weather-related disasters, by 2030. To implement this, the government launched the Climate Resilience Execution Agency (CREAD). 

90% of homes on Dominica were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Maria (Photo: Flickr/USAID-DART)

“Climate resilience is critical for the survival of Dominica,” Francine Baron, CEO of CREAD and the country’s former minister for foreign affairs, told Climate Home News. 

Since 2015, Dominica has been building hurricane resilient homes which have concrete roofs, shatterproof windows and underground foundations. These homes did not suffer severe damage during hurricane Maria in 2017, said Baron.

The aim is to ensure communities can be self-sufficient for 14 days after a hurricane by supplying them with enough food, water and access to electricity. 

Much of Dominica’s population lives in physically vulnerable locations, such as near an eroding coastline or volcano. CREAD is looking at building new homes in less vulnerable areas. 

Hurricane-proof homes in Dominica (Photo: CREAD)

To achieve the 2030 goal, Dominica must ensure resilience lies at the heart of every sector and diversify its economy so that it “bounces forward after a catastrophic event,” said Baron. 

“Resilience is not just about buildings and infrastructure,” said Wilkinson, who serves as an advisor to CREAD. “It’s about the long-term, socioeconomic development of the country and ensuring that a hurricane cannot wipe out everything.”

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Dominica is piloting a blockchain insurance scheme that will pay out premiums to people when a storm hits. The country is also investing in high value agricultural exports, such as essential oils, to generate extra revenue, said Wilkinson. 

Investing in nature is also an important part of CREAD’s strategy. By 2030, Dominica aims to increase its forest cover to 67% and increase its healthy coral reef coverage by 50% to protect its coastline and boost fish stocks. 

Dominica needs an estimated 8.2-9.8 billion eastern Caribbean dollars (ECD) ($3-3.6 billion) to become climate resilient by 2030. Since Hurricane Maria, the government has spent 2 billion ECD ($740 million) on critical infrastructure and other resilience measures.

There is an estimated finance gap of around 2.5-3.5 billion ECD ($925million-$1.3 billion). 

Becoming climate resilient is a very expensive undertaking,” said Baron. “We rely on support from the international community.” Dominica has received some funding from the Canadian government and the UK department for international development. But it relies on much more international support to achieve its 2030 goal. 

The pandemic has impacted CREAD’s operations, with travel restrictions temporarily halting construction projects. “We have not been able to move as fast as we would have liked,” said Baron. But work continues and, despite pandemic challenges, Dominica has no plans to backtrack on its resilience plans. “It is not an option for us to become resilient, it is a must,” said Baron. 

The post As Elsa heralds a busy hurricane season, Caribbean states count on resilience plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

The ruling Morena party led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (widely known as Amlo) is likely to get around 200 of the 500 seats. Official figures suggest his allies in other parties will get around 95.

While Morena and its allies maintain an absolute majority, they will not have the 334 votes needed to change the constitution, which López Obrador has suggested he would do to overcome legal obstacles to his plans.

“My hope is that these unconstitutional reforms do not see the light in the end,” said New Climate Institute analyst Maria Jose de Villafranca.

Political risk analyst Carlos Ramirez told Climate Home News that the elections had “put a brake” on the reforms.

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The reforms would give the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) a competitive advantage over private and foreign rivals.

Electricity generated by CFE, which predominately comes from burning coal and gas, would be prioritised in the grid over energy from private companies, which is generally cleaner and cheaper and so currently dispatched first.

Amlo’s proposed reforms would reverse previous reforms that President Enrique Nieto wrote into the country’s constitution in 2013, so that future governments would find it harder to undo them.

In March 2021, a judge ruled that López Obrador’s reforms must be frozen until the Supreme Court decides whether they are constitutional.

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Ramirez said that most Mexican legal experts agree that the reforms are unconstitutional but a Supreme Court judgement was unlikely be the end of the story.

He predicted López Obrador would try to gather support from opposition delegates from the PRI and Citizens Movement parties to reach a 2/3 majority.

He could also, Ramirez said, hold a referendum next year asking something like: “Do you think our energy resources should be for the use of Mexicans?”

While such a referendum would not be binding, it would “create the environment in order to pressure the legislature to strike down the 2013 energy reform”, Ramirez said.

López Obrador is ideologically opposed to private and foreign control of Mexico’s energy infrastructure.

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Energy ownership is an emotive issue in Mexico. The anniversary of the 1938 nationalisation of foreign-owned oil is now a national holiday.

Despite falling costs and Mexico’s plentiful sun and wind, Amlo has dismissed solar and wind energy, calling wind turbines “visual pollution”. The only low-carbon sources he has praised are large hydro and nuclear power plants.

Asked why he doesn’t want state-owned renewables, de Villafranca said: “He’s just a bit stubborn. He just keeps repeating the same discourse over and over without listening to the science and economic experts.”

Greenpeace Mexico’s Pablo Ramirez told Climate Home News that the right-wing opposition parties like PRI, PAN and PRD “have been adopting a very fake environmentalist speech” since López Obrador came to power. This has contributed to Amlo’s “narrative of environment as a right wing theme and the oil as the people’s interest”, he added.

Hope for Mexico’s energy transition comes, he said, from state governments. He pointed to Mexico City’s mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who is a member of López Obrador’s party, but is also a physicist and contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. She is promoting rooftop solar and cycle and public transport infrastructure.

The post Elections dash Mexican President’s hopes for dirty energy reform appeared first on Climate Home News.

The president’s office said that Oquist died on Monday night. Local media reported the cause of death was pulmonary embolism, a common complication of severe Covid-19 infection – although no positive diagnosis of the virus was made.

“Paul Oquist Kelley served the people, the families, all Nicaraguans with love, faithfulness, commitment and untiring bravery,” president Daniel Ortega said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“[He was] a brother, a colleague and I believe one of the most important and prominent people in this country, a true Nicaraguan, more Nicaraguan than many who were born in this country,” said Gustavo Porras, speaker of Nicaragua’s national assembly.

Climate watchers have described him as a “fighter for justice” and a  “complex figure in global climate negotiations”, with a sharp, analytical mind.

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Born in 1943 in California, Oquist attended university in the US before moving to Nicaragua where he held several positions in Ortega’s government in the 1980s and when he returned to power in 2007.

In the climate space, Oquist made waves by refusing to back the adoption of the Paris Agreement, arguing the deal did not go far enough to cut global emissions and protect developing countries from climate impacts.

“We’re not going to submit because voluntary responsibility is a path to failure,” Oquist told Climate Home at the time in a video interview on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Paris in 2015. 

“We don’t want to be an accomplice to taking the world to 3 to 4C and the death and destruction that represents,” Oquist said. “It’s not a matter of being troublemakers, it’s a matter of the developing countries surviving.” 

Nicaragua, a country in central America described by the World Bank as a “renewable energy paradise”, is a tiny emitter, generating just 0.02% of global emissions. 

Nicaragua eventually joined the Paris Agreement in 2017 in a move president Ortega said was a show of solidarity to countries affected by climate disasters. 

Following this change of heart, Oquist was appointed co-chair of the multi-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund (GCF) board in 2018. In this role his main responsibility was steering the board meetings, where decisions are reached by consensus.

On the GCF board, Oquist called for stricter vetting of potential private sector partners. For example in 2019, he backed civil society concerns about a Chilean private equity firm specialised in wealth management and an Indian bank mired in financial instability. Both entities were accredited.

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Oquist was a close political advisor of president Ortega and his defence of the government’s crackdown on political opponents resulted in financial sanctions from the Trump administration. 

Following news of his death, political leaders and climate experts paid tribute to Oquist on social media. 

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said in a statement that Oquist was known for his “inexhaustible energy, cheerful nature and dedication to reveal and defend, internationally and in any setting, the truth.”

South African GCF board member Zaheer Fakir described Oquist as a “fighter for justice and a steadfast and dedicated climate warrior”.

Sad to hear of the passing of a colleague, a comrade and a friend Dr Paul Ouquist. A fighter for justice and a steadfast and dedicated climate warrior. May his kind soul rest in eternal peace. HASTA LA VICTORIA SEMPRE! @theGCF @UNFCCC pic.twitter.com/9bUMe3LqV0

— Zaheer Fakir (@zaheer_fakir) April 13, 2021

Henning Wuester, director of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency, wrote on Twitter: “With Paul Oquist the global climate process loses a very bright and engaged personality. He was difficult but very sharp and analytical – an important voice to carefully listen to. I will always remember some of his statements of the early days of the GCF.”

Rest in power, Paul Oquist. A complex figure in global climate negotiations, but I will always appreciate the clarity he brought in calling out dodgy private sector deals, backing up CSOs when other governments stayed silent. Classic example in the GCF:pic.twitter.com/WQlLwnrdGH

— Joe Thwaites (@joethw8s) April 13, 2021

The post Climate watchers pay tribute to Nicaraguan envoy Paul Oquist, who died on Monday appeared first on Climate Home News.

A UN World Food Programme study (WFP) found that nearly eight million people are hungry in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.

This is one-fifth of the region’s population and a fourfold increase on the result from 2018’s survey, which was itself conducted in the wake of a drought.

Of the eight million hungry, around 1.7 million are in the WFP’s “emergency” category, requiring urgent food assistance.

Community leader Celia Moore serves food to children affected by Hurricane Eta in Nicaragua (Photo: WFP/Oscar Duarte)

WFP regional director Miguel Barreto said that, after Covid-19 and hurricanes Eta and Iota, the region had “hit rock bottom”.

“Many now have nowhere to live and are staying in temporary shelters, surviving on next to nothing,” he said.

In November 2020, Eta and Iota destroyed over 200,000 hectares of crops in the region – enough to cover Hong Kong twice over.

The hurricanes destroyed the homes and livelihoods of 6.8 million people. According to the WFP, they even disrupted service, tourism and informal jobs, causing hunger in new groups who were “previously relatively untouched”.

Guatemalan crops under water after Hurricane Eta (Photo: WFP/Alejandro Arriola)

A few months before Eta, hurricane Amanda hit 12,000 hectares of crops in El Salvador, affecting 22,000 farmers’ livelihoods. As a result of the disaster, the WFP said 336,000 people became severely food insecure.

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season brought the highest number of storms since records began, requiring meteorologists to start naming them after Greek letters, having gone through the Roman alphabet. Experts said rising sea temperatures contributed to the severity of the hurricanes, in combination with the La Nina weather phenomenon.

Honduras: Blocked migrant caravan leaves thousands trapped in hurricane zone

In August 2019, Honduras declared a state of emergency after a drought ruined many of the crops in its south and Nicaragua’s north.

The WFP’s survey found 15% of people in these countries are now making “concrete plans” to migrate – either within their own country or abroad. This is almost twice the figure of 8% from 2018.

In June, Hurricane Amanda destroyed homes in El Salvador. (Photo: WFP/Mauricio Martinez)

Since the hurricanes, many Central Americans have tried to travel to the USA, with 8,000 joining a caravan in January. The Biden administration warned the migrants it was “not the time to make the journey” and they were dispersed by a joint military operation in Guatemala.

Weeks later though, Biden ordered his National Security Adviser to draw up plans on how to protect and resettle those displaced by climate change. The move was celebrated as “extraordinary” by migrant activists.

The WFP says it plans to help 2.6 million people in the region this year and requires US$47.3m over the next six months.

The programme is mainly funded on a voluntary basis by governments, although corporations and individuals can also donate.

The post Hit by hurricanes and Covid, more Central Americans go hungry and plan to migrate appeared first on Climate Home News.

Speaking to Climate Home News, Grenada’s finance minister Gregory Bowen said successive governments were desperate to change this but had their hands tied by a privatisation deal made nearly 30 years ago.

On advice funded by the World Bank, the current government pursued reforms to support renewables – only to be ordered to renationalise the electric utility by a World Bank tribunal, for $58 million plus legal costs.

As the government seeks to recoup some of the costs by selling shares in the utility, Bowen held up the three decade-long struggle as a cautionary tale. “It has significantly prevented us from going into renewables and we do not believe any country, any small country, should enter any such agreement,” he said.

In the 1980s, almost all developing countries had nationally owned electric utility companies. The only major exception was Chile, then run by free-market dictator General Augusto Pinochet. In the 1990s, they started to sell them to private companies, cheered on by institutions like the World Bank.

One of those countries was Grenada. In 1994, on advice from the World Bank, it privatised its electric utility, Grenlec. The then government sold a controlling interest to a small family firm in Florida called WRB Enterprises, which made its money primarily by selling Caterpillar construction machinery and whose only electricity experience was in part of the Turks and Caicos.

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Bowen, who ran Grenlec when it was state-owned, described the privatisation contract as one-sided and “the worst deal that could ever have passed” for Grenadians.

Bob Blanchard, chief executive of WRB, disputed that characterisation, telling Climate Home News the company shouldered its fair share of risk. “Every decision we made if it backfired came on the stockholders not the rate-payers,” he said.

Among the deal’s conditions was that, if the country’s currency collapsed, there was civil unrest or its power supply was wrecked by a hurricane, flood or fire then the government would have to buy Grenlec back. Any change to the law that impaired the value of Grenlec’s assets could trigger a “repurchase event”. The price would be determined by a formula in the contract which Bowen says “had nothing to do with fair value”.

Meanwhile the rate-setting framework allowed Grenlec to pass on any increase in the oil price to consumers.

Between 2011 and 2015, Grenada’s energy costs per kilowatt hour were between four and ten times more expensive than those in the USA, although similar to some Caribbean neighbours’. In a recent press conference, Grenadian foreign minister Oliver Joseph described high electricity costs as “stifling economic growth” by putting off manufacturing companies from investing.

Gas prices are going up again today. Grenlec also said that their fees are increasing because of the rise in the cost of fuel.

— Ashleigh (@_Ashess_) July 17, 2018

As solar power costs dropped, rooftop panels could have been a cheap and clean alternative for Grenadians. But they had to get a licence from Grenlec and sell any excess electricity to them, or face up to six months in prison. The number of licences available was limited – to avoid overloading the grid at particular locations, according to WRB.

Originally, surplus electricity from rooftop solar was sold to Grenlec through a “net metering” scheme, with a ten-year fixed price of $0.17 per kWh. But, Blanchard said, this was “very costly to the company”. It was replaced with “net billing” system, under which Grenlec deducted the cost of the fuel it would otherwise have used to supply the property. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), this “resulted in limited installation of installed capacity, as consumers perceive the payback period as too risky”.

The only problem I have with WRB and Grenlec is the monopoly on electricity. If I wanna get off the grid I should be able to

— Grenadian Christian Soldier (@nickyb_zero3) March 13, 2019

In this monopolistic system, Grenlec would have to drive any large-scale transition to renewables. This transition did not take place. Grenada achieved barely a tenth of its target to get 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2020.

The government blames the 1994 deal which it says gave Grenlec no incentive to invest in renewables. The Inter-American Development Bank agreed, saying the deal “enabled a monopolistic, fossil fuel biased development of the electricity sector, severely hampering the development of renewable energy technologies”.

WRB’s Blanchard insisted the lack of progress was “not through lack of trying” on the company’s part. He blamed Bowen’s conservative New National Party, complaining the government had not supported attempts to purchase land from the state or absent private landowners for solar and wind farms.

What’s not clicking for Grenada? Truly. We just have our renewable resources going to waste. Talk, talk, talk bit no action https://t.co/HeScr8xqBd

— 谢奈尔 (@itsShay_nell) October 22, 2020

In 2016, a World Bank-financed project led to reforms which shortened Grenlec’s 80-year license, opened up electricity generation, changed the way electricity prices were set and took away its tax concessions.

This draft law was overseen by a consultant who was paid $115,000 by the World Bank to advise on the implications of the reforms on the 1994 deal and “strategies to avert arbitration”. Two more World Bank-financed consultants then reviewed the law.

After all that, WRB argued the law was a “repurchase event” and took Grenada to the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Icsid) to try and force a sale.

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Following a two-year court case and nearly $15 million in legal costs, the three Icsid arbitrators ruled in WRB’s favour. They ordered Grenada to pay the company $58m plus costs – nearly a tenth of the country’s $786m projected 2020 revenue – to buy back a share in Grenlec.

According to Bowen, the case caused such embarrassment for the World Bank that its president asked Grenada’s prime minister to make it go away with a settlement. “It was not looking pretty at all,” Bowen said, “you get the World Bank loan to change the legal framework and then it was the court arm of the World Bank who imposed such a ruling. I think there was embarrassment at the highest level of the World Bank… their programme caused us to be in this position and I think they are very very conscious of that.”

Blanchard also criticised the World Bank. “They were funding an effort that was ill-conceived and was going to potentially run down the risk of where we ended up with an Icsid case and an arbitration. Their position was that all they are doing is providing the funding. What the government does with that funding is up to the government.”

This case could have consequences for other nations. While there is no concept of “precedent” in international law, Icsid arbitrators can take “inspiration” from past rulings.

The tribunal ruled that WRB was under no legal obligation to share the government’s view of Grenada’s best interest. Martin Brauch, a legal researcher from the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, told Climate Home this ruling ran “dangerously close” to denying the government’s right, which is enshrined in international law, to determine the public interest and regulate accordingly. “Its decision may have that detrimental effect,” he added.

Gus Van Harten, a lecturer in international investment law at Osgood Hall law school, said that investor-state dispute settlement law is “full of these failed privatisation deals – these terribly negotiated deals”. He added that the ruling “shows how energy privatisation contracts can bind governments for generations”.

Having been forced to nationalise Grenlec, the government is now trying to sell shares in Grenlec – but does not expect to get what it paid for them. This time, Bowen said they only want to sell to Grenadians. The plan is to install a “competent management company to take it into the 21st century”.

So when things settle a bit more, we buying shares with Grenlec awa? Or we don’t trust? pic.twitter.com/hPEff4AGO1

— Krissy (@KrissyLionz) December 30, 2020

With control of energy policy, the government is aiming for at least 30% (and up to 100%) of electricity to be generated renewably by 2030. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates it has the potential for 20 MW of wind power, 25-50 MW of solar power and more than 50 MW of geothermal. The country’s electricity generation capacity is currently around 50 MW. 

Despite the bad experience, Bowen said, the government is still looking to the World Bank for support, along with other multilateral development banks and the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Most climate finance from rich countries is in the form of loans, many of them on not so generous terms. Bowen called for grant funding. “If we get grants we can make the price come down significantly and maybe over 30 or 40 years we could cover the $63m we paid due to this whole scenario between the World Bank and ourselves,” he said.

The World Bank declined to comment.

This article was updated to clarify that the government was planning to divest shares in Grenlec, not find a new private buyer.

The post Why Grenada had to nationalise its electricity for $60m to pursue renewables appeared first on Climate Home News.

This year has brought more storms strong enough to be named than any other since records began. It is the first year in which two hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic in November, past the storm season’s peak.

Experts said rising sea temperatures linked to climate change had contributed to the hurricanes’ strength, along with factors like the La Nina weather phenomenon. US president-elect Joe Biden linked climate change to the “increasing frequency of these powerful storms”.

I’m keeping in my prayers all of our friends and neighbors in Hurricane Iota’s path and those impacted by Hurricane Eta across Central America. The increasing frequency of these powerful storms is another reason that fighting climate change will be one of my top priorities.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 17, 2020

Before hitting Nicaragua on Monday evening and killing at least six people, Hurricane Iota devastated the small Colombian island of Providencia off the Nicaraguan coast with wind speeds up to 160 miles per hour (260kmph). Colombian president Ivan Duque said that two people have died and one is missing.

Alicia Fernandez is an environmental advocate and professional in California with many relatives in Providencia. She told Climate Home: “There was not one home that was unaffected. Every single house on Providencia was affected by the hurricane. As of now, it’s not liveable. They’re evacuating everyone to Saint Andres [a nearby Colombian island].”

She added: “My dad came in his twenties to California to make a better life for himself and our family. He finally finished constructing our house [in Providencia] about four years ago and now this. He worked his whole life to build that house and we are not sure how much of it is still standing.”

Alicia Fernandez’s family home pictured the day before the hurricane (Picture: Alicia Fernandez)

“This is all climate change,” she said. “This is all due to huge countries like the US, like Europe, like China, starting back from the industrial revolution emitting greenhouse gases. Natural disasters are just going to become more frequent and more extreme as developed countries continue to emit. The ones who are most highly affected are the developing ones like Providencia, Nicaragua and Honduras who don’t have the resources to be able to withstand this type of damage.”

In the short-term, she said the islanders need food, water, clothing as they “have nothing” and their homes must be rebuilt. Eco-tourism is its main source of income and that infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, she added. “I hope that we can get support from other developed nations and organisations who value and have an interest in our climate crisis and helping people who’ve been affected.”

Vietnam braces for Typhoon Molave, in worst tropical storm season for decades

After hitting Providencia, the hurricane continued towards Nicaragua, reportedly killing six people, displacing 62,000 and affecting 400,000 in the same part of the country which was hit worst by Hurricane Eta.

Anaitee Mills is a World Bank climate change and disaster risk consultant. She is originally from Guatemala and now working on Jamaica’s climate policy. She tweeted that vulnerable countries need to “urgently step up in early warning systems and resilience building. Today is Providencia and Nicaragua… tomorrow could be us!”

When asked if the international community and developed countries should do more to help, she agreed. “But it’s important to emphasize that this is not a one man show, we need to get all hands on deck. Political and local leadership is key to mobilize the technical and financial support of donors,” Mills said.

Carlos Manuel Rodriguez is head of the Global Environment Facility and a former energy and environment minister of Costa Rica. He tweeted: “My heart are with my Nicaraguan and Honduran brothers. Two huge hurricanes in the last two weeks. Forests fires, pandemic and now hurricanes are not just hallmarks of a bad year. Welcome to the Anthropocene!” He added that Central America should invest in increasing forest cover to become more resilient to hurricanes.

After two huge hurricanes in Central America the country with the highest forest cover overcomes better the impacts and has less economic damages . The region has lost 20% of its forests in the last 20 years. We need to invest in climate reliance: nature base solution! pic.twitter.com/IOXlpnP99x

— Carlos Manuel Rodriguez (@cmrodrigueze) November 18, 2020

Climate experts told Climate Home that global warming is making storms more intense and dangerous.

Liz Stephens is a natural disaster expert at Reading University. She told Climate Home: “This Atlantic hurricane season has seen a record number of named tropical cyclones, and Iota is the most intense to develop so late in the season. We are currently experiencing a La Niña event which is known to increase the likelihood of storms forming in the Atlantic, but warmer sea temperatures as a result of climate change are expected to drive more intense storms with stronger winds and higher rainfall totals.”

Chris Holloway, a meteorology professor at Reading University, said the Caribbean sea was around 1C warmer than normal before hurricane Eta. This is “significant” and “there were still slightly above-average sea temperatures in the greater Caribbean region when Iota was intensifying, which likely contributed to its rapid intensification,” he said.

Climate change makes the probability of very strong cyclones, like Iota, higher in general, although there is still scientific debate about how much this probability is expected to increase, Holloway said. Scientists are most confident that climate change will affect hurricanes in three ways. First, sea level rises make storm surge from any cyclone more dangerous. Second, storms will be rainier since warmer air can hold more water vapour. Third, storms will shift towards the north and south poles.

Ilan Kelman is a professor of disasters and health at University College London, stressed that poverty and inequity were what made people vulnerable to these “un-natural” disasters. “Irrespective of how human-caused climate change is affecting hurricanes, Central America does not need to have hurricane disasters, if vulnerabilities are fully tackled.”

The post Hurricanes Iota, Eta devastate parts of Central America in record-breaking season appeared first on Climate Home News.

Five years after the Paris Agreement was adopted, governments are under pressure to submit tougher climate plans to the UN ahead of a critical climate summit in Glasgow, or Cop26, still scheduled for November.

This is the first test of the ratchet-up mechanism built in the Paris accord.

More than 100 vulnerable and developing countries representing about 15% of global emissions have expressed their intention to increase their climate plans, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), according to a tracker by the World Resources Institute.

But their efforts could be delayed after international organisations which support developing countries design and deliver their climate plans have had to postpone national coordination meetings and workshops.

“We are entering into unknown territory,” Jahan Chowdhury, in-country engagement director for the NDC Partnership, which supports about 75 countries design and deliver their climate plans, told Climate Home News.

“I am not sure if countries are going to be submitting their NDCs in 2020,” he added.

Chowdhury said the NDC process usually required about three large in-country meetings with a broad range of national stakeholders and five smaller, more focused, meetings. Some, but not all, meetings could be moved online.

“We will not be able to replace 100% of these meetings,” he said, adding that the whole-society approach advocated by the NDC Partnership was more difficult to implement.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

Chowdhury insisted plans were being put in place to ensure the NDC Partnership and its international partners could “redouble our efforts to make up for the lost time” when the immediate crisis passes.

But uncertainty about timing remains.

Frank Rijsberman, director-general of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), which supports about 20 countries formulate more ambitious NDCs this year, said “consultations with governments are one after the other coming to a halt”.

“The governments are trying their very best to adapt to the situation,” Rijsberman told CHN, adding the GGGI has moved meetings online as much as possible, with positive results so far.

“We are pretty positive about the seriousness that we see in many countries to make NDCs stronger,” he said.

“It was always challenging to get all the work done by the Cop,” citing some countries stating the Paris Agreement requires them to submit new or updated plans by the end of the year, rather than by the Glasgow summit.

So far, only four nations have submitted enhanced NDCs to the UN – the Marshall Islands, Suriname, Norway and Moldova.

In private, negotiators are also expressing concerns about how the NDC enhancement process can continue to move forward given the circumstances.

One developing country diplomat said the delay of domestic consultation processes could mean enhanced NDC design could be significantly postponed or risked being limited.

Coronavirus: China’s economic slowdown curbs deadly air pollution

Among least developed countries, some are in the midst of developing new NDCs, but others have not begun “as they are still looking for funding to undertake the process,” said Anna Schulz, of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), who specialises in supporting vulnerable countries in the climate negotiations.

“The virus could also delay the start of their NDC development if it impacts the capacity of partner organisations and funders to release funding,” she warned.

The impact of the economic slowdown on developing countries’ ability to toughen their climate plans this year is a growing concern.

Belize’s ambassador to the UN Janine Felson, who leads the Alliance of Small Island States’ (Aosis) work on climate finance, told CHN the economic fallout from the pandemic was “significant”.

“We are very concerned about the implications for much needed progress,” she said, adding “our commitment to ambitious climate action is unshaken”.

Aosis said it would support its members in moving forward with their climate action agenda.

For Rijsberman, a drastic economic downturn and the risk that rich countries could slash their climate finance budgets for developing nations was “a more important threat to the Paris Agreement than the delay in meetings and consultations”.

Developing countries’ conditional targets – pledges that are dependent on receiving finance and technological support – will be affected first, he added.

In 2009, rich nations promised to mobilise $100 billion in climate finance for developing nations every year by 2020, from both public and private sources. Those amounts are meant to rise in the 2020s.

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Earlier this week, an analysis by the International Energy Agency warned the collapse of oil price could cut revenues of vulnerable producing countries such as Nigeria and Iraq by up to 85%.

Between developing countries’ ambition for setting new climate plans and resources available to them to implement it, “there is likely to be a mismatch,” said Chowdhury, who warned the quality of NDCs should not be compromised because of a delayed timetable.

“Whether it’s going to have an impact on their ambition that is not known,” he added. “Climate action cannot happen in absence of wealth creation – without this clear loop taking place it’s going to be challenging.”

Yamide Dagnet, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute, warned again speculating on the current public health crisis’ impact on ambition this year. “The next few months will be critical,” she said.

Dagnet added stimulus packaged designed to prop up the economy should be aligned with the Paris Agreement goals and boost low-carbon activities that can create growth and jobs.

“Everything has come to standstill but it does not mean we can’t bounce back,” she said. “We should not shift gear on climate action.”

The post Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Yet amid this wave of deforestation, two countries are bucking the trend.

In fact, Colombia and Costa Rica saw not only a drop in deforestation rates, but renewed efforts to restore previously degraded forests that generated revenue for their economies.

What did these two verdant countries have in common? Both have imposed taxes on carbon emissions.

Economists and scientists agree that carbon taxes help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating an incentive for people to use less fossil fuels. But that’s not all they can do, as we and our co-authors – ministers from both countries – note in an essay published in the journal Nature.

Carbon taxes are also effective at reducing the greenhouse gas emissions created by the destruction of tropical rainforests, making them even more critical to addressing the climate crisis.

If tropical deforestation were a country, it would be the world’s largest emitter after China and the United States. Moreover, tropical rainforests remove carbon from the atmosphere: The Amazon, for example absorbs five percent of global carbon emissions every year.

This means that when we cut down our rainforests, we also eliminate one of our best tools for addressing the climate crisis.

But in both Colombia and Costa Rica, deforestation rates are down, while revenues to fund forest restoration efforts are up.

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The programmes have different structures but similar impacts. Since 1997, Costa Rica’s carbon tax has helped to protect and restore lands across a quarter of the country. It generates $26.5 million in revenue every year, which the government then pays out to farmers and landowners that commit to rainforest protection or restoration on their property.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s programme has generated more than $250 million in revenue over the past three years. More than a quarter of that revenue goes toward environmental causes such as reducing deforestation and monitoring protected areas.

These programmes also offer a counterpoint to the argument that carbon taxes disproportionately impact people with lower incomes.

In Costa Rica, the government helps lower-income residents to complete their applications, and it prioritises lower-income regions when distributing payments. As a result, two out of every five people who receive a payment from the programme live below the poverty line.

We wanted to see what would happen if other countries adopted similar policies, so we analysed their potential impact on 12 countries with tropical rainforests across Africa, Asia and South America.

Our model found that if all 12 countries adopted a policy like Colombia’s, these countries would collectively generate $1.8 billion every year. If they decided to adopt an even more ambitious proposal in the face of increasing global emissions, their revenue would soar to nearly $13 billion — equivalent to the GDP of Nicaragua.

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Either scenario would have a profound impact on protection and restoration efforts. Countries facing the biggest threats from deforestation, like Indonesia, would have robust funding streams to help restore devastated landscapes.

Other countries, like Mexico and Malaysia, would be able to better monitor their protected areas. And every country would reduce the public’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Our research shows that a carbon tax is one of the most effective investments a country can make, and a particularly easy initiative for countries with existing carbon offset programs like Peru and Ecuador.

It offers a powerful tool for governments to fight deforestation, reduce emissions and support rural communities. Governments should consider it, and international institutions should encourage it.

Science tells us that humanity has about a decade to change course and avoid a worst-case climate scenario. A carbon tax in tropical countries would go a long way to that end — while helping those who are most vulnerable to climate impacts.

Edward Barbier is university distinguished professor at the Department of Economics, Colorado State University and Sebastian Troëng is executive vice president of Conservation International.

Their research was published this week in Nature.com together with Colombia’s Minister of Environment Ricardo Loranzo and Costa Rica’s Minister of Environment and Energy, Carlos Manuel Rodriquez. 

The post Carbon taxes are key to stop deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.

The culprit, called sargassum, turns clear-blue sea water a murky brown and smells like rotten eggs when it washes ashore and starts to rot.

The seaweed is a natural occurrence on beaches in the Caribbean and elsewhere. It’s part of an ecosystem for fish, crabs and birds.

But it has proliferated dramatically in recent years, covering shores with thick layers of the weed and forcing tourism officials to clean it up so visitors keep coming.

It is an icky nuisance for tourists and an economic and environmental disaster.

“We came from over there, looking for a spot that is cleaner. But it is this way everywhere,” said Maria Guadalupe Vazquez, 70, pointing off into the horizon as she lounges in a beach chair in Miami Beach.

Authorities brought in trucks and front-loaders Friday to scoop the stuff up and haul it away. They know this is no long-term solution, however.

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One problem is global warming – the hotter the ocean, the more these weeds reproduce, said Steve Leatherman, an environmental expert at Florida International University.

But the bigger problem is the Amazon river, he added.

Scientists say that starting around 2011, much more land along that mighty waterway was cleared for farming.

But it yields a poor, muddy red soil so farmers use a lot of fertiliser, which rains wash into the river, where it flows into the Atlantic. And the fertiliser ends up fertilising the sargassum.

“Now there’s 20, or 30, 50 times more, 100 times more than we’ve ever had before,” said Leatherman.

“We think this is going to be the new normal so we are going to have to find a way to deal with this, and it’s going to be difficult,” said Leatherman, aka Dr Beach, as he drove by piles of sargassum on Miami Beach.

The stuff is nothing new. When Christopher Columbus saw a bloom of sargassum to the east of the Bahamas, it was so thick he thought it was an island.

That was out at sea, however.

“What happens out in the Atlantic Ocean, it’s fine. But now this is an economic and environmental disaster,” said Leatherman.

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The pernicious effects are many: fishing boats have trouble starting their engines. Beaches are disgusting for tourists. Fish choke because the seaweed absorbs too much oxygen. Turtles struggle to find a place to lay eggs. When they do, the babies cannot make it from the shore out to sea. And dead seaweed sinks, smothering coral reefs.

No one has calculated how much damage is being done to countries’ fishing and tourism industries.

In the British Virgin Islands, the layer of seaweed is two meters thick. Punta Cana, a beach in the Dominican Republic that is famous for its clear water, has turned brown.

Barbados recently declared a national emergency. Mexico has called in the navy to restore the beauty of tourist hub Cancun.

“I don’t know what’s going on but it’s really not a good sight to see, you know what I’m saying? We’re tourists,” said Sed Walker, 48, who was visiting from Los Angeles.

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A study published in July by the University of South Florida in the journal Science concluded that the seaweed problem, which started in 2001 and showed peaks in 2015 and 2018, is here to stay.

Satellite imagery shows blooms of sargassum form at the mouth of the Amazon. From there it spreads across the Atlantic, from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to Africa.

Scientists named it the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB). In 2015 and 2018, it stretched over nearly 5,592 miles. In June of last year, its biomass exceeded 20 million tons.

The study blamed the sargassum explosion on discharges of fertiliser in the Amazon and natural nutrients along the coast of Africa.

“A critical question is whether we have reached the point where recurrent GASB and beaching events may become the new norm,” wrote Chuanmin Hu, the lead author of the study and a professor of optical oceanography at the university.

“Under continued nutrient enrichment due to deforestation and fertiliser use in agriculture,” Hu wrote, “the answer is likely positive.”

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