Just 50% of 4.5 million people in Harare and four satellite towns currently have access to the municipal water supply, the city authority told Climate Home News.

“There is a rotational water supply within the five towns,” Harare city council corporate communications manager Michael Chideme said. “Some people are getting water five days a week especially in the western suburbs, but the northern suburbs are going for weeks without a drop in their taps.”

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Chideme said people were either depending on water merchants, open wells, streams or several council-drilled boreholes. “The situation is bad, period!”

Dr Jean-Marie Kileshye from WaterNet warned Harare’s water was highly polluted: “Water-borne diseases linked to these boreholes are on the rise, but people have had to take in their own hands water supply because the utility has failed to provide water.”

Hardlife Mudzingwa, of Harare’s Community Water Alliance, said 10 typhoid cases were reported during the first week of July in the southwestern suburb of Glen View.

Cities around the world are facing increased water stress. Last week, the Indian city of Chennai began using trains to ferry in emergency supplies after rains failed. In 2018, Cape Town in South Africa avoided a city-wide water network shutdown by just a few months.

Zimbabwe is getting warmer as the climate changes and heavy rains and droughts are becoming more intense. In Harare, rains are expected in October at earliest, according to James Ngoma of the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department.

In 2018, a drought warning was issued to Zimbabwe by the Southern Africa Development Community. But those messages were not getting through, said Brad Garanganga, a climate scientist from Zimbabwe. Under-resourced meteorological departments had not been able to help policy makers “make decisions to take action on this type of important information ahead of time rather than wait until a crisis hit”.

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Harare obtains raw water from four dams: Harava, Seke, Chivero and Manyame. Harava and Seke are completely dry. This has led Harare city council to decommission the Prince Edward water treatment plant, which is fed by those dams.

This has left only one water treatment works – Morton Jaffray – supplying water to Harare and the four other satellite towns.

The dams that feed Morton Jaffray – Chivero and Manyame – are larger and closer to capacity, said Harare mayor Herbert Gomba. But they are “heavily polluted”, requiring more than 10 chemicals to purify. Upstream towns dump domestic, sewage, agricultural and mining waste into the rivers that feed the capital’s dams. The city is spending $3 million a month on water treatment chemicals, Gomba said, forcing it to restrict the amount released.

Decreased water levels at the highly-polluted Lake Chivero (Photo: Justin Mutenda/Herald)

Harare’s daily demand is around 1,200 million litres (Ml). Gomba told CHN the city was producing around 450Ml a day. Last month, Harare City Council recommended the water situation be declared a national emergency.

Community organiser Mudzingwa said he believed the city supplies to be less than 100Ml/day. Companies that packaged and sold bottled water to supermarkets and hotels were still receiving municipal supplies, while residents saw their taps turned off, he claimed.

Harare’s water system was designed to service a population of 350,000 people, said Kileshye. The last upgrade was in 1994, but the country has since been in near-constant economic crisis. The city council’s website says some sections of infrastructure have been in use for more than 60 years, “way beyond their economic life of at least 15 years”.

Chennai: Trains deliver emergency water to drought-hit city

With this in mind, in 2011, the Zimbabwean government signed a loan of $144m from the China Export-Import (Exim) Bank to upgrade its water infrastructure.

The government has accessed $72m, according to Gomba, with which the Morton Jaffray water treatment plant was rehabilitated. But five distribution centres and two sewage treatment plants were yet to rehabilitated.

Mudzingwa raised questions over how the other half of the loan was administered, saying: “A 2014 internal audit report produced by City of Harare showed that there was inflating of quotations on materials that were bought through the loan. Corruption marred the water project with commodities overpriced, hence the government was not able to access the full amount.”

Climate Home News launches African reporting programme

Gomba rejected corruption allegations. “We never received liquid money, but equipment procured from China. It was due to the government’s inability to honour previous loans following the economic crisis that hindered access to the balance, not corruption.”

The mayor added that non-payment of residential and commercial rates was hampering his administration from effectively delivering water. Even after rehabilitation, he warned supplies from Prince Edward and Morton Jaffray works would reach only 770Ml per day, leaving a shortfall of 430Ml.

“We have to construct three new dams, to add about 840 million cubic metres. But over time Harare has to decommission the old dams and allow them time to rehabilitate naturally,” said the mayor.

Map: Two of Harare’s four reservoirs, Chivero and Manyame, seen to the west of the city, are heavily polluted.

In 2016, the Zimbabwean government signed a contract with a Chinese contractor Sinohydro to construct a dam northeast of the capital Harare. Mudzingwa said construction of Kunzvi-Musami Dam – 67 km outside Harare – was estimated to cost $850-900 million. But the project was not new.

“The discussion on the construction Kunzvi-Musami Dam as an alternative water source started as early as 1990 but is still not ready,” he said. “The central and local government have failed us on water supply.”

Mudzingwa agreed an urgent infrastructure upgrade was needed to solve the water challenges in Harare but he stressed the need for budget transparency. “We must also ensure citizens are involved actively in water governance framework and smart coordination between water sectors,” he said.

Council spokesperson Chideme said the city was running education programmes for citizens, “to minimize pollution of available water resources and while effectively using the available water sparingly so that we do not run out of water”.

“Technology by itself will not be good enough,” said WaterNet’s Kileshye. “The people across the whole spectrum from households, industries need to be made aware that they are part of the solution to sustainable water in cities.”

This article was produced as part of an African reporting programme supported by Future Climate for Africa.

The post Two million in Zimbabwe’s capital have no water as city turns off taps appeared first on Climate Home News.

The wagons were hauled by a special locomotive, decorated with flowers and with a “Drinking Water for Chennai” banner on its front.

Four special trains a day have been called up to bring water to Chennai – India’s sixth most populous city – from Vellore, some 125
kilometres away, to help battle the drought.

The first consignment will be taken to a water treatment centre before being distributed in trucks to different parts of the metropolis on Saturday.

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Chennai has seen only a fraction of the rain it usually receives during June and July. During a similar crisis in 2001, trains were also needed to bring water to the city of 4.9 million people.

The bustling capital of Tamil Nadu state normally requires at least 825 million litres of water a day, but authorities are currently only able to
supply 60% of that.

With temperatures regularly hitting 40C, reservoirs have run dry and other water sources are dwindling further each day.

The Chennai metro has turned off its air conditioning, farmers have been forced to stop watering their crops, and offices have asked staff to work from home.

The city’s economy has also taken a hit as some hotels and restaurants shut shop temporarily and there have been reports of fights breaking out as people queue for water.

The post Trains deliver emergency water to drought-hit Chennai appeared first on Climate Home News.

Yearly, we produce five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from crop and livestock production.

From seed to mouth, it can be easy to forget how much in terms of production goes into our food. So here’s a couple of things you may not already know about the carbon footprint of your favourite dishes.

1. Sandwich fillers

Chicken isn’t the most carbon-intensive meat, but it may come as a surprise to know that some of our favourite veggies have an equally poor carbon record.

Researchers from the University of Manchester recently calculated the carbon footprint of ingredients in British sandwiches. For sandwich eaters, cutting out tomatoes from a classic BLT (bacon, lettuce, and tomato) may be better for the environment.

Natural gas and electricity are used for the heating and lighting of greenhouses for tomatoes in the UK, contributing to their high carbon footprint. A 2009 report by the WWF found that in the UK, tomato, pepper, and cucumber production is worse for the environment than chicken and turkey.

2. Tofu of us consider everything

Demand for soy is driving deforestation, but think again before you put all the blame onto tofu eaters or the vegan movement. Around 70% of the global soy production is fed directly to livestock.

Beef racks up to 105kg of Co2e per 100g, while tofu produces less than 3.5kg. Trying to feed all those cows has meant that the expansion in soy has led to deforestation and the decline in other valuable ecosystems that store carbon. The Cerrado, a savanna ecoregion of Brazil, has lost half of its natural vegetation to soybean plantations.

One study found that deforestation related to soy production in Brazil is responsible for 29% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

Microplastics in the Azores (Photo: Creative Commons)

3. Something fishy about that

Maybe not strictly carbon footprint related, but microplastics, tiny pieces ranging from 5 millimetres down to 100 nanometers in diameter, are everywhere and a recent article from the World Economic Forum suggested that they have been found in a range of foods from fish to honey, chicken, and beer.

Besides polluting seas and oceans, microplastics are swallowed by fish and other marine creatures and enter our system when we eat seafood. Land animals also consume microplastics, although, unlike with fish, we tend not to eat their digestive systems.

4. Organic isn’t always better

Organic food has an image of health and sustainability but is not necessarily better for the climate than non-organic food. One study published in Environmental Research Letters found exactly that in June 2017.

“Organic systems require 25 to 110% more land use, use 15% less energy, and have 37% higher eutrophication potential than conventional systems per unit of food,” the study found. “In addition, organic and conventional systems did not significantly differ in their greenhouse gas emissions or acidification potential”.

Beetroot burger (Photo: George N)

5. Bleeding burgers

There are a variety of reasons why someone would consider going vegetarian, with studies suggesting that going vegetarian “can cut your carbon footprint in half”. While some vegetarians may miss the flavour of meat, we can’t be certain how many miss being reminded that that’s what they’re eating.

Now, vegetarians and vegans can treat themselves to a meatless patty that literally bleeds… beetroot juice. Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Naturli are some of the companies working on bringing meat-free ‘bleeding’ burgers to the mass market. 

These burgers are either grown in labs or made from ingredients such as mushrooms, wheat, nuts, coconut oil, beetroot and soy, and have a significantly smaller carbon footprint than the animal-based original. 

Farmers inspecting wheat near Pullman, Washington (Photo: Jack Dykinga)

6. Wheat for it

Most of the emissions from staples such as bread come from the fertiliser used to grow wheat. A 2017 study found that ammonium nitrate fertiliser accounts for 43% of all the greenhouse gas emissions in the production process of a loaf of bread.

But can different types of bread be better or worse for the environment (besides being better or worse for your body)? Cereals used in bread, such as oats and barley, have smaller carbon footprints than typical wheat used in white loaves, as well as rye.

7. One way isn’t the best way

Blanket agricultural production doesn’t work across the world, and it’s important to consider local ecosystems when looking at how best to produce food with the lowest carbon footprint.

A vegetarian typically has a smaller carbon footprint than a meat eater but the plant-based diet isn’t practical everywhere, especially for those who live in dry or cold places that cannot support the growth of most vegetable crops.

Although approximately 1,799 gallons of water is needed per pound to raise a cow, the amount of water needed in order to successfully farm in desert-like climates can be huge and is currently unsustainable. Even though it may be better for the climate to be vegetarian, for some, that just isn’t sustainable.

The post 7 surprising things about the carbon footprint of your food appeared first on Climate Home News.

It has been said that they can be seen as “a house for trees inhabited by people”. The exterior facades feature a total of 21,000 plants, including 800 full size trees.

Recently appointed as president of the Milan Triennale art and design museum, professor Stefano Boeri, is the architect who invented and managed the construction of the “vertical forest”. which was first realised in the 26 and 18-floor skyscrapers in the new business centre of Milan.

CHN: Professor Boeri, how did you come up with the idea of lining skyscrapers with trees?

SB: The idea came from afar; perhaps I first envisioned it when, at the age of 13, I read “The Baron in the Trees” by Italo Calvino: the story of a young nobleman who, by choice, decides to move into a tree and there spend his entire life. Since then, obviously, there were a lot of other hints, but what impressed me most, has been the in-depth study on how big cities in the world rapidly expand, with terrible implications on our environment.

Can you give us some numbers?

Megalopolises grow at impressive speed. To give you an example, Beijing, with its suburbs, has now reached 103 million inhabitants. Cities occupy only 2% of our planet’s land mass but account for 75% of the production of carbon dioxide pollution, the main cause of climate change.

Do you see a way for combating this phenomenon?

Plants are the best defence against these polluting factors. They ingest carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis and absorb thin powders and pollutants. Starting from these considerations, I came up with the idea of planting an arboretum in the centre of a large and populated city. My two vertical forest buildings occupy 1,500sq m of ground and host 21,000 plants. If the same number of living trees were to be planted on a flat surface, it would take an area of at least 30,000sq m.

Was this idea immediately well accepted?

Not really. At the beginning, we had to fight against scepticism, mistrust and suspicion, as always happens when you propose new and never before tested ideas.

China: New environment ministry unveiled, with huge staff boost

How did you overcome all objections?

With a coordinated effort by specialists from a variety of scientific disciplines, ranging from botany to sociology, and from environmental protection to design. We studied everything up to the most minute detail, and came up with many original and innovative solutions for the problems we had to face.

For example, in order to identify the most suitable plantings of full size trees capable of withstanding windy days, we went to Florida, a state with a lot of knowledge about hurricanes, There, we conducted tests in their wind tunnels to identify those varieties be placed on the upper floors. Normally you do not have many windy days in Milan but, when they do happen it may create a problem. To our surprise, we discovered that plants with large leaves and extended branches were most fit to resist the wind.

Now, how do you assess this experience?

Now the picture is quite clear and the experiment has been very successful: 800 high trees are in place since 2012 and we have not lost a single one. Only two trees had to be replaced, but it was due to the fact that they had suffered during transportation. The tenants of the two vertical forest buildings have lived happily in this unique environment since 2014. We also discovered that the presence of the plants reduces the effect of dizziness caused by living high up off the ground.

To get it all done we imagine that you had to devise many new and never before tested technological solutions.

Yes, we had to make difficult decisions and impose solutions that, at the beginning, were not appreciated by everyone. As an example, all the plants on the walls of the buildings are considered as a common condominium service and, as such, are managed as a whole. They have been entrusted to Laura Gatti’s team of specialists who had to develop new and peculiar skills, in relation to the special care that they must devote to the vertical forest; we call them “the flying gardeners”.

Four times a year they come in with a seasonal cycle that consists of two external treatments and two internal ones. By doing this, we are able to guarantee professional uniformity in treatments and, last but not least, a drastic reduction of maintenance costs, with respect to what the individual tenants would have to pay if they had to attend to the plants on their own.

Did everything go as planned or have you had some sort of surprise?

We continue to discover new things. For one, we had the clear demonstration of the intelligence of plants as our trees grow and come very close to the ceiling of the overlying terraces, but never touch them. Also, we found that they widen up to get closer to the neighbouring plants without ever overlapping. In essence, they seem to manage the assigned space with great rationality.

Another surprise: for fighting ticks on the plants without using pesticides, we decided to bring in 9,000 ladybirds from Germany. Shortly thereafter, the ticks had disappeared, but the richly fed ladybirds had multiplied. It did not last long, as the birds rapidly exterminated them. As a result, swallows, now very rare in Milan, have nested on our buildings. The vertical forest has become a new and varied ecosystem.

What impact has the vertical forest had in Italy and in the world?

We have not patented anything, and all the adopted solutions have been published; there are no secrets and we are pleased to see that architecture inspired by the same criteria is developing in other parts of the world, from Japan to China to South America to the north of Europe.

Obviously, since we were the first and the ones who accumulated the more in-depth experience in the field, we are constantly called upon to cooperate and to design new green architectural structures. We work a lot in China, and I am very proud of one of our projects to be built in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where a new complex designed as a vertical forest will be destined to “social housing” for young couples on very low incomes. Interestingly enough, the final cost of these structures, including the green, does not exceed €1,300 per square meter.

In Italy, unfortunately, there is still little attention being paid to urban green areas. Thus we lose incredible opportunities for the development of new jobs and for the managed improvement of the environment. Few people know that in recent years, our wooded areas are expanding in total surface area in spite of forest fires and frequent neglect.

When shall we see the first Vertical Forests in the United States?

I hope soon. 

This article was first published in Italian in America Oggi.

The post ‘We have brought swallows into Milan’, says father of the vertical forest appeared first on Climate Home News.

Eight Delhiites die each day from the city’s bad air. In response, the regional government has made efforts to tackle pollution from coal plants and tailpipe exhaust. But any benefits these policies might produce are threatened by skyrocketing imports of a fuel more polluting than coal or diesel.

Petroleum coke – known as petcoke – is a high-carbon residue produced during the refinement of heavy oils. In its raw form, the high-carbon fuel can be used as a cheap substitute for coal.

Delhi’s environmental authorities say petcoke, cut into coal power station feeds around the capital, is now one of the major sources of smog in the city.

In many parts of the world, petcoke is restricted because of its toxicity. In India however, the fuel is unregulated and burned freely. In this regulatory void, demand has soared, rising 23% a year for the last five years. The country imported 20 times more petcoke in 2016 than it did in 2011.

Delhi is in a race against time. The Supreme Court has ordered the use of petcoke to end but the government has failed to ban or regulate the fuel. Activists and public health officials are desperate to convince politicians to act before winter’s still, stagnant weather conditions begin to pool smog above the capital.

(Data: resourcetrade.earth)

When burned, petcoke emits 5-10% more climate change-causing CO2 than coal. But its true filthiness is revealed in the toxic smog it creates. The key air pollution-causing contaminant is sulphur, which creates oxide gases and particles, both of which are harmful to human health.

In Delhi, a (relatively lax) regulation limits sulphur in coal to 4,000 parts per million. The National Capital Territory’s environmental agency (EPCA) says petcoke being burned around the capital contains sulphur up to 72,000ppm. Petcoke emissions also contain significant amounts of toxic heavy metals – particularly vanadium, nickel and iron.

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Petcoke’s primary use in India is in cement-making plants, where the process limits pollution. But when it is used in the coal power stations, the pollutants emerge unadulterated.

In February, India’s Supreme Court released a finding that called the sulphur content in petcoke “extremely high” and said the fuel was a “major cause of pollution in Delhi”. The court directed the national government to either ban petcoke’s use in power generation outright or place restrictions on the sulphur content, which would be a de facto ban.

So far, no action has been taken. The ministry of environment has asked for more time. The court has given the government a final deadline of 24 October to come up with a plan.

This is a problem that begins, in part, in the tar pits of Alberta and the refineries of the US Gulf coast. India produces its own petcoke. But local refineries can’t keep up with demand and the country has emerged from nowhere to become the largest importer of petcoke on earth.

In 2016, 87% of India’s overseas petcoke came from the US, the world’s largest producer. Its use in US power generation has plummeted due to heavy restrictions. As a result, US refiners and traders are looking to markets with looser regulation and, say environmental campaigners at both ends of the supply chain, fuelling India’s airborne public health crisis.

Until 2014, China was the biggest buyer of US petcoke. But Asia’s largest economy has been on a political journey with air pollution. Sulphur restrictions, brought in in 2016, economic downturn and local bans on new power plants combined to stifle US petcoke’s access to the far east powerhouse. Between 2013 and 2014, the trade was cut in half. (Japan also remains a stalwart consumer of US petcoke.)

Global trade in petcoke is dominated by one country, the US (Data: resourcetrade.earth)

“India has become the dumping ground of petcoke from countries like USA and China,” Sunita Narain, who heads the Centre for Science and Environment, told the Economic Times in February. Narain is not only pushing for a domestic ban on petcoke’s use in power plants but an import ban as well.

Lorne Stockman, a senior research analyst at Oil Change International, said much of the US petcoke was left over from the refinement of heavy oil from Canada’s tar sands. Environmental restrictions in the US prevent it from being burned in most power stations, unless they are fitted with pollution scrubbing technology.

“The US refiners have invested in this heavy oil refining strategy in order to take advantage of the cheap dirty feed stock from Canada,” he told Climate Home. “Then this waste product is dumped into markets that will accept it. It’s a perfect example of the industry maximising its profits while maximising its pollution.”

It is uncertain how much petcoke is being burned around Delhi, according to an EPCA report, as refiners do not collect data on how much is being sold into the capital territory. It is also uncertain what proportion comes from the US, as opposed to domestic refineries. During site visits, however, EPCA inspectors found industries were using imported product.

The trade within India is controlled by some of the biggest, most influential and least transparent corporations in the country, including Adani Enterprises. Adani’s website says it sources petcoke from the US.

Climate Home contacted some of the largest US petcoke exporters. None returned emails except for Ahmed Jama, CEO and president of Florida-based PermuTrade.

“I cannot speak for other companies,” he said. “But I do know petcoke is being sold into the power generation industry and steel industry [in India].”

PermuTrade is a relatively small fish. Jama said his company transports between 0.6Mt and 1.2Mt of petcoke every year, 75% of which goes to the cement industry in India. According to Jacobs Consultancy, Koch Carbon trades more than 20Mt globally every year. Oxbow, another company owned by the Koch brothers, also ranks among the largest global traders.

Jama said his company sells only to cement plants to ensure the “environment is protected”. “We could make a lot more money selling petcoke to many other industries, like the power generation industry and steel industry but we are not all about the money,” he said, adding that an India-wide ban on petcoke “might not be the greatest idea”.

“Petcoke should be banned or limited for captive power plants but not for cement plants. There should be clear sulphur emission thresholds in place for companies to comply with and be held accountable to. If petcoke is cut, the government will need to provide cheap coal or they won’t have power,” said Jama.

In fact, environment authorities are not pursuing a ban on use in cement. But they are trying to control power plant emissions before Delhi again disappears beneath the smog of industry.

The post US exports of tar sands waste are fuelling Delhi’s air pollution crisis appeared first on Climate Home News.

Harvesting the Cordyceps sinensis fungus, called ‘yarsha gumba’ in Nepal, provides a livelihood for Himalayan dwellers. The fungus fetches up to Rs 2,800,000 (£20,000) per kg in raw form. During the peak season of yarsha collection, locals drop everything to pursue fungus hunting, including their usual profession. Even schools remain closed during yarsha collecting seasons.

The fungus grows on the head of the larvae of caterpillars and locals crawl on hands and knees to find it. The work is hazardous in the high altitude regions where the fungus grows, with hunters young and old regularly succumbing to exposure.

Himal Aryal, who has been involved in the yarsha trade for eight years in Rukum, a mountain district west of Kathmandu told Climate Home that 90% of buyers were Chinese.

“It is known as Himalayan Viagra as it helps to increase libido in both sexes, for which only a few rich people buy the fungus,” he said.

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But local yarsha hunters have been experiencing a huge drop in the availability of the fungus in recent years.

Bibek Jhakri, who has also collected the fungus for eight years, said: “I used to find 50-60 yarshas a day during my earlier years, while now finding four to five per day is a matter of luck for me.” He said he was afraid his major source of income won’t last.

Most of the yarsha hunters in Thabang, the western district where Jhakri is from, are worried about their seasonal source of income. They could, a decade before, rely almost exclusively on income generated by yarsha collection. Collectors in hilly areas typically lack academic education and production from agricultural land in those areas is marginal.

A 2016 study published in the journal Biological Conservation, found a combination of climate change and untimely and over harvesting were to blame for the previous falls. Whereas in future the range of the fungus would be reduced by up to a third because less snow would fall in the pastures and snow would melt earlier in spring.

High mountains are experiencing a more rapid change in temperature than lower elevations. “There are strong theories that guide the expectation of climate change being comparatively higher in mountains than at sea level,” Nicholas Pepin, a geographer at the University of Portsmouth, told Climate Home.

In Mugu district, hunters Pabitra Rokaya and Dhir Bahadur Bohara, have experienced sharp decrease in yarsha availability in recent years and people around them have given up. “[We] are able to find only a tenth of what we used to in past years. If the decline happens yearly like this, we could no longer depend on yarsha as our primary source of income,” said one.

The post Climate threatens ‘Himalayan Viagra’ fungus, and a way of life appeared first on Climate Home News.

A widow, Jha lives in one room with her three teenage children. In rural Nepal, widows are treated as social outcasts. They are seen as predatory, potential husband-stealers and their interactions with men are frowned upon.

“You should do what you want,” says Jha, who received training from Empower Generation – an NGO that on Thursday will be awarded a £20,000 Ashden award for promoting the role of women and girls in the clean energy sector.

Another Empower-trained solar entrepreneur, Lalita Choudhary, also faced cultural barriers. “Individuals are going to say all sorts of things” about business women in rural Nepal, she says. Choudhary lives not too far from Jha, in Lahan, Siraha, just 17km from the Indian border. Most people in the area work in agriculture, growing rice and corn or tending to goats and cows.

Runa Jha, in her solar shop in Janakpur, eastern Nepal (Photo: Lucy EJ Woods)

In many communities, women “hide their faces and do not talk to men” and “are not really allowed to get a job,” says Abhilahsa Poudel, Empower Generation’s communications coordinator.

But solar power’s effect on village life is inarguable. Its allows for cleaner home environments, with light into the evenings and the ability to charge a mobile phone.

The social benefits that flow from the women-run solar businesses, means that Jha and Choudhary have become admired for their work by both men and women in their communities. “Everyone wants to be like [Choudhary] and to work like her,” says Poudel.

Jha and Choudhary are two of the 23 women that NGO Empower Generation has trained to be renewable energy entrepreneurs, who in turn, employ and manage a further 170 sales agents. Some of the agents are men, but most are aspirational young women, creating a ripple effect of empowerment through sustainable, profitable employment.

“Before, women were not allowed outside the house, and were told not to study as they have to do the housework,” Jha says.

Empower Generation mentors and supports women registering their own businesses to sell solar lanterns, solar home systems, clean cook stoves and water filters. The trainee entrepreneurs are given lessons on climate change and the adverse effects of fossil fuels, becoming leaders in their community for promoting renewable energy and environmental awareness.

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As women do not traditionally work in energy, Empower Generation’s work aims to “really move the needle on how women are valued,” and change the rural Nepalese culture of women being considered to be the property of their husband’s families, says Empower Generation co-founder Anya Cherneff.

The “priority is to create bad-ass business women,” says Cherneff.

Since owning and running a solar business, Jha has taken on other leadership roles, including leading a community clean-up group. “I feel like I want to lead now; I like to lead,” says Jha.

Many of the women working with Empower Generation apply their skills and confidence to further business ventures and other arenas of public life. Choudhary is currently running as a candidate in local government elections, and Sita Adhikari, Empower Generation co-founder is now a United Nations adviser.

The Ashden awards ceremony on Thursday will host former US vice-president Al Gore as keynote speaker.

Adhikari said that receiving the award “encourages us to work even harder to cultivate more women entrepreneurs who are providing reliable, affordable clean tech solutions.”

The post ‘Bad-ass business women’ bring solar empowerment to Nepal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Since 1 January, the government-run Nairobi Water company has been distributing water piecemeal to more than 3 million residents.

In December, Ndakaini dam – the source of 84% of Nairobi’s water – was only 48% full. Nairobi Water said the rations would ensure that the declining water stored in Ndakaini reached every resident.

The water company projected that by April, the levels in the dam would have risen to normal capacity, replenished by Kenya’s long rains, which traditionally begin in March and fall until May.

But the rains have not arrived and water levels earlier this month at Ndakaini Dam had fallen to a low of 25%. By April 18, despite occasional showers in the city, the rationing programme was still in place.

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According to Nairobi Water’s distribution programme, some parts of Nairobi are receiving water for as little as 12 hours a week. Only a few areas such as the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport are receiving an uninterrupted supply.

Companies seeking water for manufacturing or office use have had to fill their tanks using water transported by bowsers run by private firms, which comes at a higher cost. According to a report by Cytonn Investments, the water shortage was likely to have resulted in job cuts.

Nairobi residents, especially those who cannot afford a means of storing water when it is available in their area, have had to spend extra money to buy the commodity from private vendors. A 20-litre container has been selling for between KES20 and KES100 ($o.20-$1) – a 9000% mark up on the current city tariff.

Nairobi Water’s corporate communications manager Mbaruku Vyakweli said sufficient rain was yet to fall in the Aberdare Forest and around Mount Kenya – the main water catchments for the Thika, Githika and Kayuyu rivers which feed into Ndakaini dam – 82 kilometres away from Nairobi.

“The catchment areas are still dry and we are praying that it rains soon,” Vyakweli told local newspaper The Star.

March to May – known as the “long rains” – are normally wet months in Kenya. But in recent years, peak rainfall season has begun in late April.

Ndakaini dam, pictured here in 2013, is now at just 25% capacity.
(Photo: Ahero Dala)

In March, the Kenyan Met Office predicted the 2017 long rains would fail entirely across large parts of the country.

The crisis comes on the back of a drought in 2016 when the “short rains” of October to December failed to reach some parts of the country. Some areas were severely affected enough for president Uhuru Kenyatta to declare a national disaster.

Recent research from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) project found that additional heat from climate change had exacerbated the 2016 drought by increasing evaporation from the soil.

This year’s water shortage in Nairobi also comes not long after an equally severe shortage that hit the capital in 2011. Eugene Wamalwa, the cabinet secretary in charge of water and irrigation, said the dam capacity witnessed in April mirrors the all-time-low recorded in 2011.

Kenyan Met Office predicts rains to fail sparking crisis worse than 2011

Samwel Mwangi, the deputy director of the Kenya Meteorological Department, told Climate Home a multiplicity of factors were behind the shrinking of volumes in Nairobi’s main reservoir.

“We need to factor in the human population pressure on the natural environment. With the increase in population, natural resources are stretched. You have people clearing forests to do agriculture and all that. All these things affect the way the weather behaves. We are building more cities and all that; so these things have a bearing on how weather and climate behave,” he said.

Currently, 220,000 households in Nairobi are supplied with water and the Nairobi Water Company pumps 550,000 cubic litres a day. As the population and economy grows, that infrastructure is struggling.

“If you look at the population of Nairobi from 2011 to now, you realise there are quite a few changes. The numbers are going up. The water demand is higher,” said Mwangi. He said he was certain there would be a similarly acute shortage within a few years.

Scientists from World Weather Attribution (WWA), who analysed counties in the northwest and southeast parts of the Kenya, agreed.

“The lack of OND [October-November-December] rains in 2016 is expected to occur once every four years while the overall lack of rainfall in 2016 is expected to happen once every five years,” they said in their March report.

The post ‘We are praying it rains soon’ – Nairobi on severe water rations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate change is hardly – if ever – on the agenda, yet, of all the major pitch games, cricket will be hardest hit by a warming world. From the ochre-coloured Australian outback to the windswept Scottish coast, cricket is defined almost entirely by the weather conditions. If they change, so does the essence of the game.

Many of the big cricket-playing nations are on the frontline of climate change. In 2016, a major match in India had to be moved due to a severe water shortage. And pitches in Bangladesh – a country threatened by intense cyclones, rising sea levels and increasing temperatures – are also feeling the pressure.

Sri Lanka and the West Indies are vulnerable to rising sea levels. And intense droughts, interspersed with periods of equally intense rainfall, are disrupting the game in southern Australia.

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In Britain, there is a danger that what are considered to be traditional weather conditions for cricket could disappear within 20 years.

Russell Seymour of the venerable Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) – one of the oldest cricketing bodies in the world – is the UK’s only cricket sustainability manager, and he is deeply concerned about how the game will cope with changes in climate.

“A match can be changed fundamentally with a simple change in the weather,” says Seymour.

“In the morning, sunny conditions make batting easier, because the bowlers can’t get any movement in the warm, dry air. Cloud cover after lunch increases humidity, and the ball starts to move. After a shower, conditions change again.

“Now imagine what happens with climate change. There will be alterations to soil-moisture levels, and higher temperatures will bring drier air, then drier pitches. This will bring a change to grass germination and growth, which in turn affects the pitch and outfield.”

In other words, the assumptions we make about English cricket, its landscapes and rhythms, will no longer apply. The ball may not move in 2025 the way it did in 1985 or 2005. The old-fashioned English seamer could be on his last legs.

The UK’s weather is likely to become ever more erratic. There are indications that longer, drier summers will be interspersed with more intense downpours.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) won’t release precise data on how much cricket has been lost to rain over the last 10 years. But, according to Dan Musson, the ECB’s national participation manager, it is considerable.

“There is clear evidence that climate change has had a huge impact on the game in the form of general wet weather and extreme weather events,” says Musson.

“I’ve been at the ECB since 2006 and we have had to implement flood relief efforts on half a dozen occasions, both in season – particularly in 2007, with flooding in the Midlands and the Thames Valley – and out of season, as in December 2015 when winter storms Desmond and Eva ran through the north of England.

“Wet weather has caused a significant loss of fixtures every year in the last five at recreational level, and posed challenges to the professional game.”

In the UK, the recreational game is most at risk: small clubs have fewer resources to protect against the threat, and more difficulty gaining insurance. And many municipal grounds are located on floodplains because the land is usually cheap and fertile. Games are repeatedly called off.

At grassroots level, the ECB has made some progress. They have commissioned research from the UK’s Cranfield University to identify flood risk, produced guidance for clubs, and they run a small grants scheme to fund wet-weather management and preventative measures.

In 2016, more than £1m was doled out to flooded clubs, which are also encouraged to install solar panels, recycle rainwater and look after their equipment. A further £1.6m has been set aside for 2017.

But at an international level, little has been done to mitigate the impact of climate change. The International Cricket Council (ICC) – the game’s governing body – has not commented publicly on climate change or the challenges it presents to the game, nor outlined a grand plan.

The ICC does not set environmental targets for its members and shows little interest in issues such as reducing emissions.

International tours by various countries fail to take green issues into consideration, with no pressure on members to plan a lower-impact itinerary. A recent winter tour by England to India included a mishmash of cross-country flights, when a more sustainable approach could have been taken.

The men – and it is still predominantly men – who run the game are not scientists or activists: they are often ex-players, sometimes businessmen.

They are juggling huge budgets, balancing television deals with the need to proselytise. No one pretends it is easy. As one commentator on the game observed, the role of administrators has traditionally been to “inure cricket against change rather than to enact it”.

Perhaps those who run the game are not worried about the climate, or don’t see the urgency, or are too busy. But prudent businessmen always look to the future and many corporate organisations around the world are now pressuring for action on climate change.

Cricket is slow-bowling its way into the future. It has plenty to lose in a warming world. It also has a moral responsibility to act.

Tanya Aldred is co-editor of The Nightwatchman, the Wisden Cricket Quarterly, which covers contemporary issues surrounding the game. This article was first published on Climate News Network.

The post Rain stopped play: Cricket ignores its climate threat appeared first on Climate Home News.

Kellen Murugi is an energetic single mother who provides for her three children by trading scrap metal. She lives in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum, which is home to an estimated 600,000 people. The former industrial area still bears signs of its past, with decaying factory buildings standing tall amidst a maze of metal shacks.

The young woman is determined to set aside enough money for her children’s future, but she says that regular flooding makes it very difficult to run her business: “Whenever it rains, the vehicle that comes to collect the scraps of metal and bring them to the recycling plant cannot access the settlement.”

Kellen Murugi says she would leave if she could (Pic: Lou Del Bello)

In Kenya, where about 60 to 80% of the population lives in slums, flooding is a regular menace that disrupts the life of the poor, often making the difference between a small income and an empty plate.

Nairobi’s informal settlements cover only 6% of the total residential land area, yet 60% of the 3 million living in the Kenyan capital calls them home. For many slum residents, living in an insecure environment is not a choice and the prospect of climate change worsening the flooding problem fills them with dread. But escaping climate change is not that easy if you are poor.

Analysis: Can ‘smart migration’ build climate resilience in Africa?

Western leaders, including US president Barack Obama and senior military figures, warn climate change could lead to “mass migration” and a “refugee crisis of unimaginable scale“. If climate change is not addressed urgently, they say, in the near future tens of millions of people will flee from rising sea levels, drought and even conflict exacerbated by harsher environmental conditions.

The evidence available to date paints a more complex picture. A recent study examined the trends in six years of migration and weather data from Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal.

“Many people would assume that extreme heat would force households to send more migrants out,” said Clark Gray, lead author of the study. “That’s what’s happening in Uganda but not in other countries.”

Indeed, in Kenya and Burkina Faso, migration even appears to decline when temperatures rise, suggesting people become “trapped” by environmental misfortune.

Migrating is expensive. Individuals leave behind domestic tasks to be covered by those who stay. Families who move together need somewhere safe to go and money upfront. They also need a place where they know someone, have friends or other family members ready to lend a hand. “You do that when times are good, not when they are bad,” said Gray.

Report: African climate plans in doubt amid slow aid flows

Gray’s study looks at cross-border migration, counting the people who choose to leave their country. But erratic weather and higher temperatures also drive so-called internal displacement, which moves people within country borders.

While Murugi doesn’t plan to move abroad, she would love to leave Kurumu and go back “upcountry” to Meru county where she comes from. But the metal dealing business is very competitive and doesn’t pay that much: “I need to save for when my boys will want to leave our home and rent their own place,” she says. “And in Meru county there aren’t many opportunities either.”

For the time being, the family remains stuck in Nairobi and puts up with the hardships of an increasingly erratic climate.

According to a report released on Friday by research group Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), in 2015, almost 93% of the 1.1 million disaster-related internal displacements across Africa were due to floods.

A child in her recently flooded home, Mukuru (Pic: Lou Del Bello)

The study says that the 1.1m figure doesn’t capture slow-onset disasters such as dry spells, which would significantly increase the total. It highlights the example of Ethiopia, where between August 2015 and May 2016 food insecurity due to drought and water scarcity displaced over 390,000 people. The report points out how poverty acts in tandem with the impacts of climate change, “trapping” people in displacement for many years.

Michelle Yonetani, a senior strategic advisor at IDMC, said Gray’s work shines a spotlight on the complexities of climate change related displacement. Often people move after an extreme event, and some of them are able to go back home soon after. But a significant proportion of them won’t be able to move back.

“Some people return to a place that is not safe anymore,” she said. “Once the crisis is over, disaster risk continues to be very high so they are likely to be faced with recurrent, repeated cycles of displacement.”

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But because recovery can be difficult and slow, their vulnerability increases over time, so they become poorer.

“This is something that the study misses, it doesn’t capture this really important dynamic,” Yonetani says. “It’s not that you are just trapped and can’t move, but you can’t escape from this very vulnerable situation. For me that’s also an important part of the [trapped migrants] idea.”

Researchers want to dispel the idea that global warming will see hordes of people descend on developed countries. “This story that is flying around, about climate change displacing a huge number of people to Europe or to the United States, just does not make sense and it’s not consistent with any of our evidence,” said Gray. “The idea of climate refugees is too simplistic, but that doesn’t seem to have sunk in to the policy and political community.”

Gray believes that if people get stuck in an inhospitable environment, the priority should be to help them where they are. That’s where adaptation, a sector that despite receiving growing attention within the African community still attracts just a fraction of the funding it needs, will be increasingly crucial for the survival of both migrants and trapped populations.

Lou Del Bello’s series of reports on Africa and climate change is funded by CDKN

The post Catch 22: when climate change *prevents* migration appeared first on Climate Home News.

The sticky goo that leaks from the trunks was once used by vintners to seal their amphorae. The resulting turpentine taste, to which Greeks grew accustomed, is still celebrated in retsina long after the practical need for the sealant has passed.

Modern techniques have diminished the amount of resin needed to produce the flavour. Despite the enduring popularity of the wine, production has collapsed to just a third of the 12,000 tonnes collected in 1965.

The first two parts of this series discovered a post-colonial legacy in Australia and Canada, where the loss of traditional land management practices – in those cases indigenous fire farming – was exacerbating the already troubling trends of climate change to put homes and lives at risk.

Collecting pine resin, Greece. Source: Cephas

In the Mediterranean, where the land has been farmed by smallholders for thousands of years, changing land practices are also adding to the danger of climate change.

EU census data shows that in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy the number of farms and farmers is falling. Meanwhile the size of farms is increasing as industrialisation drives agriculture to new scales and focuses economic attention on the most fertile land.

After countless generations, families are abandoning the hills. The amount of forest Greeks use for resin tapping has fallen from 327,500 to 147,500 hectares.

When they are worked, the pines, each one owned by a specific family, are fiercely protected. Goats and sheep keep the undergrowth down, staving off the threat of fire when the brutal heat of summer lies like a dream over the Aegean.

Now the shrubs grow tall and wild. Fires, the like of which have not been known in modern times, are being visited on Greece. Around Athens, the villages on Mount Parnitha burned during massive fires in 2007. Two years later, Marathon and Makri – large satellite towns of the capital – were ravaged.

“This is a size of fire we have never experienced before,” says Ioannis Gitas, an associate professor from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki’s forestry and natural environment faculty. “It is climate change, because we didn’t experience mega fires twenty or thirty years ago. Now we experience mega fires in the country.”

But he adds: “In general we have changed the way we deal with the land. That’s a big problem.”

Fire bombs: a city in the path of climate disaster

Once smallholders abandon less productive land, the forests return, less wood is gathered from the understory and fewer domesticated animals graze beneath the trees.

The return of a wilder Europe has been celebrated by advocates of “rewilding”. It has seen the flourishing of wolves, bears and bison in places they were once lost. But in the hot, dry southern countries of Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, a land full of fuel has lead to the inevitable.

As summer comes to southern Spain, the population doubles as visitors from abroad and other parts of Spain flood toward the sea. Many former farming villages have been transformed into holiday towns, where people have second homes. But all around them, the land is falling back into a wilder, more volatile state.

“The first species to recolonise are shrubs, which are quite flammable,” says professor Emilio Chuvieco from the University of Alcala in Spain.

The picture of how climate change will affect fires in the Mediterranean is complex. In some places, drying out of the landscape could eventually occur to such an extent that plants do not grow. This could limit the fuel available. Other work shows that the amount of land burned could double by 2090.

For now, says professor Emilio Chuvieco from the University of Alcala in Spain, there is a clear trend towards more dangerous and destructive fires.

“Whenever you really have extreme climate conditions, then the likelihood of having very severe seasons is higher than in the past,” he says. “There are fires that affect much larger territories than they used to because there is much less fragmentation.” These larger fires are occurring closer to residential areas than they used to, he adds.

Worst hit in recent times has been Portugal, which accounted for more than half of the burned land in Europe in 2016. More than 200 homes in the Madeira resort town of Funchal were destroyed in August.

In Australia, this series found councils unwilling or unable to convince rate payers to stump up for radical land management techniques beyond periodic fuel reduction burns. In Canada, programmes are in place, but they remain hopelessly underfunded.

So how can economies of the southern Mediterranean, perennially in crisis, hope to combat this threat?

In Spain, the rules of firefighting are being rewritten. Once, says Chuvieco, it would have been anathema to Spanish fire fighters to allow a fire to burn unfought. But now they are simply too ferocious and too many to extinguish.

This may have the unwitting result of positively affecting the size of fires. Forest managers in the US now advocate letting remote fires run their course in order to reduce fuel load and perhaps prevent large fires from moving into inhabited regions in future.

Fire bombs: British Columbia prepares for infernos

One recent study found that adaptation and prevention could reduce the impact of climate change on Mediterranean fires by 74%. But in Greece it is illegal to conduct strategic burns – considered the minimum of fire management in Australia and North America.

Gitas says he has made many representations to government to get in front of this looming crisis. But political ineptitude is as native as retsina at the southern end of the Balkans.

In 1998, the responsibility for fighting forest fires was transferred from the forest service to the metropolitan fire service. But no staff were moved between the departments, says Gitas. This loss of experience led to a lost decade of fire management during the strongest period of economic growth in the country’s recent history.

Now financial crisis has hit, and no-one is interested in handing out money for prevention.

“We have to manage our space better before a disaster, not after. This is common sense, but you know in Europe we are having difficult financial times,” he says. “You talk to the politicians about it. Nobody is going to give you any money for planning. At least in my country. They are going to pay after the fire happens.”

Our dance with the danger of wildfire is getting faster and closer with every season. Talking to fire scientists around the world, you can hear their barely concealed fear as the fuel builds up in the hills.

Lori Daniels, from Vancouver, asked why we delay when we know that acting now will save lives, homes and money in the future?

Looking down on my home town of Hobart in Tasmania, David Bowman described its destruction in appalling detail. Our civilisation’s inability to respond to threat is a pathology, he said: “It’s a fight we have to have with ourselves.”

The post Fire bombs: why is the Mediterranean burning? appeared first on Climate Home News.

But the two share a less merry distinction – they are both sitting ducks for catastrophic fire.

The first article in this series found Tasmania’s capital Hobart facing the twin threats of climate change and a landscape overbrimming with fuel because traditional fire management by Aborigines had ceased with colonialism.

There are strong parallels in BC. As the climate warms, fires are predicted to become more severe, larger and occur more frequently in unusual times of the year.

The times call for bold ideas. Here, authorities are attempting to avert danger with a scheme so radical that one fire scientist in Tasmania calls it “crazy”, although not as crazy as living in a tinderbox.

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“Almost every year for the last five years we’ve said: wow, this is the earliest start to a fire season in a long time or ever,” says Lori Daniels, a forest scientist at the University of British Columbia’s tree ring lab.

The coastal region in BC gets more rain than the interior. Even so, the capital Vancouver’s northern slopes, where Daniels lives, are desperately exposed once the perennial summer drought arrives. Here the city has made trouble for itself. The hills around the harbour were once lined by old wet forests. But those have been logged and replaced by more flammable woods.

“The forests that have grown back are very productive and are a really different structure and now we have more than a million people who live in the vicinity of those forests and are very active ignition sources,” said Daniels. In other words, Vancouverites have laid their bed and manage to set fire to it every chance they get.

To the east, behind the coastal mountain ranges, the densely populated forests of the interior pose an even greater threat to human life and property. A rain shadow leaves timbered communities behind the mountains sitting among the hottest and driest forests in Canada.

At the root of the problem in both Canada and Australia is the European colonists’ toxic relationship to the land.

Daniels says (as yet unpublished) analysis of burning patterns within trees reveals what can only be human-induced fire activity. Abnormal distributions of grasses also hint that the forest ecosystem evolved under a regime of regular burns. Much like Australian Aborigines, the original inhabitants of BC burned the forests in order to manage them.

Modern British Colombian townships nestle into the same forests, but they have changed in perilous ways.

“We moved into the same places that first nations were. But then we’ve eliminated fire,” said Daniels. “We’ve eliminated first nations and their management from the land. And now we have communities surrounded by very dense forest, full of fuel, that are vulnerable.”

Earlier this year, wildfire caused the evacuation of the Alberta town of Fort McMurray. Thousands lost their homes in the costliest disaster in Canadian history (C$3.58bn). But Daniels believes that the geography of British Colombia, with its steep hills and rain shadow cast by the coastal mountains, makes parts of that province even more fire prone than the boreal forests of Alberta.

A large fire burned much of Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park in British Columbia, in 2003. It burned into the city of Kelowna, where 239 homes were destroyed (Photo: Cate Eales/Flickr)

There are 356 communities in BC that have been assessed for fire vulnerability and 298 are considered to live under high or severe risk of catastrophic fire. Yet nearly half have never engaged with the province’s Strategic Wildfire Prevention Initiative (SWPI), which provides funding for fire planning and management. Of the communities who have made a plan, just half of them have actually acted on it.

The ski town of Whistler is a star performer. In summer, the mountains here become hot and dry and the million-dollar lodges sit amid a forest ready to explode. In order to protect these assets, the council has engaged in one of the most expensive and intensive fire management programmes anywhere on Earth.

The forest is thinned out, often by hand, and the understory is dragged away. Only some mature trees are left. This creates an open parkland – more closely resembling the forests that indigenous peoples would have known in the days of regular fire management.

The open forest creates a buffer zone between the woodland and homes. The lack of undergrowth stops fire from climbing into the canopy. It also gives firefighters critical advantages. With the fuel stripped from the understory, crews can fight the fire from places it would have previously been too dangerous to stand with a fire so close by. Water bombing is much more effective is the water actually hits the ground. That requires a thinned out canopy with less tress.

So far, 43,000 ha of forest has been thinned out across BC. The government believes three communities – West Kelowna, Alexis Creek and Barnhartvale – were spared disaster during the 2009 and 2010 fire seasons as a direct result of this work. It’s a vision that Tasmanian fire scientist David Bowman says all vulnerable communities should adopt if they insist on living beside fire-prone woods.

“[The] idea is crazy,” he says. “But living in a firebomb is not? We grafted a European city onto a wild place and we’ve half done it. We’re not going to take our cities and towns away. So we are just going to have to bite the bullet.”

But is it realistic? On the surface, the costs are astronomical. According to Forest Practices Board manager Tim Ryan, the average cost per hectare is $10,000. In communities such as Whistler, says Daniels, where residents have insisted on a careful, aesthetically-sensitive approach, the cost is more than twice that.

Imagine then, the task of securing all of BC, where 685,000 ha of forest borders communities at high risk. If you include communities at moderate risk, the number approaches one million hectares. Even if the rudest, cheapest approach is taken, the cost would approach $10bn.

“Between 2004 and 2015, $78m was contributed in the province of BC towards this preventative fire management,” says Daniels. The gap seems unbridgeable. Until you consider the costs of not doing it.

Report: Saskatchewan denies climate science as wildfires lick its border

In 2003, thirty-three thousand people had to be evacuated from BC’s third city of Kelowna as a wall of fire descended from the hills. The province’s worst fire destroyed more than 230 homes. In that year, the province’s fire fighting bill alone was $750m.

“That’s ten times what we spent over the subsequent decade trying to prevent another $750m year,” says Daniels.

The bill mounts when the disastrous and potentially avoidable damage to homes, communities and the local economy are factored in. The BC government says the net benefit of treatment is more than $7,000 per hectare.

That is before they account for the enormous health costs and impacts on the environment that are the result of large wildfires. The science of estimating these costs is imprecise, but for a guide, one study in 2006 found smoke exposure from a single day of a fire near the city of Edmonton cost the city between $1m and $5m.

“When you start lining up all the actual costs, it justifies spending the money to actually act and try to reduce these fuels that cause such tremendous fires,” says Daniels.

Just like the human response to climate change, which is driving fires towards Canadian homes, prevention is less costly and painful than reparation. But even in wealthy former colonies, the lure of deferred payment is proving a powerful demotivation.

The last in our series, to be run on Wednesday, will look at the Mediterranean, where an ancient landscape is being transformed by modern economics, sending fire into communities that have worked the land for centuries.

The post Fire bombs: British Columbia prepares for infernos appeared first on Climate Home News.

A hot, northerly gale and rolling fireball turn the forest around us into a blast furnace. The oil-filled eucalyptus canopies explode. One by one, the hills around the city catch alight. Then with a great sweep the fire runs up the slopes of Mount Wellington. Chunks of burning wood are flung into the air and rain down on the city. Office buildings, churches, schools and homes (perhaps the one I grew up in) randomly burn. In all, he says, four or five suburbs are destroyed.

That’s the catastrophe, Bowman says, that the residents of Hobart live blithely beside every summer. And the odds are steadily getting worse. Both on land, and in the atmosphere, humans are creating bigger and bigger problems for ourselves.

This Climate Home series will examine a dangerous trend in three distinct but related landscapes – Australia, western North America and the Mediterranean.

In each of these places, climate change adds what Bowman, a professor in fire ecology from the University of Tasmania, calls “the plus”: a dialling up of danger as weather patterns shift towards a more fire prone future.

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He gazes down at Hobart, home to 200,000 people. “I’m horrified at the complete disaster about to unfold,” he says with the bluntness of someone who has given up trying to coax people into listening to him. He could be dismissed as an alarmist. Indeed, he says, he often is. But this cataclysm has happened before.

Almost fifty years ago, on 7 February 1967, a small spot fire in the northern suburbs of Hobart was grabbed by a brutal northerly and sent roaring towards the city.

It was the last day of school summer holidays. A teenaged Mark Nicholson (a friend of my family) was fishing with his grandfather in a clinker-built dingy on Cornelion Bay, a few kilometres from the city centre, when he felt the wind begin to strengthen.

A rough estimate of scale puts the distance between the front at 1:30pm and 2:30pm at 6km. Source: Hobart City Council

“The wind just got harder and harder and hotter and hotter,” he recalls. “The wind was really hot and embers started to land in the bay. Then this fireball raced down through Lenah Valley and ended up setting fire to the Domain [the parkland beside the city centre]. Our house backed on to the Queens Domain so I wasn’t quite sure whether the house was still there.”

Powerless to row to shore against the wind, Nicholson and his grandfather had to tie up to a yacht to prevent being carried across the estuary. They sat and watched as the mountain exploded with flame. It was “terrifying”, he says.

On what became known as Black Tuesday, 62 lives were lost. In just five hours, 2,640 sq km of forest was burned; 1,293 homes were destroyed.

“The capital was a city of terror, with people standing in the streets openly weeping,” reported the Australian Shipress news. Random ember attack had turned suburban streets into a lottery. Grateful, unscathed looked out of their side windows at destituted neighbours. Nicholson’s house survived.

Charles Roberts and Elsa (dog), survey the ruins of the Fern Tree store two months after the Black Tuesday fires (Photo: Stuart Roberts)

In the intervening half century, the city has stretched up its encircling hills, reaching further into the embrace of the forest.

“You can see why they want to do it,” says Bowman. “Wake up in the morning and listen to the birds. It’s marvellous… Culturally we are really decoupled, we want to have it all.” But he believes the piper must be paid.

The memory of Hobartians may have faded; but the land remembers. Behind the city, Mt Wellington looks down, a dominating presence like the famous Table Mountain of Cape Town. Today you can stand on a rocky outcrop and look over the white skeletons of the giants that burned fifty years ago. The young trees are still climbing at their navels.

But Bowman isn’t so much interested in the trees as what lies beneath. On Knocklofty, just behind the suburb in which my mother has her home, twisted thickets of tea tree, black wattle and native cherry make the forests impassable.

“City of Terror”, the Shipress News reports on the 1967 fires in Hobart. (Photo: Nigel Roberts)

It’s this incredible volume of fuel that haunts Bowman, whose own house is just 250 metres from the forest edge. When the fire comes, the undergrowth acts as a ladder for the fire to reach the explosive eucalyptus crowns. The forest, according to Bowman and other fire managers I spoke with, is as primed as it was in 1967.

Now add in the changes to southeastern Australia’s climate as the planet warms. There will be more big wet spells that promote growth, then droughts and heatwaves that make catastrophic fires like 1967 ever more likely.

Screengrab: The Climate Council

Because of the many complex causes of fire – including human population growth – identifying climate driven trends has been difficult. But one trend is clear and unequivocally linked to climate change. Globally, the length of the fire weather season increased by nearly 19% between 1979 and 2013. This has been particularly true in eastern Australia.

Just three years ago, less than an hour’s drive from Hobart, the small rural community of Dunalley was razed by a brutal fire.

“It could just as easily have been Hobart,” says Bowman. “We are not even dealing with the now. How do you deal with the plus?” In the face of this stacking of the climate dice, which will be resolved (or not) in boardrooms and fora far from the provincial green island of Tasmania, it is important to look at the things that can be controlled. This is the creed of what climate wonks call “adaptation”.

Bowman has a radical vision for Hobart’s adjustment to the new normal, but to understand it, he says, we need to walk further around Knocklofty.

On the eastern flank of the hill there is a city council interpretation sign that shows a painting by the colonial artist John Glover. The sign is placed where Glover sat at his easel in 1855. His painting depicts an expansive view of Hobart’s estuary, seen through some tall trees and an open wood.

Looking down the valley today, the difference is startling. No glimpse of Hobart can be seen. The valley is filled by a green wall of small trees and shrubs.

Australians wondering about the difference between 1.5C and 2C of warming? Here's what it means via @climateinstitut pic.twitter.com/bMVtE6GNSP

— Karl Mathiesen (@KarlMathiesen) August 23, 2016

When Hobart was first settled, the woods were open and airy. This was the result of thousands of years of fire management by indigenous Tasmanians, says Andry Sculthorpe, an ecologist and member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. Regular burns diversified the hunting fodder and allowed for easy passage.

While much traditional Tasmanian knowledge was lost amid a particularly severe and brutal programme of colonial eradication, Sculthorpe says there are many clues that reveal the landscape created by his ancestors.

“Where we can see a lot of old campsites in the middle of dense scrub. Well, we can know that they weren’t sitting in the middle of impenetrable thickets in their camp, so that’s the indicator that the country was open,” he says.

Before Aborigines, there were other landscapers. Megafauna, such as the hulking Palorchestes azael – a tapir-like marsupial the length of a horse – crashed about flattening shrubs and mowing down the understory.

None of this means that there have not always been huge bushfires (the Australian term name for wildfires) in Tasmania. But as humans have disassociated from the landscape and left it to go wild, we’ve simply turned up the danger.

“There’s probably always going to be weather patterns where fire is going to be dangerous but I think the extent of damage that we’ll see, with the way the bush is at the moment and they way it was in ’67, is going to be a lot worse than if there had been previous fire management through the country,” says Sculthorpe.

John Glover’s early colonial work. (Photo: Karl Mathiesen)

This breakdown of the human relationship with land and the inherent dangers are not native to Tasmania. Bowman lists off a range of other places – Sydney’s Blue Mountains and the Adelaide Hills in particular – where Australia’s cities are blundering their way into a burning building.

Given the headlong rush towards dangerous climate change humanity is currently engaged in, Bowman and Sculthorpe both advocate controlling the factors close to home. Hobart’s city council does conduct seasonal burning. But the walk I go on with Bowman reveals the inadequacy of the programme. The grasses and leaf litter are blackened and the occasional stump has been torched, but the medium-sized scrub, that ladder to the treetops, remains.

Bowman says the only way to defend against “the plus” is to transform the landscape. This, he says, would involve a drastic slashing of all undergrowth in a 500 metre perimeter around the city. A massive programme of biomass removal to create an open forest buffer around the city.

Bowman sighs when he looks at the Glover painting: “I love it”. The forest, he believes, should be engineered to resemble the painting and the ancestral memories of the Aborigines. He has met with opposition among environmentalists, who believe the forest should be left to its natural state.

“It’s natural in the sense that it will grow like that by itself,” says Sculthorpe. “But if you think about how the forests were under Aboriginal management then a lot of them are thicker now than what they were. So they do need a bit of care.”

Report: Climate-linked bushfire warning as Tasmania’s ancient forests blaze

The largest constraint on Bowman’s plan is that it would be hugely expensive – something Canadian forest managers will discuss in the next instalment of this series. The Hobart city council’s bushfire planning reports recognise that more needs to be done. Consequently the council is ramping up burning – which compels residents to complain about smoke pollution – and the creation of firebreaks.

But the investments are limited by a budget that general manager of the City of Hobart Nick Heath says is governed by people’s perception of risk – rather than reality.

“Risk level tolerance varies within and between communities and would be governed by a range of factors, including cost and willingness to pay in an environment of competing interests and not unlimited budget,” he says.

Bowman calls this inability to conceive of and respond appropriately to imminent danger “a disease. A sociological pathology. Can we cure ourselves in time?”

Bowman’s fire management strategy may sound severe, but it is considered the gold standard in another landscape that has seen its traditional owners forced off and danger creep in: British Colombia. BC’s fire prone communities will be next in our series.

The post Fire bombs: Hobart lies in the path of climate disaster appeared first on Climate Home News.

While countries such as Morocco, which hosts the world’s biggest solar photovoltaic plant, are ready to embrace the power of large-scale renewables, solar technologies still lag behind in many African regions. Unpredictable subsidies, poor installations and lack of training on how to maintain the solar panels have hindered the spread of solar.

Rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa are peppered with broken solar panels, often not installed properly or donated by institutions that could not cover maintenance costs. This fuels the belief that solar photovoltaic is a bad investment.

But where large-scale projects fail to reach those in need, entrepreneurs are taking over to show that small-scale solar can be versatile, a source of income and perform a surprising variety of functions. Here are six ideas that are changing the perception of solar energy in modern Africa.

1. Mobile microcredit

Swahili for “borrow”, “kopa” is the keyword at the heart of one of the most successful solar enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa. It combines mobile technology, microcredit and clean energy.

M-Kopa targets the rural poor of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, who survive on an average of less than US$2 a day and cannot afford to buy solar panels outright.

The hardware package is a small solar panel and battery to power three led light bulbs, a phone charger, and a radio. It comes with a SIM card for payment – and here’s the clever bit.

Customers pay 3,500 Kenyan shillings ($35) upfront, followed by daily instalments of 50 shillings ($0.50). Once the daily payment is made via mobile, a signal is sent that switches on the system. After a year’s worth of payments, they own the system and use it for free.

So far, M-Kopa has connected more than 400,000 homes, with 500 systems being added every day.

2. Solar suitcase

Solar suitcase is a portable system that fits in a small box and has been deployed in various African countries. The prototype was originally developed by the California based charity We Care Solar to improve the conditions of maternity wards in rural Nigeria.

During a research trip, the charity’s co-founder discovered that in many maternity wards electricity was sporadic. That meant that nighttime deliveries were attended in near darkness, surgeries had to be canceled and critically ill patients would often lose their lives due to the lack of lighting.

The prototype was so successful that is now used to power schools, orphanages and homes all over rural Africa, with the active participation of communities and local institutions, most recently in Kenya.

Solar engineers at work in Kenya. Credit: Daphin Juma

Here, a team of local female solar engineers install six solar suitcases as part of the country’s pilot project, which hopes to put women at the forefront of a clean energy revolution.

3. Cold hubs

Citizens of rich nations take their fridges for granted. But a couple of hours of occasional power shortage and the weekly shopping ending up in the bin are a reminder of the importance of cold storage.

In developing countries up to 45% of the food that is not kept fresh after harvest spoils quickly. As a result, 470 million small-scale farmers are lose about a quarter of their annual income in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, according to Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, founder of the company Cold Hubs.

The Nigerian entrepreneur, who is a radio presenter and a farmer himself, turned to solar power to provide cheap and effective refrigeration to million of farmers.

He set up solar-powered cold rooms in major markets, where farmers can store their produce for a daily fee. Refrigeration extends the lifespan of vegetables from two to 21 days, reducing waste and boosting farmers’ income.

4. Connecting slums

In Africa, it’s not only rural people who struggle with energy access. As Climate Home reported, the urban poor often live in off-grid fringes of major cities.

For the past four years, the town of Stellenbosch in South Africa has been involved in a pilot project aimed at demonstrating that solar power can work for urban slums.

With funds from the South African Government’s Green Fund, the Ishack project has been providing off-grid solar on a pay-for-use basis to residents of the local informal settlement, also training them to install and maintain solar panels.

Credit: Ishack project

Although based on donations, the project aims at finding a replicable, self sustaining business model for the urban poor, generating jobs and bringing down the prices of solar services so everyone can afford them.

The initiative has so far powered over 1,000 households and aims to expand its reach to the 2,500 homes of the area, setting an example for other informal settlements in Africa

Once established, the business model could also incorporate off-grid sanitation, water and food production services.

5. Small business boost

“Africa is a continent of entrepreneurs” said Xavier Helgesen, co-founder of the company Off-Grid Electric. “From the farmer selling her harvest, to the salon owner serving his neighborhood, to the shopkeeper charging mobile phones, these are the businesses that are the lifeblood of local communities.”

After building its huge client base and expertise in the solar field by powering rural homes in Rwanda and Tanzania, the company has now launched Kazi na Zola, a portable solar system targeting small businesses, in particular phone charging shops, restaurants and barber shops.

For a monthly fee, shopkeepers can offer a higher value service to their customers, boosting profits.

The standard kits come with a solar panel, battery box, LED lights and a radio. Barbers get electric hair clippers, phone-charging stores get solar lanterns that they can rent, and restaurants get a TV. The company also plans to introduce solar kits for internet cafes, health clinics and computer labs.

6. Solar sister

Of the estimated 1.6 billion people currently living without electricity in the world, 70% are women.

Women are the main consumers of household energy and know better than the men what they need to run a home or a small farm.

Although portable solar technologies are well established, distribution is still a challenge in remote communities.

Solar Sister is a network of female entrepreneurs that tackles the problem by involving African rural women in the distribution of solar products within their villages. The social enterprise now counts over 2,000 members in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Nigeria, bringing light to more than 370,000 people.

On top of generating income from sales, families can drop the use of kerosene, keep their animals warm and healthier, and provide light for the kids to do their homework after dusk.

Lou Del Bello’s series of reports on Africa and climate change is funded by CDKN

The post Six bright ideas lighting up Africa from the grassroots appeared first on Climate Home News.

And that is precisely why they should have a place at the table of future climate change negotiations, according to a special report presented by the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change (BPCC) at the UN’s COP22 climate conference, which ended yesterday in Marrakech, Morocco.

Although most environmental stories from Brazil are about the Amazon and the rainforest, Brazil has been rapidly transforming itself into a country where the majority of the 210 million population live in urban settlements. By 2050, a staggering 90% will be city dwellers.

The report on climate policies and the impacts of climate change on urban infrastructure was presented by Suzana Khan, president of the BPCC’s scientific committee.

She said: “Although they are not present at climate change negotiations, it is in the cities that most impacts will occur. They are the ones who will have to adapt because they are where most of the world’s population lives.”

196 countries to Trump – UN must tackle climate change: https://t.co/Eyj1C7eoWy #COP22 pic.twitter.com/dHmFY5Jqaa

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) November 18, 2016

Khan pointed out that it is the cities that consume half the world’s energy, so they also have an important role in the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Urbanisation is a global trend. In 1900, only 13% of the world’s population lived in cities. Today, it is over half, and by 2050 it will be two-thirds − or between 5.6 and 7.1 billion people, according to the UN’s 2014 report on world urbanisation prospects.

The biggest increase is in developing countries, where more and more people live in unplanned urban settlements.

Yet in spite of the fact that it is the urban population that is most affected by climate change impacts, cities as such have not been represented independently at the talks. They were not present at the Paris Agreement negotiations last December, nor were they present at the COP 22 talks in Marrakech.

The BPCC report says that there is already a high concentration of people in Brazil living in areas of risk that have been occupied without formal permission.

More than 3 million homes are located in 6,329 slums and shantytowns. Less than half of the population have access to sewage systems, and only 40% of wastewater is treated.

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The cities have already begun to suffer the impacts of climate change, with an increase in heatwaves and a higher frequency and intensity of extreme events, such as flooding and droughts.

Khan said: “Climate change intensifies and amplifies the problems that are often already present in a city, such as flooding, mudslides, and a greater incidence of diseases, including the mosquito-transmitted viruses dengue, zika and chikungunya.

“Added to these problems are new challenges such as the lack of water caused by prolonged drought, more frequent heatwaves, and rises in sea levels.”

Rainfall could diminish by 22% in the Northeast region of Brazil by 2100. But, in contrast, 37% of Brazilian towns and cities were affected by flooding between 2008 and 2012.

California is looking into joining UN climate talks if the US quits: https://t.co/3jXDeD7jR1 pic.twitter.com/NrbLB78mvN

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) November 18, 2016

The report says that cities in coastal areas − 12 of Brazil’s main cities are on the sea − can expect a rise in sea levels and storms, affecting inhabitants, infrastructure and ecosystems.

The impact on water supplies will also be considerable, as urban areas are the second biggest consumers of water in Brazil, after irrigation systems.

Extreme events such as intense rainfall in a short period of time result in more residues and detritus entering the water supply, and the lack of drainage worsens the situation, leading to serious hazards for drinking water purity.

And prolonged droughts lead to a loss of quality in the water supply because polluting elements are not washed away.

As a result of these problems, combined with the effects of larger populations, the report foresees that by 2025 the demand for clean water will increase by 28% from the level in 2005, demanding investments of around US$ 7 billion.

Gloomy forecasts

Faced with such gloomy forecasts, are there any potential solutions?

Suggestions include preserving any fragments of forest and vegetation that remain in cities, creating linear parks along streams to minimise flood impact, creating natural and artificial barriers such as dams, marshlands and wetlands as buffers to contain rising seas, and altering construction regulations to reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling buildings.

There must be a much greater efficiency in the use and re-use of water, with improved water storage capacity. Hydrological basins must be recovered and reforested.

In view of the cities’ role in climate change, Khan believes not only that they should “be integrated into Brazil’s action plan for reaching the Paris targets”, but should have a place at negotiations alongside national governments.

Recent experiences show that, without joined-up thinking between the various levels of government, progress will be slow.

In 2009, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro − Brazil’s two largest cities − cancelled their municipal plans to fight climate change, claiming they depended on national actions such as incentives for public transport or regulations for energy generation.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

The post Time for cities to get a seat at global climate talks? appeared first on Climate Home News.

That provision is being put to the test in North America, where indigenous communities fiercely oppose oil pipelines and a major hydropower dam.

Kevin Hart, regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations – an organisation representing 900,000 Canadians, has come straight from Standing Rock to UN climate talks in Marrakech.

“I was there as an international observer representing 600 nations. I went down to give my support to my relatives in Standing Rock,” he told Climate Home. “You know, I witnessed firsthand women being attacked by security forces with dogs, goons hired by Dakota Access pipeline.”

Standing Rock, US has been the site of fierce clashes over a US$3.8 billion oil pipeline. On one side, the native Sioux tribe and environmentalists are trying to block construction, fearing its impacts on the Missouri river and contribution to climate change. On the other, security forces defend the property rights of developer Energy Access Partners, which has permits for the project.

To Hart, it invoked a dark period of human history. “When arrests were made, our people were put in dog kennels in the Morgan country sheriff’s department,” he recalled. “They had numbers written on their arms… Back in the second world war, we had another regime do that to another group of people.”

Lord Stern: Indigenous land rights are fundamental to climate safety

Another leader from the Assembly, Francois Paulette, feels the same anxiety. He lives about 200 miles downstream from Alberta’s tar sands, where crude oil is to be extracted and taken to refineries in the US Gulf Coast under the Keystone XL pipeline project.

The Keystone Pipeline XL project was halted by US President Barack Obama, who refused to grant the application of TransCanada, the company behind the project. His successor Donald Trump, however, has promised to un-block fossil fuel projects.

Paulette said the wastewater discharged can seep into the Athabasca river, which flows into their territory. This is what happened with other existing pipeline projects, he claimed: “That river is so polluted, people are dying from cancer, people cannot eat fish.”

Francois Paulette is in Marrakech to register his opposition to oil and hydropower projects (Pic: Purple Romero)

It is not just oil pipelines that concern Paulette, either.

In August, the Canadian government approved two permits for the construction of the Site-C dam, which will flood the Peace River valley territory, a major fishing and hunting site for the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations.

Paulette maintains that prime minister Justin Trudeau, like his predecessor Stephen Harper who approved the Keystone Pipeline XL project, did not consult indigenous people before giving the Site-C dam the green light.  “He approved it. He approved Site C. He said he’s gonna talk to us, he did not,” said Paulette.

The indigenous leader said this raised questions on the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement as a tool for upholding human rights. “The Paris Agreement is very supportive, but on the ground, it’s another story.”

Trudeau: Canada to set national carbon tax from 2018

The Trudeau government is keen to show respect for indigenous rights as part of its commitment to implement the Paris Agreement, which it ratified in October.

In her speech at the high-level segment of the UN climate talks, Canada environmental minister Catherine Mckenna introduced Maatalii Okalik, a young leader of the Inuit people, to the world.

“With your continued leadership that will define our future on climate action, I am hopeful that it is done in cooperation with indigenous peoples, in platforms, and with respect to our rights, which ultimately support indigenous self-determination,” Okalik told delegates.

Mckenna would later say that Canada was already doing this: “At home, officials from all levels of Canadian government are working with indigenous peoples, business leaders, youth and environmental organizations, and all citizens to develop a Canadian framework for clean growth and climate change.”

Paulette said this pronouncement should result in Canada putting its foot down against oil pipeline projects and the Site-C dam.

“We have to tell them if Canada is gonna be leading, they can’t extend anymore these hydro dams, projects using the tar sands.”

Hart remains hopeful that Trudeau will make good on his word that he will nix economic activities that harm the environment and the tribal communities. “He indicated that his most important relationship is with us First Nations.”

In the next steps that will be taken by the Canadian government, they should remember two things, said Hart: “When you make a decision you always, have to think of the 7seven generations,” and that “no means no”.

The post Indigenous leaders call on Canada’s Trudeau to uphold Paris deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Gullah or Geechee people inhabit the Sea Islands and “low country” along a 650km stretch of Atlantic coast from northern Florida to North Carolina. (Gullah is the preferred name in the Carolinas, Geechee in Georgia and Florida.)

With many of the lands and waterways that sustain them lying barely above sea level, this culture that endured slavery now faces eradication.

Okra crops have withered under drought, rising tides swamp fields with salted water and leave dead trees piled on the shore. In recent years, freshwater floods have shut down oyster farms.

Source: gullahcommunity.org

“We have been agrarian and sea-working people since the 1600s, since our ancestors were put on these islands during chattel enslavement,” says Marquetta Goodwine, also known as Queen Quet, the Gullah/Geechee’s elected head of state and chieftess.

“Our ability to sustain our culture is in jeopardy because of these changes in the climate.”

Goodwine will go to Morocco next week to represent her people at the UN climate talks.

A crowdfunding campaign to cover the costs has reached more than half of its $3,000 goal. But Goodwine says she will go, whether or not she reaches the funding target.

“It means so much to our community for me to get there and have our story be a part of this finally,” she says.

40% of all West African slaves arrived on the US mainland at the ports around Sullivan’s Island, where the ceremony to make Goodwine chieftess took place.

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After emancipation, they remained on the coast farming, working the ocean and weaving beautiful basketry. Far from Africa, the culture that grew there has withstood the entropy of modernity.

“The land is our family and the waterways are our bloodline. That is how we as the Gullah Geechee people see this land. We are inextricably tied to the land and the Sea Islands,” says Goodwine.

Today, the Gullah/Geechee population is roughly one million, according to Goodwine, with about half of them living traditional lifestyles along the Atlantic littoral.

Despite their numbers, their pleas to US politicians have been repeatedly ignored, either because they don’t think climate change is a real phenomenon or they are simply not interested.

But Goodwine is used to such fights and she has prevailed before. In 1999, she travelled to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Switzerland.

The sight of a US citizen giving testimony of injustice to the UN left lawmakers red-faced. A heritage act recognising and funding the preservation of Gullah/Geechee cultural traditions and cultural sites followed.

“I’m doing what I know works and that is having the international community support our consistent existence as a culture because what happens domestically here is not focused on us,” says Goodwine.

“You would think that the US would automatically take care of us because our cultural group is a part of them. But it’s not looked at that way and we’re not treated that way.”

She says participation at the talks will bring many benefits to her people beyond bypassing the political roadblock in Washington.

She sees her nation as part of the well recognised group of Small Island Developing States and wants to forge alliances and understanding between her people and theirs.

From the conference, she hopes to send envoys around the world to learn how communities are fighting the rising of the tide.

“I’m sure that there are other communities that are dealing with very similar issues to what were are dealing with,” she says.

The post Former US slave nation heads to Marrakech climate summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Chances are, unless you work in a green NGO, it would have passed you by.

That’s a shame, as the four-day meeting in Ecuador capital Quito could deliver some vital inputs into global efforts to build more sustainable and greener urban areas.

As such it’s directly plugged into efforts to decarbonise the world’s economy, to wean people off cars and ensure cities are not simply concrete jungles with dirty air and water.

A 24-page final draft of the declaration which will underpin this meeting contains 22 references to climate change 10 mentions of climate adaptation.

Under “our shared vision” it sees future cities that:

“adopt and implement disaster risk reduction and management, reduce vulnerability, build resilience and responsiveness to natural and man-made hazards, and foster mitigation and adaptation to climate change”

And under a list of commitments it says environmental sustainability must be a central principle for future planning:

“by promoting clean energy, sustainable use of land and resources in urban development as well as protecting ecosystems and biodiversity, including adopting healthy lifestyles in harmony with nature; promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns; building urban resilience; reducing disaster risks; and mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

Why is all this important?

Take a look at the 2014 New Climate Economy report – commissioned by the UK, Norway, Sweden, South Korea, Ethiopia, Colombia and Indonesia.

Cities are responsible for 70% of energy consumption and a similar level of emissions. By 2030, 60% of us will live in cities or towns. 90% of urban growth is projected to take place in the developing world.

More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas, and of those a quarter are classed by the UN as slums. According to the World Bank 1.2 billion people live in sub-standard housing, with 3 billion requiring new homes by 2030.

More than 1/2 the world population lives in urban areas, about 1/4 of these live in #slums. We must change this! #HabitatDay #Habitat3 pic.twitter.com/XB4SFldJ2F

— UN ECOSOC President (@UNECOSOC) October 3, 2016

What makes Habitat III exciting is its rarity: it only takes place once every 20 years.

What makes it less exciting is that despite an agreed declaration and input from a huge number of governments, what is agreed will not be binding.

David Satterthwaite is a senior fellow in the Human Settlements Group at IIED, a London-based development think tank.

“There is a lack of focus on local government capacity and accountability (central to delivering most SDGs) and at best ‘the poor’ are seen as passive recipients. At worst they and their needs are invisible,” he writes.

“Yet again, national governments will make long lists of solemn commitments that they will not or even cannot meet without local government and local civil society.”

As one senior London-based development official put it to me last week, “the Mayor of London’s office are unlikely to be poring over the Habitat III findings to work out what to build next and how to do it”.

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Leilani Farha is the special rapporteur on the right to housing for the UN’s Human Rights Commission. She contends a current draft declaration must go further if the aim is to create a fairer world.

“A realistic vision of inclusive and sustainable cities cannot affirm the importance of economic growth without demanding a new approach to economic policymaking,” she says in the Guardian.

“This must be based on the realisation of human rights and more equitable distribution of resources in cities, including land and access to public space.”

Still – other analysts and development professionals reckon it can deliver positive if incremental change – especially on pulling together the various strands on climate, cities, clean energy and disaster risk reduction.

Here’s a briefing note from Camilla Born, a policy advisor at the London-based E3G environmental think tank, highlighting the climate links to the meeting, which starts on 17 October.

What is Habitat III?

-A meeting every 20 years that outlines the “urban agenda”
-A process that creates a guide to building the cities of the future, responding to the challenges of the time
-Habitat III will produce a declaration the reflects the world’s urgent contemporary need to deliver sustainable development – Agenda 2030, Paris, Sendai, mass migration, refugees, increasing conflict, resource crunches and climate change, inequality

What can we expect?

-A nice UN summit
-An “energiser” for the sustainable urban agenda
-The creation of a go-to document for progressive cities, planners, funders and governments
-An expansion of the evidence base for sustainably planned and managed cities

The draft declaration – this is not the final draft

-Is pretty good – if you delivered on all of this you’d be looking at a pretty utopian city. Saying that none of the policies are crazy or out of reach, each one of them will have been delivered somewhere before. However holistic delivery will require a new way of urban planning, funding and… politics.

-Climate goals are integrated through the various components of the declaration, climate action is firmly seen as an asset which can produce many mutual benefits

-The declaration seeks to reposition cities as engines for sustained and inclusive economic growth and that this can only be delivered with systemic changes in governance, planning, financing, development and management of cities

A few notable details:

-Explicitly cites unsustainable production and consumption, pollution, disasters and climate change risks as forces which are undermining efforts to end poverty

-Places the declaration in context of Agenda 2030, Paris and Sendai. Mentions well below 2C and pursuing effort to limit to 1.5C

-Commits to promote international, national, sub-national and local climate action

-Commits to medium to long-term adaptation planning processes, as well as city level vulnerability and impact assessments

-Seeks to explore feasible solutions for climate and disaster risks, including through collaboration with insurance and reinsurance institutions

-Other clean and green policies include: renewables, efficiency in multiple sectors, smart grids, community energy, EE buildings, resilience to disasters, sustainable infrastructure, risk informed planning, disaster contingency plans, electric transport

-Supports the establishment of a UN-habitat multi trust fund for capacity development in support of sustainable urban development for developing countries. Will collaborate with climate funds to secure resources.

-Report on Habitat III implementation every 4 years. UN Habitat as focal point for sustainable urbanisation but call on other UN agencies to compliment.

The post Habitat III: what to expect from the UN’s urban summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Kibera’s relatively small area hosts somewhere between 200,000 and half a million people, crammed together in a jigsaw of mud houses with curled tin roofs, navigated by a maze of narrow passages.

The place is riddled with hazards, from its regular cholera outbreaks to a chronic lack of water supply and healthcare facilities. But that’s not the impression given out when you talk to the residents here.

Asked about its shortcomings, many just smile and say they love Kibera, where their families have lived for generations and the community runs a variety of small businesses as well as social and art projects.

People in Kibera aren’t resigned to poverty, they want the place to thrive without giving up its identity.

You only get a shrug of resignation when touching on the topic of energy.

Electricity is lacking, and locals feel there’s nothing they can do about it. To get that little bit of power that keeps their households going, they tap into the public grid illegally. It is a dangerous operation, with electrical faults a common cause of house fires that spread rapidly in the crowded conditions.

“When the latest explosion destroyed almost 40 houses, the government promised us 100 iron sheets, but they never arrived,” says Shadrach Otieno, a musician living in a single room in a network of mud houses at the heart of the slum.

While the government is ambitious in its plans to power rural areas, and off-grid energy is a growing market for private businesses, authorities seem consistently at a loss as to how to provide the city’s poor with basic energy.

Seen from a height, Kibera’s landscape is dotted with poles carrying white meters, a relic of the the latest unsuccessful attempt to solve energy poverty in the slum.

The prepaid meters have been installed by Kenya Power and Lighting Company, which distributes electricity around the country, as part of the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid programme.

With financial support from the World Bank, they are designed to offer a cheap and reliable alternative to the dangers of DIY engineering.

While regular customers pay US$150 for a new connection, the same service in Kibera costs 1,160 Kenyan Shillings (KES), or $12. The World Bank and Kenya Power cover the difference.

The catch is that there simply are not enough meters to meet demand. When electricity runs out they become empty boxes towering on the roofs, surrounded instead by home-made electric poles carrying stolen power.

Johnstone Ole Turana, spokesperson for Kenya Power, says: “The biggest challenge we are facing is once the residents finish the power units that were installed with the prepaid meters, they resort to illegal connections.” He says that the company expects to receive more financing from the World Bank to connect more households, but this has yet to materialise.

Otieno walks me around the slum, where I meet Carol Okoth, a beautician who lives with her family in a small, prettily decorated apartment. When they welcome me in, the power has just come back in the neighbourhood, but the two rooms where Okoth lives are still in the dark. A light bulb has short-circuited, leaving a black mark on the plastic-coated ceiling.

“These things happen all the time. We know it’s dangerous but there’s no other way,” she says. Her family has enough electricity to power a TV in the main room, but they don’t have enough to also iron their clothes or cook.

,

“We just use kerosene, or coal,” she says. Charcoal trade is heavily regulated in Kenya due to the threat it poses to forests but in many places, including Kibera, it remains a key source of energy. In Kibera, you can find it on the streets much more often than in other parts of Nairobi. Charcoal makes for good business, as residents are undaunted by the threats it poses to their health or their often flammable furniture.

Outside, by the door, a tangled ball of thin, colourful cables connects several apartments in the block, while a bigger rubber cable hangs from a roof, its tip naked. Otieno picks it up: “You see? This is connected to the meters. It’s useless.”

David Njenga tells me a similar story. The soft spoken young man is a kinyozi, Swahili for hairdresser, and because of the power cuts he has just lost a day of work at the most profitable time of the year – “when kids go back to school and they want to look nice”.

An erratic electric supply is also bad for Njenga’s healt. “I have chest problems and when the power goes down, sometimes for hours, my house gets really cold and I can’t sleep.”

Making my way through the slum’s pathways I wonder why clean energy solutions seem to be unexplored here, while in rural areas the race for electrification is so often fueled by solar panels. I ask the energy ministry, but get no comment.

Some of the hurdles are clear. Most residents don’t own the houses they live in and have no incentive to invest in solar panels for their roofs, regardless of the price.

Small “plug and play” devices, with a panel that can charge a lamp or a mobile phone, don’t solve the problem and the batteries are generally short lived. Otieno tells me that people simply aren’t willing to pay up front for the device. Prices start at about US$6.

Kibera is developing fast and and where aid falls short the residents take the lead. Almost everyone owns a mobile phone and local teachers run independent primary schools to keep the kids safe, fed and teach them how to count and read.

But chronic energy poverty is often overlooked, trumped by an array of other problems such as poor sanitation or lack of education.

The people of Kibera know that in the modern world there is no life without energy. If they don’t have safe, clean options, they will resort to dangerous, dirty ones.

The post In pictures: the energy poor of Africa’s biggest slum appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fresh from quitting what is becoming an increasingly brutal race to replace Ban Ki-moon as UN secretary general, Christiana Figueres is back with a new project: Mission 2020.

City leaders, bankers and the burgeoning climate philanthropy sector can expect calls in the coming weeks and months as the Costa Rican gets to work.

“By 2020 we have to bend the [emissions] curve and by 2020 we have to have a critical level of support for developing countries,” she tells Climate Home.

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Watching the Paris climate deal meet its first threshold of support from more than 55 countries filled her with “gratitude” she says, but also underlined a gnawing sense of urgency felt by many governments in developing countries. Eight months on from Paris some are asking: what has changed?

Figueres plans to work with cities on standardising emissions data, corporate giants on investing in renewables and says she will target major charities and philanthropies to stump up more cash.

A sign this is already happening came last week, with 19 foundations including Bill Gates, Tom Steyer and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) pledging $53 million for developing countries to invest in energy efficiency.

Billions more could flow as a result of the Mission Innovation project launched last December, backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Virgin chief Richard Branson.

“I do think there’s an important role for philanthropic finance in next five years to come into the climate space more than we have seen before. We are in a transition stage and philanthropies can play a critical role,” she says.

Report: Christiana Figueres departs UN secretary general race

Staffed with former UN colleagues and boasting Newton Investment Management chief executive Helena Morrissey as one of five advisory board members, Mission 2020 will be based in London.

After the Brexit referendum and with UK climate and energy policy in a state of flux it seems a curious choice for an HQ, but Figueres cites the city’s rich seam of climate policy and finance expertise.

Last week she was spotted talking to new UK climate minister Nick Hurd and longtime climate advocate Kate Hampton, CEO of the Mayfair-based CIFF, which is valued at £2 billion.

While the Bonn-based UN climate convention corrals more countries into ratifying the pact and starts work on a rulebook for the agreement, it’s clear that will not stop dangerous warming.

Markets and cash flows are still moving too slowly, says Figueres, with a much-hyped green bond market far from diverting capital flows away from high-carbon projects.

The cost of inaction: who will fund loss and damage?

Crashing auction prices for solar farms in the Middle East, Peru and Chile “beat the pants” off fossil fuels she argues, but the required renewables paradigm shift has not happened yet.

“Clean energy investments are still hovering around $300bn when that should be growing exponentially,” she says.

“Mainly that’s because we have not figured how to use public funds to de-risk projects – and it’s that blended finance piece we are still struggling with.”

It’s worth noting she’s far from alone in this belief. On 22 September Bank of England governor Mark Carney said green finance is still a “niche interest” and requires public and private sector collaboration to boost flows.

That’s a real problem for many developing countries faced with populations demanding better access to power for their mobile phones, computers and basic amenities others take for granted.

Report: Green Climate Fund to target ‘high risk’ investments

Policy frameworks and the raft of woolly investment plans presented ahead of last December’s Paris summit are still not up to speed – due in part to a lack of in-country expertise and funding.

Nor is the much-vaunted Green Climate Fund ready to fill this gap, beset as it is by internal squabbles and a lack of direction at board level.

So the clock is ticking, and if developing country governments don’t get enough support “they will have to turn to fossil fuels for their only response,” Figueres warns.

With three great ladies at #Parisagreement meeting . @UN special envoy Mary Robinson: @CFigueres and @PEspinosaC pic.twitter.com/wbxJ8Nx09z

— Nick Hurd (@NickHurdUK) September 21, 2016

Still, clean energy funding and investment plans are not the only climate game in town.

Two blocks away from this interview off 2nd Avenue, UN officials were still deep in discussions over a new plan to help alleviate the world’s vast refugee crisis.

Over 65 million people are now classed as displaced by the UN, with around 21 million of those refugees from conflict, famine and other disasters.

Adopted last week, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants mentions climate change, but is at its heart a reactive piece of UN politics, aiming to cope with vast flows of people.

The 22-page document forms the basis of a new set of negotiations which will likely run through 2017, perhaps culminating in 2018, offering little sense of an immediate solution or if governments see any connection between migration and extreme weather.

UNGA: EU invests billions to prevent migration

Making those links between the refugee crisis, the protection of natural resources and climate change was at the heart of Figueres’ brief pitch for the UN top job, which ended last month.

The votes fell for others, but she maintains the bid was worth it, if only to illustrate what she calls the “arc of consequence” and the need for a longer-term plan than the UN presently has.

“I think there is more awareness now of the fact that all these issues under the UN, starting with climate change, natural resources, human rights and migration are intertwined.

“Whatever we do on climate and other natural resources can either lead to more peace or conflict. If we don’t address them today we will be facing them in the future.

“The fact we are so unprepared to deal [with current refugee numbers] should be at best a warning that we need to prepare better… and that means we need to take care of our land.”

The post London calling: Figueres dives back into climate after UN bid appeared first on Climate Home News.

Their arguments often fall into two categories, science and economics: the need for more studies before concluding that human activity is a major cause; that investments in mitigation are too costly and will damage our economy.

These arguments can be difficult to overcome in a capitalist society, and in the US corporations have a track record illustrating the success of sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Americans were victimized by protracted corporate intransigence on accepting scientific findings connecting smoking and lung cancer, leaded gasoline and mental retardation in children, and chlorofluorocarbons and the hole in the ozone layer.

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If those motivated more by faith than science joined those motivated more by science than faith, we would have a powerful movement that would disarm the willful deniers. Energy companies are unlikely to challenge a teaching of Jesus or a verse in Deuteronomy.

Which raises the question, in what way is climate change a religious issue, as well as a scientific one? Climate change will strike the needy first and hardest, for they have the fewest resources to adapt. Consider Matthew 25:45b: “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

Applicability to climate change is clear. And consider an explicit, related instruction from Leviticus 23:22: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien.”

Furthermore, human activities since the beginning of the industrial revolution have resulted in the addition of large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which causes more heat to be reflected back than was the case two centuries ago.

Analysis: What do the world’s leading faiths think on climate?

The additional heat changes the climate, which in turn produces numerous effects on the planet, some of them contrary to biblical teachings. Since humans caused additional emissions of carbon dioxide, we bear responsibility for its effects, and therefore this becomes also a religious issue for some.

The first part of my book, Hospitable Planet: Faith, Action, and Climate Change, discusses the environmental teachings in “the law” Jesus said he came to fulfill, Genesis – Deuteronomy, and identifies those violated by the effects of climate change.

For example, climate change is reducing biological diversity, while the Noah episode contains multiple requirements to preserve all species.

We find ancient forms of environmental impact statements in a companion to “the law” (the Talmud) rooted in the familiar verse “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”  These ancient environmental rulings readily apply to emissions of greenhouse gases that harm our neighbours, and indeed all life on earth.

Report: Pope Francis warns US Congress on climate threat

I also discuss 10 measures that would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and recommends an environmental rights movement, akin to the civil rights movement, to push for their implementation.

The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr invoked both secular and sacred arguments to press for integration: equality with jobs, housing, and education, and reminders that we are all created in the image of God.

Similarly, an environmental rights movement rooted in science and, for some, fueled in addition by an awareness of the ways the effects of climate change violate biblical teachings would constitute a powerful force.

The movement can use confrontational non-violence, speeches, and social media to push for change and for sanity: that’s not hyperbole, for we are on course to devastate our life-support system, for example reduced food, water, and biological diversity.

The faith community can help push America and other countries to the tipping point of full engagement with climate change by handicapping the willful deniers and sowers of doubt. Let us hope that community invokes the teachings in its sacred texts and acts with the urgency required.

Stephen Jurovics is the author of Hospitable Planet: Faith, Action, and Climate Change published by Morehouse Publishing in 2016.

The post Can Christian groups heal bitter US climate rift? appeared first on Climate Home News.

There have been lots of headlines about its destructive environmental impact, but much less is known about the health impact of eating palm oil. So, I decided to use my own body in an experiment to find out what palm oil is doing to our health in a documentary I made, Appetite for Destruction: The Palm Oil Diaries.

You’ve almost certainly eaten palm oil today. It’s in everything from bread, to biscuits, pizzas, ice cream, chocolate bars and ready meals. However, it’s a relatively new addition to our diet.

Before palm oil, food manufacturers used hydrogenated oils, known as trans-fatty acids, to give vital texture to food products. But trans-fatty acids suffered very bad publicity in the early 2000s and became seen as a very unhealthy ingredient.

This led to government rulings across the world that trans-fatty acids must be labelled on products that contained them. Inevitably this put consumers off buying products with this damaging label.

Food companies were left with a dilemma: they couldn’t use trans-fatty acids, but they needed an ingredient that would provide that smoothy, creamy taste their customers loved.

Deforestation in Korindo oil palm plantation, Papua (Pic: Mighty)

As Prof Bruce Griffin from the University of Surrey told me, “palm oil was introduced as a natural substitute for trans-fatty acids”.

Despite replacing an unhealthy ingredient, palm oil-producing countries have suggested palm oil is perfectly healthy. The Malaysian Palm Oil Council even suggests that studies show palm oil, in liquid form, is “comparable to the much touted gold standard olive oil for its effects on blood cholesterol”.

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I wanted to see for myself whether palm oil is healthy or not. I contacted a team of researchers from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. They had been doing an experiment in which they compared the effects of eating palm oil with sunflower oil.

For seven weeks, participants ate muffins containing either palm oil or sunflower oil. The thirty-nine participants received muffins that were “identical with regard to energy, fat, protein, carbohydrate, and cholesterol content, as well as taste and structure”. The only difference was the oil – palm or sunflower.

Under the researchers’ guidance, I did my own version of the experiment that mimicked the official study. For six weeks, I ate three muffins a day containing palm oil on top of my normal diet.

At the start of the experiment I had a remarkably low body fat – just 4.6%. This was the result of doing lots of long-distance running, including running eight marathons in eight days for a previous documentary.

Dorgan’s body fat is measured by scientists at Uppsala University (Screengrab: Appetite for Destruction: The Palm Oil Diaries/Go Forth Films)

After six weeks I returned to Uppsala to be tested. Remarkably, my body fat had increased to 7.4%. That’s an increase of around 60%! In addition, my muscle mass has decreased and fat stores increased.

You may not be surprised that my body fat increased after eating three muffins – an extra 750 calories – every day for six weeks. However, what is most shocking is not the weight gain, but where the fat was gained within my body.

In the University of Uppsala’s controlled study they noticed that participants from both the palm and sunflower oil groups gained about 1.6kg in weight. However, the palm oil group gained “more liver fat, total fat, and visceral fat” than the sunflower oil group. This means the fat was gained around vital organs, which can be very dangerous in the long term.

David Iggman, one of the researchers, analysed my results and predicted that if I continued with a palm oil-rich diet, “according to these results, you could be at risk of developing metabolic disease, perhaps also liver disease and even cardiovascular disease”.

“Remarkably, my body fat had increased to 7.4%.” (Screengrab: Appetite for Destruction: The Palm Oil Diaries/Go Forth Films)

This certainly shocked me. I returned to the UK worried that we’re not seeing the whole story when it comes to palm oil. I started noticing in the supermarket that some companies are now labelling food products as palm oil free. However, this is not for health reasons, but an environmental pledge.

Take Meridian’s peanut butter, which has a banner on its packaging saying, “No palm oil!”. The banner is held up by a cartoon orangutan – an animal suffering from the deforestation caused by the expansion of palm oil plantations in South East Asia.

For my palm oil documentary, I visited palm oil-producing countries. The environmental destruction in Cameroon and human rights abuses in Guatemala I witnessed were appalling. And they’re driven by our massive consumption of palm oil.

I think we need to reconsider not only how we produce this oil, but also, given the health consequences, whether we should be eating so much of it in the first place.

Appetite for Destruction: The Palm Oil Diaries is available on Amazon and iTunes

The post Palm oil: bad news for forests, and your liver appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a message to mark the Catholic church’s World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the Pope called on governments and individuals to take radical action to tackle climate change.

“Climate change is also contributing to the heart-rending refugee crisis. The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most vulnerable and already suffering its impact,” he said.

God gave us the earth “to till and to keep” in a balanced and respectful way.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) September 1, 2016

In an explanation of the message on the Vatican website, Cardinal Turkson, one of the Pontiff’s closest aides and his public face on global warming, said he wanted the public to take affirmative action to tackle environmental ills.

“Pope Francis says it is up to citizens to insist that these commitments are honoured, and to advocate for more ambitious goals,” Turkson wrote.

“He suggests that social pressure – including from boycotting certain products – can force businesses to consider their environmental footprint and patterns of production.”

That message is likely to jar with many conservative politicians in the US, who are staunch defenders of the oil, gas and coal industries who create products that are causing global warming.

Report: Over 3000 UK churches on way to ditching fossil fuels

Turkson – a Ghanaian who some tip as a future Pope – said developed countries also needed to step up and deliver higher levels of support.

“As part of paying down their ‘ecological debt’ to their poorer neighbours, richer countries need to provide them with needed financial and technical support,” he said.

“The same logic animates the fossil fuel divestment movement.”

In his address, Pope Francis called on Catholics to advocate for more ambitious climate goals on Friday, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

The figurehead for 1.25 billion believers worldwide wrote of the importance of shaping social change as well as living a greener lifestyle.

Planting trees, car-pooling and turning off unnecessary lights were all recommended. “We must not think that these efforts are too small to improve our world,” said the Pope.

“In the same way, the resolve to live differently should affect our various contributions to shaping the culture and society in which we live.”

His message is the latest in a string of interventions on climate change, notably the encyclical “Laudato Si” published last summer.

It provided a moral frame for the international Paris Agreement that followed in December.

In the US, it challenged climate scepticism among conservative Catholics – and some polls suggest he shifted views.

The post Vatican urges boycott of environmental polluters appeared first on Climate Home News.

New social media platforms are dissolving time and geographical boundaries.

Surely, the revolution of online democracy in communication brought by Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram is bringing us closer together to save the planet?

But research around social media and the political convolutions brought by the Donald Trump and Brexit surprises suggest otherwise.

“Social media is good for allowing people to reach out to like-minded people,” said Luis Hestres, an assistant professor specialising in communication at the University of Texas at San Antonio in the US.

Report: Twitter fails to bridge gap between climate activists and sceptics

Most social studies show online interaction is reinforcing pre-existing beliefs and values, rather than opening minds, he added.

UK-based researcher Hywel Williams found in his study of the English-speaking Twitter community’s approach to climate change that Tweeters were conversing in “echo chambers” that merely reflects their existing views.

While a small number of Twitter users communicated with others holding different views about climate change, most did not interact at all with the other side.

“As the online debate fragments, existing views are likely to become reinforced and extreme,” said Williams, an environmental scientist at the University of Exeter who is analysing complex social systems.

Look for yourself in @CarbonBrief's brand new 'climate change' map of Twitter https://t.co/HX5ihqvcd8 pic.twitter.com/t8Fbkaa8vP

— Carbon Brief (@CarbonBrief) April 26, 2016

Even if we are not talking to those with different views, there is no doubt that social media, especially Twitter, has become a formidable weapon in climate activists’ arsenals.

Another climate-social media scholar, David Holmes at Australia’s Monash University, was surprised by the online efficacy of NGOs at the Paris climate change summit at the end of last year.

His study of the impact of Twitter at that seminal international gathering found that NGO tweets were retweeted eight times more than those written by news media journalists.

“This indicates people trusted NGOs more than the mainstream media,” said Homes.

While journalists are still writing the core information about climate change, it is the NGOs that are “curating” the sort of news media articles that are widely disseminated, according to Holmes.

Social power

The Australian academic credits the NGOs’ highly effective online activism as being instrumental in coercing government delegates in Paris to sign on to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels” in the international gathering’s final agreement, rather than just aim for 2 degrees as had been widely expected.

But the flow of social media is not going all the climate activists’ way.

Witness the rise of Republican presidential candidate and climate change doubter Donald Trump. The feisty billionaire is a product of television.

His meteoric rise to prominence among the US public began with his role as the former host of The Apprentice reality television program, which pitched contestants against each other over their business pitches.

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But it is Trump’s ability to use cut-through, and often incendiary, comments to viral social intent that most lifted his profile in the run up to the bruising US presidential battle.

Some of Trump’s more controversial comments are testing the maxim that any publicity is good publicity, but he is certainly continuing to set the social media world alight.

While television viewing in countries like the UK and the US have declined by 3 to 4% per year on average since 2012, it remains a formidable weapon in the US presidential campaign.

University of Texas at San Antonio academic Luis Hestres said Trump has been highly effective in marrying the twin powers of television and social media.

“Trump has been able to get plenty of free TV time by making outrageous comments that are picked up by the social media,” said Hestres.

It’s snowing & freezing in NYC. What the hell ever happened to global warming?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2013

Arguably though, it is the meaning – rather than the medium – of the social media messages that empowers Trump and others who are able to cut through the cacophony of the online world.

While anathema to climate activists, Trump’s stated belief that climate change is a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive” – along with his pledge to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement – is simple and emotive.

Such strong and clear messages provide solace for opponents of climate action, and may help to sway those with little interest but general suspicion of global bodies and liberal agendas.

Of course, the heady brew produced by combining powerful and un-nuanced messages with the instantaneous information web of the internet is not peculiar to the US.

It is evident the victory of emotional statements over the use of cold and bland facts was a major contributor to the success of the Leave supporters in the UK’s referendum to leave the European Union in June.

Simple narrative

“A key mistake of the Remain campaign was the assumption that the EU debate could be settled by statistical models and elite expert opinion,” writes climate change commentator George Marhsall in a recent blog.

Marshall believe the Leave campaign’s effective use of anti-establishment messages portraying the Remain supporters as self-serving experts who did not understand the concerns of ordinary people is mirrored in the online activism of climate change deniers.

The simplicity of the emotive, cut-through messages used by those opposing climate action is likely to continue to be effective as they bypass the boring details and uncertainty of scientific investigation.

The main problem with communicating climate change is that it is complicated. This is not surprising as the scope of this unintended planetary experiment is unprecedented.

Recent research shows humans are releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any event in the past 66 million years.

Even as social media is now splintering into a host of new platforms, many relying increasingly on video clips such as Instagram and Vine, a fragmented contest of ideas is likely to remain as a defining feature of online interaction about climate change.

Such differences are bound to become even vaster when we don’t share opinions with those holding divergent views.

Simon Pollock is a climate politics analyst based in Canberra, Australia.

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The post Social media echo chambers are hurting climate debate appeared first on Climate Home News.

Scientists have developed five new ‘biofortified’ varieties, enriched with iron and zinc through a natural process of selective breeding, which are able to withstand drought more effectively than conventional breeds currently on the market.

In a country where beans provide 40% of the proteins consumed by the poor and are grown by over 85% of the 18 million farmers, climate-proofing their main staple could be a life-saver for the rural population of Uganda.

Drought is currently ravaging East Africa, after an exceptionally intense and long El Niño which some observers are afraid will rapidly morph into La Niña.

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This would be very bad news for the region, as La Niña is historically associated with severe drought.

In a scenario of such uncertainty, farmers who chose not to migrate can only try to adapt as fast as possible to avoid the worst impacts on their livelihoods.

The new beans could be a key factor in riding out the drought. Because their plants mature faster and need a lower amount of rain, they escape the worst impacts of dry spells.

They also respond better to increased temperatures, allowing farmers to keep their plantations at a lower level without moving to higher ground, where the weather is cooler.

New bean varieties each have different qualities: drought resilience; disease tolerance; high iron (Pic: CIAT/Flickr)

“We realised that because of the importance of beans in Ugandan diet, any change in their nutritional properties would have a big impact on the consumer,” said Stanley Nkalubo, programme leader at the National Crops Resources Research Institute, who took care of the breeding process and the dissemination of the seedlings.

A survey revealed that in Uganda nearly 38% of children below the age of five are short for their age and 16% are underweight as a result of malnutrition.

And research today shows that a healthy diet is not just about the amount of calories eaten, but micro-nutrients such as minerals and vitamins absorbed are as much as if not more important.

The new climate smart beans are hitting the market at the same price of their conventional counterparts, but other than being healthier they also have economic benefits.

Adapt or die: UN urges countries to build climate resilience

“Because the farmers won’t have to buy supplements, but just grow their new beans, the improved breeds are also a good investment” said Nkalubo.

What also makes for good return on investment is the capacity of the plants to guarantee yields even in case of drought, improving households’ resilience in the face of extremes.

The beans were developed in cooperation with the farmers who assessed the new varieties for preferred color, taste, cooking time and tolerance to factors such as pests or impoverished soil. Of the 13 breeds developed, only the best five made it to the field.

‘Micronutrient malnutrition, the so-called “hidden hunger”, affects more than half of the world’s population, especially women and preschool children in developing countries,’ said Clare Mukankusi, a breeder with the Pan-African Bean Research Alliance, which was also involved in the project.

With climate change claiming more and more fertile land, hidden hunger could spiral out of control in East Africa and beyond.

Report: Pace of warming threatens Africa’s new maize varieties

The Ugandan experiment is only the first step towards building food security and resilience all over East Africa.

Mukankusi explained that other countries have received the materials, including Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, DRC and Ethiopia, where last year’s El Niño has left a trail of famine and destruction.

But because each country has its own unique ecosystem, the seedlings that are field tested need to follow a particular pipeline before being released, depending on their performance and farmers’ preference.

Other than Uganda, Burundi has also already released three of the new breeds, and over the coming months farmers will judge if the new climate-smart beans live up to their promises, and estimate the direct effect they can have on malnutrition.

Lou Del Bello’s series of reports on Africa and climate change is funded by CDKN.

The post Climate-smart beans offer hope to Uganda’s farmers appeared first on Climate Home News.

The smoke damages their health and that of their families. The wood in some areas is harvested faster than it can regrow. Switching to cleaner stoves ticks a lot of sustainable development boxes: green, clean, female-focused.

Such initiatives attract high level support. US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves in 2010.

Its leadership council also counts as members Antonio Guterres, frontrunner for the UN top job, and China climate envoy Xie Zhenhua.

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Many projects are financed by carbon credits. Reducing climate impacts is only one of the prospective benefits, but an established international carbon market offers donors assurance their money will get results.

Google “cookstoves + carbon” and you will get a raft of offsetting companies advertising their green credentials. But are these initiatives actually working?

A field study, recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, looked at the first project in India approved for carbon offsets through the UN-backed Clean Development Mechanism. Its findings were not encouraging.

Researchers monitored air pollution and fuelwood use of 187 families in rural Karnataka, southern India. Half had been randomly assigned more efficient “Chulika” cookstoves.

It was the pilot for a rollout of Chulikas to 21,500 families by Bangalore-based NGO Samuha, which it projected would prevent 43,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Lab tests suggested these new designs, developed in consultation with the community, would need 67% less fuel than traditional stoves. That is the basis for awarding carbon credits.

Other developers are pursuing similar projects. The Netherlands-based FairClimateFund has invested in Chulika stoves for 17,000 households in Karnataka through the Janara Samuha Mutual Benefit Trust.

It expects to recoup the cost within five years through verified carbon credits, according to an entry in the Alliance’s carbon credit catalogue.

The catalogue also claims the stoves will cut respiratory disease and premature death, although there is no attempt to quantify this benefit.

It quotes villager Munirabeghum: “We can save a lot of trees by using the Chulika… And there is less smoke and our eyes do not burn. It is easy to cook on Chulika.”

Report: Climate policies on collision course with clean cookstoves drive

Unfortunately, that was not borne out by the pilot results.

The study found no statistically significant difference in wood use between families who used the new stoves and the control group.

Some 40% of those who got a Chulika continued to use their traditional stove too, which they preferred for making food like rotis. It’s a common enough phenomenon to have a name: “stove stacking”.

“Stove stacking”, or continuing to use old stoves alongside new efficient designs, wipes out some of the benefits of interventions (Pic: Ther Wint Aung, University of British Columbia)

“A stove may perform well in the lab, but a critical question is what happens in the real world?” said lead author Ther Wint Aung, a doctoral student at University of British Columbia.

“Women who are busy tending crops and cooking meals and caring for children are using stoves in a number of ways in the field that don’t match conditions in the lab.”

Indoor air pollution actually increased across the board, attributed to seasonal weather patterns and food rituals. The rise was smaller in households that switched to a Chulika, with 51 micrograms of fine particulates per cubic metre compared to 139 for traditional stoves.

Report: Somalia climate plan targets illegal charcoal trade

Still, “it feels pretty far from a complete solution”, said co-author Julian Marshall, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington.

“We studied one stove in one village in India, so I can’t say this applies to all projects,” Marshall told Climate Home. “But many projects are not investigating in-the-field impacts.”

Neera van der Geest, chief executive of the FairClimateFund, emphasised the findings came from the pilot and did not refer to the wider rollout.

“Extensive capacity building and training of households is needed to support proper implementation of cookstoves at household level,” she told Climate Home.

Cookstoves were never going to make a big dent in global greenhouse gas emissions. GACC identifies 57 projects that have distributed 6.8 million stoves to date and are expected to offset 10.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2015 and 2016. That is roughly equivalent to a year’s worth of emissions from a 2GW coal power plant.

While the carbon impact may be small, the political capital invested in this programme is substantial.

“Clean stoves could be as transformative as bed nets or vaccines,” Clinton claimed when she launched the GCCA in 2010.

The Clean Development Mechanism has become a conduit for a wide range of development goals. A spokesperson for the CDM told Climate Home the secretariat would bring the study to the attention of the board.

A solar cooker heats water in Nepal (Pic: Rob Goodier/Engineering for Change)

The Chulika is on a spectrum of cookstoves that covers all kinds of fuels and technologies.

It was chosen to reflect the community’s circumstances. Households could use the same freely available wood they were used to and were asked to pay only 200 rupees towards the 1,400 rupee (US$21) cost of the stove.

Some other types of cooker bring bigger climate benefits, but there are trade-offs with cost and function.

On the cleanest end are solar cookers, which concentrate the (free) sun’s rays onto a cooking pot. They have an obvious limitation: you can’t use them before dawn or after dusk.

Natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas are better than bioenergy for health purposes, but are relatively expensive and as fossil fuels don’t qualify as climate-friendly.

There are various ways of processing crop residues or animal dung into biomass pellets or biogas. These perform better than the raw material, but cost more – and supply chains take time to establish.

Report: India’s solar plans receive billion dollar boost

Testing and standards have got tighter since the Chulika was approved by the CDM in 2011, Alliance chief executive Radha Muthiah told Climate Home.

“Looking back at this type of rocket stove, we would conclude from the get-go that it would not deliver those emissions reductions.”

The Alliance is working with the CDM and organisations like Gold Standard to update the criteria. While Muthiah said it was not feasible to field-test every intervention, they are also trying to understand how human behaviour affects the outcomes.

It could take 10-15 years to get truly clean fuels to marginalised communities, she added, leaving a role for incrementally better wood stoves.

“The challenge here is one of adoption and availability to different target households around the world. If somebody only has access to wood, am I going to suggest they switch over to a clean burning fuel like ethanol? That is just not practical.”

This article has been amended to clarify the distinction between the pilot and wider rollout of Chulika cookstoves in Karnataka

The post Are carbon market-financed cookstoves really “clean”? appeared first on Climate Home News.

They don’t want the earth to get too warm, though. That is the message of the campaign “1.5C: The record we must not break“.

It is based on the tough global warming limit 195 governments agreed to aim for at last year’s Paris summit.

Sports stars are urged to show their support for a rapid scale-up of clean energy and sustainable lifestyles.

Competitors from the Marshall Islands, Afghanistan and South Sudan – countries on the front line of climate impacts – are leading the charge.

Brazilian surfers, footballers and water polo players have also lent their voices. Campaigners hope others will follow, using the #Sport4Climate hashtag across social media.

.@ma_werneck #Sport4Climate champion: “ride the good wave” & don’t break the #1o5C target https://t.co/uRodYO2A4i pic.twitter.com/k05EBiZgZN

— Connect4Climate (@Connect4Climate) July 28, 2016

The opening ceremony starts at 20:00 Friday in Rio de Janeiro, directed by Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, known for City of God.

Its contents are closely guarded, but there are rumours “promoting peace with the planet” will be a central theme.

Not all is peace and harmony, though. Indigenous groups plan to shine the Olympics spotlight on deadly conflicts over land and resources.

They are opposing massive hydropower dams, cattle ranches and soy plantations that encroach on traditionally indigenous territory.

Brazil is the most dangerous country in the world to be an environmental defender, with 50 murders recorded last year.

Comment: Can Brazil green its energy without mega dams?

The arrival of global sporting heroes has also exposed dire water pollution at some of the competition sites.

Swimmers are advised to keep their mouths closed in Guanabara Bay, which is contaminated with human faeces, rubbish and the occasional corpse.

Still, if previous tournaments are anything to go on, that will all be forgotten when Usain Bolt gets out of the starting blocks.

The post Rio Olympics: don’t break 1.5C record, say athletes appeared first on Climate Home News.

The author of the Facebook post was Robbie Picard, an activist with a Canadian group that lobbies in support of the country’s vast tar sands industry.

“My question to the rest of Canada, particularly Ontario and Quebec: Why are we getting our oil from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, places that if you’re gay, they will chop off your head?” Piccard told CBC News.

Piccard, who is gay, was initially unrepentant when asked about the post, which many said was sexist, although he later removed it.

Interview: Meet the woman who took on Canada’s tar sand barons

“If this draws attention that we are getting fuel from countries that butcher gays and lesbians — I mean, butcher them, hang them, publicly beat them —  then I’m OK to take a few shots if that means it draws attention to the bigger issue,” he added.

Canada’s oil sands are a touchy subject. Extraction is energy intensive and wrecks the local environment, but in Alberta alone royalties hit C$5.2 billion in 2014.

Despite prime minister Justin Trudeau’s climate hawkish rhetoric, even he has been reluctant to suggest production will have to fall for Canada to meet its long term climate goals.

The post Buy Canadian oil if you love hot lesbians, says lobbyist appeared first on Climate Home News.

Add different civil society representatives, stakeholders from the private sector as well as legislators from regional and national governments.

Now picture them discussing on round tables how their cities could become more sustainable. Imagine then a concluding session in the plenary where all findings would be boiled down to five key recommendations.

What’s the result? Well, “building political will” is definitely among these five key findings. Why are we so sure? Because we’ve experienced these sessions hundreds of times.

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Political will is lacking when it comes to making our cities greener, cleaner and more liveable. But frankly, that’s not the point.

The question is: what will actually generate this political will and what are the causes of its absence? What do we have to change so that mayors, local authorities and governments will actually start to act?

Certainly the different measures for making cities more sustainable need to make economic sense.

They need to fit the needs of the people and they have to be compatible with the social DNA of every single place. But that’s not enough.

They also need to be supported by national governments. Most importantly, the different governmental levels need to work better together.

What is Habitat III?
It’s a major UN summit focused on urban infrastructure and the cities of the future, taking place in Ecuador’s capital Quito from 17-20 October. A key focus of the meeting will be how human settlements can be built and adapted to focus on sustainable development and  climate change goals.

This article focuses on this latter point. How do we overcome the competition for power between national, regional and local governments?

How do we ensure that representatives from across levels of government really understand that sustainable development requires them to collaborate much more closely?

How do we make better use of integrated urban development policy approaches?

Habitat III: an opportunity

The upcoming UN Habitat III conference to be hosted in Quito next October will bring together a huge range of stakeholders and actors, ranging from the UN-level down to the municipal level.

This will be a precious opportunity to launch and promote cross-cutting proposals to enable this multi-level governance that we so much need.

A proposal that we believe could offer a concrete tool to improve multi-level governance, would be the creation of National Urban Policy Commissions.

These would be cross-ministerial and cross-governmental  commissions co-led by national, regional and local governments which would help to bridge incompatibilities between local and national legislations and hence help the effective and consistent implementation of national programmes within the local context (e.g. sustainability programmes).

High density housing in Sicily, Italy (Pic: Pixabay)

The NUPCs would serve as a bridge to promote understanding from national governments of the diversity of local governments and the need for tailored approaches to certain policies and programs.

The Commission would be equally composed of members from different levels of government (from the city to the national level).

This will ensure representation of all government levels and that these can work cohesively and constructively on establishing and implementing a sustainability roadmap for cities.

Other stakeholders such as civil society organizations, interest groups and the private sector would also be involved within these commissions to ensure comprehensive representation and to stimulate cross-sectoral collaboration.

These NUPCs would also be the institutional platform for the monitoring of National Urban Policies (as outlined in Habitat III Policy Paper 3) as well as of the New Urban Agenda (as to be agreed by the UN General Assembly in October 2016).

This would allow the commission to assume two key roles. On one hand, the role of improving multi-level governance by supervising cross-level collaboration.

On the other hand, it would serve as a dedicated national taskforce for monitoring and advising the implementation of the New Urban Agenda following its ratification at the Habitat III in Quito in October 2016.

What would NUCPs do?

Design National Urban Policies. The Commission is in charge of advising on the design, the implementation and the monitoring of National Urban Policies.

Facilitate coordination and help cross-departmental collaboration. The Commission is in charge of encouraging projects and collaboration across governmental departments and national ministries to find integrated, and cross-silos policy solutions for cities. Many times departments both at the national level (e.g. ministries) and at the municipal level (e.g. city councils) struggle to work jointly and cohesively. The Commission therefore facilitates collaboration across governmental departments to ensure coherence across sectorial policies at the national as well as at the municipal level.

Establish Cooperation Projects Across Levels of Government. The Commission ensures enhanced coordination and collaboration across the different levels of government. Coordination between the national and municipal governments is essential in ensuring improved effectiveness of policy implementation, greater efficiency in the administrative procedures as well as ensure consistency and coherence between national and local policies. It is also important to ensure a balance between top-down and bottom up approaches.

Advise different government levels on the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda. The Commission is helping that the agreements of the New Urban Agenda are considered when designing and implementing National Urban Policies. This Commission will be adapting the international targets and objectives agreed in the New Urban Agenda to the national and local contexts and explore concrete action-oriented solutions to achieve those targets. The Commission therefore facilitates the enactment of the New Urban Agenda and ensures consistency of national and local policies with international agreements.

Coordinate Multi-Stakeholder Engagement. The commission engages different experts and stakeholders from a variety of sectors (government, private sector, civil society, etc.) when drafting National Urban Policies. This ensures that all voices are heard and all interests considered in an open, fair and transparent way.

Coordinate City-to-City Collaboration. The Commission also facilitates the cooperation of cities across the country and promote exchange of knowledge and best policy solutions among cities from the same country and from abroad.

Current progress to make our cities a better place is indeed held back by the lack of political will. But that shouldn’t be a conclusion.

It should be the point of departure to actually generate this political commitment.

The best way to reduce political tensions among different levels of governments from different political views should be to institutionalize the cross-sector collaboration in a way that is fair for all of them.

Daniela Chacón is Deputy Mayor and City Council Member of the Metropolitan District of Quito, Ecuador. Stefan Schurig is a member of the Executive Board of the World Future Council Foundation

The post Habitat III: we need a new urban climate agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.

Perhaps most striking is the warning about large productivity losses already being experienced due to heat stress, which can already be calculated for 43 countries.

The paper estimates that in South-East Asia alone “as much as 15% to 20% of annual work hours may already be lost in heat-exposed jobs”.

And that figure may double by 2030 as the planet continues warming − with poor manual labourers who work outdoors being the worst affected.

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The release of the papers coincides with the start of a conference on disaster risk reduction, held in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and jointly sponsored by the International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) and the UN Development Programme.

The aim is to alert delegates to the already pressing scale of the problem and the need to take measures to protect the health of people, and to outline the economic costs of not taking action.

In an introduction to the six-paper collection, UNU-IIGH research fellows Jamal Hisham Hashim and José Siri write that humanity faces “substantial health risks from the degradation of the natural life support systems which are critical for human survival.

It has become increasingly apparent that actions to mitigate environmental change have powerful co-benefits for health.”

Health risks

The author of the paper on heat stress, Tord Kjellstrom, director of the New Zealand-based Health and Environment International Trust, says: “Current climate conditions in tropical and subtropical parts of the world are already so hot during the hot seasons that occupational health effects occur and work capacity for many people is affected.”

The worst area for this is problem is South-East Asia, with Malaysia being typical. In 2010, the country was already losing 2.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) because of people slowing or stopping work because of the heat.

By 2030, this will rise to 5.9% − knocking $95 billion dollars off the value of the economy.

The most susceptible jobs include the lowest paid − heavy labour and low-skill agricultural and manufacturing. Even so, the global economic cost of reduced productivity may be more than US $2 trillion by 2030.

"Persistent heat on land and in the sea this June shattered records" @NOAA pic.twitter.com/PRx8pOoD7k

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) July 20, 2016

India and China are two of the worst affected economies. By 2030, the annual GDP losses could total $450 billion, although mitigation may be made possible by a major shift in working hours, which is among several measures employers will need to take to reduce losses.

The list of 47 countries includes many in the hottest parts of the world, but countries in Europe − among them, Germany and the UK − are also on the list, along with the US.

One of the side-effects of this increased heat is the demand for cooling, which is placing a major strain on electricity infrastructure. Dr  Kjellstrom notes that the additional energy needed for a single city the size of Bangkok for each 1°C increase of average ambient temperature can be as much as 2,000 MW, which is more than the output of a major power plant.

The rising demand for cooling also contributes to warming the world. Air conditioners not only pump heat out directly, the electricity required is typically produced by burning fossil fuels, adding to atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Report: Ban Ki-moon calls on world to unite behind Paris climate deal

People acclimatised to air conditioning also become less heat tolerant, further increasing demand for cooling. But heat stress is only one of the problems addressed by the papers.

From 1980 to 2012, roughly 2.1 million people worldwide died as a direct result of nearly 21,000 natural catastrophes, such as floods, mudslides, drought, high winds or fires.

The number of people being exposed to disasters has increased dramatically – in cyclone-prone areas, the population has grown in 40 years from 72 million to 121 million.

The papers also say: “Disastrously heavy rains can expand insect breeding sites, drive rodents from their burrows, and contaminate freshwater resources, leading to the spread of disease and compromising safe drinking water supplies.

“Warmer temperatures often promote the spread of mosquito-borne parasitic and viral diseases by shifting the vectors’ geographic range and shortening the pathogen incubation period.

Combination of disasters

“Climate change can worsen air quality by triggering fires and dust storms and promoting certain chemical reactions causing respiratory illness and other health problems.

They say that central and south China can anticipate the highest number of casualties from this combination of disasters that will befall them as a result of continuing climate change. This knowledge may help to explain why China has been so pro-active in tackling global warning in the last year.

The authors underline the fact that fast-rising numbers of people are being exposed to the impacts of climate change, with much of the increase occurring in cities in flood-prone coastal areas or on hills susceptible to mudslides or landslides. Especially vulnerable are people living in poverty, including about one billion in slums.

Urban planners, the authors say, can help by designing cities “in ways that enhance health, sustainability, and resilience all at once” – for example, by incorporating better building design, facilitating a shift to renewable energy, and fostering the protection and expansion of tree cover, wetlands and other carbon sinks.

The delegates at the conference will be discussing ways to better prepare for and create warning systems to improve disaster response. They will also be recommended to take steps to reduce casualties by enhancing drainage to reduce flood risks and by strengthening healthcare, especially in poor areas.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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A core group comprised of Bangladesh and the Philippines – the two countries having historically spearheaded this area of work of the Human Rights Council – as well as Vietnam promoted the resolution.

“Compared to any time in the past, accomplishing a world of dignity, a world of peace, a world of fairness, a world of justice may remain a far cry if we fail to factor in innovative ways to provisioning human rights of the climate-affected people” said Bangladesh’s Nahida Sobhan, calling on all other countries to support the resolution.

While the Council had already adopted several such resolutions in the past years, this year’s resolution had been negotiated under unprecedented circumstances.

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Last December, all governments had indeed agreed to mention explicitly the importance of human rights in the preamble of the Paris Agreement – which thus became the first global environmental treaty to include such a reference. The reach of a consensus on this issue helped provide a positive context for the preparation of the new resolution.

“Following the inclusion of human rights language in the preamble to the Paris Agreement, there is no longer any room for arguing that human rights do not fall squarely within the climate discussion” Ben Schachter, from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said.

Indeed, a cooperative spirit characterised the negotiations leading to the adoption of the new resolution; with fewer political sparks than experienced in the past.

This context also impacted the content of the resolution, the final version of which includes eleven paragraphs addressing various aspects of the relation between human rights and the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC).

Report: Climate change is a matter of human rights, agrees UN

The resolution welcomes for instance the adoption of the Paris Agreement, urging its rapid ratification and full implementation.

Through this resolution, the Council welcomed the upcoming organization of the COP-22 in Marrakesh and called upon States to “consider, among other aspects, human rights within the framework of the UNFCCC”.

The Council also invited the international community to enhance “cooperation and assistance for adaptation measures to help developing countries, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change”.

Still, the nature of the interactions between the climate negotiations and the human rights institutions remains a sensible element.

Some governments sought to clarify, while adopting the resolution, their view regarding the role that the UNFCCC and the Council should be playing.

Report: Fear prevails after Filipina anti-coal activist murder

Prior to offering his country’s support for the resolution, Russian representative Alexey Goltyaev expressed concerns with respect to the eleven references to the UN climate change negotiations contained in the draft resolution.

On the other hand, the NGOs promoting the integration of climate considerations in the work of the UN human rights bodies expect a closer cooperation between two processes in particular in relation to knowledge sharing.

Franciscans International’s Budi Tjahjono, a longtime advocate for a more active role by the Council on the issue, highlighted this expectation.

“With the adoption of human rights language in the preamble of Paris Agreement 2015, the Council is expected to work together with UNFCCC in ensuring the promotion and protection of human rights in climate policy and actions at all level,” he said.

These references also echo ongoing discussions taking place in the climate negotiations. During the last negotiation session in May, some governments have continue to seek a better integration of human rights to support the full implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Uganda and Mexico in particular publically requested the organisation of a specific workshop in order to better understand how human rights obligations and principles should guide the work undertaken under the UNFCCC.

In addition to these institutional linkages, the resolution also considered specific activities to be undertaken by the OHCHR.

Since 2014, the Council has mandated annual events and reports to consider the impacts of climate change on specific aspects of human rights.

This first thematic work addressed the relation between climate change and the right to food in 2015, followed by a focus on the implications for the right to health in 2016.

The Human Rights Council conveyed in March 2016 a panel discussion on the Impacts of Climate Change on the Right to Health.

This event was followed by the preparation of a special report by the OHCHR on the Impacts of Climate Change on the Right to Health. Contents from the report fed into the resolution.

Vanuatu in the wake of Cyclone Pam (Pic: UNICEF)

“We are pleased that the current resolution explicitly takes up one of the recommendations contained in the OHCHR’s analytical study, encouraging States, as appropriate, to integrate policies on health and human rights in their climate actions at all levels, including their national plans of action for climate mitigation and adaptation.” Ben Schachter noted.

Looking forward, the Human Rights Council mandated new actions to be undertaken to further consider the implications of climate change on the rights of the child.

The Council called on all relevant experts and organisations to share information with the OHCHR in order to facilitate the preparation of a special study on this issue next year.

These activities will complement the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child which already mandated a day of general discussions to be held in September 2016 with experts and governments on the children’s rights and the environment.

While the adoption of the resolution guarantees that the Council will continue its substantive work on the protection of human rights in the context of climate change, some civil society voices now call on the OHCHR to up its game internally.

“The role of the Council in relation to climate change needs to be strengthen by establishing a more permanent human rights and climate change desk within the OHCHR,” Budi Tjahjono commented.

“This would facilitate in mainstreaming the work on human rights and climate change within the OHCHR”.

Sébastien Duyck is a researcher at the Arctic Centre with a specific focus on environmental governance and human rights and a project attorney with the Centre for International Environmental Law. Follow him on twitter @duycks

The post UN Human Rights Council declares climate a priority appeared first on Climate Home News.

Late on Wednesday Socialist, Labour and Green parties voted to slash carbon emissions 50% by 2020 and 95% by 2030 on 1990 levels, a goal lawmakers admit is demanding.

“A key part of the plan is to prioritise pedestrians, bicyclists and public transport before car traffic, both when it comes to investments in infrastructure and the use of space,” Lan Marie Nguyen Berg, Oslo vice mayor for the environment told Climate Home via email.

“This will also lead to reduced local air pollution and improve quality of life in the city. Making the city centre car free by 2019 is part of this plan.”

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Transport accounts for the largest chunk of the city’s emissions, 63%. According to local media, 90,000 people work in the city centre on a daily basis, but only 1,000 call it home.

A strategy document published in February aims to boost bike use 25% by 2025 and says by 2020 all public transport should be powered by renewables.

“Oslo will arrange for at least 20% of heavy transport to go on renewable fuels by 2020 and all heavy transport equipment operation should go on renewable fuel by 2030,” reads the plan.

Car traffic across the city will need to drop 20% by 2019, while the council plans to commission a feasibility study on fitting carbon capture technology to a waste incineration plant at Klemetsrud.

The announcement comes two weeks after Norway’s national government announced it was targeting climate neutrality from 2030, to be achieved by buying international carbon credits.

The post Oslo votes to slash emissions 95% by 2030 appeared first on Climate Home News.

While Luke Skywalker and the Californian socialite were busy breaking the internet, the future of the planet gained sporadic attention from global news agencies.

These are some of the findings in a study of the Paris meeting by Martin Moore, director of the Centre for Study of Media, Communication and Power at Kings College London.

Using a series of complex algorithms, Moore’s team crunched the numbers on the two-week event, focusing on 133,000 articles from a range of publications across the British political spectrum.

One thing became obvious. For most editors, climate change is not an priority, although a surge of compelling news stories before and during the meeting was not kind on COP21’s chances of going viral.

(Pic: Climate Unspun/Open Democracy)

The Paris attacks two weeks earlier, Donald Trump’s mooted ban on Muslims and severe floods across Europe saw to that.

“There was a lot going on,” Moore said at an event in Oxford hosted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ).

At the Paris summit, unlike the 2009 attempt to strike a global climate deal in Copenhagen, there was no scandal to capture the imagination.

A mass leak of climate scientist emails ahead of Copenhagen sparked a media frenzy. The talks themselves were conflict-riven, with national delegations briefing against each other.

Climategate five years on: who won the war?

Absent such drama, journalists in Paris initially focused on a “crisis” narrative, driven by the impacts of Storm Desmond across the UK and warnings over sea level rise, drought and famine from development NGOs.

In the second week of the summit, coverage slowly switched to the likelihood of an outcome but still, explicit coverage of the nuts and bolts of negotiations was thin.

“What was of particular interest was only 6% of articles referred to corporations and only 3% to industry bodies,” said Moore, offering a useful insight for business and climate strategists.

His picture is one where to a great extent governments and civil society dominated and – perhaps – controlled the narrative through persistent and effective outreach to journalists.

Also interesting is the relative lack of space offered to climate sceptics in the mainstream press, in direct contrast to previous headline UN climate summits.

(Pic: Climate Unspun/Open Democracy)

“For the most part there was a general acceptance of the science,” Moore said. A small gathering of sceptics in a Paris hotel was covered by Vice and Climate Home, but few other media attended.

As expected, editorial slants through publications varied widely.

In the UK, the Guardian was focused on solutions; the Daily Mail majored on climate crisis. The BBC warmly welcomed the final agreement, while the FT was openly sceptical it was sufficient.

Report: Why did Paris climate summit get less press coverage than Copenhagen?

Protests from civil society appealed to media who had embedded video and pictures at the core of their strategy. Visual stunts involving mermaids were lapped up by Buzzfeed and Vice. Campaigners take note.

But for print-heavy operations these and other organised “actions” generally failed to make much of a dent, perhaps making a paragraph in a story rather than a lead.

The study did not explore the consumption of the stories published, but given all digital newsrooms use analytics to watch the success – or failure – of articles in real time, output tells its own story.

Much as the public or campaigners may assume stories are written in the “public interest”, editors rarely commission articles that they know will not be read.

(Pic: Climate Unspun/Open Democracy)

How can this inform media coverage and lobbying strategies?

Climate change is still taken seriously by leading online, print and broadcast channels, evidenced by the thousands of journalists attending the talks in Paris.

But it’s still dominated by Western outlets, with few reporters from regions likely to be substantially hit by future impacts.

News in India, China, Brazil, Russia and Africa was thin, a separate report from the RISJ due out later this year will reveal.

Except for specialist outlets like Climate Home, Climate Wire, Carbon Pulse and Carbon Brief (the clue is in the names) the intricacies of the negotiations are emphatically not front page news.

Coverage is frequently slanted towards the impacts climate policies will have on individual countries, as opposed to the wider benefits or consequences of tougher greenhouse gas cuts.

Evolving landscape

For now, most people still consume the “majority of their news from familiar and trusted brands” according to the RISJ digital news report for 2015.

But in a fragmenting digital landscape the influence of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and other social media channels yet to be launched is fast growing, it said.

Governments are already seeking to bypass journalists with orchestrated online “interviews” and announcements on twitter, while groups like Greenpeace are building their own news platforms.

Globally digital inequality persists even as platforms proliferate. There is a “widening information gap” between those online and offline, observes BBC News director James Harding in the same report.

That points to a need for outlets covering climate change to ensure they can penetrate audiences without regular internet or mobile access. It’s often these communities in Africa and Asia that need the information most.

There are, Harding added, “uneven patterns in the fewer stories that seem to get even bigger audiences and the many more that do not”.

It seems keeping up with the Kardashians is likely to be a challenge for some time to come, even for global warming.

Aspire to inspire before u expire

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) August 12, 2010

The post Kim Kardashian v climate change: There’s only one winner appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to a report in London’s Financial Times, Lloyd’s says the US government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which subsidises insurance cover for householders in regions vulnerable to floods and storms, encourages irresponsible house building.

Lloyd’s also says the NFIP subsidy regime is financially unsustainable. Because of claims related to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and superstorm Sandy in 2012, the NFIP has now run up debts of more than $24 billion.

Insurance companies have been among those at the forefront of analysing the financial implications of climate change and assessing climate-related risk worldwide.

Concerted action

In the run-up to the UN conference on climate change in Paris last December, insurance companies pressed for more concerted action on global warming, saying it posed a serious threat to the future of the industry.

Insurers say rising payouts related to climate change and weather in heavily-insured western countries such as the US result in less money being made  available to provide affordable insurance in developing countries, where it is most needed.

A report by Munich Re, one of the insurance industry’s leaders in analysing climate change, says the world’s most deadly and costly catastrophe in 2015 was the Nepal earthquake in April, resulting in at least 9,000 dead and billions of dollars worth of damage.

“As is so often the case in developing countries, only a fraction of the $4.8 billion in overall losses caused by the quake and the aftershocks was insured – $210 million,” says Munich Re.

The situation in the US is the reverse, with heavy NFIP subsidies and other local, state-controlled schemes for too many homes built in areas exposed to storms and flooding.

“Intended as a disaster relief programme, the federal flood insurance scheme is really a land development policy”

The most glaring example is along the coast of Florida, a region that is regularly hit by hurricanes and giant storms. Coastal lands are also threatened by sea level rise related to climate change. Yet despite these risks, the area has seen a steep rise in population and housebuilding.

In 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit the Florida coast, causing an estimated 65 deaths and causing $25 billion of damage to housing and businesses.

With encouragement from insurance schemes subsidised at federal and state levels, the damaged areas have all been redeveloped. And insurance experts say that if a similar storm were to hit the Florida coast now, more lives could be at risk and losses would amount to $50 billion.

Bargain prices

Professor Omri Ben-Shahar, an expert on insurance law at the University of Chicago, argues in an article in Forbes magazine that government subsidies mean that flood policies are being sold at bargain prices.

He says the system is hard to justify, with middle-class taxpayers living inland having to subsidise mostly upper-income owners of coastal homes.

“Government-provided insurance made sure that premiums were low enough to sustain ongoing development and a massive relocation of population to regions which, we now know, are borderline inhabitable,” says Ben-Shahar.

“Intended as a disaster relief programme, the federal flood insurance scheme is really a land development policy.”

After the government had to pay out massive amounts in claims in 2012 in the aftermath of super-storm Sandy, the US Congress decided to phase out the NFIP scheme and its insurance subsidies. As a result, insurance premiums in some coastal areas rose tenfold.

An intense lobbying campaign followed, and much of the NFIP scheme is now back in place.

This article was produced by Climate News Network

The post Top insurer urges US to stop subsidising climate-risk homes appeared first on Climate Home News.

It seems a curious question given most analysis on global warming focuses on renewable energy, finance or infrastructure to protect against rising tides.

But substance abuse and domestic violence are inextricably linked to low levels of resilience to extreme weather among some communities, a study has found.

Compiled by Practical Action, the Overseas Development Institute and Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), it raises questions over how to help people to adapt to climate impacts.

“Alcoholism adds to the workload of men, and can lead to them not being able to feed their family,” said Reetu Sogani, an Indian development specialist and one of the report’s authors.

“Climate change aggravates these impacts, so we cannot really divide alcoholism and climate change… they are all connected.”

Analysis: Is development the best kind of climate adaptation?

Alcoholism is a rising concern in developed and developing countries and a causal factor in over 200 diseases and chronic conditions.

An estimated 3.3 million die in its grip every year, says the World Health Organisation in a 2014 report, with men twice as likely to succumb.

According to the study, cheap alcohol is widely available in the Indian city of Gorakhpur, located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh near the border with Nepal.

This makes it – like many other areas where addiction rates are high – uniquely vulnerable to extreme events which can rip apart already weak social units.

“In India, men’s income-generating possibilities are affected by weather events, which causes tension and anxiety,” says the study.

“When waterlogged roads prevent men from getting to work, many stay at home, help with rearing animals, go out to search for work or turn to drinking.”

Report: Climate adaptation brings men back to women-only village

In India alcoholics are less likely to have loans approved, meaning they and their families are more likely to suffer from extreme events that mean they cannot work or have damaged homes.

The findings call for a drive to ensure climate policies offer broad support to communities, alcoholics and the large numbers of women who often suffer violence linked to these addictions.

“You can’t look at climate change in a silo – we need to integrate it into social cohesion,” said Sam Bickersteth, head of CDKN.

“Clearly good development is gender sensitized, and climate change [policy] has developed without being gender sensitive, particularly mitigation.”

Blog: Why women are key to tackling climate change

Change brings its own troubles.

Including women in planning is often seen as “slowing and complicating” by some communities, said Virginie Le Masson, a geographer with the ODI.

That means rolling out policies that combat these views and address gender imbalances, allowing women to contribute in public discussions and have access to finance.

And, says the report, it means equality between men and women must be a principal target of new climate projects, however hostile communities may be.

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With two days until more than 150 countries sign a pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero later this century, they are upping the ante.

“In the middle of next month, at locations around the planet, activists organized by, among others, 350.org, a group I helped found, will commit widespread civil disobedience,” writes Bill McKibben.

“It will be by far the largest-scale moment of civil disobedience the climate movement has yet seen. And here’s why: Because so far action comes far too slowly.

“The world’s governments agreed in Paris in December to try and hold global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius – but the pledges they made will let the mercury rise more than twice that much.”

In a “global wave of mass actions”, activists will target fossil fuel producers, governments and companies perceived to be slowing efforts to slash emissions.

In the UK, activists from Reclaim the Power plan to “shut down the UK’s largest opencast coal mine” in Ffos-y-fran, Wales.

Similar protests are planned in the US, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, Canada and Nigeria from 4-15 May.

“As at a few other moments in recent human history, from the anti-colonial struggles touched off by Gandhi or the civil rights moment triggered by Rosa Parks – it’s time to underline the moral seriousness of the challenge by putting our bodies on the line,” added McKibben.

“We have reason to think it will help: when we organized the civil disobedience actions at the start of the Keystone Pipeline fight, almost no one had even heard of the project.

“But 1,253 arrests later it had become an environmental watchword, and a catalyst for resisting hundreds of other fossil fuel projects.”

The post Climate activists plan ‘global wave’ of protests in May appeared first on Climate Home News.

Low 2015 rainfall levels left Arjun Kashinath Kumbad, a cattle farmer in Maharashtra, struggling to feed his livestock (© Subrata Biswas / Greenpeace)

By Ed King

Global drinking water supplies are under increasing threat from heavy industry, coal power and a warming climate.

That’s the finding in a new report published by NGO Greenpeace, released on World Water Day 2016. It finds 44% of coal plants and 45% of planned projects are in areas of water stress.

“If all the proposed coal plants were built the water consumed by coal power plants around the world would almost double,” said Harri Lammi, a Greenpeace senior global campaigner on coal.

“We now know that coal not only pollutes our skies and fuels climate change, it also deprives us of one of our most precious resources: water.”

According to campaigners the world’s 8,359 operating coal-fired power plants use enough water for 1 billion people.

Khomnal Village pond at Mangalwheda taluk, Solapur district in Maharashtra usually has water all year round – but not now (© Subrata Biswas / Greenpeace)

Maharashtra has declared 15747 villages in 21 districts as drought affected (© Subrata Biswas / Greenpeace)

Heavy industry and energy companies dump their waste into the Yellow River as it snakes through Huinong district, Shizuishan, Ningxia (© Lu Guang / Greenpeace)

Greenpeace says the coal industry in Yulin in Shanxi province is using water supplies once reserved for crops and drinking (© Nian Shan / Greenpeace)

To guarantee drinking water for his family and sheep, this farmer has to drive two buckets of freshwater from a small source every 2-3 days (© Nian Shan / Greenpeace)

The post Coal and climate threatens India, China water supplies appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Joe de Sousa/Flickr)

By Ed King

The mayors of 20 leading European cities say high levels of air pollution from diesel cars pose a threat to their citizens, and want tougher EU-wide action to regulate emissions.

In a letter published on Tuesday they say new rules governing car emissions offer a “permit to pollute” at the expense of public health.

Last month MEPs voted against a plan to close gaps in air pollution controls on new diesel cars, meaning limits on nitrogen oxide (NOx) will be effectively be relaxed from 2019.

“It is unacceptable to introduce emissions thresholds, only to allow them to be violated,” says the letter, which is supported by leaders in Paris, Athens, Madrid, Amsterdam, Milan, Oslo and Warsaw.

“What can we say to parents whose children are suffering from acute respiratory disorders, or to elderly people and to the most vulnerable?”

London: Fronting up to a global pollution battle

London Mayor Boris Johnson was invited to support the protest, but a source at Paris City Hall which coordinated the letter said they had not received a positive response to their invitation.

The UK capital has some of the highest levels of NOX emissions in the EU and the issue has dominated this year’s mayoral election race with candidates pledging to phase out diesel taxis.

Other European cities are already taking radical steps to cut pollution levels.

Madrid plans to ban up to 50% of cars from its historic centre when air quality levels drop, while Milan and Paris have cut vehicle numbers on smoggy days.

Oslo has published a proposal to stop all private vehicles from driving though the centre by 2019.

The post Europe’s capitals say diesel cars threaten health of residents appeared first on Climate Home News.

As rainfall patterns become more erratic, many women face longer walks to gather water (Pic: Practical Action/Dfid)

By Ed King

Women are frequently portrayed as being vulnerable to climate impacts.

This much is true, especially so in developing countries where they are responsible for running households, collecting water and feeding their families.

But there’s another critical side too. Women are leading actors in enabling change, in educating communities to become more resilient and influencing regional, national and international leaders.

To mark International Women’s Day 2016 we picked out nine views explaining why women are critical to global efforts to address and prepare for a warming world.

Please add your own comments at the bottom or send @ClimateHome a tweet using the hashtag #IWD2016

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South African foreign minister

“Being gender smart is not about pushing men away, but as African proverbs – which we have many of – say, one hand does not clap, but two do and make a sound. This about time we acknowledge the contribution of women.”

Christiana Figueres, UN climate chief

“Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, the most vulnerable, and women are the strongest key agent of adaptation. On both sides because of the vulnerable and potential to contribute they are one of the most important elements here.”

Natalie Isaacs, One Million Women

“Women have incredible power to transform society. In Australia women make 85% of the consumer decisions that affect the household’s carbon footprint. We’re 51% of the electorate. Everything we do is about empowering women and girls to take practical action. Once you start taking action and you see a result: you can’t stop.”

Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh

“If we don’t discuss women’s rights then whenever we are discussing or negotiating on climate change we are leaving out half the population. It impacts men and women differently. If a disaster kills one male, four females will die. We need gender sensitive responses to address climate change.”

Mary Robinson, former Ireland president

“This is fundamental to climate justice. Women are agents for change who will bring about change on the ground. They will be the ones having to adapt to the climate shocks so they need to be empowered, valued and included at the table for decision-making.”

Fatou Ndeye Gaye, former environment minister, Gambia

“When we say sustainable development, we start from the homes and houses. When you wake up it’s women and children who do the chores in Gambia. Many of those chores we share in the house but it’s the responsibility of the women. Women can inform the top.  Women’s issues are family issues.”

Mafalda Duarte, Climate Investment Funds

“Every day all across the world, billions of women – farmers, land-managers, commuters, entrepreneurs, consumers, investors – make decisions that affect the future of our children and our planet. We need women to be empowered to make decisions but in order for that to happen they need to be engaged in decision-making processes and provided with leadership opportunities.”

Justine Greening, UK secretary of state for international development

“Quite simply, no country can develop if it leaves half of its population behind. Girls and women everywhere need control over their lives – the power to make their own choices about their health, their marriage, their family, their education and their careers. That is why we will continue to put improving the lives of girls and women at the heart of everything we do.”

Radha Muthiah, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

“If we can deliver cleaner cookstoves women will gain time because they are not spending so much time collecting firewood, more efficient stoves mean they spend less time cooking and it means there’s cleaner air so they are healthier and their children are healthier.”

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