Submitted in May 2020, Ukraine’s national greenhouse gas inventory report said “the occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea and armed aggression by the Russian Federation” had led to a loss of control over 7% of Ukraine’s territory. “This fact complicates, and sometimes makes impossible, the process of data collecting and reporting, needed for the annual National GHG Inventory.”

The report then detailed why it views Russia as an occupying power, citing UN resolutions and reports.

Moscow has hit back. In a statement released on 30 December, Russia said the allegations were “absolutely incorrect and unacceptable”. It claimed not to be a party in the “Ukrainian internal conflict that covers the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions” and argued the Crimean people had chosen self-determination in a controversial 2014 referendum.

Most international actors do not recognise the 2014 referendum and continue to regard the Crimea region as part of Ukraine.

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“I wish it could be taken as a greater serious engagement” with the UN climate process, Mark Galeotti, a professor in Russian politics at University College London, said of the Russian statement. “But rather the language and tone suggest simply a knee-jerk response to the language Kyiv used.”

Galeotti described the spat as “one of the tragedies we see in international bodies’ debates: Moscow (and, in fairness, Kyiv) are more concerned with using them as opportunities to play out their narrative struggle over Crimea than actually engaging with the issues in question”.

Until the conflict broke out in 2014, the two countries had been allies within the climate process. They jointly opposed the Doha amendments to the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 as well as a related dispute in June 2013.

Since then, Ukrainian campaigners have accused their government of using the conflict as an excuse for weak climate targets.

The two countries’ climate pledges are “critically insufficient,” according to Climate Action Tracker. Russia has committed to axe emissions by 30%, and Ukraine 40% from 1990 levels by 2030.

The common baseline year came just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its vast industries, making it a relatively easy target to achieve.

The UN climate body has been approached for comment.

The post Russia-Ukraine dispute over Crimea spills into UN climate forum appeared first on Climate Home News.

Iran and Libya – both among the 14-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) – as well as Yemen and Eritrea have not ratified the agreement.

The deal has been formally endorsed by 193 of 197 nations, including all G20 countries. Turkey and Iraq signed up in late 2021.

The US withdrew from the agreement under president Donald Trump, with effect from November 2020. His successor Joe Biden rejoined the pact on his first day in office, 20 January 2021, and formally re-entered the global treaty 30 days later.

South Sudan, the world’s newest country which is torn by conflict, ratified the deal on 23 February 2021.

Before that, Angola ratified on 12 August 2020, Kyrgyzstan on 18 February and Lebanon on 5 February.

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The four countries yet to ratify the accord account for around 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the European Commission’s emissions database.

Iran (1.85%) is currently the top emitter among the nations that have not yet ratified. The others represent a far smaller share of global emissions: Eritrea (0.01%), Libya (0.14%), and Yemen (0.03%).

International agreements are initially signed to signal intent to comply, but only become binding through ratification. That can take an act of parliament or some other formal acceptance. Different countries have different processes. Former US President Barack Obama used disputed executive powers to ratify the Paris accord in 2016.

Once ratified, the agreement commits governments to submit their plans to cut emissions. Ultimately they will have to do their bit to keep global temperatures well below 2C above pre-industrial times and to “pursue efforts” to limit them further to 1.5C.

“Oil has been an important factor for economic security for several of these countries,” David Waskow, of the World Resources Institute think-tank in Washington, told CHN, noting common interests of both Opec nations and the US, the world’s top oil producer.

Big emitter yet to ratify:

Iran

As a major producer of oil and natural gas exporter, Iran’s energy sector accounts for around 77% of its total emissions. Despite its fossil fuel empire, the country has developed a renewable energy industry thanks to a number of national plans and funds.

In November 2015, it pledged to reduce its emissions by 4% by 2030, compared to a business as usual scenario. Its national plan said cutting greenhouse gas emissions “will be facilitated and speeded up, only in the absence of any forms of restrictions and sanctions.”

Iran’s reluctance to ratify stems largely from its dependence on oil, complicated by the collapse of the July 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and other major powers led by Washington.

Windmills in Manjeel, Iran (Photo: Ali Madjfar)

This article was updated on 07 October 2021 after Turkey ratified the agreement and on 3 November 2021 after Iraq ratified the agreement. 

The post Which countries have not ratified the Paris climate agreement? appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a meeting in Birmingham on 8 February, 110 sometimes sceptical citizens were consulted about ways to decarbonise the UK economy as part of preparations by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government for the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in November. 

France launched a similar democratic experiment in October to seek voters’ ideas for cutting emissions. Last year, the UK was the first G7 economy to legislate a goal of net zero emissions by 2050 but it did not spell out exactly how.

Buy less new stuff, rent everything from toys to cars, and repair damaged possessions were among topics debated at the Birmingham meeting. 

“The more we consume, the quicker we run out of natural resources,” Nicole Koenig-Lewis, a reader in sustainable consumption at Cardiff University, told the room.

UK climate diplomacy ‘already happening’ for Cop26 despite leadership vacuum

“Thinking about resources like fossil fuels or minerals: it always leads to an increase pollution of our water and the air and also too much waste. Thinking about the fashion industry, 300,000 tonnes of clothing are sent to landfill every year,” she said.

Many in the audience said they got the message although others doubted the government would heed their ideas.

“It’s a big issue for my generation,” Leia, a currently unemployed 20-year old engineer from Darlington, told Climate Home News of a throwaway society. Reporters were asked only to use participants’ first names.

“We’ve never been taught to mend or make clothes. I have but I know I’m the exception, so we need to educate young generations how to do these things rather than just live a consumerist lifestyle,” she said.

Participants in the Birmingham citizens’ assembly, the second of four weekends devoted to consulting the public, were recruited through a civic lottery, under which the government sent 30,000 invitations and randomly picked 110 people out of those willing to take part.

The attendees reflect the UK population in terms of age, gender, education, ethnicity, geography and attitudes to climate change, according to Resolve, a charity specialising in participative democracy overseeing the climate assembly. 

The outcome of the discussions will be presented to the six parliamentary committees which called for the assembly in April. The government will not be bound by the recommendations, prompting Extinction Rebellion UK to call out the assembly as “toothless”.

By contrast in France, President Emmanuel Macron has said he plans to present citizens’ proposals “unfiltered” either to a referendum, to a vote in parliament or to direct regulatory application.

One million solar panels! If only we knew where they were…

In Birmingham, one audience member won a round of applause by asking Rachel Reeves, the chair of parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee: “How can we be reassured that the government will follow on our recommendations?” 

Reeves, of the opposition Labour Party, insisted that the assemblies were genuine.

“We can have a degree of reassurance that the government are going to listen and take on board the views of the citizens’ assembly,” she said, pointing to cross-party support. “We’re going to use what you come up with to inform our future work programme.”

Participants broke out into several groups in an afternoon session, each tackling ways to decarbonise an area of the UK economy, including energy in the home, transport and consumption. 

In the workshop on consumption, lectures challenged the notion that greater energy efficiency in the future would allow British people to get away with present-rate consumption. 

A net-zero economy would also have to encourage less waste, higher-quality and more durable products than those produced at present in a shift from a throwaway consumer culture.

“Is the new iPhone, which has a new form of selfie, adding enormous amount of value to our life?,” asked John Barrett, a professor in energy and climate policy at the university of Leeds. 

“It isn’t about personal blame. This is about a system that we work in,” he said, sending several heads to nod in agreement. Some economists object that a shift to buying less will undermine growth and jobs.

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Koenig-Lewis advocated a shift away from ownership and towards renting or sharing. Ride-sharing for commuters by car, clothes-sharing or product rental, such as the Lego subscription box, could allow British people to cut resource use in the long-term. 

The participants, who were spread across five tables of six to seven people including a mediator, then had ten minutes to exchange views with experts in a session closed to the media. 

Barrett reported upon the audience’s “annoyance” towards products’ lower standards and limited lifespan.

The idea of forcing companies to indicate their products’ carbon footprint was particularly popular, the experts said. Carbon footprint labelling is currently not compulsory in the UK, despite support from household names like Kit-Kat chocolates, Cheerios cereals and Nescafe coffee.

So was a graph linking emissions to income that showed the 5% richest section of the population have by far the greatest impact. “The reaction was a sense that they want to make sure that the polluter pays,” Barrett said. 

On the sharing economy, Koenig-Lewis said participants wanted to discuss “how to  make a rented car feel more personal”. 

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There was also vivid interest in repairing initiatives, such as the rise of ‘repair cafes’, free meeting places where people can bring broken products such as clothes, bicycles, furniture, electrical appliances and, if necessary, learn how to fix them.

Notwithstanding the odd disagreement over subjects such as whether to restrict consumption of meat in favour of plant-based diets, participants provided overwhelmingly positive feedback on the experience in surveys. 

Chris, a 32-year old mechanical engineer from Oxfordshire, admitted to being initially “very sceptical about the climate assembly”. 

“I heard a lot of people say: we want a group of people, to represent the people, to make a decision for the people. And I thought: and is that not what Parliament supposed to be?”

But he said the diversity of the assembly and willingness of participants to find compromise on issues had left him “pleasantly surprised”.

The assembly embraced the full spectrum of British society, he said, from “people who are in denial to people who say we need to fix it tomorrow and everything in between along that line”.

“I feel proud of what has been achieved,” Adrian, a 52-year old lawyer from Belfast, told CHN.

“Everyone that’s involved in this is going towards a same goal,” he said, “And that makes me a lot more secure about the outcome of this than I was when going into it.”

The post Don’t shop till you drop: advice to UK citizens on net zero climate goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

The 31 October meeting was the first time representatives of both houses met to discuss adaptation. At the conference, politicians, climate experts, farmers, activists and regular citizens expressed concern that policymakers were not doing enough to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

According to a report published by France’s Senate in June, 2C of warming above pre-industrial levels could deal a profound blow to France by 2050.

The report claims heatwaves are set to strike more often and longer, and wildfires – a phenomenon only experienced in the Mediterranean region – could unfurl across the whole country several weeks a year from 2060.

Drier soil will also make it significantly harder to grow food, while sea level rise threatens to engulf the coast, ski-stations in the Alps and Pyrenees will fall prey to disrepair and Asian tiger mosquitos carrying tropical diseases could rear their heads, it said.

The report warned some regions would have it harder than others, with touristic regions in the mountains or on the coast particularly vulnerable.

“Change is here and it will accelerate,” transport minister Elisabeth Borne said.

IEA World Energy Outlook outlines 1.5C scenario

“Only this summer our country experienced two intense heat waves. They deeply disrupted our collective and individual lives. I am thinking of the postponed national exams, of the slowed down trains, of the cancelled sports events. Electricity production was also disrupted.”

“Nowadays we speak of these events as ‘extreme’. Unfortunately, they will become less and less exceptional,” she said.

Both the report’s commissioner, senator Ronan Dantec, and Frédérique Tufnell, a deputy for the Charente-Maritime region, called on the national assembly and senate to hold a debate on the country’s strategy to adapt to the climate crisis.

Tufnell said the country should consider a framework adaptation law – “though the decision depends on the government,” the deputy from president Macron’s La Republique en Marche party told Climate Home News.

Bruno Charles, vice-president of Lyon, said France had yet to develop “a common culture around what climate change means for a 2000-year-old town like ours. We’re proud to be part of the Unesco heritage list – though in 100 years, living conditions will have been turned upside down.”

“How will five century-old buildings fare in the face of 50 days of heatwaves at 50 degrees?” he asked. “How do you create social housing in the knowledge that there’ll be summers at 50 degrees during 60 days? How do you get around in a town where the asphalt is melting?”

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Despite two national adaptation plans in 2011 and 2018, the country has so far failed to come up with an adequate adaptation strategy, participants agreed.

Charles slammed a general lack of political willpower to address the looming problems. “We have a generation of mayors and presidents who were born before the awareness of climate change and think that technical solutions will fix things,” he lamented.

Vivian Despoues, chief strategist at the Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), pointed to the record rush to buy fans and air conditioners in June as evidence that the country was ill-prepared for heat waves.

Other participants pointed to instances where the impacts of climate change were not being factored into decision-making.

Antoine Bonduelle, head of Climate Action Network France, criticised plans to operate an electric shuttle to Beauvais airport without questioning the logic of air travel.

“Everything is great!” he said of the shuttle. “But as soon as it comes to talking about the low-cost economic model, we find ourselves in the company of politicians who are airport lobbyists. They’re not there to say: ‘Let’s imagine how can we reduce the airport in the years to come’.”

EU plots climate deal with China

There was strong support to restore ecosystems to simultaneously cut emissions and adapt to climate change –  also called nature-based solutions – in the run-up to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, due to take place in Marseille in June 2020.

Sylvie Feuillette, a spokesperson for the water agency in Seine Normandie, said that something as a simple as restoring hedges on agricultural land could “improve soil quality, retain water, limit streams and dependency on pesticides”.

Deputy Tufnell, the commissioner of a January report on wetlands, likewise urged the country to protect these “lands of the future” that offer many benefits, including water filtration, carbon absorption, or buffer zones for flooding.

“Two-thirds of the wetlands [in France] disappeared during the 20th century,” she pointed out.

The post Stakeholders push for progress on France’s climate adaptation plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Spanish socialists (PSOE), who are scrambling to host the Cop25 summit in December after civil unrest led Chile to withdraw its invitation, won 120 seats in the 350-seat parliament – three less than in elections in April.

The country now faces a hung parliament and continuation of the last six months of difficult political negotiations. This leaves the socialists in charge in a caretaking capacity and the organisation of Cop25 remains in their hands.

The Ministry of the Ecological Transition said that the results of the election would not impact upon the preparations of COP25.

According to Artur Patuleia, an analyst with the E3G think tank, coalition negotiations are expected to stretch on beyond the conference’s 2 December start date and preparations should be unaffected.

The conservative People’s Party (PP) shot up from 66 to 88 seats after leader Pablo Casado shifted towards the centre. Earlier this month, Casado said he backed the socialists’ move to bring UN talks to Spain’s capital after Chile dropped out at the last minute.

Buoyed by the separatist crisis in Catalonia, far right Vox Party more than doubled its seat count to 52, while liberal Ciudadanos all but disappeared from the political scene, nosediving from 57 to 10 seats.

Madrid to host Cop25 climate talks in December after Chile withdraws

This leaves Pedro Sanchez with the options of forming a coalition government with an enfeebled far left Podemos (down from 42 to 35 seats) and Catalan separatists, or with the PP.

Addressing reporters outside the party headquarters in Madrid, Casado did not exclude the possibility of backing the socialists.

“Let’s see what Sánchez proposes … Spain can’t stay deadlocked,” he said, referring to the fourth national election in four years.

But Patuleia, who authored a report on the transition away from coal in Spain, said that the probability of a pact with the conservatives was “very low”.

“From a climate perspective, the best scenario would be a PSOE minority government, or a PSOE government in a coalition with Podemos, some regional parties and Ciudadanos,” he said.

Can Teresa Ribera transform Spain into a green champion?

The election also saw coal mining regions largely reiterate support for the PSOE even after the party closed the country’s 26 coal mines in December 2018 and vowed to shut nine out of 15 coal-fired power plants by June 2020.

The socialist government struck a deal with the mining unions in October 2018, committing the country to inject €220m into mining regions over the next decade, boosting retirement schemes and retraining.

Despite an overall rise of the PP and far-right, municipalities hosting the country’s most polluting coal-fired plants all re-elected champions of the transition away from polluting energy. The PSOE clinched a winning vote share of 30.14% in Pontes de García Rodríguez  (Asturias, North West), 34.66% in Carreño (Asturias, North), 35.47% in Carboneras (Andalucia), 25.46% in Teruel (Aragon, North) and 29.57% in Los Barrios (Andalucia).

“The PSOE maintained the number of seats in the Asturias region. From that point of view one can conclude that an alignment with the climate ambition and social tradition was successful,” Patuleia said.

The next UN climate summit, also known as COP25, will be held in Madrid from 2 until 13 December.

The post With UN climate talks looming, Spanish election continues political uncertainty appeared first on Climate Home News.

Lord justice James Dingemans and justice Martin Chamberlain said the Met had used powers beyond the reach of the law, Section 14 of the 1986 public order act, which can only apply to single assemblies.

The judges ruled that the movement’s uprising, which brought much of central London to a standstill, constituted multiple, physical assemblies despite being organised under the umbrella of one movement.

Extinction Rebellion art seized by police includes Ron Mueck skull

Imposed after a week of disruptions in London, the ban instructed “any assembly to linked to Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ (publicised as being from 7th October to 19th October at 1800 hours) [to] cease their protests within London by 2100 hours 14 October”.

A string of public figures sympathising with the movement had requested the judicial review of the ban, which abruptly rendered Extinction Rebellion’s eight day occupation of Trafalgar Square illegal. These included Green peer Jenny Jones, Labour MPs David Drew and Clive Lewis, Green MEP Eleanor Chowns, Labour activist Adam Alnutt, Green MP Caroline Lucas and environmental journalist George Monbiot.

“We’re delighted with today’s result,” Extinction Rebellion lawyer Tobias Garnett told reporters outside the court. “It indicates our belief that the police’s blanket-ban was unprecedented and now unlawful on our right to protest. It’s a victory for those who want to draw the government’s attention to what the scientists have been telling us for decades, which is: that the planet is warming, that we’re in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, that we are responsible and we have a very short time to do something about it.”

“Rather than criminalising Extinction Rebellion’s activists, we call on the government to tell the truth and act now on this ecological emergency,” Garnett said.

Emmanuel Macron’s war on climate activism

Protesters could now sue the Met for wrongful imprisonment and receive compensation.  Jules Carey, a lawyer from Bindmans who acted for the protest group, estimated the number of arrests that took place under the ban at “around 700 people”.

Carey told the Guardian each compensation claim could be several thousands of pounds. “It’s a very expensive mistake for the Metropolitan police.”

“This judgment is a vindication of those who have sought to defend our crucial right to protest,” Monbiot said. “Non-violent civil disobedience is essential to democratic politics – in fact there would be no democratic politics without it. The attempt by the Metropolitan Police to shut down civil protest was a direct assault on democracy. I am delighted it has been struck down.”

Chown, who said she was arrested on 7 October “for doing nothing more than standing more on Trafalgar Square”, described the judgment as an immense victory for the right to assembly and to protest, which are cornerstones of democracy”

“It does outline that in some ways the courts can be our friends and the police have to be really careful of how they use their powers with demonstration,” Sarah Lunnon, a member of the movement’s political circle, told CHN. “I don’t think activists always recognise that”

Earlier in October, Joanna Gilmore, an academic specialising in public order law at the University of York, told CHN that a successful overturn of the ban would not spell the end of Extinction Rebellion’s troubles. “If they stop arresting people under Section 14, they’ll start arresting people under other offences such as aggravated trespass offences. There’s a broad range of powers they can draw upon.”

The police would be able to issue the Section 14 order again, this time refining the terms of the act by perhaps narrowing the ban to a smaller geographic area

The post London police ban on Extinction Rebellion was unlawful, court finds appeared first on Climate Home News.

The capital’s police also took into custody hundreds of art works. Among them is a giant skull by renowned contemporary artist Ron Mueck.

The Australian, whose hyperrealistic sculptures have been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery and the Tate, gifted a test casting to an Extinction Rebellion funeral procession designed to mourn the lives lost to climate change. The prototype served to model one hundred skulls that filled a room in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 2017.

“Having heard that there was an XR skeleton procession planned it seemed an obvious way to make use of it and lend support to a cause I believe in,” Mueck wrote to CHN in an e-mail.

Trump begins formal US withdrawal from Paris Agreement

“It was lent to XR to use as visual accompaniment to their peaceful nonviolent protests in whatever way they saw fit. I wasn’t directly involved in its deployment.”

In auctions, Mueck’s artworks have been sold for as much as $1.3 million, the price varying depending on the size and medium of the artwork, according to auction database MutualArt. It is likely that the prototype would be worth significantly less than its final version, though the work could accrue value in time through its association with Extinction Rebellion.

Mueck said he has “no idea where it is now and no idea on what basis it was confiscated”. Extinction Rebellion’s said it was seized along with other skeleton sculptures. Contacted by CHN, the Metropolitan Police did not appear aware of the value of the object and said it was “unlikely we are going to be able to confirm the seizure of individual items at this stage – there are just too many”.

Mueck lent this prototype of a skull to Extinction Rebellion (Photo: XR Skeletons Rebellion)

Other less high-profile protest art works, many of which took weeks to craft, were also taken.

Along with 40 people, Bristol artist Simon Tozer crowdfunded, built, mounted and ultimately glued himself to a cubic tower draped with Extinction Rebellion banners. Following the imposition of a city-wide protest ban on London, which is currently being challenged by the movement, the group decided to deploy the structure on the grounds of the Tate Modern.

Discovering the structure, Tate Modern’s director, Frances Morris, rapidly gave the greenlight to the action, Tozer said, granting permission to the protesters to occupy their grounds the full day.

After 1,600 arrests, Extinction Rebellion fights for right to protest in UK

The police however told the Tate that the ban prevailed over its right to hold the protest on its grounds, prompting the arrest of ten activists.

“Once it was up, we did get permission from the Tate for it to be on their land, so it was quite a surprise to us that it was taken down,” Tozer said. In a statement, Tate told CHN it had declared a “climate emergency” but “as a public body, we are bound not to endorse or actively support protest of this nature. However, as is always the case in relation to peaceful protests, we wouldn’t stand in the way of organisations demonstrating in our public space”.

Tozer described the seizure of the artwork as “very unreasonable”. “It wasn’t being used to block a road or disrupting anybody,” he added.

It is currently being held by the police as evidence, he said.

Chile has abandoned hosting Cop25, we cannot abandon its people

Kat Brendel, a full-time arts campaigner within the group, recently recovered her car from police, but has yet to see a jacket made by one of the movement’s chief designers, Miles Glyn, with the word “empathy” embroidered onto it.

“I love the fact that something that says ‘empathy’ and is covered in hearts is deemed a threat to the state,” Glyn told CHN.

“The police tactic has been to portray to protests as a bunch of people, bodies on a road,” Brendel said. “But actually there’s a huge range of creative talents and skills: from cooks and carpenters to sculptors and artists. Humanitarian, creative, community-oriented people.”

“The work that everyone’s put in, they’ve purposefully tried to eliminate that, because it makes us more human, and not the extremists that they like to present,” she added.

Three policemen tower over an elephant part of a Noah’s Ark artwork (Photo: Ray Leonard)

The police also confiscated a Noah’s ark made by the Christian Action Group in Bristol, West of England. 15 people crafted the object from wooden pallets over three weeks, including six teenagers from a school in East Sussex.

The Metropolitan police told CHN that protesters could claim back their items. But protesters say they are worried.

“One of the problems is that claiming your property could lead to the police bringing further charges against you,” Tobias Garnett, a member of Extinction Rebellion’s legal team, said.

“Another problem is that the police have been routinely destroying stuff from the camps as they cleared them, which they’re not supposed to do.”

“We would like to claim it back but as yet have not been able to locate it,” Barbara Keal, one of the artists who made the ark, said. “There has been some ambivalence in case doing so could be incriminating.”

Police surround a structure erected outside Tate Modern (Photo: Ben Spencer)

“The police’s confiscation of a good deal of artwork and similarly of facilities for disabled rebels – including their toilets and even a wheelchair – seemed particularly heartless aspects of the policing of October’s Rebellion,” Rupert Read, a philosopher and spokesperson for the movement, told CHN.

Although he admitted the confiscation was “a bit heartbreaking”, Glyn remained defiant.

“The more certain actions become illegal, the more space that leaves us to be creative and to create new stories in slightly different ways.”

“I’m going to make more banners saying ‘Love’ and ‘Care’ and watch them get dragged away,” he said.

The post Extinction Rebellion art seized by police includes Ron Mueck skull appeared first on Climate Home News.

Quoting unnamed sources, the Sunday edition of the Bild tabloid said it was “99% sure” Gabriel would get the job. “Save for insurmountable, last-minute differences, he will become the new president,” the source said.

Gabriel, a former leader of the Social Democrats party (SPD) who served as foreign minister, is in competition with another politician from the right-wing Christian Democrats, Hildegard Müller, for the role replacing former Ford CEO, Bernhard Mattes, according to reports. The salary is estimated upwards of €600,000 ($666,000) per year – double Chancellor Angela Merkel’s earn.

The news is the latest twist in the long-running entanglement between Germany’s political class and its influential car manufacturing sector, which accounts for around 830,000 jobs and is worth $444 billions.

Green Climate Fund replenishment fails to fill hole left by Trump’s US

According to AFP, the car industry became disgruntled over Mattes’ lack of political connections and poor defence of the sector following revelations in 2015 that flagship German car-maker Volkswagen had cheated emissions tests, known as the Dieselgate scandal.

Gabriel was a member of Volkswagen’s supervisory board from 1999 to 2003 while he was premier of the northwestern state of Lower Saxony. The state still owns a stake in the company and controls 20% of the voting rights. 

There is a long tradition of top German government officials either coming from the industry or going to work there.

Joachim Koschnicke, a former chief lobbyist for the car maker Opel, led Merkel’s 2017 re-election campaign, while Michael Jansen and Thomas Steg, who served as Merkel’s federal office director and deputy government speaker, worked as a senior Volkswagen lobbyist.

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“For many years, the car industry has used its grip over the German government to bend legislation in its favour,” Pia Eberhardt, a researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, told Climate Home News.

“Gabriel’s knowledge and extensive contacts to the German political elite will be extremely valuable for the industry’s future lobby battles, whether they will be about lowering CO2 emissions to fight climate change or about more stringent testing requirements to prevent the industry from cheating like in the Dieselgate saga,” Eberhardt said.

Contacted by CHN, the SPD declined to comment on Gabriel’s “future career … [given that he] is no longer part of the executive board of the SPD.”

The post Former German vice chancellor Gabriel tipped to head car industry lobby appeared first on Climate Home News.

The new version, which was first reported by Russian daily Kommersant and seen by CHN, does away with legally binding targets and sanctions included in a draft dating from March.

Also scrapped was a section detailing a fund to support carbon-cutting projects, along with sections allowing the government to strengthen the bill over time.

The government could present the draft bill to parliament by December, according to Greenpeace Russia.

The U-turn came after the ministry of the economy, which penned the bill with a view to modernising Russia’s infrastructure and economy, held talks with the ministry of energy, ministry of industry and trade and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

As rich countries slow walk green finance, Putin offers Africa an alternative

The latter’s members include giants from the country’s steel, oil, gas and coal industry, such as Russia’s largest coal company, the Siberian Coal Energy Company (Suek).

Although RSPP recently supported the ratification of the Paris Agreement, it has shied away from supporting state measures to decarbonise.

Speaking on 17 October at an environmental forum, RSPP chair Alexander Shokhin objected to climate regulations, such as cap and trade, carbon taxes or a fund for carbon-cutting projects, stressing that Russia had already “fulfilled [its] obligations to reduce to the level of 70-75% (greenhouse gas emissions) from 1990”.

Russia: The fight for the world’s largest forest

The 1990 baseline for Russia’s climate target predates the collapse of the Soviet Union and its vast industries, making it an underwhelming target. In fact, the world’s fourth largest polluter could see its emissions rise and yet still meet its current Paris pledge, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Mikhael Yulkin, chair of the Ecological Investment Centre, said fossil fuel lobbying had not only influenced business and government fora, but shaped national media coverage, which was “negative” towards the proposed bill.

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This culminated in a media backlash against Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN climate summit convened by Antonio Guterres. The days following her speech saw an infamous 2017 article denying man-made climate change by oceanographer Alexander Gorodnitsky go viral.

“Russian lobbyists have successfully opposed cap and trade carbon pricing,” Vladimir Chuprov, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace, told CHN. “The only conclusion we can draw is: in Russia the industry does not want to convert to green technologies.”

Responding to Kommersant, the economy ministry said that it reserved the right to introduce “additional measures, if necessary to achieve national emission targets [in a separate bill for] the long-term strategy of economic development of the Russian Federation with a low level of greenhouse gas emissions”.

This article was amended.

The post Russian draft climate law gutted after industry intervention appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a statement, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that France exceeded nitrogen dioxide levels, which are associated with exhaust from diesel engines, in twelve zones.

The country must now comply with EU standards without delay, with failure to do so exposing it to fines by the European Commission.

The ruling by the ECJ, which makes France the third EU state to be condemned by the court for exceeding pollution limits alongside Bulgaria and Poland, is the latest in a spree of judicial actions by the European Commission against member states failing to comply with air quality standards.

Emmanuel Macron’s war on climate activism

Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania and the UK also face legal action for exceeding emission limits on nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. Germany, Italy and Luxembourg are also grappling with cases for allowing car manufacturers to toy with their emissions. The ECJ has yet to give out a verdict on these.

Environmental campaigners welcomed the decision.

“The condemnation is excellent news, which we impatiently awaited,” Olivier Blond. head of Respire, a French association campaigning for clean air, told Climate Home News. “I hope that this will incite the government to finally take the necessary measures. We particularly need to fight against diesel vehicles: these are the biggest nitrogen dioxide emitters.”

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Jens Müller, air quality manager at Transport & Environment, said: “For years the French government has failed to tackle toxic air pollution, and today’s ruling is the strongest possible decision to finally force them to act. Road transport is the main source of pollution in most European cities and the only solution is to ban dirty cars and replace them with fewer and zero-emission vehicles.”

“Europe at its best has won legal action against France at its worst to enforce nitrogen dioxide laws. UK is next in the dock,” Simon Birkett, CEO of Clean Air London, said in a tweet.

The post France systematically breached air pollution limits, EU court rules appeared first on Climate Home News.

Undeterred, if not galvanised, by a city-wide protest ban issued against them on Monday, thousands of Extinction Rebellion activists flooded Trafalgar Square in the UK capital on Wednesday afternoon.

Leading environmentalists, including writer and environmental campaigner George Monbiot and co-leader of the country’s Green Party Jonathan Bartley, sought and achieved arrest to take a stand on the climate emergency and freedom of assembly. They follow the arrest of Green MEP Ellie Chowns on Monday evening.

Extinction Rebellion eyes legal challenge after police ban protesters from London

“I am here today to be arrested,” Monbiot told crowds under the autumnal sun. “In case the police were of any doubt of that, I’ve even brought a little sign saying ‘I’m assembling with Extinction Rebellion in breach of Section 14’”, referring to the police order that outlawed the group’s ‘Autumn uprising’, which disrupted the city centre for eight days.

“What the police have done in imposing this ridiculous draconian order is to bring us together with others,” said Monbiot. “Those of us who are seeking to defend our life-support systems are being brought together now with people seeking to defend our human rights. So we thank the police for creating and expanding our assembly.”

Award-winning author & @guardian journalist @GeorgeMonbiot arrested just now for flouting London-wide ban on XR protests. @TheGreenParty co-chair @jon_bartley also just arrested (on his birthday) while 2,500 people discuss the climate emergency on Trafalgar Sq. #EverybodyNow pic.twitter.com/BWxFu9TBFk

— Extinction Rebellion UK (@XRebellionUK) October 16, 2019

As of Wednesday 8am there had been 1,642 arrests linked to Extinction Rebellion protests, the Metropolitan Police reported.

“This draconian decision is a disgraceful suppression of our human rights,” Asad Rehman, head of War on Want said. “But sadly it hasn’t happened overnight: from anti-fracking protesters to protesters against the arms trade to anti-racist campaigners, and of course to climate protesters, people are being consistently labelled as domestic extremists.”

Laurence Taylor, deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, has defended the order, calling it “entirely proportionate and reasonable to impose this condition because of the cumulative impact of these protests”.

Hungary: Green opposition wins Budapest mayoral election in blow to Orbán

Members of Extinction Rebellion have launched a legal challenge to the order. A court hearing has been granted on Thursday afternoon, with members supporting the action including peer Jenny Jones, Green MEP Ellie Chowns, Green MP Caroline Lucas, Labour MP Clive Lewis, shadow minister for environment, food and rural affairs David Drew, Monbiot and Labour activist Adam Allnut.

Joanna Gilmore, an academic specialising in public order law at the University of York, told CHN: “The Extinction Rebellion protesters have positive rights of free speech and free assembly. And any restrictions on those rights, as the Strastbourg Court has made clear, have to be interpreted in favour of those seeking to assert their right to protest.”

“It seems to me a ban on protest of a particular movement throughout the whole of London is excessive and disproportionate, and if this isn’t I don’t know what would be,” Gilmore said.

Happy birthday @jon_bartley pic.twitter.com/EGo3owdyQg

— Ellie Chowns (@EllieChowns) October 16, 2019

Circumstances under which the order was issued have yet to emerge. The Met Police has the power to immediately impose the ban independently of the government or the mayor’s orders should it deem that a public assembly poses a serious threat to property or public order, according to Gilmore.

London mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted on Tuesday that he had not been consulted over the decision and was currently in talks with the Metropolitan Police over ways to allow activists to protest legally.

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Formally known as the Section 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act, the ban was created under Margaret Thatcher in the aftermath of waves of industrial unrest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the miners’ strikes.

Gilmore described it as “a key part of the armoury that police forces across the country use to clamp down on environmental protests – in particular the anti-fracking movement”.

A successful overturn of the ban would not spell the end of Extinction Rebellion’s troubles, Gilmore said. “If they stop arresting people under Section 14, they’ll start arresting people under other offences such as aggravated trespass offences. There’s a broad range of powers they can draw upon.”

The police would also be able to issue the Section 14 order again, this time refining the terms of the act by perhaps narrowing the ban to a smaller geographic area.

The post After 1,600 arrests, Extinction Rebellion fights for right to protest in UK appeared first on Climate Home News.

Formally known as Section 14 Public Order Act, the ban instructs “any assembly to linked to Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ (publicised as being from 7th October to 19th October at 1800 hours) [to] cease their protests within London by 2100 hours 14 October”.

The ban, which may have been ordered by the Home Office, abruptly rendered Extinction Rebellion’s eight day occupation of Trafalgar Square illegal. Police forces flooded the space, which until then the group had been occupying legally, dismantling tents and arresting dozens of protesters, including Green MEP Ellie Chowns.

The imposition of the order saw 92 arrests.

Green opposition wins Budapest mayoral election in blow to Orbán

It came on the back of a week of disruption in which protesters have blocked roads, stopped flights, targeted public and private institutions and been subjected to intense police pressure. On Tuesday afternoon the number of arrests had risen to 1,489, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The decision to shut down the rebellion prompted dozens of politicians, the majority of them Greens, to defy the ban and protest on Trafalgar Square Tuesday afternoon.

MPs and MEPs sung, paced the square and took turn to give speeches on the steps that once witnessed mass anti-apartheid demonstrations.

Standing against a backdrop of policemen, Extinction Rebellion spokesperson and philosopher Rupert Read, told a small crowd that the moment marked a historical turning point.

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“We’re not totally sure whether this is legal or not. It’s incredible that it might not be, this is obviously a very peaceful protest. We’re in a really bad situation in this country if it’s come to the situation where this is not allowed,” said Read.

Green peer Jenny Jones is launching a legal challenge to the order on the grounds that it breaches protesters’ right to freedom of expression and to protest under the European Convention. Lawyers representing Jones also believe the protest ban does not fall within the remit of Section 14, which is to “manage an assembly, not to ban it outright,” a judicial action pre-action letter seen by CHN read.

Tobias Garnett, a member of the Extinction Rebellion legal strategy team overseeing the challenge, told CHN he hoped the High Court would examine the case on Wednesday.

“We are fairly confident that this is going to succeed,” Garnett said, “because it’s a disproportionate curtailment of people’s rights, but frankly we would prefer that, rather than spending their time and money trying to silence protest in London, the government and police told the truth and acted now on the ecological emergency.”

Co-leader of the UK Green Party, Sian Berry said: “We are here today to ask the mayor of London whether he supports having a complete ban on Extinction Rebellion throughout the whole of Greater London. Leaving people with no place to protest is a literally a ban on your human right to free expression and free assembly across a whole city of 8.5 million people.”

London mayor Sadiq Khan has declared a climate emergency and repeatedly called out the British government for “dragging its feet” on climate action.

After 11 days of civil unrest, Ecuador reinstates fossil fuel subsidies

“I am seeking further information from senior officers about the operational decision to impose a Section 14 order on the Extinction Rebellion Autumn Uprising – including at Trafalgar Square – and why this was necessary,” he said in a statement, suggesting that he may not have been warned of the Metropolitan Police’s decision.

“I believe the right to peaceful and lawful protest must always be upheld.”

“However, illegal action by some protestors over the past eight days has put undue pressure on already overstretched police officers, and demonstrators should bear this in mind when considering any further actions.”

Laurence Taylor, deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, defended the order, noting the police “have made good progress clearing Trafalgar Square and other sites to enable the capital to return to normal following more than a week of protests”.

“After nine days of disruption we felt it is entirely proportionate and reasonable to impose this condition because of the cumulative impact of these protests,” she said, adding that the order only applied to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’.

Paralympian climbs onto plane as Extinction Rebels disrupt London airport

“If Extinction Rebellion, or any other group, come to us with a proposal for lawful protests then of course we will discuss that with them,” Taylor said.

Should the legal challenge fail, Read told CHN that “the plan is just to carry on. The great thing about mass non-violent direct action is that it’s very hard for the authorities to deal with, because there are so many of us they can’t arrest us all”.

“In a way what we’ve seemingly forced the authorities to do is to make a difficult and I think it will be widely seen as a wrong decision. That is the benefit of mass direct action… I’m hoping and I believe that more people will now rally to this cause,” Read said.

Greta Thunberg lent her support to the movement on Tuesday evening, tweeting “If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken”.

The post Extinction Rebellion eyes legal challenge after police ban protesters from London appeared first on Climate Home News.

The action was part of an Extinction Rebellion protest which targeted the airport on Thursday.

Brown, who is vision impaired and won bronze in cycling at the London 2012 games, was videoed by Extinction Rebellion climbing from the boarding steps while aircraft attendants looked on. It was unclear whether he had glued himself to the aircraft.

https://www.facebook.com/XRebellionUK/videos/704856936665127?sfns=mo

Talking from the disabled toilets in City Airport before boarding the British Airways flight to Amsterdam, Brown said: “I’m trying to make a difference to this crisis, this substantial crisis that we face. I booked a flight to Amsterdam at 13.05.

“I will attempt to climb on the roof of the plane. I have glue with me and maybe cause a little bit of disruption. That is what we need, civil disobedience is the only thing that makes a difference under these circumstances.

“The average salary of people who fly from this airport is £100,000 plus. All the people who live around this airport don’t benefit from the enormous wealth that is generates. I’m looking forward to boarding.”

“I will attempt to climb on the roof of the plane. I have glue with me and maybe cause a little bit of disruption. That is what we need, civil disobedience,” said paralympics medalist James Brown. #ExtinctionRebellion https://t.co/9bZS1x0QjG pic.twitter.com/HxWohqnBQA

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) October 10, 2019

The flight was cancelled.

A woman filming the protest from inside the airport was also arrested. The footage, which captured her arrest, showed a police officer telling her: “I have had information that you have helped this gentleman to get on the plane. That you have given him a ticket to do so. You are under arrest on suspicion of aiding and abetting, endangering an aircraft and public nuisance.”

The officer said her phone would also be seized since she used it to record the incident.

Responding to Brown’s video, Claire Perry, nominee president for next year’s climate talks and former UK minister for energy and clean growth, hit back at the use of civil disobedience to achieve change.

“What we need now is to follow the global science and cut emissions to net zero by 2050 incl[uding] in hardest to reach areas like steel making which creates more than 3x the emissions of aviation. Let’s solve the problem for ever not scare people to make headlines for 5 minutes,” she tweeted.

Flying generates just under 3% of global emissions, roughly the same as Germany. The UN aviation body anticipates emissions to increase by up to 300% by 2050 under business as usual. Globally, steel is responsible for 7% to 9% of all direct emissions from fossil fuels, according to the World Steel Association.

Hundreds of activists attempted to block the airport Thursday morning, in protest at the site’s £480m expansion plans.

Apart from Brown’s effort, the turnout however failed to disrupt other airport traffic, which remained “fully operational”, London City Airport tweeted. 60 planes had departed or arrived by 9.15am.

As part of its expansion project, London City Airport has announced eight new aircraft stands equivalent to the size of 11 football pitches, a new taxiway and a quadrupling of its size.

Happening right now at the entrance. pic.twitter.com/9lXkRlOkmM

— Natalie Sauer (@natalielsauer) October 10, 2019

Protesters have said that they will relay in and out to occupy and shut down the airport for three days. It marks the movement’s most radical action to disrupt air traffic since activists attempted but failed to fly drones over Heathrow Airport in September, resulting in 19 arrests.

“London City Airport is planning to roughly double its numbers of flights,” philosopher and Extinction Rebellion spokesman Rupert Read  said. “It is located in a highly built up area meaning that its flights cause a lot of noise-misery as well, of course, as climate-deadly pollution. It is used disproportionately by private jets and by financiers, businesspeople and other members of the polluter elite flying in and out of the City of London, when often they could do what they need just as well by using digital telecommunications. This has to stop and Extinction Rebellion are here to stop it.“

Extinction Rebellion said on Thursday morning there were roughly 250 activists on site trying to block transport access to the area via road and rail.

Despite failing to cause significant disruption to air traffic, the mood on site appeared largely positive, with protesters of various ages and backgrounds dancing and chanting for climate justice under the autumnal sun. Police picked up dozens of protesters and loaded them into vans.

“It’s mainstream science that we can starve in our lifetime,” one heavily escorted protester shouted as police took him to a van. “The government is failing to protect us from climate breakdown and ecological collapse. There is a disconnect. We are sleepwalking into catastrophe.”

Another man clambered over scaffolding and barbed wire to stand on the entrance’s rooftop.

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Mat, an employee at a wildlife charity who declined to give his second name, said he remained hopeful the blockade would hold despite its failure to cause significant disruption.

“This is not intended not to be a one-day protest,” he said “We’re expecting wave after wave people who are willing to take a stand and keep a spotlight on the climate crisis.”

CHN asked him whether he would be willing to be arrested in an action that had been declared illegal.

“I have young children so it’s difficult to think that I’d be in a situation where I’d have a record and also to think I’d spend a night in a police cell,” he said. “However, those children are the reasons I’m here. Their future is in jeopardy. At the moment without this kind of direct actions attention is not being given to the crisis.”

Responding to concerns over the aviation sector’s emissions, London City Airport said that it had slashed emissions by 30% over the past five years and were committed to achieving the UK target of net-zero 2050. This does not include the CO2 released by flights in and out of the facility.

The post Paralympian climbs onto plane as Extinction Rebels disrupt London airport appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last week, UN chief António Guterres gathered the world’s political, business and civil society leaders in New York in an effort to jump start action on climate change.

While the world’s largest emitters failed to present substantive plans on how they are going to drive carbon out of their economies, dozens of announcements on climate action were made over the three-day summit.

CHN is publishing this (non-exhaustive) list of initiatives, promises and goals with a view toward accountability. We will be returning in the coming months and asking those listed below: what have you done?

If you have information about any of the announcements and the plans to see them fulfilled, or indeed if you think we have missed any, please get in touch to let us know by emailing cf@climatehomenews.com.

Overall government ambition 

• 65 countries expressed their intention to enhance their climate plans by the end of next year. This comes in addition to 11 countries that have already started the process of looking at how they can boost the ambition of their national plans by 2020.
• 66 countries are planning to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. 
• All of the least developing countries have pledged to enhance their climate plans next year and reach net zero emissions by 2050. This is likely to be contingent on receiving climate finance from the wealthiest countries.

Europe 

• EU said at least 25% of the next budget will go to climate-related activities.
• France, Germany and the Netherlands called for EU emissions to be reduced by 55% by 2030 on 1990 levels – up from 40% at present.
• France said it would not enter into any trade agreement with countries that have policies counter to the Paris Agreement.
• Germany committed to carbon neutrality by 2050.
• Germany and Slovakia joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, bringing the number of members to 32 national governments, 25 subnational governments and 34 businesses.
• Finland promised to become carbon neutral by 2035 and planned to become “carbon negative” soon afterwards.
• Slovakia pledged to end subsidies to coal mines in 2023 as it joined the powering past coal alliance, committing to close all coal mines. It has also committed to carbon neutrality by 2050.
• Ireland has vowed to set a moratorium on exploring for new oil but said it still intends to use gas as a “bridging fuel”.
• Russia ratified the Paris Agreement.
• Italy said it would phase out coal by 2025 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. It also committed to put in place a “Green New Deal”, including a green jobs programme and review its subsidies to fossil fuel.
• Greece pledged to close all lignite power plants by 2028 with coal plants to be dismantled from 2020.
• Hungary promised to phase out all coal-powered electricity production by 2030 and increase forest cover by 30% by 2030. 
• Sweden, South Korea, Denmark and Iceland announced a doubling of their contribution to the Green Climate Fund. A total of 12 countries made financing announcements to the fund, including the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Monaco, Slovenia, Hungary and Lichtenstein. 
• The UK pledged to double its funding to tackle climate change through overseas development aid to £11.6 billion over the next five years.

Asia

• India said it will raise the portion of renewable into its energy mix to 175GW by 2022, with the aim of boosting it to 450GW in the long-term.
• Indonesia promised to cut fossil fuel subsidies and develop a green finance facility.
• Pakistan committed to reach land degradation neutrality by 2030 by restoring at least 30% of degraded forests, 5% degraded croplands, 6% of degraded grasslands and 10% of degraded wetlands, and would plant 10 billion trees over the next five years. 

South and Central America

• Chile promised a full decarbonisation of its energy mix, but did not communicate a date. 
• Bolivia said it would reach 100% of households with electricity, with 79% renewable by 2030.
• Guatemala pledged to restore 1.5 million hectares of forested land by 2022. 
• Colombia has committed to restoring 300,000 hectare (about 180 million trees) of forest by 2022, and an additional 900,000 hectares of agro-forestry and sustainable forest management.

 Small Island States 

• Small island developing states made a collective commitment to raise the ambition of their NDCs by 2020 and move to net zero emissions by 2050, contingent on assistance from the international community. They intend to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030.
• Fiji committed to plant 1 million new trees and said it was exploring planting 31 million more.
• Barbados pledged to plant one million trees by end of 2020 (on 166 square miles of land) and called on all Bajans around the world to come and help.

Oceania

• New Zealand has committed to plant one billion trees by 2028 and to make the country “the most sustainable food producer in the world”. 

Africa 

• Sierra Leone committed to planting 2 million trees by 2023.
• Nigeria said it would employ youth to plant 25 million trees.
• Kenya promised to plant 2 billion trees by 2022. 
• Ethiopia reaffirmed its commitment to planting 4 billion new trees a year.
• Congo DRC committed to stabilize its forest cover at 60%.
• South Africa pledged to finalise a just transition plan compatible with the 1.5C target and a climate change bill to provide the legislative basis for updating its climate plan, allocate sectoral emissions targets, and regulate large emitters. It also vowed to develop a programme to enhance the land’s net emissions sink capacity by restoring subtropical thicket and grasslands, expanding forestry and reduce tillage.
• Morocco promised to produce 52% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030.

Subnational actors

• 102 cities committed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
• 10 regions, 93 businesses and 12 investors said they would reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
• 2,000 cities committed to placing climate risk at the centre of their decision-making, planning and investments, including climate-smart urban projects and innovative financing mechanisms.

Business and industry

• 87 businesses have committed to implement the 1.5C target across their operations and value chains. This includes Danone, Engie, Ikea, L’Oréal, Nestle, Sodexo. 
• Getting to zero coalition. Giants from the shipping, energy and finance sectors pledged to work together to make net-zero shipping a commercial reality by 2030.
• Zero carbon buildings. A host of rich and developing countries pledged to decarbonise the construction sector in a UN-endorsed initiative. The partnership will seek to kickstart adequate policy measures and mobilise $1 trillion for energy-efficient buildings in developing countries by 2030. So far Kenya, Turkey, the UK and United Arab Emirates have signed up.
• One Planet Business for Biodiversity. A coalition of 19 companies pledged to develop solutions to scale up regenerative agricultural practices, boost cultivated biodiversity and diets and eliminate deforestation while enhancing the restoration and protection of natural ecosystems. The initiative was launched as part of French president Emmanuel Macron’s ‘One Planet Lab’. Partners are expected to develop policy recommendations during next year’s biodiversity talks in China.
• Insurance firm AXA launched ORRAA, a multi-stakeholder collaboration platform to develop finance products such as blue carbon resilience credits and coral reef insurance which invest in coastal natural capital.

Financial sector

• More than 130 banks, with $47 trillion in assets, signed onto new climate principles.
• The International Development Finance Club (IDFC). A group of 24 national and regional development banks promised to inject $1 trillion into climate projects by 2025, with at least $100 million for adaptation. IDFC also vowed to launch a partnership with the Green Climate Fund to promote direct access to international climate finance and a new $10 million climate facility to support its members on accessing climate finance. 
• Carbon neutral portfolio. Asset owners of the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance representing $2.4 trillion (and annual direct emissions equivalent to 73 coal-fired power plants) committed to align their investments with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C. This includes Allianz, Caisse des Dépôts and La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ). 
• The Climate Investment Platform was launched to directly mobilize $1 trillion in clean energy investment by 2025 in 20 least developed countries. The platform aims to provide a variety of services to governments and the private sector to scale-up the energy transition and accelerate investments for low carbon, climate-resilient development. It is also intended to enable the delivery of ambitious NDCs. This is a UN-led initiative. 
• Climate risks in infrastructure. A coalition led by the private sector and representing more than 20 institutions with $8 trillion assets under management was launched with the goal of developing the first framework for the pricing of physical climate risks in infrastructure investing.
• Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI) led by Willis Towers Watson, the World Economic Forum, the Global Commission on Adaptation, Jamaica, and UK was launched to facilitate capital investment in resilient infrastructure. Under the scheme, stakeholders pledged that 70% of the $90 trillion expected to be invested in infrastructure globally between now and 2030, will go to low- and middle-income countries exposed to climate risks.
• Risk-informed early action partnership pledged to deliver new and improved early warning systems. The initiative is led by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. 

Joint diplomatic initiatives

• Global deal for nature. Costa Rica called on countries to set aside 30% of the planet as part of a global deal for nature. The deal is expected to be finalised at the 15th biodiversity conference in Kunming, China, in 2020. The Seychelles, the United Arab Emirates, Monaco, Gabon, and Mozambique have backed the initiative.
• Norway launched a high-level panel for the sustainable ocean economy, representing 14 countries that cover approximately 30% of the world’s coastlines, 30% of the world’s exclusive economic zones, 20% of the world’s ocean catch and 20% of the world’s shipping fleet, including a new initiative to build resilience for ocean and marine-protected areas.
• The central African forest initiative pledged to maintain the forest cover of Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea, allowing the Central African rainforest to continue to stock approximately 70 gigatons of carbon and provide livelihoods of 60 million people and maintain regional rainfall patterns.
• 7 Central American countries pledged to establish and manage 10 million hectares of “sustainable productive landscapes that are resilient to climate change,” with a goal to reduce emissions by no less than 40% reduction from the baseline year of 2010 by 2030. Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama have signed up. 
• Amazon. The governments of Germany and France pledged to respectively contribute $250m and $100m to protect the Amazon forest, while the EU said it was drawing €190m through its cooperation and development programmes. The NGO Conservation International represented by actor Harrisson Ford also promised to put $20m on the table.
• Small-holdings. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced $790m to double the funding of the food technology research body CGIAR. The foundation pledged $310m, with the rest to come from the Netherlands, European Commission, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Germany and the World Bank. 
• Insurance resilience. Led by governments, multilateral organisations, the private sector, and civil society, the InsureResilience Partnership 2025 pledged to ensure that 500 million poor people worldwide will be covered against climate shocks by pre-arranged risk finance by 2025. Germany and the UK are enhancing risk finance and insurance programs, and the private insurance industry will commit up to $5bn of risk capacity until 2025. More here. 
• African adaptation initiative promised to ensure regional cooperation on adaptation, and the investment of $1bn in African countries and the doubling of adaptation finance accessed and mobilised by African countries by 2025. The initiative also vowed to translate national adaptation plans into investment plans and projects eligible for funding by 2025.  
• Coalition for sustainable energy access was jointly launched by Morocco and Ethiopia to meet the energy needs of the world’s population with clean energy . The initiative pledged to share experiences and best practices to deploy renewable sources of energy and, where appropriate, model existing practices, particularly in least developed countries.
• LIFE-AR initiative, led by a coalition of least developed countries, promised to strengthen south-south cooperation, mobilise $30-40m, and deliver pathways to climate-resilient development by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050.
• The Three Percent Club. Fifteen governments and ten companies committed to tap into research by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and accelerate energy efficiency by 3% every year. Countries involved include: Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Portugal, Senegal and the UK.
• The cooling coalition identified cooling as a “major blind spot” with emissions from air conditioning and refrigeration expected to rise 90% from 2017 levels by 2050. The coalition pledged to set ambitious cooling targets and support “cross-sectional” national strategies, policies and national action plans. Bangladesh and Lebanon promised to adopt comprehensive national cooling plans and several countries committed to the Biarritz pledge for fast action on efficient cooling, led by France. Countries which have promised to take action include: Andorra, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, France, Hungary, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, North Macedonia, Norway, Rwanda, Senegal, Spain, and the UK. Five countries are already committing to integrate cooling in their national climate plans:  the Dominican Republic, North Macedonia, Rwanda, Senegal and Spain.
• Industry Transition. 5 companies and 9 countries, including Argentina, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, South Korea and UK, promised to set out pathways for carbon intensive sectors to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
• Transport. 100 organisations, including governments, private sector leaders and cities, pledged to accelerate the decarbonisation of the transport sector. 
• A leadership of urban climate investments initiative promised to accelerate, scale-up and leverage climate finance for climate-friendly urban infrastructure. Led by Germany, it includes France, UK, Mexico, Luxembourg, Cameroon and Japan. The initiative pledged to empower over 2,000 cities in project preparation by 2030, placing climate risk at the centre of decision making, planning, and investments. Up to $64m in grants have been pledged for its implementation.
• Turkey, Kenya, the governor of Maine, US, the mayor of Surabaya, Indonesia, the European Investment Bank, committed funds to strengthen the resilience of 600 million urban slum dwellers by 2030 and to lift them out of poverty.
• Climate action for jobs. Led the International Labour Organisation, Spain and Peru, the initiative pledged to develop a framework for countries that considers job creation, social protection, skills development, and technology and knowledge transfer when taking climate action.
• Thirty-two national governments committed to implementing gender-responsive climate change action plans and policies and empowering women as leaders of climate action. 
• Safer air initiative. 41 countries, 71 sub-national governments and two health finance organisations have committed to achieve air quality and align climate and air quality plans by 2030. The Clean Air Fund, which is taking part, vowed a $50m fund to start implementation.
• African youth climate hub. Led by Morocco’s Mohammed VI Foundation for Environmental Protection, the initiative committed to showcase the leadership and innovation of African youth.

The UN 

The United Nations secretariat adopted a 10-year climate action plan, pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% and source 80% of electricity from renewable energy by 2030. The plan commits the UN secretariat to achieve absolute and per capita greenhouse gas emission reductions of 25% by 2025 and per capita reductions in electricity consumption of 20% by 2025.  It also pledged to sourcing 40% of its electricity from renewable energy before 2025.

This article was corrected to delete a previous mention of China saying it will cut emissions by over 12 billion tons annually through nature-based solutions. Instead, China was referring to the mitigation potential of nature-based solutions globally. 

The post This is what the world promised at the UN climate action summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), which was founded in 1964 to help developing countries to access equitable international trade, called on governments to overhaul the rules of the international trade and monetary systems so that all countries – in particular developing ones – could carry out the necessary mass investments to decarbonize their economies.

Unctad secretary general Mukhisa Kituyi said meeting the UN sustainable development goals, which include reining in the heating of the planet, “requires rebuilding multilateralism around the idea of a global Green New Deal, and pursuing a financial future very different from the recent past”.

“The global economy does not serve all people equally,” said Richard Kozul-Wright, director of Unctad’s division on globalization and development strategies, who oversaw the report. “Under the current configuration of policies, rules, market dynamics and corporate power, economic gaps are likely to increase and environmental degradation intensify.”

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Instead of hoping to fix the crisis in developing countries through a blend of public and private sector initiatives, which an Unctad press release branded as “taken from the playbook of banking conglomerates”, the development agency urged governments to take the lead.

Among a battery of global reforms, Unctad recommended granting debt relief and revising the way that debt was structured in order to allow developing countries to pay for green policies.

“We need a set of rules in place that can handle sovereign debt problems when they emerge in much fairer, efficient and transparent way than is the case today,” Kozul-Wright said.

The agency also called on the creation of a global environmental protection fund that would provide predictable and stable emergency funding. This could be financed by tapping into special drawing rights, an international monetary reserve currency originally set up by the International Monetary Fund to act as a supplement to national currencies.

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The report found that global trade, be it under the form of regional or bilateral agreements, should not have the authority to shape questions such as the cross-border flow of capital, debt or equity. Instead, the international community should privilege capital controls and put an international system into place to oversee capital flow between countries, including developing ones.

Echoing recent calls to create a European Climate Bank, authors also suggested shifting the role of central banks from taming inflation to aggressively championing climate finance. To checkmate tax evasion, it further called on the establishment of a global minimum corporate tax rate on multinationals between 20 and 25% combined with capital controls.

“This is a big public investment push,” Kozul-Wright told Climate Home News. “It’s not going to be done by the private sector. You need public banks to finance this, because we don’t think that the current financial system as it is currently constructed will ever deliver finance to public goods of this kind on the scale that we’re talking about.”

In the absence of such constraints, green finance could increase to around $1.7tn every year, according to Unctad estimates, generating at least 170 million jobs in the world and allowing a clean industrialisation in the global south.

Originally conceived in 2008 in London by a group of economists and environments, the Green New Deal draws inspiration from the New Deal, US president Franklin Roosevelt’s all-encompassing stimulus package to counter the effects of the Great Depression and reform the financial market. The Green New Deal envisages mobilising the state to tackle social inequality and carbon emissions as one.

It was first popularised in the US by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and has since become a plank policy for US democratic candidates and embraced by EU politicians.

British economist Ann Pettifor, part of the original London Green New Dealers group, called the report “enormously significant, because while the UN and its scientists have taken the lead on a scientific side on this crisis, we need to understand that the climate and the economy are deeply integrated”.

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“This is a crisis that doesn’t belong in one place. It’s neither a north nor a south crisis and it requires global collaboration,” Pettifor said. “It’s echoing the revolutionary monetary theory that underpinned the New Deal.”

Pettifor likened the reorientation of the monetary system recommended by Unctad to Roosevelt’s decision to ditch the gold standard.

“Under the Gold standard, Wall Street and the City of London called the shots and really influenced important domestic policies, like the exchange rate, the ability of money to flow across borders and the ability of the government to spend,” Pettifor said.

“The very first thing that Rooselvelt did on the night of his inauguration was to begin to dismantle this system and demand that the banks hand over all of their gold so that in future it would be the government and not Wall Street that would be in the driving seat of the economy.”

“We’ve got to learn from Roosevelt if we are to tackle the climate crisis right now and that is what Unctad is trying to do,” Pettifor said.

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The world’s fourth largest emitter, Russia, has formally adopted the Paris Agreement, drawing an end to months of national tensions on the subject.

“The Russian Federation has accepted the Paris Agreement and is becoming a full-fledged participant of this international instrument,” Ruslan Edelgeriev, the president’s climate advisor, told the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, before proceeding to list the country’s climate contributions.

“Russia is already playing a leading role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to the 1990 base-line,” he continued. “Our total emissions over this period have decreased almost by half. This represent 41 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent which on the planetary scale has allowed to cumulatively hold global warming for an entire year.”

This baseline maps to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its vast industries, making it a relatively easy baseline for the country to promote past success.

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“Russia is making another colossal contribution to combatting CO2 emissions and CO2 sequestration which is not reflected in the contributions but is a crucial factor in this effort. These are Russia’s boreal forests which are the lungs of the planet, ” Edelgeriev said.

Whereas he had previously intended to submit the decision to parliament, months of opposition from industry lobbyists and deputies have swayed president Putin to bypass the chamber and endorse the pact via a government accord. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed the government decree in the day.

The country’s climate pledge is however notoriously weak, with Climate Action Tracker labelling it as “critically insufficient”.

Observers of the country’s climate policy welcomed the decision.

The UN climate action summit – as it happened

“It’s a really important signal for Russian society, for regional governors, for business, for NGOs, that Russia is onboard with global efforts,” Alexey Kokorin, WWF Russia climate programme director, told Climate Home News. “That Russia recognises the importance of the climate problem, and that Russia does not oppose the anthropogenic impact of climate change, which is already really important.”

“The adoption of the Paris Agreement increases the chances of preventing a global climate catastrophe, but this chance must be utilised correctly and, most importantly, taken quickly – there is no time left for compromises and attempts to maintain the status quo of a fossil power,” Greenpeace climate officer Vasily Yablokov said. “Russia’s actions in this matter are of great importance: our country has enormous potential to reduce greenhouse emissions.”

The move follows years of lobbying from European governments, including Germany, France and Scandinavian countries.

Long non-existent, climate policy has been twitching to life in Russia in recent months. The government is currently reviewing a law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, along with two national plans for low-carbon development and adaptation.

The country’s announcement means that there are now eleven countries yet to formally ratify the Agreement. These are Angola, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, South Sudan, Suriname, and Yemen.

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The announcement came hours before the UN climate action summit convened by António Guterres got under way in New York.

Senior figures from the maritime, infrastructure, energy and finance sector, including shipping behemoth Maersk and oil company Shell, joined the so-called Getting to Zero Coalition.

They will seek to coordinate the launch of clean fuels and vessels while making sure that these are supported by adequate ports, finance and policy incentives.

The UN climate action summit – live

“Energy efficiency has been an important tool which has helped us reduce CO2 emissions per container with 41% over the last decade and position ourselves as a leader 10% ahead of the industry average,” Søren Skou, CEO of the world’s largest container ship operator Maersk, said

“However, efficiency measures can only keep shipping emissions stable, not eliminate them. To take the next big step change towards decarbonization of shipping, a shift in propulsion technologies or a shift to clean fuels is required which implies close collaboration from all parties. The coalition launched today is a crucial vehicle to make this collaboration happen.”

“The challenge around commercially viable zero emission vessels is not (primarily) a technological challenge,” spokesperson for the Global Maritime Forum, Torben Vollemund, wrote in an e-mail. “We can (and are) building engines that can burn zero emission fuels. We can produce zero emission fuels for instance based on biomass and hydrogen produced from renewable electricity or from natural gas combined with carbon capture and storage.”

“The challenge is a collective action challenge, since decarbonizing shipping is about a systemic transformation that is beyond the power of any single stakeholder and stakeholder group,” Vollemund said.

Vollemund also stressed the urgency to act, with ships entering the global fleet in 2030 still operating in 2050.

This “means we only have a decade to get commercially viable and scalable zero emission vessels and fuels in place – and we are not even close”.

Led by the Global Maritime Forum, Friends of the Ocean, and the World Economic Forum, the initiative seeks to make good on the UN International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) pledge to halve emissions from 2008 levels by 2050, with the view of phasing them out as soon as possible in the century.

Currently responsible for 2-3% of annual global emissions, the international shipping industry could see its emissions soar by up to 250% by 2050 in the absence of any action.

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The announcement came hours before the UN climate action summit convened by Antonio Guterres got under way in New York.

The cohort of banks, which include the US Amalgamated Bank and the Dutch ASN and Triodos Banks, will assess and disclose the greenhouse gas emissions generated by their financial products as part of the industry-led initiative Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF).

While the sum is but a fragment of the $386 trillion-high global stock of financial capital, it represents the single largest carbon disclosure initiative within the financial sector. It also marks the first time the financial sector will apply a global carbon accounting standard, with methods previously specific to the US or Netherlands.

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The PCAF will enable investors to judge whether their portfolios are compatible with the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit warming to “well below” 2C and make “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”.

The methodology will apply to a wide range of assets, including sovereign bonds, listed equity, mortgages, real estate and corporate debt.

“PCAF enables the financial industry to take meaningful, collective and global action to combat climate change,” head of Triodos bank Peter Blom said. “Knowing the emissions of their loans and investments means banks can be transparent with their stakeholders. They can better understand and manage the risk of the climate emergency for their business. And, crucially, they can make informed decisions that limit the negative impact, and increase the positive impact, of their financial decisions on the climate.”

What is the UN climate action summit?

“Our experience in the Netherlands is that measuring and tracking climate impact drives concrete action and change,” Kees van Dijkhuizen CEO of the Dutch ABN AMRO said. “At ABN AMRO, PCAF helped us understand that our 800,000 residential mortgages are one of the areas that have the highest carbon impact. With that knowledge, we now promote mortgages that incentivize customers to take energy efficiency measures. Climate action like that is not only good for business – but is a duty to our clients, the planet, and to future generations.”

Founded during the Paris Agreement in 2015, PCAF has assessed $1.2 trillion worth of assets since 2018.

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The so-called “2030 climate protection programme”, which comes less than three days before Antonio Guterres’ climate summit in New York, aims to help the country meet its 2030 national target of slashing CO2 emissions by 55% from 1990 levels. At present the country has achieved almost 30%.

Under the new emissions trading system, the government will issue emissions rights for €10 per tonne in 2021, with prices rising every year to €35 until 2025. From 2026 onwards, a cap will be placed on emissions, shrinking every year.

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It is set to complement the European Emission Trading System (ETS), which is restricted to energy and industry emissions.

The legislation followed a night of heated talks, which saw conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD) spar over the CO₂ pricing and strategies to expand renewables.

Other key measures included:

• Confirmation that Germany will phase out coal power by the 2038 at the latest
• A goal to put 7-10 million electric cars on the road powered by 1 million charging points
• A goal to increase the renewable share of energy to 65% by 2030
• Tasking the current climate cabinet with carrying out annual reviews of climate objectives. The government will thereby institutionalise a body that had been temporary and assign it to monitor the progress on legally-binding reduction emissions targets per sector.
• Measures to soften the impact of higher carbon prices on commuters and low-income householders. People driving to work will thereby be able to claim 35¢ per km of commuting – up from 30¢ per km – until the end of 2026.
  

While the legislation will save chancellor Angela Merkel from arriving empty-handed at Monday’s climate summit, it is unlikely to appease the country’s mounting appetite for radical green policies.

The Greens clinched 20% of the vote in the European elections in April and the announcement on Friday took place amid huge youth-led climate protests. On Friday, public broadcaster ARD released a survey showing that 63% of German voters wanted the government to prioritise climate, even at the cost of economic growth.

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Niklas Höhne, founding partner of NewClimate Institute and a professor at Wageningen University, said the package “lack[ed] courage”.

“The new imperative is to aim for zero greenhouse gas emissions. But the package only collects individual measures to meet the short term target, without a clear vision how to phase out fossil fuels completely,” said Höhne.

Returning from climate protests in Berlin, which organisers said were attended by up to 250,000 people, Alexander Reitzenstein, an analyst with the think tank E3G, said the measures were a “disappointment… and piece-meal”.

“The proposed measures mark a clear progress,” Reitzenstein said. “It is however quite unlikely that they will be enough to reach the domestic and European climate targets, notwithstanding the need for more ambitious targets to contribute to limiting global warming to 1.5C.”

The scheme to spare drivers from the effects of increased carbon prices was “quite controversial because many argue it incentives to use the car and increases traffic …. and basically offsets the effect of carbon pricing.”

He added that the entry-level emissions rights in 2021 were set at an “extremely low price”. “It goes up quite early but it’s really low.”

Ottmar Edenhofer, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), agreed. “The grand coalition has not delivered on this central issue,” Edenhofer said in a statement.

What is the UN climate action summit?

“The price path [for the emissions trading scheme] is too low and does not extend far enough into the future to have a steering effect. By contrast, a sensible entry price is €50 per tonne of CO2 and rises to €130 by the end of the next decade, i.e. 2030. The carbon price should be the core instrument of climate policy, but now it only has an alibi function.”

Germany’s Fridays 4 Future group, which represents the student climate strike movement, dismissed the programme as “not my climate package”.

“It’s a bad joke when the federal government praises the pressure from #FridaysForFuture at the beginning of every statement and then wants to sell us decisions that further trample our future,” the campaign group tweeted.

The government is expected to unveil further details about the policy package further on Thursday at its next cabinet meeting.

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Pierre Goinvic and Fanny Delahalle, from the climate civil disobedience movement ANV COP21 (Non-Violent Action COP21), risked a €500 fine for theft of the French president’s portrait from a town hall in Lyon in February.

More than 20 activists had stormed the townhall to support the action. “The theft is established and does nothing to resolve climate change,” prosecutor Rozenn Huon said at the start of the trial on 2 September.

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But judge Marc-Emmanuel Gounot did not see it that way.

“Faced with the state’s failure to respect objectives that can be perceived as minimal in a vital area,” Gounot wrote in a 8-page verdict delivered on Monday, “the mode of expression of citizens in democratic countries cannot be reduced to votes cast during elections, but must invent other forms of participation as part of a duty of critical vigilance”, adding that the action represented “a very moderate disturbance to public order.”

The statement went on to credit “the minds of citizens deeply involved in a particular cause serving the general interest” and frame the the portrait removal as a “necessary substitute for the impracticable dialogue between the president of the republic and the people”.

Since 21 February, ANV-COP21 has taken down 133 portraits of Macron from town halls in protest at the French government’s lack of action.

The verdict took many by surprise in France, with judges only rarely resorting to the notion of “state of necessity”.

“His words allow the debate to breathe,” lawyer Thomas Fourrey said. “We are coming out of systematic repression, he is telling all those who are concerned about the state of the planet that they are in the right ”

Delahalle told CHN she was “extremely happy” about the decision.

“It confirms that the state is completely deficient on the climate question and not respecting the commitments that it took at [the 2015 climate talks in Paris known as] Cop21”

“We hope that it will set a precedent,” Delahalle said. “To me this is really the sign that society is moving on climate, that it is currently understanding the emergency at stake and the current government is not up to the task”

The verdict comes after politicians and scientists flocked to the activists’ defence. Climate scientist Wolfgang Cramer provided data on greenhouse gas emissions to illustrate the climate emergency, while former housing minister Cécile Duflot, who now serves as CEO for Oxfam France, testified to the “lack of political will” on climate.

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In an interview with France Info, Duflot also saluted the courage of the judge and said that the decision would go down in history.

“There are three very important things in this judgment: the recognition of climate inaction and real danger; the fact that, as citizens, we can legitimately question the executive power and the president of the republic in a way other than through elections; and this decision to release,” Duflot said. “There is an opportunity to act in the face of the extreme danger of the climate crisis.”

“I think that, frankly, unsociable behaviour does not deserve to be encouraged by decisions of this kind” minister of transport Elisabeth Borne told the state TV channel France 2 on Tuesday. The state prosecution has said it would appeal the case.

The next trials are due to take place in Muhouse and Nancy in the East of France on 9 October.

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Unusually hot weather along with dry thunderstorms this summer have combined to turn the Arctic Circle into a tinder box. More than 2.4 million acres of forest have burst into flames in Alaska. 13 million acres – an area bigger than Belgium – have burned in Siberia, Russia, unleashing plumes of smoke the size of the European Union. Meanwhile, fires continues to sweep through Northern Canada.

Edward Alexander, co-chair of Gwich’in Council International (GCI), a body representing the rights of 11,000 people in the indigenous territory of Alaska and permanent member of the Arctic Council, told Climate Home News that the region could no longer look south for emergency assistance, but had to build its own resilience.

In the event of extreme wildfires, states have been known to request firefighters from southern countries. July of last year was one example, when Sweden sought emergency assistance from the European Union and Turkey.

“What we’ve tried to say is: ‘Let’s look to the north to solve some of these problems, let’s look across the pole, and remember that there are resources around the table that we could bring to bear on new problems’,” Alexander said. “Whether that’s understanding the problems from a scientific point of view, or coordinating our emergency management systems and having some sort of agreement that’s based on the best practices of the region.”

US breaks from Arctic consensus on climate change

The group submitted a proposal to increase cooperation among Arctic states at the the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR) working group of the Arctic Council in June. Founded in 1996, the Arctic Council seeks to encourage cooperation between Arctic countries, especially in the area of environmental protection. Member states include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States, while six indigenous groups also sit in the negotiations as permanent participants.

The proposal would see states develop training partnerships to fight fires specific to the local ecosystems such as the taiga and pool expertise on fire management, including from indigenous communities.

It garnered enthusiasm, one source told CHN, with the US also stepping in to suggest creating a regional inventory of firefighters.

“It’s a big deal,” said Alexander. “Not just as an emergency response, but as a response to climate change. Wildland fire is not just an effect of climate change anymore, it’s also becoming a significant driver of climate change, and we really need to understand what’s going on there in the north. We also need to better work together to address the issue.”

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Jens Peter Holst-Andersens, the chair of the EPPR working group, said that he was “thrilled that this project proposal on wildfires is from a permanent participant, because they are the people who live in Arctic and have to deal with the consequences of wildfires”.

A second proposal by the GCI aims to refine the region’s understanding of fire ecology by encouraging research into the impacts of fire on flora and drawing up a circumpolar map showing fires affecting the region, rather than a single-state.

Alexander said that the fires and climate change in general were having a profound impact on the lives of the Gwich’in people. Scattered across Alaska, most of the communities can only be accessed by air or snowmobile, largely relying on hunting for food. Fires have burned trap lines and disrupted people’s hunting traditions, while plumes of smoke have considerably lowered the local air quality.

“We’ve seen fish mortality,” Alexander said. “Some of the rivers got so warm that the fish died before they spawned. We’re seeing new insects. We’re seeing a prevalence of unusual species.”

The next Arctic Council meeting is slated for September in Stockholm, where member states intend to discuss Arctic cooperation on wildfires and oil spillages.

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Created in June, the group Animal Rebellion describes itself as “a mass volunteer movement that uses methods of non-violent civil disobedience to end the animal agriculture and fishing industries, halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of climate breakdown and social collapse”.

It expects at least 10,000 people to block roads, stage sit-ins and volunteer for arrest in major UK cities, such as London and Manchester, during Extinction Rebellion’s next two-week protest, starting on 7 October. Groups in Israel and Canada are set to take part in similar disruption.

The last action of Extinction Rebellion in April saw over 1,000 people arrested, after activists occupied and parked pink boats and trucks in London’s arteries, including Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge and Parliament Square.

“We’ve been inspired by this success,” Animal Rebellion writes on its website “and believe it will continue if more of us join. We believe that this movement is the route to ending the industries of animal farming and fishing, and achieving justice for animals, because we know that climate catastrophe and ecological collapse cannot be averted while these industries continue to exist.”

Extinction Rebellion: hundreds of activists face court, in summer of prosecutions

Animal Rebellion subscribes to Extinction Rebellion’s three core demands: for the government to “tell the truth” by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, act now to halt biodiversity loss and slash emissions to net zero by 2025, and set up a citizens’ assembly to oversee the transition.

The group believes that these asks entail the end of meat industry, citing research that shows emissions from meat-based diets are approximately twice as high as those from vegans. It is also calling on recognize animals’ “resistance to exploitation and their liberation from animal agriculture, fishing and other unjust practices.”

Spokesperson Alex Lockwood told Climate Home News they did not intend to alienate people through their methods and were open to a “civilized dialogue” with other sectors of society. They were discussing internal disagreements with farmer members of Extinction Rebellion, he said.

“We need rapid change to our food system if we are to tackle the climate emergency,” Lockwood said. “And that may be very uncomfortable for people. But what are we meant to do? If we know that we need system change we can’t just sit around and wait for it to happen, because it’s not.”

Meat and potatoes: international media majors on diet in IPCC coverage

The announcement comes days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the outsized carbon footprint of meat production compared to other food sources.

“The consumption of healthy and sustainable diets, such as those based on coarse grains, pulses and vegetables, and nuts and seeds, animal-sourced food presents major opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the IPCC said in a landmark report on the links between land use and climate change.

It was widely interpreted by media as a call on individuals to eat less meat, prompting an angry backlash from British livestock farmers. With veganism growing in popularity, defending the meat industry was a hot topic for the UK’s National Farmers Union’s last round of internal elections.

For a more plant-focused vision of British agriculture, Lockwood pointed to a 10-year transition plan by the RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Alliance.

Research by Harvard university showed that the UK could save up to nine years of CO2 emissions by changing the use of land currently employed to grow feed for livestock for cultures of grains, beans, fruit, nuts and vegetables for humans.

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This article was amended to reflect that the original IPCC quote included the words “animal-sourced food”.

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Last week’s IPCC report on land use may not have turned out to be the headline-generating machine that the 2018 report on limiting warming to 1.5C was; nor did it go unnoticed. The scope for stories was wide, with co-chair Jim Skea telling Climate Home News the paper was “the most complicated thing I’ve ever been involved with”.

While some journalists picked up on trade-offs between carbon storage and food production, the importance of indigenous land rights or sustainable farming practices, one theme dominated: meat.

Led by western media, the majority of coverage focused on the environmental impact of readers’ steak habits – even in countries where vegetarian diets are dictated by financial constraints or spiritual practice, not consumer preference.

Despite being the first IPCC report with a majority of authors from the developing world, few news outlets in poorer countries dedicated space to it. What little reporting filtered through was largely based on the IPCC press release or newswire copy, rather than highlighting the stark implications of the science for vulnerable communities.

Comment: How we manage land is critical to climate justice

AFP led with “Can we eat Big Macs and still avoid climate chaos?”, summarising that “not everyone needs to become a vegetarian, much less vegan, to keep the planet from overheating, but it would probably make things a lot easier if they did.” Reuters also attempted to capture that nuance, writing “although the report stopped short of explicitly advocating going meat free, it called for big changes to farming and eating habits to limit the impact of population growth and changing consumption patterns on stretched land and water resources.”

In the UK, The Times called on the reader to “Eat less meat to save the Earth”, while in the Guardian leftist commentator George Monbiot hit out at the IPCC for “[understating] the true carbon cost of our meat and dairy habits”. It provoked a backlash from British farming unions, who lamented “biased” and “selective” reporting of the science.

Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine had a similar focus, describing it the report as “a thorn in the flesh” (the word “fleisch” also meaning meat). Spanish online magazine Economía Digital warned the report would worsen the dire state of the national meat sector, which has suffered from declining demand in the past decade.

The focus on diet isn’t without its problems, Max Boykoff, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and a seasoned observer on climate coverage, told Climate Home News.

“Some of these ways in which certain outlets can choose to focus in on the individual can serve to distract and simply displace in a finite news hole those larger scale stories that need attention: the revolutionising of our agricultural practices, the way we manage our forests,” Boykoff said.

“Yes, [eating habits] are the way we come into contact with the environment most frequently. But to stay in that place is to atomise and limit the possibilities for making the kind of changes that are needed.” It also gave “corporations a free pass”, he said.

Analysis: Nine solutions to the food-forests-fuel trilemma

India initially set its own agenda, with the Business Standard first to obtain a leak of the draft report in July. Under the headline “Climate change could cause 29% spike in cereal prices,” journalist Nitin Sethi noted that increased aridity in Asia could severely impact food security, and leave up to 522 million people prey to “water stress, drought and habitat degradation…. in a significant finding for countries such as India”.

On the day of the final report’s publication, however, much of the national media toed the vegetarian line. The Times of India went with an uncannily similar headline to that of The Times in the UK (“Adopt a green diet and help save Earth: UN body report”), while India Today gave twin prominence to the report’s messages on food security and plant-based diets.

In the most vegetarian country on earth, that angle smacked of irresponsibility, said Dharini Parthasarathy, a communications officer at the umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN).

“The report also talks about the extent of hunger and poverty that will be exacerbated by bad land use and climate change. For decision makers in India, that’s an alarm bell. We’re in an agrarian crisis, so for that not to be the big takeaway is quite something,” she said.

The big picture wasn’t lost on everyone.

IPCC: Urgent action needed to tackle hunger alongside climate crisis

The New York Times wrote of the planet’s soil as a carbon and hunger time bomb. “A half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming.” It quoted one of the lead authors of the report, Cynthia Rosenzweig, who said that “the potential risk of multi-breadbasket failure is increasing… All of these things are happening at the same time.”

In France, Germany and Spain media called for a revolution in food systems. The French and German media covered the report particularly extensively, with Le Monde, Liberation and Ouest-France devoting front pages to it. Left-leaning Süddeutsche Zeitung mentioned the report in no fewer than 16 articles on Thursday and Friday.

Addressing a nation of farmers, France’s press delved deeper than others into the takeaways for agriculture. Le Monde splashed with the headline “Humanity is exhausting the earth” – the word “terre” carrying the double meaning of “planet Earth” and “soils”. A caricature by Plantu shows a mapped snake biting its own tail, in a reference to a French phrase denoting self-harm.

To Olivier de Schutter, former UN chief on the right to food, the report is first and foremost an endorsement of agroecology. He told the French paper of record that humanity needed to turn away from fertilisers and pesticides and embrace organic methods.

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Like Climate Home News, Brazil’s Folha de S Paulo homed in on the competing demands on land to cut emissions through forest plantations and biofuels, and grow food.

In the highest and fourth highest emitting countries in the world, China and Russia, media stuck to neutral summaries of the report’s key messages.

China’s official state-run press agency, Xinhua News Agency, led with the headline that “UN report points out that land degradation will exacerbate climate change”.

As record wildfires tore across Siberia, unleashing plumes of smog the size of the EU, the Russian press missed an opportunity to cover feedback loops between fires and climate change. It wasn’t for want of trying on the part of Greenpeace Russia, which circulated a press release to 400 outlets titled “UN recognizes fires in natural areas as a threat to climate”. The report noted that “fire weather season has already lengthened by 18.7% globally between 1979 and 2013,” with “significant increases in forest area burnt in boreal Siberia”.

Instead, state news agency Interfax contented itself with a broadbrush overview of the report, focusing on rising food security risks and the need to slash meat consumption.

Tanzania’s The Citizen offered a rare bit of African commentary, with an editorial urging the “government… to check the habit of wanton falling [sic] of trees for the excuse of farming” and advocating “strong punitive measures against the destruction of natural forests”.

Reuter’s charitable arm, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was one of the few outlets to focus on the report’s conclusion about the critical role of indigenous people  in land and climate conservation.

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Large-scale tree-planting and bioenergy production are important tools to limit global warming but could threaten food security, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In late-running negotiations on how to summarise the latest science for policymakers, representatives of forest nations stressed that with sustainable management, these conflicts can be minimised.

“Land already in use could feed the world in a changing climate and provide biomass for renewable energy, but early, far-reaching action across several areas is required,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, one of the leading IPCC scientists coordinating the report. “Also for the conservation and restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity.”

Left unchecked, global warming itself will damage ecosystems, eroding the capacity of land to support human life, the evidence shows.

Analysis: Nine solutions to the food-forests-fuel trilemma

The special report on land use shines a light on the importance of afforestation and fuel crops to absorb carbon dioxide – and the associated risks of land degradation and increased desertification, which it said could have “potentially irreversible consequences”.

It covered controversial ways to limit global warming such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (Beccs): burning plants to generate energy and pumping the emissions underground.

“The report leaves no doubt about the devastating impacts that large-scale bioenergy, Beccs and afforestation with monocultures would have on water availability, biodiversity, food security, livelihoods, land degradation and desertification — a tsunami of threats that make large scale bioenergy and Beccs completely unacceptable and unworkable,” said Linda Schneider, senior programme officer in climate policy at the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

In one scenario, use of forestry and land to store carbon causes crop prices to soar 80% by 2050, translating into an extra 80 to 300 million people suffering from undernourishment.

This tension is however limited if trees are planted on land unsuitable for agriculture and used to prevent desertification and restore degraded soil. Small-scale planting of native species can also provide a safety net during times of food and income insecurity.

Another way to reduce competition for land is to crack down on illegal logging in protected areas and better manage existing forests.

Comment: It is high time to reboot our relationship with nature

Bioenergy, which can replace carbon-intensive fossil fuels, must be used judiciously to avoid tensions between feeding a growing population and tackling climate change, the report showed.

Extensive use of bioenergy – including with carbon capture and storage – puts an additional 150 million people at risk of hunger if used to reduce emissions by several gigatonnes of CO2 per year.

But limiting bioenergy crops to marginal lands could significantly reduce negative effects, potentially even enriching ecosystems and the soils in the process.

Those warnings come after national delegates and scientists spent a week in Geneva, Switzerland, debating what to include in the summary for policymakers (SPM), a 41-page document to guide governments.

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Among the most contentious topics were passages detailing the downsides of large-scale bioenergy and forest plantations.

Led by Brazil, a group including the US, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom pushed back against a diagram in the draft that flagged several trade-offs in red. The final version separated out the contested elements, highlighting areas of scientific uncertainty and how best practice can bring dual benefits.

A draft of the IPCC land use report summary for policymakers raised several red flags around bioenergy

The final version emphasises areas of uncertainty and the benefits of following best practice

France and Germany, however, “stood firm in the face of attempts to water down high afforestation scenarios,” an observer told CHN.

The two delegations also championed “nature-based solutions” to restore natural landscapes such as mangroves and peatlands to soak up carbon emissions, according to three sources. The final version added several paragraphs on this theme, compared to the draft.

Bolsonaro under fire for deforestation denial, after sacking space agency chief

Jim Skea, a lead scientist on the IPCC report, told Climate Home News the final version introduced “a lot more nuance” about bioenergy.

“What was picked up from the previous draft was that the message about bioenergy was almost entirely negative because the figure assumed that it would be deployed at the scale that would remove at least 3Gt of CO2 annually… But we are not deploying bioenergy nearly at that scale at the moment,” he said.

The report is part of a series of landmark publications by the IPCC aiming to arm governments with the best climate science ahead of 2020, a critical moment for UN climate negotiations. Next month will see the release of a report focused on oceans and the cryosphere – water in its solid state such as glaciers and ice sheets.

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Due for release on 8 August, the report is set to warn that expanding bioenergy crops and forests in order to soak up greenhouse gas emissions risks displacing precious farmland and worsening hunger.

But there are ways to limit the tension between clean fuel, carbon sinks and food. Here are nine win-win-win solutions

Photo: Wikimedia commons

1. Banish food waste

One of the most common myths about food security is that it’s all about production. In fact, most of the world’s hunger takes root in problems of distribution and access. Roughly one third of all food is lost or wasted between the farm and the fork. And 1.3 billion tonnes of squandered food means millions of square kilometres of squandered land.

There are many solutions to food waste. The World Resources Institute has suggested that governments set food loss and waste reduction targets, create independent waste watchdogs and boost investment to slash post-harvest losses in developing countries. Better food date labels are another must.

Photo: Creative commons

2. Eat less meat

“When it comes to the question of how to reduce demand for land, the heart of the discussion is of course to reduce demand for animal products,” says Pierre-Marie Aubert, the leader of the European food policy initiative at the Paris-based think tank Iddri. “This for a very simple reason: animal production consumes the great majority of known green surfaces on earth.”

Animal farming, including feedstock, takes up 83% of the world’s agricultural land, but delivers only 18% of our calories. A plant-based diet cuts the use of land by 76% and halves the greenhouse gases and other pollution that are caused by food production.

While the world’s poor would benefit from more animal protein, in the rich world slashing meat consumption can go hand in hand with healthier eating.

Palm oil plantations in Indonesia (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Achmad Rabin Taim)

3. Move away from (some) cash crops in poorer countries

The past decades have seen farmers in developing countries increasingly focus on satisfying Western appetites for crops like coffee, cacao and palm oil. This has resulted in the substitution of rich patchworks of crops with monocultures.

As well as limiting the range of food crops available for local diets, intensive farming methods on homogenous plantations can kill vital pollinators.

As a result, soybean production now presents substantial risks for food security in Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina. There is a similar phenomenon in Indonesia and Malaysia due to large-scale palm oil plantations.

“It’s lose-lose. We lose on production and we lose on the degradation of the ecosystem,” Aubert says. He recommends diversifying agriculture.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/SthefanyMora

4. Sustainably intensify agriculture in the global South

“Cattle must be lonely in Brazil,” former UK climate envoy David King joked when he visited the country in March 2016, noting the vast areas they roam.

In many tropical countries, rainforests are cleared to create pastures for grazing, but because farmers do not invest in soil health, the land slowly deteriorates. Farming incomes eventually degrade alongside grasslands, prompting ranchers to deforest new tracts – a vicious cycle.

The leading source of deforestation in Brazil, ranching accounts for 450,000 square kilometres of stripped Amazon, with an average 1.3 cattle per hectare. Carlos Nobre, a scientist in Earth Systems at the University of São Paulo, says that with better ranching practices, each cow could be raised in half the space, preventing further deforestation.

A plot cultivated along the principles of permaculture in France (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Alôsnys)

5. De-intensify agriculture in the global North

In developed countries, on the other hand, intensification has in many cases gone too far. Since the second world war, a revolution in farming methods banished food scarcity – but degraded soils in the process.

The intensive use of fertilisers and pesticides, coupled with mechanical ploughing, is unsustainable over the long term. By definition, less intensive methods lead to lower yields, other things being equal.

But a 2018 report by Iddri argued a shift to greener practices in Europe was essential to future food security and carbon storage – and coupled with dietary changes (see point 2) could slash total farming emissions by 40%.

Coconut trees flirt with Mexican marigolds in Kerala, India (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Ezhuttukari)

6. Turn farmland into a carbon sponge

Regardless of where it’s located, forward-looking agriculture will need to boost soils’ capacity to absorb carbon. There are tried and tested methods to achieve this, such as growing several crops on one field, also known as intercropping, or disturbing the soil less by reducing tillage.

Dousing the soils with biochar – a charcoal produced from plant matter – could also help soils store up carbon.

The Montane peatlands in Eastern Australia (Photo: Creative Commons/Doug Beckers)

7. Care for existing carbon-rich ecosystems

When it comes to storing carbon, all landscapes are not created equal. Coastal habitats, such as mangroves, sea grass and salt marshes can soak up carbon up to 40 times faster than tropical forests. Peatlands, which cover 3% of the land surface, represent the largest terrestrial carbon store.

Caring for them is a priority if we are to keep emissions under control. They also provide an effective barrier against flooding and storms – which can threaten food crops – and create habitats for biodiversity and pollinators.

Biofuel proponents claim that algal biofuels can cut through the food vs biofuel dilemma (Photo: Creative Commons/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – PNNL)

8. Choose the right bioenergy crops

Some biofuels are better than others. First generation biofuels, distilled from food crops like corn, sugarcane, rapeseed, soybeans and palm oil, are controversial. In the worst cases, research shows such biofuels pollute even more than petroleum-based fuels, for example where rainforest is cleared to make way for a low-yielding palm oil plantation.

Third generation biofuels like algae are promising in theory, holding over 200 times more biomass per area than terrestrial biomass. In practice, though, they are difficult to produce at scale and have yet to break through commercially.

There is scope to generate bioenergy in ways that don’t compete with tree cover or food production, however. Agricultural waste, forestry offcuts and crops grown on marginal land are safer sources.

Windmills in Galicia (Photo: Creative Commons/Makunin)

9. Rapidly reduce emissions in other sectors

Last but not least, “action on land and forestry is not an excuse for lack of action on industry and energy,” says Greenpeace campaigner Christopher Thies.

While the IPCC foresees biofuels and forestry playing a key role in limiting warming to 1.5C, the scale of the challenge depends on other polluting sectors.

The faster fossil fuels are phased out, the less pressure falls on land use choices to meet climate goals.

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The ruling dealt a blow to the 1GW Ostrołęka C project, a joint venture between utilities Enea and Energa backed by the government.

It is a major win for Client Earth. The environmental law firm had bought shares in Enea and filed a lawsuit against the project on the grounds it posed an “unacceptable” financial risk to investors.

“This is an excellent result for Enea’s shareholders and for the climate,” Client Earth lawyer Peter Barnett said. “The plant is a stranded asset in the making, facing clear and well-documented financial risks.

“Companies and their directors are legally responsible for managing climate-related risks and face potential liability if they fail to do so. Enea and Energa should lay this project to rest before it incurs any further costs to the companies and their shareholders.”

Turkey: supreme court blocks coal plant, as wave of new projects stalls

Revived in 2016, the €1.2 billion project was part of the government’s plan to ensure the country’s energy security. It was presented as a necessary supplement for renewable energies that will partly replace a number of old coal power plants due to be taken offline by 2020.

With a controlling stake in Enea, the Polish government pushed through company approval despite concerns raised about the project’s economic viability. In September 2018, 22% of non-government shareholders voted against starting construction and 58% abstained. At project partner Energa, with 37% opposed the project.

The €1 trillion global asset manager Legal & General Investment Management, which is invested in both Enea and Energa, said that its clients faced “very high financial risks due to its uncertain policy support, rising carbon prices, unreliable capacity payments and threat of new technologies in energy generation,” Reuters reported at the time.

Client Earth claimed its case against Enea was a world first, in the way it forced the company to reckon with climate risk. As carbon-cutting regulations kick in and clean energy sources become competitive on price, it argued, coal generation is an increasingly bad bet.

“Pursuing this project puts an unnecessary burden on the state and taxpayers and is in no way necessary for national energy security,” said Marcin Stoczkiewicz, head of Client Earth Poland.

“Enea and Energa need to look at what the future of energy is in Poland. There is vast employment potential in cheaper, domestic renewables.”

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European Investment Bank (EIB) revealed the strategic shift in a draft on energy lending policy on Friday.

If adopted by EU finance ministers on 10 September, the policy will pull the plug on finance for infrastructure dedicated to coal, oil and gas by the end of 2020. Instead, it will pivot to clean energy projects.

“This is the result of several months of work and it’s also a reflection of the views we have heard from hundreds of stakeholders across Europe as to what the priorities of the European Bank should be when it comes to supporting energy in the future,” said vice president Andrew McDowell in a video statement.

“The main proposals are clear: we want to increase our support for the energy transition in Europe, the decarbonization of the European economy. We want to support more energy efficiency and energy savings projects, we want to help further decarbonize energy supply, through more support for renewable energy. We want to support energy innovation, new technologies that will be necessary in the future to meet ambitious climate and energy commitments. And we need to support more the energy infrastructures of the future, particularly the electrification of the European economy.”

The draft proposes some exemptions including production of biofuels and high-efficiency gas-fired combined heat and power plants.

Comment: A weak carbon price is worse than no carbon price

Environmental organisations, which have been calling for such a shift for years, erupted over the news.

“This is a crack of light in the darkness,”  Colin Roche, fossil free campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said. “While the EU and national governments are floundering as the planet burns, the EU’s public bank has made the brave, correct and just proposal to stop funding fossil fuel projects. We are now urging the European Investment Bank’s board to endorse this step forward, and ensure there are no loopholes for fossil fuel funding.”

The policy is something the EU could present at the climate action summit convened by UN chief Antonio Guterres in New York on 23 September.

“Saying that their bank is aligning its energy lending with Paris [Agreement] by ruling out fossil-fuel funding, is pretty significant,” Lisa Fischer, a policy advisor at think-tank E3G, told Climate Home News. “It will set the standard for others to follow.”

The initiative would also “put a lot of pressure on the European Union to align its infrastructure priorities,” Fischer said.

Guterres asks all countries to plan for carbon neutrality by 2050

The proposed ban on funding natural gas may meet resistance, Fischer said. Having committed to end coal power by 2038, Germany is eyeing gas as a bridge fuel.

“We know that there’s a disagreement between ministries in Germany, so that the environment ministry [wants] to exclude fossil fuels, but they’re not actually holding the pen,” Fischer said. “It’s the economy ministry that is writing the position and sending the finance ministry that will relay it.”

Meanwhile, Romania has not given up on the dream of extracting gas in the Black Sea, despite a spate of recent regulation making that task harder. Another country rich in gas, Bulgaria, could also lobby against the proposal.

Championed by French economist Pierre Larrouturou and top climate scientist Jean Jouzel, the idea of an EU bank for climate investments has piled pressure on the EU’s lending arm in the past months. More than 600 political figures backed the initiative, with French president Emmanuel Macron,  Spanish president Pedro Sanchez and the pope ranking among its most influential supporters.

“It’s put a lot of tension on the EIB that wasn’t there beforehand,” Fischer said. “The EIB came out saying: ‘Hang on, we’re the climate bank!’ I think that set the standard and then it was about translating what that means.”

Last year €16.2 billion euros, or 30% of the EIB’s lending, went towards climate action.

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The EU is locking horns with a bloc of countries led by the US and Japan over a mechanism included in more than 3,000 trade deals, ahead of UN talks in Vienna in October.

Investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) is a system of private courts that allows foreign investors to bypass domestic courts and sue governments in cases where national policies hurt their profits. It raises the prospect of fossil fuel corporations claiming billions of dollars in compensation for climate legislation enacted under the Paris Agreement, including carbon taxes or initiatives to phase out fossil fuels.

“The ISDS system has given rise to an alarming number of claims against environmental measures, which are already the fastest growing trigger for dispute,” said Amandine Van Den Berghe, a lawyer with Client Earth.

“Amid this climate emergency, we call on governments to respect their international commitments, and push for a deep and systemic reform of ISDS, so that these mechanisms are not able to undermine efforts to save the planet.”

EU moots crackdown on deforestation through supply chains

Importantly, legal experts say challenges under ISDS do not need to succeed to have a chilling effect on regulation. While it is hard to draw a direct link, they point to a case where France watered down a proposed 2017 law to phase out oil and gas extraction, after oil company Vermilion threatened to sue.

Client Earth urged countries to exit investment treaties with ISDS. Those not ready to ditch treaties because of political or economic pressures could alternatively press for radical reform of corporate courts, it suggested.

Preventing the use of ISDS in the case of policies contributing to the Paris Agreement would be one way to stop investors weaponizing it against the climate. Other options include requiring claimants to go through domestic courts before the ISDS system, empowering third parties, such as communities affected by investments, to bring counterclaims, or integrating climate change considerations into the calculation of compensation.

So far, none of the leading national submissions take up these ideas. Instead, they limit themselves to addressing some of the most glaring deficiencies of the process, such as conflicts of interest of arbitrators.

Comment: How von der Leyen could make a carbon border tax work

Under the current system, there is nothing to stop an arbitrator serving as witness or counsel – so-called “double-hatting”. Arbitrators can also take jobs in the private and public sectors.

One example is Yves Fortier, a director on the board of mining company Rio Tinto, who has acted as an arbitrator in cases involving mining companies. In April, Fortier was one of the arbitrators to greenlight gas and oil explorations by Shell in a dispute against the Filipino government.

Led by the US and Japan, a group of countries including Chile, Russia, Mexico and Australia that are part of the Trans-Pacific Patnership have proposed tackling such conflicts of interest by introducing a code of conduct for arbitrators and counsels.

The EU, where backlash against ISDS led trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström to brand it “the most toxic acronym in Europe”, seeks to address these concerns through the creation of a whole new institution: the multilateral investment tribunal (MIT).

The proposal seeks to avoid conflicts of interests by employing full-time judges. It also sets out transparency rules, an appeal process and a way for third parties to submit interventions to court if they have an interest in the outcome of the dispute.

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While these features make the MIT a more progressive proposal than that floated by the US and Japan, it is “still far from what we consider being a real progressive and systemic reform”, Van Den Berghe said.

“At the moment there seems to be no appetite for such improvements at the European Commission,” Bart-Jaap Verbeek, trade analyst at the Dutch think tank SOMO and observer in the talks, told Climate Home News.

“In fact, the director general trade official responsible for ISDS is quite frank and clear about his position: in his view, there is nothing wrong with the substantive investment protection standards, only with the procedural aspects of how these are being enforced in terms of transparency, legitimacy, consistency and independence. In his words – ‘Justice needs to be seen’.”

In time, the bloc intends the MIT to replace the patchwork of ISDS across different treaties. The MIT, a document by the European Commission reads, would “be for investment dispute settlement what the World Trade Organisation is for trade dispute settlement”.

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Only proposals by a group of developing countries, including South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, India, and smaller states, start getting at the structural deficits decried by campaigners.

Brazil is lobbying to replace ISDS with a state-to-state dispute settlement, whereby investors require the authorization of the state they reside in before pressing with charges against another government. In addition to courting more public scrutiny, this approach allows governments to prioritize strategic interests over investor profits, such as diplomatic ties or climate policy.

Submissions by developing countries “really go beyond the MIT camp or the incrementalist camp,” Verbeek said. “They have far more respect for domestic courts, for human rights or for sustainable rights.”

But it may be that developing countries dump ISDS regardless of the outcome of the Vienna talks. Together with pressure from civil society, multimillion-dollar legal and compensation costs associated with the ISDS procedure have led an increasing number of governments to disentangle themselves from corporate courts.

Asset managers worth $15 trillion make climate risk promise to Macron

“In the years of climate change they [i.e the developing countries] are the ones that are going to be hit very hard by it,” Van Den Berghe said. “They will need to adopt [climate change] mitigation measures, and those may be challenged by investors. It’s a very vicious circle, and all of this being paid for by taxpayers’ money.”

Ecuador, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Venezuela have exited investment treaties that include ISDS and taken steps to strengthen domestic courts. Meanwhile, Brazil has never ratified any investment treaties with corporate courts.

Set to take place 14-18 October, the UN Commission on International Trade Law (Uncitral) meeting in Vienna will resume negotiations on ISDS reform that begun in July 2017. In the absence of any deadline, it is predicted that the talks could drag on.

While these structural reforms may help or hinder climate action, that impact is rarely addressed explicitly. Few national submissions mention the Paris Agreement.

“It’s being done under the flag of the United Nations, and there is no linkage whatsoever with other processes at the United Nations, such as the climate agreement,” Verbeek said. “It’s not in the mindset of the people there: it’s all about investment protection and investment rights and thinking about business interests.”

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Models suggest large areas of land are needed to draw carbon dioxide out of the air to limit global warming to 1.5C, the most ambitious target in the Paris Agreement.

This risks worsening hunger by competing with food production for space, according to the draft summary for policymakers obtained by Business Standard.

“Widespread use at the scale of several millions of km2 globally” of tree-planting and bioenergy crops could have “potentially irreversible consequences for food security and land degradation”, the report said.

Intensifying the production of bioenergy crops through the use of fertilisers, irrigation and monocultures could also erode soil and its capacity to soak up carbon in the long run.

UN report on 1.5C blocked from climate talks after Saudi Arabia disputes science

There is rising demand for fuels derived from plants as a source of renewable energy. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), describes modern bioenergy as the “overlooked giant” of renewables, predicting it will outpace solar, wind and hydropower in the next five years.

However, converting land to bioenergy production could deprive countries of valuable agricultural soil and displace crops and livestock to less productive regions. Populations most at risk of food insecurity were sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, the IPCC draft said.

To minimise the conflict, scientists advised governments to limit the scale of bioenergy. Depending on the way countries developed, negative effects from biofuel crops could kick in starting from between 2 and 6 million km2 globally.

A safer way to reduce land emissions is to protect and restore ecosystems known for their capacity to absorb carbon, including grasslands, peatlands and coastal wetlands, which affect smaller areas.

On the food production side, measures to cut waste and a shift to lower meat diets can also help to alleviate pressure on land.

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The report dealt a blow to the system of intensive agriculture spawned after the second world war and called for a shift to sustainable farming. The current food system is responsible for over half of human-caused methane emissions and 25-30% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Breaking monocultures by cultivating several crops at once, planting more crops to enrich and protect soil, such as legumes, and reducing tillage could help soil absorb more carbon.

The findings chime with research by French think tank IDDRI published in December, which showed that an agroecological food system in Europe could slash emissions by around 40% compared to 2010.

The report urged policymakers to consult local people, “particularly the most vulnerable”, over the use of land. This could help governments identify the most appropriate uses for land and overcome potential conflicts or trade-offs.

Responding to media reports on the leak, the IPCC said in a statement that “drafts of the report are collective works in progress that do not necessarily represent the IPCC’s final assessment of the state of knowledge”.

Government representatives are due to meet 2-6 August to consider the report and finalise the summary for policymakers ahead of publication.

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Drawing on data from the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database, the two Paris-based think tanks found a sharp drop in patent applications for carbon-busting inventions since the beginning of the decade.

Applications plummeted 77% from a high of 1,256 in 2011 to 285 in 2018 in the power generation sector and 918 to 298 in buildings over the same period. The figure for transport peaked at 740 in 2014, slumping to 259 last year. Inventions related to carbon capture and storage and manufacturing were also down.

The downward trend was confined to technologies for mitigating climate change. Communication and health innovations, in contrast, saw steady growth.

“The precipitous decline in patented innovation since 2011-2012 is a stark warning, since there can be a long lag between innovation and cost reductions,” authors Miguel Cárdenas Rodríguez, Ivan Haščič and Nick Johnstone wrote.

“We have benefited significantly in recent years from the research efforts that went into wind and solar power in the 1990s and 2000s, with increasingly competitively generation costs. The evidence presented here based on patents raises concerns about developments in future years.”

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The analysis did not fully explain the reasons behind the trend, but cited political uncertainty and technological maturity as possible culprits. A growing overlap between digital and carbon-cutting technology can also make the latter harder to single out.

“Carbon is ubiquitous in our economies, and because it is ubiquitous, the means by which you can mitigate it are ubiquitous,” Johnstone told Climate Home News. “For that reason it can be increasingly difficult to identify these inventions that can lead to climate mitigation, just because, like mushrooms, they can pop up anywhere.”

In 2015, then-US president Barack Obama fronted Mission Innovation, a pledge by 24 countries and the European Commission to double investment in clean technology research and development by 2021.

Most signatories are lagging behind that commitment, however. A December report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation found they were collectively on track to increase public R&D spending only 50% percent over the 5-year period.

In an e-mail to CHN, David King, who as UK former climate envoy was a key architect of Mission Innovation, described the IEA/OECD findings as “surprising”. This did not mean the initiative had failed, he said, as it only fully launched in 2016/17 and “is still getting off the ground.”

It could take six or seven years for the investment to show up in patent applications, King added. “R&D is a slow business!”

Despite current president Donald Trump’s hostility to international cooperation on climate change, the US is “still on board”, King insisted. “They don’t want to miss out on the innovations [and] wealth-creating opportunities.”

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Using a tool developed by Politico Europe and the journalist James O’Malley to track which Twitter accounts MEPs followed, Climate Home News found that most MEPs within the power blocs of the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), Social Democrats (S&D) and liberal Renew Europe (RE) groups do not follow a selection of most influential accounts on climate change.

This is despite the blocs’ pledges to address the climate crisis as a matter of priority, with RE and S&D currently demanding the EPP’s nominee for commission president present a tough plan for cutting emissions. The fourth largest grouping, the Greens, had a far higher engagement rate.

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Compiled by CHN, the list of 80 accounts (see below) featured key climate activists, campaign groups, institutions, EU politicians, UN figures, scientists, publications and think tanks. Just 6 out of 80 accounts were followed by more than 5% of MEPs from the EPP. That figure increased to 9 in the case of the RE, 14 in that of the S&D and to 44 in that of the Greens.

European representatives also took little notice of what ten of the world’s top climate scientists had to say. Pennsylvania State University’s Michael Mann was the most followed. But out of his 150,000 followers, only 7 were MEPs, with 5 of these from the Greens, 1 from the S&D and 1 from the EPP. No deputies from RE’s 94 MEPs subscribed to the account. Less than two MEPs from each of the three largest blocs followed a scientist.

Top UN climate figures and architects of the Paris Agreement were also largely ignored. Former UN chief Christina Figueres accrued a maximum following 0f 28 MEPs, or less than 5% of the total number of European representatives on the social network. No MEPs follow the accounts of Frank Bainimarama, Fijian prime minister and leader of the 2017 UN climate talks, Carolina Schmidt, Chile’s environment minister and next president of December’s climate talks, Luis Alfonso de Alba, secretary-general’s special envoy for the 2019 Climate Action Summit or the UN secretary general’s sustainable energy special representative Rachel Kyte.

The profiles of followers of the figurehead of the climate school strikes, Greta Thunberg, provide a case a point. Most of these hailed from the Greens (49% of the bloc follow her),  S&D (20%) and GUE-NGL (26%). In contrast, only 8% of the RE and 4% of the EPP followed the Swedish teenager. Zero MEPs from the right-wing populist group of Identity and Democracy (I&D) have signed up to her account.

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On the few occasions conservative EPP members enter the climate bubble, they privilege institutions, with 12 MEPs, or 8% of the EPP, following the account for the EU directorate-general for climate action.

Disengagement with specialized sources of knowledge is also chronic. By one MEP, CHN beat both Carbon Brief and Business Green as the most followed specialized English-language climate publication, with 14 MEPs. Considering that represents little more than 2% of the European Parliament, climate publications are losers on all counts in the MEP twittersphere.

Paris-based IDDRI and E3G were the most followed climate change think tanks, with 12 subscribers each. The Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions was all but ignored by MEPs, despite ranking as the world’s fourth most influential environmental think tank according to the Global Go To Think Tank Report 2018. Generally our selected think tanks left MEPs cold.

The ECR, I&D and GUE-NGL coalitions bypassed climate think tanks and scientists entirely.

Methodology

Our analysis looked into the extent to which MEPs followed what CHN considers some of the most influential figures of the climate Twittersphere. It’s our assumption that anyone engaging in policy about this issue would find at least some of these accounts interesting, provocative or useful. With 627 out of 751 MEPs on the social network, the data gives a snapshot impression of how engaged the European Parliament is with climate matters.

There are a few caveats to mind when looking at the results. The Politico tool uses data from late June and is not updated in real time so if an MEP has followed or unfollowed someone that will not be reflected in the results. It also does not distinguish between an account that is followed by one or zero MEPs.

The list of influential accounts by CHN does not claim to be exhaustive. In order to minimise the chances of results being skewed along political lines, we have chosen to include a variety of voices belonging to the fields of climate campaigning, research, or politics. We selected ten top accounts for the following categories: climate activists, movements and campaign groups, scientists, think tanks, publications, climate institutions and EU institutions.

CHN included Twitter accounts on the basis of their number of followers, while also trying to mind factors such as gender balance or nationality.

Last but not least, the results reflect upon the international conversation in English. This means that whenever we included organisations we opted to survey their international or European accounts rather than national. It is therefore possible that an MEP who is not following Greenpeace International could still be following Greenpeace France.

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And if you would like to follow them, here is our (non-exhaustive) list of climate influencers.

Activists and movements

Greta Thunberg @GretaThunberg

Extinction Rebellion @ExtinctionR

Fridays for Future @Fridays4future

Sunrise Movement @sunrisemvmt

Al Gore @algore

Bill McKibben @billmckibben

Laurence Tubiana @LaurenceTubiana

Naomi Klein @NaomiAKlein

Luisa Neubauer @LuisamNeubauer

Leonardo Dicaprio @LeoDiCaprio

Scientists

Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann

Ed Hawkins @Ed_hawkins

Eric Holtaus @EricHolthaus

Johan Rockström @jrockstrom

Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin

Corinne Le Quere @clequere

Valerie Masson Delmotte @valmasdel

Jacquelyn Gill

Katharine Hayhoe @Khayhoe

Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate

10 climate institutions

EU Climate Action @EUClimateAction

UNFCCC @UNFCCC

UN Environment @UNEnvironment

IPCC @IPCC_CH

GCF @GCF_News

Cop25 @COP25CL

Cop24 @COP24

IEA @IEA

WMO @WMO

GEF @TheGEF

EU politicians

Teresa Ribera @Teresaribera

Miguel Arias Canete @MAC_europa

Claire Perry @Claireperrymp

Svenja Schultz @SvenjaSchulze68

Isabella Lovin @IsabellaLovin

Pascal Canfin @pcanfin

Ska Keller @Skakeller

Francois de Rugy @FdeRugy

Bas Eickhout @BasEickhout

Molly Scott Cato @MollyMEP

Publications

CHN @ClimateHome

Carbon Brief @CarbonBrief

Nature Climate Change @NatureClimate

NYT climate change @NYTClimate

Desmog @desmogUK

Clean Energy Wire @cleanenergywire

Business Green @BusinessGreen

Unearthed @UE

Euractiv Energy and Environment @eaEnergyEU

EcoWatch @ecowatch

Big NGOs

Climate Action Network @CANIntl

CAN Europe @CANEurope

Greenpeace @Greenpeace

WWF @WWF

350.org @350

Friends of the Earth @friends_earth

Climate Reality @ClimateReality

ClientEarth @ClientEarth

Carbon Disclosure Project @CDP

We Mean Business @WMBtweets

Climate think tanks

PIC potsdam @PIK_Climate

Stockholm Environment Institute @SEIresearch

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research @TyndallCentre

LSE Grantham @GRI_LSE

IDDRI @IDDRI_ThinkTank

E3G @e3g

WRI @WRIClimate

Ecologic Institute @ecologicBerlin

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions @C2ES_org

CarbonTracker @CarbonBubble

UN climate figures

Christiana Figueres @CFigueres

Patricia Espinosa @PEspinosaC

Frank Bainimara @FijiPM

Carolina Schmidt @CarolaSchmidtZ

Luis Alfonso de Alba @ladealba

Rachel Kyte @rkyte365

Hilda Heine @President_Heine

Paul Watkinson @pwatkinson

Svein T Veitdal @tveitdal

Erik Solheim @ErikSolheim

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On Friday, deputy prime minister Alexei Gordeev ordered the ministries of environment and foreign affairs to submit a bill to ratify the accord to parliament by September 1, according to a government statement.

The country, which ranks as the world’s fourth biggest polluter, is one of 12 out of 197 signatories to the Paris Agreement not to have ratified the accord.

The communiqué said it was “now necessary… to launch the process of ratification before the World Climate Action Summit [on 23] September 2019” – a key, last-chance climate conference convened by UN chief Antonio Guterres that aims to boost countries’ emission reduction pledges.

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

The move follows months of back-and-forth consultations between the economic development ministry, which penned the law, and the ministries of resources and environment and foreign affairs.

The government statement said ratification of the Paris Agreement “could give Russia additional opportunities to participate in all negotiation processes and protect its interests in international fora that define the rules for reducing CO2 emissions and develop relevant documents”.

Aside from the looming climate action summit, the government also cited a global shift in demand towards low carbon energy as a reason for the bill. “The world’s electric power industry is becoming less carbon-intensive, and this predetermines the competitive advantage of goods produced in countries with greener energy,” it read.

David Attenborough: Climate change may become abhorred as much as slavery

On Tuesday at a global manufacturing and industrialisation conference he was hosting in Yekaterinburg, president Vladimir Putin said Russia was experiencing the effects of the climate crisis, with Arctic temperatures rising faster than anywhere on the planet.

“The degradation of nature and climate continues,” Putin said. “And it’s getting more and more acute with droughts, bad harvests, natural disasters.”

However Putin said renewable energy should not lead to “the complete abandonment of nuclear or hydrocarbon energy”. He urged international cooperation on nuclear power development and warned against energy “absolutism” and said “blind faith in simple, showy, but ineffective solutions leads to problems”.

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The Russian leader said: “Will it be comfortable for people to live on a planet with a palisade of wind turbines and several layers of solar panels?”

He continued: “Everybody knows wind energy is good, but are they remembering about the birds in this case? How many birds are dying? They shake so much that worms come out of the ground. Really, it’s not a joke, it’s a serious consequence of these modern ways of getting energy. I’m not saying that it doesn’t need to be developed, of course, but we shouldn’t forget about the problems associated with it.”

There are no references to worms emerging from the ground because of the vibration of windmills in scientific literature. The only online mention in English is a 2011 post on a US anti-wind power blog site.

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Russia is in the process of reviewing a framework climate legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Currently under debate in Russia’s upper chamber, the legislation would give the government powers to introduce greenhouse gas emission targets for companies and charges for those that exceed them, with proceeds potentially going into a fund to support carbon-cutting projects. It also lays the groundwork for a cap and trade system, emissions permits and tax breaks for companies reducing or capturing their emissions.

NGOs have cautiously welcomed the bills in a country traditionally hostile to climate action, with the autocratic regime repeatedly thwarting any attempt by students to organise climate marches.

Meanwhile, the government continues to seek out partnerships with China for oil exploration in the Arctic. In June, China National Chemical Engineering signed an agreement with oil company Neftegazholding, a sister company to the state oil company, Rosnef, to explore Payaha oil field in Taymyr peninsula in North Siberia. It is estimated that the whole field has 420 million tons of oil reserves.

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While grateful for international support, the African politicians said has a message for secretary Rory Stewart that administrative costs charged by international agencies, such as the UN Development Programme, were unacceptably high.

Gambian environment minister Lamin Dibba told Climate Home News: “We would want to see more countries not only pledge [new money], but commit the resources and make them accessible. Sometimes it takes one or two years to follow a particular project.”

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Germany and Norway have committed to doubling their contributions to the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) as it seeks new finance this year. The UK has not yet announced a new contribution.

The UN typically charges 12 to 20% of funds for climate projects, while the World Bank Trust takes up 5% administrative fees added to management costs, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) told CHN.

Poorer countries have long argued money for climate projects is not a donation, but an obligation on the part of the wealthy nations that are overwhelmingly responsible for global warming.

“I know the developed world has its problems – they also have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in their own countries,” Ugandan minister water and environment Sam Cheptoris said. “But because we are poor: it is difficult to cope with the consequences [of climate change]. We are prepared to play our part. There should be some sort of partnership with the developed world.”

One tenth of UK climate aid spent through western consultants

Both ministers pointed to GCF-funded projects in their countries that had been subject to administrative delays. Staff sent by international agencies were also frequently disconnected from the countries’ needs, they said.

“Some of these NGOs, we call them briefcase, one-man NGOs,” Dawda Badgie, a senior civil servant at the Gambian national environment agency, said. “When you go there, you talk to them, they don’t know what they are doing there.”

The group, who were in London representing a climate negotiating bloc of the world’s 47 least developed countries, called on international agencies to give local experts and officials more control.

“When intermediaries come with their project, they come with their experts,” Lucy Ssendi, a climate advisor to the Tanzanian government, said. “You have to fly in consultants in and out, but if it is an initiative that is built in the country, you also have local experts. That would bring down the cost and make the amount of money for actual implementation reasonable.”

Nationalism could sink the Paris Agreement. The UN chief is fighting back

“The idea is to try and change how funding arrives in countries, for it to come behind what these countries know is working, building the national institutions and not just the intermediaries coming in as project managers,” IIED’s climate programme director Clare Shakya said.

Last year, CHN reported that 10% of UK foreign aid for climate-related projects was spent through private consultancies.

The UK Department for International Development (Dfid) did not respond to questions.

This week, Stewart told journalists Dfid should put more of its own experts into the field to ensure its aid money was delivering “quality”.

“I would like in 20 years for people to say Dfid has the best experts on the ground who speak local languages and really understand the ins and outs of running a health clinic in Rwanda or a school in Nigeria. And that we’re known for our people rather than our money,” the Telegraph reported.

Last week, UK prime minister Teresa May committed to aligning all of the UK aid budget with the achievement of the Paris climate agreement goals.

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Changes to international climate support were urgent, Cheptoris said, with climate change taking a toll on the countries.

In Uganda droughts were drying out vegetation and trees, which in turn worsened the impact of storms.

“Had we windbreaks, that would have reduced the velocity of the wind and the houses would be safe. Because there weren’t any trees, the wind just blew,” he said.

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“Solving the climate crisis could be Europe’s next heroic act, one that will be admired and praised by future generations” prime minister Antti Rinne told journalists in Brussels on Monday morning. 

EU global leadership in climate action will be “a key priority of Finland’s presidency,” Rinne promised. “In the 2020s, the EU will have the chance to fulfil the expectations of its citizens by taking the lead in addressing the major challenges faced by humanity…

“The crucial one is climate change, which is why the time for ‘yes, but’ policies for combating climate change is over: in Finland, in the EU and in the world.”

The country earned praise last month when a newly formed coalition government announced that it would target carbon neutrality by 2035 – one of the world’s most ambitious timelines. Only Norway has announced the earlier target of 2030, but relies heavily on international carbon offsets to meet the goal.

Finland aims to be carbon neutral by 2035

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

That ambition is reflected at EU level. Together with France and Germany, Finland has been one of the most vocal countries in favour of a 2050 net zero emissions goal. The country is also calling for the bloc to slash emissions 55% from 1990 levels by 2030.

At the last Council meeting, national leaders fell short of consensus on the tougher 2050 target, after Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Estonia blocked a deal.

Polish energy official Tomasz Dabrowski told a conference in London last week the heavy coal user would “probably” sign up to the target, “but we need to know what it will cost and the whole social impact of the transition”.

Finland’s Europe minister, Tytti Tuppurainen, told News Now Finland she was “optimistic” that the four countries would get behind net zero, with financial incentives. 

“Probably it needs linkage to the multi-annual budgetary framework, because those regions and countries that are, for good reason, a little bit afraid that their economies are going to be hurt, so if we can find a way to compensate them, it’s easier to find a solution,” Tuppurainen said on Monday.

In addition to the 2050 net zero goal, the Finnish presidency has committed to develop the circular economy and champion a Common Agricultural Policy that can better respond to climate change. It also aims to step up the bloc’s leadership in the UN deal on biodiversity.

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The mammoth agreement, signed by the European Commission on Friday after 20 years of negotiation, will create an integrated market of 780 millions consumers with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It is set to lift tariffs on a range of goods, including cars and food produce. Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro and EU trade chief Cecilia Malmström described the deal as “historic”.

But Hulot warned the deal would enable environmentally destructive practices under the Bolsonaro administration.

“On the one hand, this creates doubt about political intentions and declarations, given the reality of practices, and we see the consequences when doubts about political action grow,” Hulot said. “On the other, we let a president, Jair Bolsonaro, destroy the Amazon rainforest, without which we have no chance of winning the climate battle.”

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Deforestation of the Amazon has surged since Bolsonaro took office, with his pro-business stance emboldening loggers, farmers and miners to clear land. Official data shows the Brazilian Amazon lost 739 square kilometres of tree cover in May – a record high for that month.

International demand for soya, beef and timber is a key driver of forest clearance.

Greenpeace activists blockaded a cargo ship importing soya to Sète, southern France, over the weekend, to protest the French government’s “inaction” on deforestation in the Amazon. The ship, which came from Cotegipe, Brazil, was “a symbol of the destructive soya system,” activists said.

On Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron sought to assuage concerns by announcing the launch “in the next days… of an independent, complete, transparent evaluation of the deal, including on environmental and biodiversity impacts”. The French government has said the agreement would have to meet the EU’s environmental and health standards.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker insisted the deal would support environmental protection.

“Trade policy has become a tool for climate policy,” Juncker said in a statement on Saturday. “In the agreement, each of the parties – each and every country bound – commits itself to the effective implementation of the Paris agreement. This locks countries into commitments taken on stopping deforestation in the Amazon for example.”

The deal has yet to be approved by member states and the European parliament.

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Hulot, who resigned from Macron’s government last year over dissatisfaction with its level of green ambition, said the Mercosur deal “exonerated importing countries from efforts that we ask of our own farmers”.

He raised similar concerns about a trade deal between the EU and Canada. “Canada is one of the worst performers of the G20. To sign the Ceta was to comfort it, whereas not to sign it was to encourage it to change,” he said.

The Canadian government was accused of mixed messages when it approved an oil pipeline expansion last week, the day after declaring a “climate emergency”.

More broadly, Hulot argued globalisation was incompatible with long term decarbonisation and production should be brought closer to home.

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After a week of backroom discussions, a key report on 1.5C warming was scrubbed forever from formal UN climate talks after the Saudis repeatedly tried to load a statement with equivocation on the science. Read our full story here.

Carbon discredit…

Brazil continued to stall efforts to regulate carbon credits, clinging to a demand that negotiators warned would “kill” the Paris Agreement.

Countries clashed over how carbon should be traded under the Paris Agreement and particularly how closely the new scheme should tie in with the system developed under the Kyoto Protocol, the clean development mechanism (CDM).

Brazil fought to allow CDM credits to circulate under the new UN mechanism. With 147.4 million credits held, the country is the fourth richest in the old offsets.

The EU, Latin American countries, least developed countries and the African Group called for there to be no transition. “There is a huge risk that markets will be flooded with old, worthless credits,” said Gilles Dufrasne, campaigner at Carbon Market Watch.

A negotiator for the African Group, El Hadji Mbaye M Diagne, told Climate Home News the “stock of units… would lower and kill the Paris Agreement”. While acknowledging the argument this wasn’t fair to investors who considered the credits an investment, he said “we need to find another way to deal with that”.

… and double counting

Countries also sparred over how to avoid double-counting emission reductions – in other words, how not to credit one national climate target with an emission reduction that is then also sold to another. At present, most countries support a mechanism that would prevent credits from being used twice.

Brazil led the charge for weaker accounting, followed by Saudi Arabia, on behalf of like minded developing countries (LMDCs) and Egypt on behalf of the Arab Group.

There was also a host of proposals to ensure that the new UN system not only shifted emissions around the globe, but reduced their overall level. The negotiating bloc of small island states, Aosis, pushed for a global tax on carbon offsets, but was resisted by wealthy countries. Meanwhile, the European Union and members of the umbrella group advocated offsets to be calculated based on more ambitious baselines.

Ultimately, the discussion was kicked down the road by negotiators, with a draft text filled with square brackets, leaving all countries’ preferences still on the table. “It’s clearer and easier to follow,” said Dufrasne. “But it does give the impression of returning to where we were in Bonn one year ago.”

What heatwave?

Outside the UN halls, Bonn was hot. Really hot. But the record-breaking heatwave sweeping Germany was lost on few within the climate community. A Chilean delegate said the heatwave had the inopportune effect of making delegates feel sleepy. Meanwhile, a South Korean delegate evaded the question of whether the temperature worried him, launching into a speech on the need to fight climate change.

“Germany shattered its all-time heat record for June yesterday, as parties sat in air-conditioned rooms debating how to receive the best available science on climate change,” Paula Tassara, a campaigner from Climate Action Network, told the plenary on Thursday evening.

France, Czech Republic, Belgium, and Italy issued health warnings this week.

Belt-tightening

Countries look set to approve a 5% increase in UN Climate Change’s core budget for 2020-21, substantially below the 26% uplift proposed by the secretariat earlier in the year. A 5% scenario dated 26 June trimmed three senior staff positions and several technical meetings.

China argued most forcefully for spending restraint, according to CHN’s sources, with many developed countries prepared to back a more generous package. It comes as the agency takes on several new responsibilities under the Paris Agreement.

“We won’t be able to do everything that we planned to do in a way that is predictable,” deputy chief Ovais Sarmad told CHN. They may be able to fill the gaps from the supplementary budget, he added, which depends on the largesse of donors like billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Finger-pointing forum

Negotiators also discussed the next periodic review of the global goal established by the UN climate change convention. Complementary to the Paris Agreement’s targets, the 1994 convention framework seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions down to “a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system”.

The next review of progress toward that goal is slated to run from 2020 through 2022.

“A number of developed countries are concerned that it’s creating forum for finger-pointing that would not be helpful on moving on all of the other tracks – transparency, the global stocktake, finance,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CHN.

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The proposal from the Aosis negotiating bloc faces pushback from wealthy nations like Australia and Japan, which plan to use offsets to meet their climate targets.

As interim climate talks in Bonn, Germany, enter their second week, negotiations over the design of a new UN carbon trading system are intensifying.

“We have been doing so many things so wrong,” said Carlos Fuller, lead negotiator for Aosis. “We have been putting CO2 in the atmosphere for too long. Obviously now we now have to pay a price for what we’re doing.”

At stake is a successor to the clean development mechanism (CDM), which under the Kyoto Protocol allowed rich countries to meet some of their national carbon-cutting targets by investing in green projects in the developing world. For every tonne of avoided greenhouse gases, a carbon credit (CER) was issued. Holders of credits could then contribute the credits to their national targets, or sell them back on the market. 

UN Environment official attacks agency’s own carbon offsetting policy

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to set up a new system for trading carbon credits across borders. Unlike the CDM, they said it must “deliver an overall mitigation in global emissions”.

Aosis is calling for 30% of carbon credits generated in the new system to be automatically cancelled, not counted towards any national targets. For example, if project prevented 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, it would generate 700 tradable credits.

This will create a “net benefit for the atmosphere,” said Fuller. Negotiating blocs for pro-market Latin American states, Africa and the world’s poorest countries have backed the idea, according to Fuller.

Lambert Schneider, an expert from Oeko-Institut who helped develop the concept, told Climate Home News it was a kind of tax. But he stressed that it should not increase costs for project developers, who would benefit from higher carbon prices as the cancellations restricted the supply of credits.

“A tax may sound as if you get less greenhouse gas abatement. But here the result is more climate action,” he said.

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It is facing opposition from the “umbrella group”, which includes Norway, Russia and the US, sources involved in discussions told CHN. Japan and Australia were the most vocal objectors, according to a developing country market negotiator. Umbrella group delegates could not immediately be reached for comment.

Norway has set a radically short timeframe to reduce its emissions to net zero, 2030, which relies on buying international carbon credits. Australia, with the less ambitious target of a 26-28% emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2030, controversially plans to meet much of it through carbon accounting manoeuvres.

“I can appreciate that they think that having a free market is better for them than having a centralised imposition,” Fuller said. 

The levy could inspire trust in the new UN scheme, he argued. “If a market is well regulated, it works better. If you just have free things, then people don’t trust what they’re getting.”

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