Inderpal Singh, 66, grows sugarcane over 2.5 acres in Bhatipura village, Uttar Pradesh. He supplies it to the local sugar mill, Nanglamal Sugar Complex.

Nanglamal Sugar Complex is owned by Mawana Sugars, one of India’s largest manufacturers. It supplies sugar to multinational companies including Nestlé, Coca Cola and Pepsi.

Singh used to almost harvest 90,000kg of cane in a typical season. This year it will be closer to 70,000kg. He told Climate Home droughts, floods and heatwaves in Uttar Pradesh make his livelihood increasingly precarious.

“No one comes to our help. Neither the mills nor the government,” Singh said.

Some farmers take out insurance against pest damage and weather extremes, but can only claim when a majority of the crop is damaged. Government-promised compensation for climate-related losses, Singh said, is “largely not effective”.

Climate Home News travelled to Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to investigate the plight of workers in the industry. These two states account for 71% of the country’s sugar exports, which could end up in cans of Diet Coke, KitKat chocolate bars and Häagen-Dazs ice cream tubs sold around the world.

Smallholders like Singh told Climate Home that they felt abandoned and exploited. While the government sets a minimum price per quintal (100kg) of raw sugarcane, erratic yields, changing quality demands and late payments strain their finances.

Climate Home News invited Nestlé, Coca Cola, Pepsi and Mawana Sugars to comment on these concerns and explain how they looked after the welfare of suppliers. At time of publication, they had not responded.

A sugarcane field in Lakhimpur, Uttar Pradesh

Sugar boom

India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugar, and second largest exporter after Brazil.  The Indian government described last year as a “watershed season” for sugar production. The country produced a record 35.9 million tonnes of sugar and exported a record 11 million tonnes to more than two dozen countries. The major importers of Indian sugar were Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sudan, and the UAE. Indian sugar also went to the EU, US, Singapore, and Australia.

Consumer goods firms are doing good business. Nestlé India reported post-tax profits of over 2,000 crore rupees ($250 million) in 2021. Coca Cola and Pepsi are not publically listed companies in India but, according to business intelligence platform Tofler, each reaped operating revenue of more than $60m.

Climate Home traced the supply chain of sugarcane grown at farms in Nanglamal village in Uttar Pradesh to mills owned by Mawana Sugars, one of Nestlé’s main sugar suppliers in India.

Mawana Sugars is India’s sixth largest sugar manufacturer, operating two mills in Uttar Pradesh. Mills are critical to the sugar supply chain. They procure and process the harvest from the fields, then send the resulting sweeteners to buyers including the government.

‘Responsible sourcing’

Nestlé, a Swiss multinational that owns brands including KitKat, Smarties and Häagen-Dazs, procured sugar in 2019 from two Indian mills in Uttar Pradesh, including Nanglamal mill which is owned by Mawana Sugars, according to its sugar supply chain disclosure, published in April 2020.

Nestlé claims to follow responsible sourcing principles, which include the provision of safe and healthy workplaces and a ban on forced or child labour. The company states on its website that it only works with farms that “meet at least legal or mandatory industry standards” for workers’ pay and conditions.

Coca Cola says it follows the principles for sustainable agriculture, with an emphasis on prohibiting child labour and abuse of labour and ensuring a healthy and safe working environment. Pepsi says it follows a positive agriculture agenda under which it is trying to source crops and ingredients in a way that accelerates regenerative agriculture and strengthens farming communities.

Climate Home did not find any child or forced labour in farms linked to Mawana Sugars and its customers. The investigation did identify poor working conditions and low pay, however, which made suppliers vulnerable to climate-related losses.

Smallholders told Climate Home that Nanglamal Sugar Complex delays payment, makes unreasonable demands and offers no protection from extreme weather impacts. This traps them a vicious cycle of loss and debt, they said.

Unaffordable seeds

The dominant variety of sugarcane has become prone to pests that thrive under rising temperatures. Mills such as Nanglamal are encouraging farmers to grow new varieties, said Nawab Singh Ahlawat, district president of Bharatiya Kisan Union Arajnaitik, which represents many sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh. But seeds for better varieties cost 3-5 times more, around 2-3,000 rupees ($24) for 100kg. “Only a few farmers can afford it,” said Ahlawat.

“They do not give good prices for [the] old varieties,” said Singh. “They want farmers to sow early and to sow new varieties but they do not give us (sufficient) seeds.”

“Mills don’t help the farmers,” said Omvir Singh Tomar, 65, a Nanglamal resident who supplies to Mawana. He lost 15-20% of his harvest to heavy rainfall in September and October. “No one will pay for this damage,” he said.

Then the Naglamal Sugar Complex was slow to procure Tomar’s surviving crop, he said. “So far, only 10,000-12,500 kg of my sugarcane has gone to the mill… I shudder at the thought that the remaining 70,000-80,000kg of sugarcane may stretch to April or May 2023.”

Unlike some milling companies, Mawana had not invested in healthcare or education facilities for sugarcane workers and their families, Tomar said.

Climate impacts are creating dangerous working conditions for India’s sugar workers and pushing them further into debt

Late payments

A common complaint among farmers supplying sugarcane to Nanglamal is that they are not paid on time, which pushes them into debt.

Tomar said Nanglamal Sugar Complex once paid him nearly a year late. He resorted to selling land to pay for his daughter’s marriage. Smallholders like him are investing more and more in fertilisers, pesticides, better seed varieties and diesel for their irrigation pumps “but the rate of sugarcane and our income are not increasing in the same proportion,” said Tomar.

Ahlawat said several sugar mills in the Meerut area owe farmers money. “Until last year Mawana Sugars also used to delay the payment,” he said, sometimes by months. The delays have not been as long this year, but farmers are still not being paid within 14 days, which according to the Uttar Pradesh Sugarcane Supply Act is mandatory, he added. If mills do not meet this deadline, they are liable for interest of 15% a year on the overdue sum.

VM Singh, the national convener of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, has been fighting for 25 years to get sugarcane farmers paid on time. Many mills in Uttar Pradesh owe several hundred crores of rupees (millions of dollars) to farmers, he told Climate Home. “The money that had to be paid to farmers is pending. Some owe money from last year too.”

‘Exploitation breeds exploitation’

Uttar Pradesh officials are trying to tighten the rules so farmers get paid for sugarcane within 10 days of supplying it. Under its Panchamrut scheme, the state government aims to double farmers’ incomes with initiatives to diversify into other crops, introduce drip irrigation and efficient sowing methods.

Kulveer Singh, a 62-year-old farmer from Seohara village in Uttar Pradesh Bijnor’s district, told Climate Home these were empty promises. “To my knowledge no farmer has benefitted from these schemes,” he said.

The Indian government claims that “timely payment and low carrying cost of stocks for sugar mills resulted in early clearance of cane arrears of farmers” last season. Observers told Climate Home that this is not the reality on the ground.

“Farmers are not paid on time. This sometimes translates into farmers not being able to clear their dues to others, including labourers. All this together leads to issues in the whole supply chain. It is like a vicious cycle. To put it briefly exploitation breeds exploitation,” said Abhishek Jani, chief executive of Fairtrade India.

On the way forward, Jani said, “brands need to take action in their entire supply chain. For instance, in the case of cocoa from the African region, a programme has been created and consumers in Europe are willing to pay extra for sustainable and ethically sourced cocoa. On sugar, we are far from that right now but there is a huge need for it,”  he said.

Deepak Guptara of the Uttar Pradesh Sugar Mill Association said no labour or human rights were violated during the production of sugar in the state.

Welfare board

So what is being done to improve the welfare of sugar farmers, in the face of climate threats?

In Uttar Pradesh, there is no specific scheme in place to protect the welfare of workers in sugarcane fields.

In 2019, the Maharashtra government established a welfare board for sugarcane workers to provide them with social security benefits and insurance and improve their overall standard of living.

Shekhar Gaikwad, Maharashtra’s sugar commissioner, told Climate Home that a corporation was initiated in November “for the welfare of farmers under which sugar mill owners and Maharashtra government will put money.” To date the government has paid in 40 crore rupees ($4.8m). The target is $30m.

Maharashtra is the first state to set up such a scheme for migrant workers, said Gaikwad. “Registration of labourers under the corporation has started. As of now, 200,000 farmers from the Beed district of Maharashtra have been registered,” he said.

‘Not functional yet’

But farmers told Climate Home they did not know anyone who had been registered under the programme.

The government scheme was meant to provide sugar workers with insurance, financial assistance and medical aid. Registration would be the first step to access these benefits, according to Raju Shetti, a former member of India’s parliament and president of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, a group that works for the rights of farmers.

But, Shetti said, “all these plans have just been in the air.”

Sunil Munde a small labour contractor from Ambajogai in Maharashtra, told Climate Home that the scheme “is not functional yet”. He manages 16 labourers and none of them are registered. “There are no funds in it,” he said. “The scheme has not yet been implemented on the ground.”

18-year-old Dhanvir Kumar, of Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh, labours on his family farm alongside studying at school. His family income cannot keep up with rising costs of living, he said. “We grow sugar but can’t afford to buy sugar. Drinking tea with sugar is like a crime.”

Reporting by Mayank Aggarwal, Arvind Shukla and Isabelle Gerretsen. Photography by Meenal Upreti. Data visualisation by Gurman Bhatia. The Pulitzer Center supported this project with a reporting grant as part of its Your Work/Environment initiative.

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A shortage of weather monitoring stations in places like West Africa’s Sahel region make it difficult to prove a disaster was caused by climate change.

But that shouldn’t stop people affected by disasters like droughts from getting money to rebuild their lives when their livestock die, scientists Friederike Otto and Joyce Kimutai told Climate Home.

At Cop27 in Egypt last weekend, countries agreed to establish a fund to support climate victims and tasked a transitional committee with working out the details by Cop28 in Dubai next year.

UN nature pact nears its ‘Copenhagen or Paris’ moment

This committee will work out how to determine under what circumstances rich countries should pay out funds to developing ones for climate disasters.

Last week,  scientists from World Weather Attribution said they could not work out climate change’s role as in this year’s food crisis in the Central Sahel region of north-west Africa.

Erratic rainfall in 2021 triggered a severe food crisis, leaving 9.7m people in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger facing hunger.

Scientists used three observational data sets and three indices of wet season characteristics. These were how much it rained in June, when it started raining and how long it rained for. They concluded that they “could not detect significant trends or a climate change influence in the 2021 rainy season.” 

What was decided at Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh?

But they said this could be due to uncertainties in the observational data and problems when working out the climate models for drought. 

“It could either be because the data is quite poor or because we have found the wrong indices. Or it could be because there really is no climate change signal,” said Friederike Otto, co-lead of World Weather Attribution. “We have no way of identifying which of these three options it is.”

The data gaps are partly due to a lack of weather stations in Africa. The data gaps are partly due to a lack of weather stations in Africa. Mali, for example, has just 13 active weather stations, compared to 200 in Germany – a country one third the size of Mali, Bloomberg reports.

Weather stations are expensive to set up and maintain but are critical to understand the current and future climate trends. 

In low-energy finish, oil and gas escape censure at Cop27

“The real problem is the long-term investment in capacity building,” said Otto. “That’s not just about building weather stations, but about [investing] in people.” 

Climate attribution informs the debate on loss and damage. 

Joyce Kimutai, climate scientist at the Kenya Meteorological Department, said there are serious concerns about attempts to connect loss and damage finance directly to attribution data. 

“It’s an ethical issue because if you do not provide compensation for losses and damages [in the case of] events that cannot directly be attributed to climate change or where the signal is not good enough, it’s going to really disadvantage communities that are the most vulnerable and most exposed,” she said. 

“This kind of finding is not atypical for regions of very high [climate] vulnerability,” said Otto. “That needs to be taken into account when designing the mechanism by which a loss and damage fund releases finance. If you would require proof of the role of climate change every time funds are released, you will basically create a fund that benefits the Global North [developed countries],” she said.

EU-developing countries’ Cop27 deal offers hope to climate victims

“The actual release of the funds cannot be directly linked to concrete [data] and a regional attribution study,” said Otto. 

“You cannot design a loss and damage fund completely independent of any scientific evidence, because then we can also get loss and damaged funds after an earthquake,” she acknowledged, but said other factors should also be taken into account, such as the country’s overall vulnerability to climate shocks. 

The loss and damage fund will be paid in to by developed countries and perhaps some wealthier or more polluting developing ones. The funds will go to “vulnerable developing countries”.

The transitional committee will work out the definition of “vulnerable”. It does not have an official definition in the UN climate process.

It has previously been used to describe the world’s least developed countries and small island states.

Greenwash alert as Cop27 draft allows double claiming of carbon credits

But the European Commission’s climate lead Frans Timmermans said last week that it should be broader than that, including countries like Pakistan which aren’t among the world’s very poorest.

The developing world’s lead loss and damage negotiator Vicente Yu tweeted yesterday that “all developing countries are particularly vulnerable”.

“What do we mean by vulnerability and losses and damages?” asked Kimutai. She said the African network on loss and damage is working hard to define these terms over the next year, ahead of Cop28. 

Instead of looking at the climate attribution for every specific event, regional climate trends underpinned by data and the vulnerability of certain ecosystems, such as drylands, should be taken into account, said Kimutai. 

The post Scientists warn data gaps must not block loss and damage appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU’s offer on loss and damage went down well with vulnerable countries and most other rich nations. China and Gulf states pushed back, while the US kept quiet.

Frans Timmermans set it out: the EU would support a new fund if it had a “broad donor base” and looked into innovative sources of finance like levies on aviation, shipping and fossil fuels.

Pakistan’s ambassador Nabeel Munir said it was “good news”.

The Maldives environment minister Shauna Aminath said she was “heartened by the good will in the room” and Barbados’ representative acknowledged the EU’s “movement”.

Resistance came from those Timmermans wants to put their hands in their pockets through his “broad donor base”.

China’s representative said “this is the time that we should implement the Paris Agreement and not the time to rewrite the convention”.

That’s a reference to the UNFCCC’s classification of developed and developing countries based on how rich they were in 1992.

Under the UN’s rules, the former are supposed to pay climate finance while the latter receive it.

But China has changed a lot since 1992. The average Chinese person is four times more polluting and 34 times richer.

Based on current and historic emissions and level of development, Gulf nations would be on the hook too.

On behalf of the Arab Group, the Saudi representative echoed China’s line on the convention, adding it was important to avoid “unfamiliar technologies and classifications and references and scopes”.

On the developed side, the EU was backed up by the Brits, Aussies, Norwegians and Swiss.

The US has been resolutely opposed to a loss and damage fund. Can it bend if China pays?

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• China’s surprise visit to US-EU event hints at cooperation on methane
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• Republican gains quash hopes of US delivering on climate finance

Movement on mitigation

A new draft text on the “mitigation work programme” has been released which contains seven areas of disagreement in its five pages.

These are talks on how to structure talks on how to reduce emissions this decade and close the gap to 1.5C. It’s process-y, but it matters.

Developed and vulnerable countries want the talks to be long, strong and specific. India, China and others want the opposite.

Up for debate is whether to rule out the talks setting new targets or goals or calling for new NDC climate plans. And whether talks go on until 2024 or 2030.

India, China and co appear to have got their way in arguing that the list of sectors discussed should be a broad one – energy, industrial processes… – rather than narrowing it down to buildings, transport etc.

Saudi Arabia’s representative said in the plenary that talks should be a “focused exchange of views” and “the outcomes will be non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances and… will not result in new goals beyond those of the Paris Agreement”.

As always, the Climate Vulnerable Forum has the most to lose from a breakdown in talks. On their behalf, Ghana called last night for the text to be finalised. If it’s not, at least one of the eight years left this decade will be written off.

In brief…

Filibuster – Negotiators have told Climate Home the African Group of Negotiators repeatedly stalled discussions on a global goal on adaptation. This included a 45-minute discussion on whether to work from a PDF or Word document. Cop27 president Sameh Shoukry said the adaptation agenda was “still being held back on procedural matters”.

Spotted  – John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua were pictured going into a bilateral meeting on Thursday evening. On Monday, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping empowered the two men to resume talks. Xie paid a surprise visit to a US-EU ministerial on methane on Thursday. Watch out for any joint communique.

Cop host, who’s next – The UAE will host Cop28 from 30 November to 12 December next year, according to a draft decision for approval in Sharm el-Sheikh. Eastern Europe is next in line. Lula’s opening for Brazil comes in 2025. Australia could follow.

Crunch time – With four days until a critical Energy Charter Treaty conference, the EU does not have a joint position on whether to ratify reforms, which allow members to end investment protections for fossil fuels. The European Commission negotiated the reforms and needs Council approval – but several member states plan to quit the treaty.

Sing for justice – Vanuatu is campaigning to get the International Court of Justice to produce a climate litigation toolkit. There’s a song. It is set to publish a draft resolution to the UN today, ahead of a general assembly vote on 14 December. It needs 97 nations, a simple majority, to pass.

Offset billionaire – Indian company Eki Energy’s shares shot up 10,000% in a year, taking the company’s valuation from $10m to $1bn. Eki’s success is tied to the offset market, mostly linked to solar and wind schemes, but its business model is built on dubious green claims, according to a Bloomberg investigation.

Africa emissions cuts – Implementing 37 measures across Africa, ranging from increasing EVs to reducing food waste and capturing methane from oil and gas, could cut the continent’s emissions by 55% by 2063, compared to 2019 levels, and prevent 800,000 premature deaths per year, according a report by the UN Environment Programme and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition.

Relatable – A press conference for parliamentarians from across Africa was delayed by 20 minutes after the speakers got lost on their way to the Cairo tent. Delegates have complained about confusing maps around the venue and there are security concerns about the official app.

Snooping worries – The UK delegation is using burner phones and avoiding charging by USB sockets as they are concerned about the Egyptian government spying on them, the Times of London reports.

Unleashing plagues – Melting glaciers could unleash more than a hundred thousand tonnes of microbes over the next 80 years, according to a study by Aberystwyth University. Based on “moderate warming” of 2-3C by 2100, a tide of microbes, including pathogens, could be released into downstream ecosystems.

The post Cop27 bulletin: Tensions finally surface appeared first on Climate Home News.

President Joe Biden promised $11.4 billion a year by 2024 to support climate action in developing countries, including an overdue $2bn to the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

But he got little through Congress in his first two years of office. A rightward swing in midterm elections, while smaller than predicted, will make it harder to appropriate funds for the climate agenda.

Following a closely fought campaign, the Republicans flipped the House with a narrow margin, enabling them to block new climate legislation. Democrats retain control of the Senate after winning contested seats in Arizona and Nevada.

Broken promise

The US has yet to deliver on a pledge to the GCF made eight years ago. In 2014, then-president Barack Obama promised the GCF $3bn but he handed over just $1bn before leaving office. His successor Donald Trump did not give any money to the fund and to date neither has Biden.

Biden said he would double US climate finance to developing countries from Obama-era levels to $11.4bn a year by 2024. With Republicans in control of the House, it is now looking unlikely he will meet that target.

Republicans generally favour a small state and don’t see climate as a priority for public spending. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso described Biden’s 2022 budget proposal as “another pipe dream of liberal activism and climate extremism. It spends too much, borrows too much, and taxes too much.”

With the Republicans in control of the House, “I don’t anticipate any sort of interest or support in international climate finance,” said Clarence Edwards, an environmental advocate with the non-profit Friends Committee on National Legislation.

John Kerry’s offsets plan sets early test for UN net zero standards

“It was a difficult road for climate finance, even with a Democratically controlled Congress,” he said. In March, US Congress approved a mere $1 billion in international climate finance for 2022, only $387 million more than the funding allocated during Trump’s presidency. 

The US should be providing $45-50bn of finance every year under a “fair share” calculation factoring in the size of its economy and historical emissions, according to the Overseas Development Institute. Campaigners described the 2022 budget as a “betrayal”.

But all hope is not lost.

Democrats have other avenues to channel climate funds. Of the $11.4bn pledge, Biden has requested that Congress appropriates half ($5.3bn). The remainder is to come through various development agencies, such as the Development Finance Corporation and the Trade and Development Authority.

While Congress still appropriates funds to these agencies, this budget is not climate-specific. The individual organisations can set their own priorities.

“The administration needs to fight for as much dedicated climate finance as possible in the appropriations bill, but also pursue other avenues, including getting agencies such as the Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank to invest more in climate,” Joe Thwaites, an international climate finance advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told Climate Home News.

International signals

A Republican controlled House could signal to other big emitters that they can stall climate progress, experts told Climate Home News. 

“Laggards are going to feel little to no pressure to actually take action,” said Kate DeAngelis, international finance programme manager at Friends of the Earth Action. South Korea, for example, recently elected a Conservative government, and Japan has been pushing the expansion of LNG at home and abroad, she said.

“The elections are very interesting for Japan,” said Hanna Hakko, senior analyst at E3G. The US is Japan’s “most important ally”, therefore the Asian country strives to keep a similar ambition level, Hakko said. She added that Japan will be watching closely what kind of positions the US will take at the G7 next year, which Tokyo is hosting.

European governments may also “continue to delay or release policies with giant loopholes for gas,” said DeAngelis. The Netherlands, for example, said last week that it will continue to provide international finance for fossil fuel projects in 2023, deferring a promise made at Cop26.

Secured wins

Biden’s landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is expected to survive Republicans flipping the House, however.  

The biggest federal climate spending package in US history, $370bn in total, will reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 42% between 2005 and 2030, according to analysis by Princeton University’s Repeat project.

“I’m not concerned about the unwinding of any recent policy wins that have happened in the US,” said Lindsey Baxter Griffith, federal policy officer for the Clean Air Task Force (CATF).

“Policymaking is difficult and undoing it is just as difficult,” she said. “We’re likely to see a lot of oversight, but with President Biden still in the White House, he’s not going to sign off on any legislation to undo those programmes.”

“There might have been an initial desire to try to roll back parts of the IRA, but the majority of the funds [in the IRA] will go to Republican controlled states,” agreed Edwards. “Once you pass something and people start seeing the benefits of the bill, it’s hard to [repeal it],” he said, adding that Republicans spent years trying to repeal Obamacare but weren’t able to.

Common ground

Although a Republican House is likely to push back on climate finance, there’s broad consensus on other climate issues, such as nuclear, carbon markets and drought resilience, said Edwards.

Climate and clean energy is one of the legislative areas that has received the most bipartisan support over the past two years, according to a report by CATF.

“There’s actually quite a lot to build on and there’s an opportunity next year for the Senate and House to cooperate on further energy legislation and industrial decarbonisation,” said Baxter Griffith.

By passing the IRA in his first term as president, Biden has secured his climate legacy, experts said. 

“He’s done a tremendous amount,” said Edwards. “This administration has done much more than any other administrations and really laid the foundations to accelerate a low-carbon economy.”

“One of the major criticisms of Obama was that he didn’t do what he could when he had control and tried to get things done in the last hour,” said DeAngelis. “Biden learned from that. He was pushing his climate agenda, every chance he got.” 

“The last two years have been monumental… there have been some incredible policy wins,” said Griffith Baxter. “But there’s still quite a lot of work this administration has to do” on clean air, methane and public health regulations, she said.

The post Republican gains quash hopes of US delivering on climate finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Cop27 visit is a stopover to bigger business next week when Biden meets China’s Xi Jinping in Bali ahead of the G20 summit.

Beijing suspended climate talks with Washington after house speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. Relations between the two superpowers could make or break the outcome of Cop27.

In Egypt, Biden came to show off his $370bn climate package – for the US – and promise deeper methane cuts in the oil and gas sector.

But there was little for the rest of world. On what matters for the “implementation Cop” – cash – Biden had his hands tied.

Without congressional agreement, Biden cannot put more money on the table. But he gave some details on how his administration will parcel out its existing budget – including to boost Egypt’s clean energy plans.

Senior US officials briefed in advance that Biden would press el-Sisi on human rights issues. Critically, the release of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the Egyptian-British activist on hunger strike, who stopped drinking water six days ago.

Egyptian authorities told his mother el-Fattah had undergone “medical intervention”. That could mean he is being force-fed but the family has no proof he is still alive.

The #FreeAlaa campaign has dominated the summit. El-Fattah’s fate could overshadow any climate legacy.

His family urged Biden not to leave the country without evidence el-Fattah lives. As the wheels of Airforce One left the tarmac, there was no word.

Young activists holding a banner briefly interrupt @POTUS speech at #COP27. Unlike in past climate meetings, protests have been severely curtailed, with no large marches around #Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh pic.twitter.com/UluJ5csNFv

— Laura Millan (@LauraMillanL) November 11, 2022

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• German, US cash aims to cut Egypt’s gas use and boost exports
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Crumbs of support

Biden had to come to Cop27 with something to say about how the US will support developing countries to cope with worsening climate impacts. But political headwinds limit his options.

He has requested Congress approve $11bn in climate funding for the 2023 budget. That would make good on his annual $11.4bn climate finance pledge. But the results of the midterm elections could decide otherwise.

If Republicans win control of the House of Representatives, which is looking likely, they could gut the pledge. If the conservatives come out on top, Democrats have until the end of 2022 to pass the budget or see the commitments quashed.

Instead, Biden set out how he will spend leftover funding already appropriated by Congress. It includes a doubling of the US contribution to the Adaptation Fund from $50m to $100m and details for how it will spend $150m to help Africa prepare for climate impacts.

The dribs and drabs of funding announced today are a far cry from what developing countries have been calling for. Biden remained silent on loss and damage finance.

“President Biden is pulling nearly every lever available to him to deliver bold climate action at home. The inconvenient truth is that the United States is grossly underperforming on its international climate finance commitments,” said Ani Dasgupta, CEO of the World Resources Institute.

“Biden is throwing crumbs into lots of different pots. That might sound impressive but it’s not the help that is needed,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa.

Fact check of the day

Asked by the Guardian today if she felt personally responsible for climate disasters like flooding in Pakistan, the CEO of US oil company Occidental Vicki Hollub accepted that climate disasters are “a problem” but said she was no more responsible than people who fly in planes, have iPhones or wear nice clothes.

She added: “We are being much more aggressive around emissions. We have to be… We are doing this direct air capture quicker than anyone else because we know we need to address it quickly.”

It’s true that Occidental is doing direct air capture – sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – quicker than anyone else. Funded by United Airlines, they are building the world’s biggest direct air capture facility.

When it opens in 2024, it will remove 0.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year. It aims to scale up the operation and capture 25Mt a year by 2032.

That should cover Occidental’s emissions from its operations, which were 25Mt in 2020.

But it’s nowhere near enough to cover the emissions from customers burning its oil, of around 200Mt a year – equivalent to Bangladesh and its 166 million inhabitants.

To offset those emissions, Occidental would need to build hundreds of direct air capture plants. Removing a tonne of CO2 this way costs around $250 to $600. While casts are expected to come down, wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave that oil in the ground?

In brief…

‘Hands full with gas’ – BP Egypt has its “hands full with gas” and “won’t be a vehicle” for the green energy transition in the region, British ambassador to Egypt Gareth Bayley wrote in internal emails to colleagues, obtained from the UK Foreign Office under the Freedom of Information Act by Culture Unstained.

Green hydrogen hub – Africa could capture as much as 10% of green hydrogen market, helping to create 3.7m jobs and adding $120bn to the continent’s GDP, according to a report by Masdar, the UAE’s biggest clean energy firm.

Carbon wonk beef – Leading climate modeller Joeri Rogelj has accused the Global Carbon Project of inflating the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C in its latest analysis. This presents “a more lenient and forgiving picture”, he tweeted.

Every little counts – The EU can nudge its climate goal of cutting emissions by at least 55% to 57% by 2030 after reaching an agreement on forestry and land use regulations. The deal sets a target to increase the carbon sink from land use and forestry by 15%.

Trade and slavery – The US has blocked more than 1,000 shipments of solar energy components from China over concerns about the use of forced labour, Reuters reports. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson denied claims of abuse in Xinjiang province and said the blockade would hinder the global response to climate change.

Shell backs Bitcoin – Shell will launch a bitcoin mining initiative at the bitcoin conference In Miami in May, according to Bitcoin magazine, the event organiser. At the event, Shell will claim that it is using immersion cooling fluid to make Bitcoin greener and cut mining’s carbon footprint by up to 48%.

Come together – The UK delegation’s meeting rooms are named after Beatles’ songs. So far Hey Jude, Yellow Submarine and Blackbird have been spotted.

Smart farming? – The UAE-US-led Aim for Climate initiative has announced a doubling of investment for climate smart agriculture and innovating food systems to more than $8bn. An investigation by De Smog previously revealed the initiative has close ties with climate-denying meat industry groups.

Taiwan’s cover – It hurts China’s feelings when Taiwan asserts its sovereignty, so the democracy has to get creative to take part in multilateral forums. At the Cop27 venue, try the St Kitts and Nevis pavilion for information on Taiwan’s climate plans.

Green, Saudi-style – If you want to learn how to save the planet, the Saudi Green Initiative has you covered. Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi took its quiz, which includes questions on how you brush your teeth and deal with excess food. Why nothing on air travel or meat eating? Too radical, apparently.

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Analysts say the excessive costs from the storm could lead to insurers either avoiding Florida property altogether or charging sky-high premiums to homeowners.  

The category four hurricane, which was one of the most powerful to ever make landfall in Florida, was also the US’ second-largest hurricane loss event on record, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  

Privately insured losses in Florida are estimated at $46-67bn, not including flood insurance. Besides damaging homes and infrastructure, the hurricane also ruined orange farms in the largest producing state.

US media reports that Ian destroyed the financial security of many pensioners who invested their life savings in Florida properties that were lost to the hurricane. 

Floridians already pay the highest home insurance premiums in the US, an average $4,321 per year – three times higher than the national average. 

This is due to the high hurricane risk as well as “a manmade crisis generated by rampant roof replacement claim fraud schemes and runaway litigation,” Mark Friedlander, communications director of the Insurance Information Institute, told Climate Home News.  

This year, Florida’s insurance premium renewals increased by a third on average, said Friedlander. Ian’s destruction is expected to hike these premiums again next year, by up to a half.

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Flood damage is not covered under standard homeowners’ policies. The vast majority is covered by the federal government’s flood insurance programme. Homeowners could be hit with $10-$17bn in flooding losses that aren’t covered by their insurance policies, according to research firm CoreLogic. That’s $500-800 per Florida resident.

Ian has delivered a major blow to Florida’s insurance market which was already unstable and embroiled in financial difficulties. 

Many of Florida’s insurers rely heavily on reinsurers, companies that insure insurance companies against claims exceeding their cash reserves.

Several property insurers have said they expect reinsurers to carry the majority of the burden. Allstate said it expects to recover 45% of its $671m losses from reinsurance and Progressive said that $1.2bn of its $1.4bn losses will be absorbed by reinsurers. 

A report by credit ratings agency Moody’s warned that reinsurers will face heavy losses arising from Ian. Reinsurer Swiss Re has said it expects $1.3bn in insurance claims and forecast a third quarter net loss of $500m because of the damage caused by Ian.

Another reinsurer, Everest Re, said on Wednesday that it expects to report $600m in pre-tax losses from Ian in the third quarter.

Given the scale of the losses, primary insurers will share a significant part of the loss burden with reinsurers, the Moody’s report said.

In addition to covering the claims from Hurricane Ian, Friedlander said the insurance industry is expected to face “an excessive level of litigation”, with legal costs, including lawyers’ fees, reaching between $10-20bn.  

“Many reinsurers have indicated they may no longer provide coverage to Florida insurers or will charge extremely high renewal rates, because of the state’s litigious environment,” he said. Bankers Insurance Group and Lexington Insurance Company,  two regional firms, said before the hurricane that they are withdrawing from the market and six Florida property insurers have declared insolvency this year. 

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The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen referred to Ian’s impact this week when she launched an assessment into how worsening extreme weather is impacting the cost of insurance. “The recent impacts in Florida from Hurricane Ian demonstrate the critical nature of this work and the need for an increased understanding of insurance market vulnerabilities in the United States,” Yellen said. 

The treasury department announced it would request data at postcode level from US insurance companies regarding their prices and policies.

The data would provide the insurance office with “consistent, granular, and comparable insurance data needed to help assess the potential for major disruptions of private insurance coverage in regions of the country that are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” the treasury said in a statement. 

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Ian brought powerful winds, heavy rainfall and storm surges to Florida and Cuba, where it knocked out the electricity grid. In Cuba, at least two people died in the storm and in Florida at least ten were killed. The storm also caused  in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. 

The Category 4 hurricane, which is one of the most powerful to ever make landfall in Florida at 150mph, is also set to be one of the costliest storms in US history.

Chuck Watson, a disaster modeller at Enki Research, said the storm could cost the US up to $67 billion in economic damages. Besides damaging homes and infrastructure, the hurricane also ruined orange farms in the largest producing state, causing orange juice prices to surge. 

Only around 30% of the damage is covered by commercial insurance, Watson told Climate Home News. 60% of Florida residents do not have flood insurance, according to a 2020 McKinsey report. 

Damage to expensive properties and infrastructure on Florida’s coastline has also contributed to the enormous overall cost. “Explosive growth in coastal zones, regulatory factors, and so forth means more property with higher values in danger zones,” Watson said. 

Hurricane Ian may cause wider ranging economic impacts due to “fragile capital markets, on the tail end of the housing bubble,” Watson added. “Reconstruction values may be significantly higher than market values,” he said, adding that it could cost $400,000 to rebuild a $200,000 beach house due to having to meet new flood regulations. 

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Emily Wilkinson, a senior researcher and specialist in global risks and resilience at ODI thinktank (formerly the Overseas Development Institute), told Climate Home News that the building regulations are struggling to keep pace with the intensifying impact of hurricanes in the region. 

“Every time the building codes get updated they become out of date because of the impacts of climate change,” said Wilkinson. The number of properties damaged by Hurricane Ian suggests that “a lot of housing wasn’t built to code, but also that the building codes may not be sufficient,” she said. 

There aren’t any estimates for the economic damages in Cuba, as most households and firms are not insured, Emily Morris, a research fellow at the UCL Institute of the Americas, told Climate Home News. But the damage is thought to be significant as the hurricane badly damaged agriculture and in particular Cuba’s tobacco crop, the country’s main agricultural export. 

The storm would deliver a major blow to Cuba’s economy, she said. “Scarce foreign exchange will need to be diverted to recovery, and this will further set back the country’s import capacity for other goods that are vital to recovery: raw materials, spare parts and capital equipment, as well as consumer goods,” Morris added. “Inflation, which has been galloping since 2021, is likely to be even harder to bring under control.”

Just two weeks ago, Hurricane Fiona also caused heavy damages in the Caribbean and Canada, with massive blackouts and water cuts in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic and up to $700 million in damages to Canadian infrastructure.

These disasters came shortly after leaders from developing countries issued a call for loss and damage finance at the UN General Assembly. The UN’s Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, called on developed economies to issue a windfall tax on oil and gas companies to pay for loss and damages caused by climate change.

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Wilkinson said that hurricanes in the Atlantic were increasingly leading to a lot more rainfall, which was causing huge economic damages. “This has been happening progressively for the past 10 years – every year there is a record level of impact,” she said. 

Scientists say climate change has intensified hurricanes like Ian. “As Hurricane Ian bears down on Florida, we already know it’s stronger and will dump a lot more rain than the same hurricane would have a hundred years ago,” Professor Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote on Twitter. 

Despite the enormous economic damages, Wilkinson said loss of life was very limited as “both countries have very good preparedness systems.”

“Cuba, even though it’s a low income country, has extremely good forecasting capabilities and prepares very well for these events,” she said. 

This article was updated with the revised death toll on 30 September 2022.

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The island is the first country to call for such a treaty. The Vatican, the UN Secretary General and World Health Organization have all backed ending fossil fuel production worldwide. 

“Every day we are experiencing more debilitating consequences of the climate crisis. Fundamental human rights are being violated, and we are measuring climate change not in degrees of Celsius or tonnes of carbon, but in human lives. This emergency is of our own making,” Vanuatu’s president Nikenike Vurobaravu told world leaders in New York on Friday.  

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Vurobaravu  called for the development of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase down coal, oil and gas production in line with 1.5C. The treaty would also “enable a global just transition for every worker, community and nation with fossil fuel dependence,” he added.

Michael Poland, campaign director for the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative, an independent organization calling for such a treaty, said Vanuatu’s proposal was important to start discussions around the issue.

“Vanuatu’s call for a treaty will not only build on this momentum ahead of COP27, but begin a new chapter of diplomatic engagement around the proposal,” Poland told Climate Home News. 

Comprising more than 80 islands stretched across 1,300km, Vanuatu is highly vulnerable to rising sea levels and intense cyclones, which frequently cripple its economy. 

During his speech, Vurobaravu also urged world leaders to support Vanuatu’s campaign to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on countries’ legal obligations to protect people from climate harm.

“The ICJ is the only principal UN organ that has not yet been given an opportunity to weigh in on the climate crisis,” Vurobaravu said. “We will ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion on existing obligations under international law to protect the rights of present and future generations against the adverse impacts of climate change.”

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If a majority of countries at the UN general assembly give the ICJ a mandate to act, the court will be tasked with interpreting what international human rights and environmental laws mean for countries’ responsibility to act on the causes and impacts of climate change. 

The UN general assembly is one of few bodies authorised to request advisory opinions from the ICJ, which settles legal disputes between countries. 

It is not expected to lead to reparations for countries that have suffered climate disasters, but could inform climate lawsuits around the world and strengthen vulnerable countries’ calls for more support at international negotiations.

“This is not a silver bullet for increasing climate action, but only one tool to get us closer to the end goal of achieving a safe planet for humanity,” Vurobaravu told the UN assembly. 

Palau and the Marshall Islands previously tried to request a similar advisory opinion from the ICJ in 2012, but failed to secure a majority. 

A resolution is expected to be introduced to the general assembly in October and a vote will take place in late 2022 or early 2023. 

New Zealand, Samoa, Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Liechtenstein, Fiji and Singapore have all said they will support Vanuatu’s campaign. 

“Vanuatu has now built a growing coalition of more than 80 nations who are backing their call for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice,” said Poland. “This initiative, and their call for a fossil fuel treaty, is part of their efforts in pushing for governments to pursue all legal avenues possible towards climate justice.”

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Fertiliser prices have increased by 300% in Africa since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted supplies. The continent is facing a fertiliser shortage of two million metric tonnes.

It has sparked a lopsided debate over how best to boost resilience among farmers.

African ministers, multinationals and philanthropists at the annual African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Kigali, Rwanda this week see widespread use of fertilisers as key to increasing yields.

Smallholder advocacy networks, on the other hand, say this model has put farmers at the mercy of volatile global markets and worsened food security.

The AGRF is organised by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which was established in 2006 with the aim of “catalysing a green farming revolution in Africa” and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and USAID. 

Food prices across Africa have increased by an average of 42% since the start of the Covid pandemic, Hailemariam Dessalegn, chair of the AGRF partners group and former prime minister of Ethiopia, said during the forum plenary. “Africa is likely to be the only hungry continent by 2030,” he said.

Deadly flash floods in UAE highlight need for resilience investment

Rwanda’s prime minister Eduoard Ngirente, told the forum that “the use of fertilisers, improving seeds and the adoption of smart agriculture, will build resilience and sustainable food security…What we do now impacts tomorrow’s results”.

Gates, AGRA’s main donor, is a fervent supporter of the fertiliser industry. “I’ve never been shy about my passion for fertiliser,” he wrote in a blog post in 2018 after visiting a fertiliser warehouse in Tanzania. “It’s a magical innovation that’s responsible for saving millions of lives from hunger and lifting millions more out of poverty by boosting agricultural productivity.”

In its latest five-year strategy, seen by Climate Home News, AGRA emphasises the use of fertiliser as a pillar of its agricultural transformation. Between 2017 and 2021, AGRA helped “farmers adopt good agronomic practices” by encouraging 75% to use fertiliser. 49% of farmers were encouraged to adopt more resilient seeds.

A 2020 assessment by Timothy Wise, research fellow at Tufts University, concluded that AGRA’s programme was “failing to bring a productivity revolution to AGRA countries”. The programme had fallen short of its goal to double yields, managing a mere 18% increase in staple crop output over 12 years. For three key crops, yields declined: millet, cassava and groundnuts.

Commenting on AGRA’s new strategy, Wise told Climate Home: “There is little indication of a change in focus. Remarkably, the new strategy pays even less attention to farmer outcomes. No concrete goals for productivity improvement, poverty reduction, or increased food security. No apparent plan to measure them.”

Many smallholder farmers are priced out of using fertilisers, Anne Maina, national coordinator of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya, told Climate Home News. “The biggest beneficiaries of this model are the multinationals that sell these fertilisers,” she said.

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The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, of which Maina is a member, says farmers should instead be trained to build soil health using organic fertilisers and compost.

Wise agreed that governments should support a move away from fossil fuel-derived fertilisers.

When the Sri Lankan government implemented a sudden ban on chemical fertilisers and pesticides in April 2021, it caused rice and tea production to fall drastically and food prices to surge. The move sparked a political and economic crisis.

But many Indian states offer a model for gradually shifting to organic methods, Wise said. “The lesson is you can’t go cold turkey… There needs to be a transition process.”

The Rockefeller Foundation told Climate Home it was taking “the views of civil society groups seriously, including those groups who criticise our funding of AGRA.”

“Today our funding focuses on AGRA’s emerging work in regenerative agriculture and agro-ecology,” said Roy Steiner, senior vice president for the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. “We appreciate that well-managed and balanced fertiliser use can be an important input to a successful harvest… Our own funding emphasises the use of natural fertilisers, such as through the cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans, and other biological approaches to improve soil health.”

AGRA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did not respond to Climate Home News’ request for comment.

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Abnormally heavy monsoon rains led to flash floods in July which killed at least 550 people across Pakistan, with rural communities in the impoverished southwestern province Balochistan hardest hit. At least 77 children have lost their lives and more than 500 people were injured in the floods.

More than 34,000 homes were deluged and 977km of road infrastructure and 61 bridges were destroyed.

Zia Salik, head of fundraising at Islamic Relief UK, was in Balochistan when the floods hit. 

“The flash floods destroyed and demolished entire villages. [These are] impoverished villages, built entirely out of mud bricks… they had no chance against the heavy floodwaters,” Salik said, adding that 85-year-olds he spoke to said they had never seen that much water in their lives. “Most people have lost their livestock and their land – they will not be able to grow anything until next year.”

Villagers raised the alarm which led to mass evacuations, but there were no early warning systems in place, said Salik. “Considering the size of the floods, the loss of lives has been relatively low.”

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In Balochistan alone, over 150,000 people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, according to Islamic Relief. 

“I spoke to families who had not washed themselves for over a week because all water pipes were destroyed by the floods,” Salik said.

Aid groups are on the ground distributing tents and food packs, but a lack of media coverage and aid cuts means there is little funding available to help communities rebuild, he said.

“Ordinarily the UK would allocate significant funds to such a disaster but I haven’t seen any announcement,” said Salik, attributing the silence to the government’s decision to freeze international aid over the summer.

Pakistan was the biggest recipient of UK bilateral aid 2015-19. It dropped to seventh place after the UK government decided in 2020 to scale back the aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income.

The US, Japan and Germany have also been major aid contributors to Pakistan in recent years, along with multilateral agencies.

Three children walk among the rubble in a village in Balochistan, Pakistan, which was badly hit by flash floods (Photo: Islamic Relief Pakistan)

Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, according to the Climate Change Risk Index 2021 by NGO German Watch.

This past month was the wettest in three decades, according to Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority, Reuters reports. Balochistan received 305% more rain than the annual average, according to the agency.

“Authorities in Pakistan have traditionally focused more on flood management and less on disaster risk reduction,” Aisha Khan, executive director for Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change in Islamabad, told Climate Home News.

“This is largely due to lack of resources for taking necessary adaptive measures and also due to inability to anticipate the sudden onset and intensity of floods,” she said. 

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In its latest climate plan, Pakistan estimated it needs $7-14 billion annually until 2050 for adaptation investments, primarily in infrastructure.

“Without access to climate finance for adaptation this will remain a recurring challenge beyond the country’s coping capacity,” Khan said. 

“Impact-based forecasting can help but indicative modeling is not precise and there is a limit to preparing for anticipatory adaptation as the scale, scope and intensity of climate induced disasters is highly unpredictable,” she said.

The most urgent adaptation needs are resilient infrastructure, which will require hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of investment, said Salik. Houses should be rebuilt with concrete foundations and steel girders, not with mud bricks which can be washed away, and the government should invest in dams, walls and channels to divert floodwaters, he said. “The real challenge is the infrastructure cost.”

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In recent weeks, oil and gas companies have reported bumper profits. BP reported profits of $8.45bn between April and June this year – more than triple the amount it made at the same time last year. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and Total reaped $51bn between them and returned $23bn to shareholders in dividends and buybacks, according to Reuters.

“This grotesque greed is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people, while destroying our only common home,” Guterres said during a media briefing on Wednesday. “I urge all governments to tax these excessive profits, and use the funds to support the most vulnerable people through these difficult times.”

The IMF agreed that governments should shield the most vulnerable from price hikes but discouraged broader consumer subsidies.

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Living costs for European households will rise by 7% on average in 2022, the IMF projects, with the poor hardest hit.

Several European governments have used price controls, tax cuts and subsidies to ease the impact of inflation – in some cases funded by windfall taxes.

In a blog post, Oya Celasun, assistant director of the IMF’s European department, wrote that policymakers “should allow the full increase in fuel costs to pass to end-users” to encourage energy savings and moving away from fossil fuels.

“Governments cannot prevent the loss in real national income arising from the terms-of-trade shock,” said Celasun. She added that governments should provide targeted relief for the most vulnerable groups, for example in the form of income support.

Fully offsetting the cost of living increase for the bottom 20% of households would cost governments 0.4% of GDP on average for the whole of 2022. It would cost 0.9% of GDP to fully compensate the bottom 40% of households, the IMF calculates.

“The IMF and UN are both clearly conscious of the need to protect the most vulnerable consumers but they disagree on who should bear the costs of doing so,” Olena Borodyna, a transition risk analyst at ODI, told Climate Home News. 

“Fundamentally, the two have a different position on how to encourage low-carbon transition – the IMF prefers market solutions and wants to incentivise consumers towards energy efficiency. The UN, on the other hand, is siding with the position of climate activists and politicians who are making a moral case for taxing fossil fuel companies amid the cost of living crisis,” Borodyna said.

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“The UN and IMF stances on the energy crisis are refreshingly compatible. We need both: windfall taxes on oil and gas profits; and a shift to policies that subsidise people, not energy,” Chris Beaton, the lead for sustainable energy consumption at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), told Climate Home News. 

“Energy subsidies are notoriously awful as a way to provide social assistance, disproportionately benefitting the people who buy most oil and gas (typically higher income groups) and locking in wasteful carbon-intensive consumption,” said Beaton.

More effective and fairer policies for tackling energy poverty include swapping subsidy spending into public services such as health and education or providing low-income households with cash transfers, he said. “This empowers people to put assistance into whatever part of their budget they find most useful, and can work as a short-term crisis measure.”

“The IMF might make a good economic point, and governments should not rush to give out blanket support measures to wealthy businesses and consumers that do not need them, but they are completely tone deaf in terms of implications for consumers experiencing the impact of the energy crisis,” Ipek Gençsü, senior research fellow at ODI, told Climate Home News. 

“The problem is that it’s not just the low-income that are currently suffering, it is a much bigger segment of the population. So supporting consumers is easier said than done in the current crisis,” she said.

It is a reminder that the most vulnerable “live at the mercy of price volatility of fossil fuels,” said Gençsü. “The sooner we can move away from use of fossil fuels, and also reduce energy waste, the better… The companies that continue to benefit from fossil fuels at a time when they are leading us to climate disaster, must be the first to help pay for the transition.” 

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The document increases ambition from India’s previous target, set in 2016, to reduce emissions for each unit of GDP 33-35% from 2005 levels by 2030.

It clarifies the target for clean energy, which caused some confusion among experts when Modi announced it at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK. India is aiming for half of installed electricity generation capacity to come from non-fossil sources at the end of the decade, not half of energy use, which would have been harder to achieve. 

Non-fossil capacity, which includes nuclear and large hydro dams as well as wind and solar, is around 40% today.

“It’s good that they corrected that error – it’s now a lot more real,” Swati D’Souza, India lead analyst and coordinator at the International Energy Agency (IEA), told Climate Home News. “The 45% [emissions intensity] reduction target is achievable for India. It also actually gives us a lot of leg room to go over it in future.”

The timing just months ahead of Cop27 in Egypt and during an energy crisis is significant, D’Souza added. 

“India announced targets ahead of Cop27 despite the turmoil that is happening in global energy markets and with countries in Europe moving towards gas. We have stuck to our guns. That says something about the commitment of our government to decarbonise,” she said.

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Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, described the 2030 goal as a “substantial pledge”.  

“It is likely to be achievable based on current policies,” he said. “Nonetheless, this is not a trivial task and will require deep structural changes in the Indian economy to de-link carbon and GDP, beyond what India has achieved in past decades.”

Dubash said the government’s decision not to commit to a clean energy generation pledge was a “missed opportunity” to curb coal. That “would have been a game-changer, because it would have required active management of thermal versus renewable energy power,” he said.  

India has a domestic target of achieving 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Modi’s verbal pledge to increase that to 500GW did not make the final cut. 

“Nothing analogous now remains in the international sphere,” said Dubash. “The new electricity pledge has the benefit of simplicity and clarity, but is not the benchmark for tracking Indian progress – the domestic pledge is.”

In a press statement, the government said the long-term climate goals are conditional on finance. “India will require its due share from such international financial resources and technological support,” the statement reads. 

Modi previously estimated the price tag at $1 trillion.

While the plan does not commit to sectoral emission reductions, the government highlighted policies that are expected to support the goal. These include a rollout of LED bulbs and a decarbonisation plan for Indian Railways.

Climate Action Tracker judged India’s previous goal as “highly insufficient” and in line with 4C warming, but gave the government credit for policies and actions that would outperform the target. Two thirds of its Covid stimulus package went towards a green recovery, undermined somewhat by continued support for coal development.

The updated plan is expected to be uploaded to the UN registry in the coming days. 

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The data shows that in 2020, rich nations mobilised $83.3 billion of climate finance, a 4% increase on the previous year but short of the $100bn target that they set themselves in 2009. 

2020 was the deadline for achieving the $100bn climate finance goal. Developed countries are now only expected to meet it in 2023.  Previous research suggests that the US is responsible for the vast majority of the shortfall.

The bulk of the funding was in the form of loans rather than grants and went to Asian and middle income countries.

Asia received 42% of the finance, roughly equal to its share of the global population, while Africa got 26% and the Americas received 17%.

Climate finance to developing countries was spread over five continents (Photo: Wikicommons)

Lower middle income countries received 43% of the funding while upper middle income countries got 27%. Low income countries, which represent about 9% of the global population and are most in need of finance, received 8%.

OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said achieving the goal next year is “critical to building trust as we continue to deepen our multilateral response to climate change.” Increasing finance for countries worst hit by climate impacts is one of the key goals of Cop27 in Egypt. 

“We know that more needs to be done. Climate finance grew between 2019 and 2020, but as we had expected, remained short of the increase needed to reach the $100 billion goal by 2020,” Cormann said.  “While countries continue to grapple with the economic and social implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we are seeing climate change causing widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people.” 

Joe Thwaites, an international climate finance advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told Climate Home News that the report “confirms what was largely feared about climate finance in 2020: that developed countries failed to meet the $100 billion goal due that year; that mobilisation of private finance has totally stagnated; and that despite a growing debt crisis most public climate finance remains in the form of loans.”

Climate finance failed to reach $100bn in 2020 (Photo: OECD)

Developing countries have long called for a greater share of finance to go towards adapting to climate change rather than reducing emissions. Mitigation finance, for reducing emissions, dropped by $2.8bn between 2019-2020, while adaptation finance rose 41% by $8.3bn.

Mitigation still receives a larger share of the total (58%) than adaptation. Adaptation funds have gone towards water and sanitation projects as well as forestry, agriculture and fishing, the OECD report notes.  

“It is good to see that adaptation finance grew significantly in 2020, making the COP26 commitment to double adaptation finance by 2025 look achievable, on route to reaching the balance with mitigation finance that the Paris Agreement calls for,” Thwaites said. 

The OECD update was published earlier in the year than usual to fit UNFCCC timelines.

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In Egypt, a major wheat importer from what was now a conflict zone, this raised the spectre of revolution. The last time prices neared the $12 a bushel mark was in 2008. The cost of living, along with rising unemployment and political repression, sowed unrest that culminated in the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak three years later.

In response to the latest surge of inflation, the government fixed the price of bread, telling millers to bulk out flour with wheat bran. Aish baladi, the puffy round flatbread served with most meals, now contains extra fibre.

Egyptians are strongly discouraged from complaining. The secret police arrested three TikTok creators for publishing a satirical video about high food prices. They face charges of terrorism and spreading false news.

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Against this backdrop, the Egyptian government hopes to use its presidency of Cop27, the next UN climate summit, to support food and energy security. Thousands of international delegates will descend on the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh 6-18 November, with a weighty agenda.

“We are living through difficult times. Egypt has been particularly affected by the consequences of the geopolitical tensions,” Cop27 president and Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, told a meeting of the British Egyptian Business Association.

Shoukry said the country had been “able to absorb the most severe impacts of the crisis” – at least for now.

“It’s a crunch,” Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative to the Cop27 president, told Climate Home News in an interview. “Prices have gone towards the roof” and that is having “a heavy economic burden.”

In Sharm el-Sheikh, governments have an opportunity to “learn the right lesson” from the geopolitical situation, Aboulmagd said: “We need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. We need to move faster and faster towards renewables.”

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It is a lesson that has yet to reach the top of the Egyptian government.

Mahmoud Mohieldin, the former investment minister appointed to work with cities, regions and business leaders at Cop26, takes the same line as Aboulmagd. Writing in Climate Home, he deplored the “new fossil fuel extractive bonanza” that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Cop27 must focus on a drastic phasedown of fossil fuels and transforming the food system, he wrote.

Yet when the EU went looking for alternatives to Russian gas, Cairo answered the call. While not a major global producer, ranking below the UK, Egypt is investing more than ever in state-owned oil companies and has signed new oil exploration deals this year.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been courting oil companies, making an appearance at the Egyptian Petroleum Show in February. Exxon Mobil’s John Ardill told the show he hoped to see the industry play a much larger role at Cop27 than at Cop26 “now that we’re in a gas hub”.

On climate, “there is still more talk than there is action on the ground,” Mohamed Kamal, co-director of Egyptian environmental education provider Greenish, told Climate Home.

One the biggest expectations from the Cop27 summit is for countries to come forward with strengthened 2030 climate plans that align with the Paris Agreement goals – something all nations agreed to do in Glasgow.

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Among major emitters, only Australia and Brazil have heeded the call – and the latter is heading for higher emissions than it projected in 2015.

At a US-hosted summit last month, Chile, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, UAE and Vietnam all said they would update their plans.

The Egyptian government submitted its updated 2030 climate plan to the UN this week. Soaring inflation and a ballooning debt are curtailing its climate ambition, it said.

The plan is a step up from the previous one, which had no emissions target, and introduces sectoral objectives for electricity generation, transport and oil and gas. But it allows national emissions to keep rising, which does not match the ambition of the Paris Agreement goals.

The strongest element is a target for renewable energy to provide 42% of electricity generation by 2035 – a goal already established under the country’s energy strategy. Environment minister Yasmine Fouad pushed for the target to be achieved five years earlier without success.

A net zero emissions target is not on the cards. “We’re very far away from that,” Aboulmagd told Climate Home, describing it as “a global aspirational goal” that is incompatible with Egypt’s development objectives.

African Union urged to bring political clout to Egypt climate talks

Unlike at the last round of talks, no major decisions are expected in Sharm el-Sheikh.

“Egypt has a different challenge to the UK presidency: it’s not a big bang Cop like Cop26,” Alex Scott, of think tank E3G, told Climate Home.

Instead, the buzzword is “implementation”.

Aboulmagd said the presidency will work to “narrow… [the] glaring gap on each and every one of the major issues”. That goes for cutting emissions, adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis, helping victims to bounce back from disaster and finding finance for all of it.

But preparatory talks in Bonn last month left “big blank pages” for Egypt to work with, said Scott. And the presidency has yet to set out “a clear vision… that a high ambition leadership group can rally around”.

Campaigners are hopeful a Cop on the African continent can deliver for vulnerable communities – and fearful that propping up Egypt’s Covid-hit tourism sector will take priority.

The beach at Sharm el-Sheikh (Pic: Wulf Willis/Flickr)

At a logistics briefing during preparatory talks in Bonn last month, observers were baffled by an emphasis on the activities available in Sharm el-Sheikh such as snorkeling.

“The wider circles of the Egyptian government seem eager to utilise this conference as a tourism ad,” said one Egyptian observer, who asked to remain anonymous.

In February, the government introduced a floor price for hotel rooms of up to five times the usual cost.

Madeleine Diouf Sarr, of Senegal, chair of the least developed countries’ (LDCs) group, told Climate Home of “legitimate” concerns it might restrict the number of negotiators who can attend the summit. The Egyptian presidency insists it has taken the concerns on board.

“A Cop held on the African continent should be accessible to all but especially those who are suffering the most from the effects of global warming, having done the least to cause it,” said Clare Shakya, director of climate research at the IIED think tank. “It is their voices that must be heard if climate justice is to be done.”

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President El-Sisi has previously shown an interest in hosting dazzling and highly publicised events. The climate summit is another moment for the former military officer to come under the spotlight.

His regime does not typically tolerate criticism. It has placed severe restrictions on the work of nongovernmental organisations, jailed human rights activists, tortured them with electric shocks and beatings and banned people from protesting without prior approval from the interior ministry.

UN climate summits, on the other hand, typically make space for multiple protests. Egyptian officials have sought to assure international delegates they will have the usual freedom to speak their mind.

“Needless to say, civil society is an indispensable partner in the global effort to combat climate change,” reads a description of Cop27’s civil society day on the summit’s website.

During a ministerial meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, Cop27 president Shoukry made a point of inviting two Extinction Rebellion activists to a meeting, saying later that they had “seen eye to eye”.

He then told the Associated Press protest would be allowed in “a facility adjacent to the conference centre” – away from the negotiations.

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In private, Egyptian activists express fears that nothing will change for them and Cop27 activism will be kept out of sight and mind of the political capital Cairo.

“In Sharm El-Sheikh, there is the sea, desert and tourist resorts. There is nothing else. It is extremely isolated,” one told Climate Home. “This decision was taken on purpose, so they can control who will go there.”

In a pointed message last month, one of Egypt’s most prominent political prisoners, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a figurehead of the 2011 revolution, warned: “Of all the countries to host they chose the one banning protest and sending everyone to prison, which tells me how the world is handling this issue. They’re not interested in finding a joint solution for the climate.”

Ambassador Aboulmagd said the government “will spare no effort to ensure our collective success in Sharm el-Sheikh.” Progress will require “listening to each other and moving away from the adversarial mode” that has dominated past climate summits, he said.

This is not a merely technocratic task but a question of legitimacy with the public. If popular concerns are not addressed, the conference risks making headlines for the wrong reasons.

The post ‘It’s a crunch’: Hunger and unease shape Egypt’s strategy for Cop27 appeared first on Climate Home News.

From the end of 2023, Schiphol airport, the third busiest in Europe in terms of passenger traffic, will limit the maximum number of flights each year to 440,000, 12% less than in 2019, the Dutch ministry of transport said in a statement on Friday.

The flight cuts aim to restore “the balance between a well-operating international airport, the business climate, and the interests of a better and healthier living environment”, transport minister Mark Harbers said in the statement. 

The government said the airport, which has faced staff shortages this year, must rein in its growth as the country seeks to reduce CO2 emissions and pollutants such as nitrogen oxide. The Netherlands previously cut the national speed limit to 100km per hour (62 mph) to reduce nitrogen pollution.

“This is a difficult message for the aviation sector that is still recovering from the far-reaching consequences of the coronavirus pandemic,” Harbers said.

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Dutch airline KLM described the decision as “highly detrimental” and said “it does not tally with the desire to retain a strong hub function” for Schiphol. The airport said it supports a “well-thought-out approach” that helps it achieve its goal of “connecting the Netherlands with the world as an increasingly quieter and cleaner Schiphol.”

Campaigners welcomed the decision, saying it sent a clear signal that curbing aviation demand is necessary to meet climate goals.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has called for international shipping and aviation targets to be radically strengthened, in line with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5C.

Aviation accounts for 2.1% of global emissions. The sector has agreed to an “aspirational goal” to make air travel growth carbon-neutral from 2020, establishing a carbon offsetting scheme to buy emissions reductions in other sectors.

Leo Murray, director of innovation at the NGO Possible, told Climate Home News it was a “world first development which could be hugely significant to global climate efforts.”

“Due to the extreme technical challenges of decarbonising air travel and the slow progress to date, it is almost certain that reducing overall flight numbers – at least temporarily – will be required at the global level to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Murray.

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Murray added it was unlikely that other airports would follow suit, but the flight cap weakened the argument for expansion of rival hubs such as Heathrow. 

It is the first time that a government has announced a flight cap, Koenraad Backers, director of aviation at the Dutch NGO Nature & Environment, told Climate Home News.

“It has always been growth, growth, growth up till now,” Backers said. “Tolerated is no longer the order of the day; rules also apply to the aviation industry.”

Greenpeace, which lobbied for Schiphol to reduce airport traffic, described the move as a “historic breakthrough.” 

“It is good that the Cabinet realises that Schiphol has, for years, been flying beyond all boundaries when it comes to noise, nitrogen, ultrafine particles and the climate,” Dewi Zloch, aviation expert at Greenpeace in the Netherlands, said in a statement. 

Zloch said the cuts don’t go far enough to curb aviation emissions. “This is the impetus. Schiphol needs to finally come up with a plan that takes the Paris Agreement into account,” she said. 

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Following a three-day meeting in Berlin, the G7’s energy and environment ministers issued a statement on Friday committing to these goals and supporting “an accelerated global unabated coal phase-out”.

It marked the biggest shift in policy for fossil fuel-reliant Japan. An annotated draft seen by Climate Home News showed that Japan had tried to remove both commitments from the communique but European countries and Canada defended them.

“There is no wavering in our commitment to 1.5C… the need for action on decarbonisation was reaffirmed at the G7,” said Japan’s environment minister Toshitaka Ooka at a press conference.

Japan takes over the G7 presidency next year. Ooka said energy issues would be “the most critical challenge”. 

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Analysts and campaigners described the statement as a gamechanger for global decarbonisation efforts.

“The end of unabated coal power AND GAS POWER is now coming into sight,” Ember’s Dave Jones tweeted.

Price of Oil campaigner Laurie Van Der Burg said Japan signing up to the communique was “an important breakthrough” as the country has been “very aggressively backing the expansion of gas in Asia but also worldwide.”

Japan is one of the world’s top financiers of fossil fuels and had been the only G7 nation not to sign up to a pledge at last year’s Cop26 summit to halt that flow. Between 2018 and 2020, Japan provided $10.9bn a year to fossil fuel projects in other countries. This is far higher than finance provided by the US or European G7 members and slightly less than Canada.

It was also the only country not to have a plan to phase fossil fuels out of its electricity system by 2035. By 2030, it aims to get 59% of its electricity from renewables and nuclear power. In 2020, 70% of Japan’s electricity was generated from gas and coal, with just 20% coming from renewables.

African nations’ dash for gas exposes division at the UN and ‘hypocrisy’ in Europe

Jones described a 2035 target as a “challenge” but “definitely achievable” for Japan. “The obvious place to start is scaling up rooftop solar and wind energy, which could help Japan create a far more secure and sustainable energy system by 2035,” he said. 

“Replacing fossil fuels with clean energy with the speed required will be a challenge for Japan,” said Hanna Hakko, senior analyst at E3G. “Additional modelling and policy planning will be urgently needed.”

But campaigners were positive about the direction of travel. “The language in the statement is strong and goes beyond the Japanese government’s previous position,” Kimiko Hirata, executive director of Climate Integrate told Climate Home News.

While Japan has not committed to phase out coal – its current energy plan forecasts that 19% of its electricity will come from coal in 2030 – Hirata said the 2035 decarbonisation target implied a coal exit. “This is totally new for Japan,” Hirata said, calling for stronger language on coal phaseout at next month’s leaders’ summit.

“Ending international fossil fuel finance is also a big step,” said Hirata. “Japan is subsidising gas exploration. Can they stop everything by 2022? This is a big question mark.”

“The renewed Japanese ambition and the new government in Australia should help supercharge Asia’s electricity transition, and will surely force a rethink in Korea to step up,” Jones told Climate Home News.

The post G7 pushes Japan to speed up clean energy transition at home and abroad appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the International Maritime Organization (IMO) last week, countries broke a deadlock on mid-term measures to decarbonise the industry.

The meeting concluded that there was consensus to price shipping emissions “as part of a basket of mid-term measures,” according to a summary by the University Maritime Advisory Services (UMAS), which is partnered with University College London’s (UCL) Energy Institute. There was general support for adopting a “well-to-wake” approach and pricing emissions from fuel production to consumption onboard a ship, UMAS said.

“[Pricing shipping emissions] is not a new concept to the IMO, but previous attempts to progress it have failed. It is therefore a huge step forward that there is now consensus on this,” said Tristan Smith, director of UMAS. 

Market-based, decarbonisation measures on the table include technical ones, like introducing a fuel standard, as well as economical ones, like setting a global carbon tax for the industry. They will be discussed at a meeting of the IMO’s environment committee (MEPC) next month.

“Pricing needs to be complemented with a mandatory measure like a fuel standard, but there is now a much improved potential for strong IMO incentivisation of shipping’s decarbonisation,” Smith said.

Responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions, ships emit around one billion tonnes of CO2 every year. Without further action, shipping emissions are projected to reach 90-130% of their 2008 levels by 2050.

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Major emerging economies have heavily resisted carbon tax proposals in the past. A proposal put forward by Pacific Island nations for a carbon price of $100 per tonne on bunker fuels previously got tepid support from EU nations and the US.

But at the working group meeting last week, all EU countries and the US spoke in favour of carbon pricing, with the UK, New Zealand and the Bahamas backing the measure for the first time. 

“There can finally be no doubt we will put a carbon price on shipping,” Aoife O’Leary, a long-time IMO observer and head of Opportunity Green, a non-profit focusing on international climate issues, told Climate Home News.

The price must be high enough to transition to zero-emission fuels quickly, as well as offering a mechanism to support developing countries, O’Leary said. Countries must move to next month’s MEPC with “ambition, equity and urgency,” she said.

“The IMO meeting last week is a major breakthrough,” said Diane Gilpin, CEO of the Smart Green Shipping Alliance, which develops tech solutions to help the industry decarbonise. “Obviously there’s a lot more detail to agree but in our experience ship owners are moving to the shadow of the whip.”

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The Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands have proposed a carbon price of $100 a tonne on bunker fuels, while the world’s biggest container shipping company Maersk has called for a $150/t levy to encourage the industry to switch to greener fuels.

But the shipping industry’s trade association has previously supported a levy of just $2 a tonne of fuel to fund research and development of clean shipping technology. That translates to a carbon price of $0.64/t.

Progress at the IMO came as the European Parliament approved its Fit For 55 package, which includes incorporating shipping in the bloc’s emissions trading scheme (ETS).

This means that all ships transporting goods to and from EU, regardless of the flag they fly, will be taxed on their emissions. As of 2024, ships will have to buy carbon allowances to cover all emissions during voyages in the EU and half of those generated by international voyages that start or finish at an EU port. Three quarters of the revenues generated from the auctioning of allowances will be put into an Ocean Fund to support the industry’s decarbonisation efforts.

“We need ambitious action at every level if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said O’Leary. 

“The IMO has only given provisional agreement to a carbon price, which hopefully will move ambitiously forward but it is definitely not at the stage where it could be said that it will achieve a reduction in shipping emissions in line with 1.5C on its own,” she said.

The post UN body makes ‘breakthrough’ on carbon price proposal for shipping appeared first on Climate Home News.

Government officials are compiling a database, using open source information and satellite images, of environmental damages in the wake of Russian attacks.

They intend to prosecute the Kremlin under international law and seek reparations.

“Russia has to pay for all that they have done,” Iryna Stavchuk, Ukraine’s deputy minister for energy and environment, told Climate Home News. “The ultimate goal is that they actually pay for the recovery.” 

Stavchuk is leading efforts to document the toll of the war on natural resources and ecosystems, in partnership with international and Ukrainian organisations.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the State Ecological Inspectorate of Ukraine has recorded 231 cases of environmental damage.

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“There is a lot of local chemical and hazardous pollution on the ground from all the missile attacks and bombings,” said Stavchuk.

Inspectors are travelling to sites struck by Russian missiles and bombs to collect soil samples and to monitor pollution levels, where it is safe to do so. They do not have access to some of the hardest hit areas.

Crimes related to environmental damage have rarely been prosecuted under international law, giving Ukraine few precedents to build on. One exception is a case brought by Kuwait against Iraq, for its invasion and occupation of the country in 1990-91.

Fires in Chernihiv, Ukraine, including at a warehouse and facility storing fuel products, on 21 March 2022. (Credit: Maxar)

When the Gulf War ended, the UN created a compensation commission to deal with Kuwaiti claims arising from Iraq’s invasion. The commission found that Iraq was liable under international law for losses and damages, including environmental damages and the depletion of natural resources. Kuwait was awarded $52.4 billion in compensation for 1.5 million of the 2.7 million claims it brought. 

“The UN Security Council decided that they would proceed with that case,” said Stavchuk. “It’s actually a problematic case for us because Russia [sits] on the Security Council.”

She added: “We understand that we will have to come up with a completely new legal [framework] on environmental  crimes because most of the documents within the UN system were designed for peacetime.”

Environmental inspectors take samples following an explosion on the Samara-Western oil pipeline, in the village of Rudnya, Ukraine. (Photo: State Ecological Inspectorate Ukraine/Facebook)

Nonprofits are helping to gather evidence of the environmental impacts and the long-term risks they pose to Ukraine and other countries. 

The environmental damage caused by Russia’s invasion is extensive and already affecting people’s health and safety, Yevheniia Zasiadko, head of climate at the Ukrainian non-profit EcoAction, told Climate Home News.

EcoAction has been using reports on social media channels, such as Telegram, to monitor incidents across the country. “But it’s impossible to see the full picture,” said Zasiadko.

Incidents documented by EcoAction include Russian bombing of oil depots, which increased air pollution over residential areas in Kyiv, explosions around pipelines, which caused oil spills and contaminated water sources, and a Russian strike against a nitrogen tank which dispersed four tonnes of nitric acid, she said.

There have also been attacks around nuclear reactors, sparking forest wildfires and posing a serious risk to surrounding areas of radioactive release.

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On 2 March Russian shelling hit the largest poultry farm in Europe, Chornobayevskaya, killing almost five million chickens. “It is unrealistic to dispose of them,” said Zasiadko, raising serious concerns about bacterial contamination. 

Pax, a peace organisation based in the Netherlands, has been using satellite images to verify locations and incidents mentioned on social media channels. The organisation started monitoring the environmental damages caused by conflict during the Syrian War.

“In Ukraine, we want to document that there are direct risks for civilians from environmental damage, in particular in urban areas and around industrial sites,” Wim Zwijnenburg, who is leading the work at Pax, told Climate Home News. 

A fire at a fuel tanker farm in Kalynivka, Ukraine, after it was hit by Russian cruise missiles on 25 March 2022. (Credit: Maxar)

Russia has targeted industrial waste facilities, which has led to wastewater leaking into rivers and lakes, creating a public health risk and preventing civilians from accessing clean drinking water, said Zwijnenburg. When Russian missiles struck a fuel tanker farm in Kalynivka, a farming village 40km south of Kyiv, it sparked a big fire which increased air pollution for communities living downwind.

“Oil and wastewater could pose additional risks to local surface and groundwater if it gets out of the facility,” said Zwijnenburg. 

The database also helps Ukrainian authorities prioritise their emergency response to incidents and, once the conflict ends, to direct rehabilitation and clean-up efforts, he said.

The post Ukraine builds legal case against Russia for environmental damage appeared first on Climate Home News.

Russia supplies 40% of EU gas and 26% of its oil imports.

“Today we will propose to ban all Russian oil from Europe,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in the European Parliament on Wednesday.  “This will not be easy,” she added.

“We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimises the impact on global markets… Thus, we maximise pressure on Russia, while at the same time minimising collateral damage to us and our partners around the globe.”

EU member states have been wary of imposing an embargo on Russian oil and gas but Germany indicated earlier this week it was ready to back an EU ban and said it would weather short-term price hikes and fuel shortages.

The re-election of Emmanuel Macron as French president last week helped tip the balance in favour of a tough EU-wide stance.

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In retaliation, Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday enabling him to terminate exports and deals on his own terms.

Russia has benefited in the short term from disruption to the coal, oil and gas markets triggered by its invasion of Ukraine, with soaring prices outweighing the effect of international sanctions. Energy and Clean Air estimates the EU has paid €52.5 billion ($55.3bn) to Russia for fossil fuels since 24 January.

To unite the 27-nation bloc, the Commission is expected to offer Hungary and Slovakia exemptions on the embargo. Both countries are heavily reliant on Russian oil, with Hungary importing 60% of its oil from Russia and Slovakia almost 100%, Genady Kondarev, a senior analyst at E3G for central and eastern Europe, told Climate Home News.

Even without their support, the proposed embargo will “shrink the Russian oil market in the EU 14 times,” Kondarev told Climate Home News.

“The embargo may come into force without Slovakia and Hungary being in it. It will still have a severe bite and there will be no risk for the economies of the two EU countries,” Kondarev said.

“This embargo is an important political signal which shows that the EU is following through with what was only a threat a few days back,” independent energy analyst Poppy Kalesi told Climate Home News.

“Civil society in the EU is already pressing for gas to follow so an oil ban can be interpreted as strike one,” she said.

The embargo could accelerate efforts to design cars out of cities, which is already happening across Europe, Kalesi added.

The post EU plans to stop buying Russian crude oil in six months appeared first on Climate Home News.

“Making France a great green nation, that is our project,” Macron tweeted on the night of his victory, after he received 58.5% of the votes against 40.5% for Le Pen – a lower margin than in the 2017 election, when he got 66% of the votes. 

In the election campaign, Macron declared he would make France “the first major nation to abandon gas, oil and coal.”

While climate advocates are breathing a sigh of relief that Le Pen – who threatened to dismantle wind turbines – lost, Macron’s climate record to date has fallen short of the rhetoric.

Coming to power in 2017 on a promise to “make climate great again”, Macron inherited an underperforming state. France was successfully sued for failing to meet its 2015-18 emissions objectives and is is the only EU member state to have missed its 2020 renewable energy target.

After five years in power, the government remains off track to meet its 40% emissions reduction target by 2030 compared to 1990 levels – a goal which it will need to ramp up to align with the EU’s collective goal of at least 55% cuts.

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Macron has said he wants to accelerate the construction of offshore wind farms, develop nuclear power and a large-scale programme to retrofit homes and make them more energy-efficient. But the deployment of renewables and uptake of electric transport has been slow.

France has only built one offshore wind farm. Macron announced this year that France will build 50 offshore wind farms by 2050, with 40GW of capacity. 

France’s weak record on deploying renewables is largely due to administrative hurdles and court challenges, especially for wind farm projects, Nicolas Berghmans, Iddri’s lead European affairs and climate expert, told Climate Home News. The time required for the installation of a wind farm in France is around eight years – significantly higher than in other EU countries, he said.

In 2021, a French court awarded damages to a Belgian couple who claimed that a wind turbine near their house in southern France caused a range of negative health impacts, referred to as “wind syndrome”, including headaches, insomnia and depression. 

Construction has started on offshore wind farms “so we should continue to see an acceleration of renewable energy deployment in the coming years,” said Berghmans.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced many EU countries to reconsider their long-standing opposition to nuclear power as they seek to reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. France has relied heavily on nuclear energy for decades. 

The country derives around 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy and is home to 56 nuclear power reactors. In February, the government announced plans to build six new reactors and to consider building a further eight. 

Campaigners are not convinced.

Any new nuclear energy project will be expensive and not come online until 2035, said Raphael Hanoteaux, a senior policy advisor on gas politics at E3G. “Solar, wind and storage are already cheaper than nuclear, and will be even cheaper in 12 to 15 years,” he told Climate Home News.

“French politicians are obsessed with the nuclear industry, which diverts attention from real solutions,” Neil Makaroff, EU policy officer at Climate Action Network France, told Climate Home News. “Not a euro of the [coronavirus] recovery plan has been dedicated to renewables. A bad signal.”

“The existing nuclear power plant fleet is quickly ageing, as its underperformance this winter clearly showed, and it is today unlikely that it will be replaced with new reactors with an equivalent generation capacity,” said Berghmans. “Renewable production will have to close this large gap.”

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If Macron is to achieve his goal of reducing France’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels, he should focus on transport and housing, Sebastien Treyer, executive director of the think tank Iddri, told Climate Home News.

Enabling access to electric mobility and ensuring large-scale energy efficiency in buildings should be priorities for Macron’s short-term climate strategy, he said.

Electric mobility is on the rise in France, but it is not growing as strongly as in other EU countries, such as the Netherlands and Norway, said Berghmans. This is partly due to delays in deploying charging infrastructure, as well as to insufficient incentives for the uptake of electric vehicles, he said. French citizens rely heavily on cars – with 75% using a car for their daily commute – and investments in cycling and public transport are lagging, he added. 

A carbon tax on fuel has been frozen since 2018, when a proposed hike triggered widespread protests and gave birth to the “gilets jaunes” movement.

“The shadow of yellow vests still looms large. It’s likely Macron’s new government will remain extremely cautious about reintegrating the carbon tax to its arsenal of measures,” Lola Vallejo, climate programme director at Iddri, told Climate Home News.

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The country’s citizens’ assembly has identified mandatory minimum energy performance standards for buildings as a key measure to force deep renovation of buildings but this measure has been watered down by the government, said Makaroff. 

“Renovation efforts are still timid considering the triple menace of climate change, the cost of living crisis, and the Russia-Ukraine war,” Vallejo said. 

“Public support for [this] is still insufficient and poorly targeted to the deep energy renovations that are needed to achieve climate targets,” said Berghmans. The government should offer more solutions and alternatives to poorer households, whose financial balances are directly impacted by rising fuel prices, he said.

The post Macron promises to abandon gas, oil and coal, but will he deliver? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The heaviest rains in decades pummeled the KwaZulu-Natal province, killing more than 300 people and causing billions of rand worth of damages to properties and infrastructure.

Torrential rainfall caused mudslides which trapped people under buildings, with officials describing the event as “one of the worst weather storms in the history of our country.” President Cyril Ramaphosa said the flooding was “a catastrophe of enormous proportions”.

“First indications are that about one month of average rainfall occurred over one or two days,” Mark New, director of the African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), told Climate Home News.  

“After detailed analysis, I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be a one-in-a-hundred-year event, or even rarer,” New said.

Some survivors blamed poor drainage and badly built housing for the high death toll. Durban mayor Mxolisi Kaunda disagreed, insisting the scale of flooding was unexpected.

But the authorities have questions to answer over the province’s preparedness for such an extreme event.

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The South African Weather Service forecast the flooding over 24 hours in advance, but did not issue a red alert. On Monday evening they raised an orange warning, indicating a medium likelihood of severe impacts, including loss of life. 

“The reason the warning never reached red is that issuing a red level warning requires coordination with provincial and local disaster management authorities,” Christopher Jack, deputy director of the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town, told Climate Home News. 

“The impact is likely an order of magnitude higher than it should have been had sufficient effort and resources been effectively directed towards upgrading informal settlements and improving management of rivers,” Jack said. “Improved disaster risk management doesn’t have to cost a lot, it just requires better coordination.”

Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate impacts, said the deadly floods had hit the poor hardest. 

“It’s the poor and disadvantaged that are carrying the heaviest load in terms of climate impacts,” Roberts told scientists and policymakers at the Royal Society London on Monday by video link from Durban.

Inequitable access to basic services is exacerbating this injustice, she said. “People who have access to basic services have a much higher adaptive capacity to those who don’t – and if you go out into Durban’s informal settlements today you’ll see just how true that is.”

Insurance is one way for communities to recover from severe flooding, but Roberts said people living in informal settlements do not have access to this. “They literally lost everything. They will experience a loss in living standards. Many have lost absolutely all the material goods that they have in this world including their house today,” she said.

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Gina Ziervogel, associate professor in the department of environmental science at the University of Cape Town, said high levels of poverty in South Africa undermine the country’s ability to withstand climate shocks.

“Adapting to climate does require improving early warning systems and infrastructure to withstand extreme events. But it also requires addressing inequality and capacity more broadly to deal better with multiple shocks,” she said. 

Francois Engelbrecht, director and professor of climatology at the University of the Witwatersrand, told Climate Home News that a very similar flooding event occurred three years ago, causing severe mudslides which killed 70 people in the province.

“The 2019 event should have been a clear warning to the provincial and national governments, about how vulnerable communities in the province are to flash floods and mudslides,” he said.  “As long as we have communities in South Africa living in areas below the flood line, or along steep hillsides where mudslides occur, the hard reality is that we will see more lives being lost during extreme rainfall events.”

The IPCC’s sixth assessment report warned that rising temperatures will increase the frequency and the intensity of heavy rainfall and flooding in southeastern Africa, as well as the wind speeds of tropical storms and the proportion of category 4-5 cyclones.

Climate change made extreme rainfall during a series of major storms in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique this year heavier and more frequent, according to analysis from World Weather Attribution. The region was hit by three cyclones and two tropical storms in six weeks. 

“The rainfall associated with such storms has become more likely and more intense,” Dr Friederike Otto from Imperial College London said. “What we can say for sure is, the damages of such storms have become worse.”

The South African Weather Service and provincial government did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment. 

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Set up with $340 million of philanthropic funding, the Global Methane Hub will offer grants and technical support to implement the Global Methane Pledge.

Launched by the US and EU at Cop26 climate talks in November, 110 countries have signed up to the pledge to date, committing to collectively reduce their methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. That is roughly in line with what is needed to keep a 1.5C warming limit within reach, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest report on Monday.

Marcelo Mena, the former environment minister of Chile and director of the Climate Action Center at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, will lead the hub.

The first $10 million of funds is earmarked for the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), which will work with 30 developed and developing countries to establish plans over the next three years to achieve the 2030 target.

“We’ll be helping all countries who’d like to develop national methane reduction plans, sharing the scientific, technical and regulatory expertise,” Drew Shindell, CCAC’s special advisor for action on methane, told Climate Home News. 

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Methane contributes significantly to global warming. Although it only stays in the atmosphere for around nine years, methane has a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. 

A paper in Environmental Research Letters last year found an all-out, rapid effort to slash methane emissions could slow the rate of current warming by 30% and avoid 0.5C of warming by the end of the century. 

Tackling methane provides a “short-term climate win,” Shindell said. “Actions to reduce it can rapidly slow warming whereas decarbonisation provides needed long-term, but not near-term, climate relief.”

The aim is for all these countries to set specific methane targets in their national climate plans, in updates ahead of Cop27 in Egypt this year, Mena told Climate Home News. 

“The quick wins are in the oil and gas sector,” Mena said, while emissions from farming and waste also need attention.

The oil and gas industry could achieve a 75% reduction in methane emissions by 2030 using existing technology, according to the International Energy Agency. And it need not be expensive: the IPCC estimates 50-80% of methane emissions from fossil fuel operations could be slashed at a cost of less than $50 per tonne of CO2 equivalent.

“Inaction on methane is not a technology or science problem, it is very much a political and organisational problem,” said energy analyst Poppy Kalesi. 

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Rubbish tips are an enormous problem and must be addressed, Mena said. Satellite images show that landfill sites in the US have been leaking methane at rates as much as six times higher than estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

The other major source of methane emissions, responsible for almost 40%, is farming. A cow produces an average of 250-500 litres of methane a day from digesting grass.

The IPCC report said that behaviour and lifestyle changes, such as reducing meat consumption and shifting to plant-based diets, are an important part of the solution. 

“We have a food system that is not healthy for people or the planet,” said Mena. “We need to build the groundwork for transformational change in our food system.” 

Better livestock manure management and changing the diet of livestock could help curb methane emissions from agriculture. There are a host of methane-busting products being trialed, ranging from laboratory-made probiotics to natural additives such as seaweed and charcoal.

Research from the University of California, Davis, for example, has found that feeding seaweed to cows significantly reduced the amount of methane from their burps and farts.

“We need to tackle the neglected sectors of waste management and the food system to reduce methane emissions,” said Mena. 

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Justin Trudeau’s government announced its emissions reduction plan on Tuesday, outlining how it plans to meet its target to reduce emissions by 40-45% between 2005 and 2030.

It predicts that oil production will continue to grow while emissions from oil production fall. Campaigners said this “doesn’t add up” and “bets too heavily on [carbon capture technology]”.

At Cop26, Trudeau told world leaders that the town of Lytton had burned down because of climate change and promised “we’ll cap oil and gas sector emissions today and ensure they decrease tomorrow at a pace and scale needed to reach net zero by 2050”.

“That’s no small task for a major oil and gas producing country,” he said. “It’s a big step that’s absolutely necessary.”

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But Tuesday’s plan did not include a cap on production emissions from oil and gas. Environment minister Steven Guilbeault said earlier this month that this policy will be deferred to late 2022 or early 2023.

Announcing the plan in Vancouver, natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson explained: “We committed to the [oil and gas] sector that we would work with them in a collaborative basis to establish the cap”.

He added: “We will be working with them over the coming months to ensure we put in place an appropriate cap that’s going to work in a manner that will continue to employ people but that will allow us to get at those emissions”.

The way in which the cap is implemented is still up for debate. Guilbeault has said that a cap and trade system is one of the options. This is when a limited number of pollution permits are issued in key sectors and companies that cut their emissions faster can sell unused allowances to those emitting more.

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The government projects that emissions from oil and gas production will decline 42% on 2019 levels, while oil production will rise 22% between 2020 and 2030.

The emissions reduction plan states: “The intent of the cap is not to bring reductions in production that are not driven by declines in global demand”.

Catherine Abreu, director of Destination Zero, told Climate Home it was good that Canada is “finally moving to address the glaring gap in all of its previous climate plans – the oil and gas sector”.

But, she said: “Increasing oil production while trying to reduce oil and gas emissions doesn’t add up… Canadian governments need to ask whether it makes sense to keep ramping up extraction in this critical decade of decarbonisation.”

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Measures to reduce emissions without reducing production include tax credits for carbon capture technology and potentially domestic and international carbon offsets for “a small portion of the reductions”, the plan says.

Julia Levin, from the Environmental Defence Canada, said the plan “bets much too heavily on [carbon capture]”.

Jan Gorski, from the Pembina Institute think tank said that the projected oil and gas emissions reductions for 2030 were not ambitious enough. He said that the industry’s fair share was a 45% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030 not the plan’s 31% projection.

His analysis suggests this can be achieved through stopping methane leaks and venting, electrification, carbon capture, facilities reaching their end of life and “other decarbonisation activities for which we do not yet have adequate information”.

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While campaigners criticised it, the oil and gas industry welcomed the plan. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said that it “acknowledges that global demand for natural gas and oil will continue for decades and Canada has a role to play in providing lower emission resources to the world’s energy mix”.

According to the International Energy Agency, if the world is to reach net zero by 2050 then oil demand should fall by 75% between 2021 and 2050. Gas demand should decline by 55% over the same period.

Guilbeault said last November that the federal government doesn’t have the constitutional right to cap oil and gas production – that’s in the power of Canada’s provinces. But the federal government can cap production emissions.

Canada is the only G7 country whose emissions are still growing. This is largely because of the growing emissions from its oil and gas production and growth in polluting forms of transport like SUVs.

Canada’s Greenhouse gas emissions (kt of co2e) since 2005, compared with G7 European countries. Japan and the US have not been included for visual clarity but their emissions have also fallen. (Source: World Bank)

The emissions reduction plan includes C$9bn ($7bn) of new green investments in electric vehicles, green buildings, farming, restoring nature and a community air pollution fund. This is in addition to Canada’s rising carbon price on pollution.

The plan set interim targets for phasing out the sale of new internal combustion engine passenger vehicles. By 2026, 20% of new vehicle sales should be zero-emission. By 2030, this should be 60% and by 2035 it should be 100%.

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That’s more than twice the total amount of solar and wind power installed in the USA.

Client Earth’s China representative Dimtri De Boer said: “450GW is really huge. That would be the lion’s share of new solar and wind capacity installation until 2030.”

The scaling up of renewable deployment should be “a major economic boost for China’s underdeveloped western regions,” he said.

Greenpeace East Asia’s Li Shuo said: “This is the positive side of the China climate story. People should get used to big numbers… China’s challenge is how to stop the coal side of the story, which is growing in equally big numbers.”

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The Gobi desert straddles China’s northern border with Mongolia. The land is cheap and there is lots of wind and sunshine.

A map of China with the windiest areas in red. (Photo: Global Wind Atlas/Screenshot))

The province of Inner Mongolia, which includes most of China’s Gobi desert, is the biggest producer of coal in China and has pursued a coal-led recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

China has brought the costs of manufacturing solar panels down and is able to use these cheap domestic panels in projects like this.

“It only makes sense to deploy domestically made renewable energy equipments in big scale as a way to contribute to climate action as well as economic growth,” Li said.

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Similar programmes in the early 2010s were hampered by bottlenecks in the grid infrastructure to deliver the electricity to major cities. This meant renewable producers had to make less electricity than they could have done.

“That problem has largely been solved,” Li said. “Building stuff in China is never a problem.”

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis analyst Simon Nicholas agreed. He told Climate Home: “China is a world leader in long distance transmission and has been building ultra high voltage direct current transmission lines for years now so if anyone can do it, China can.”

But De Boer warned that transmission would still be costly. Electricity will be lost while being transmitted long distances from the desert to China’s more populated areas.

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New York University Shanghai professor Yifei Li said that maintaining a large solar farm in the desert would be relatively expensive because of the region’s remoteness, the steep difference between day and nighttime temperatures and the high level of dust which reduces panels’ effectiveness.

What to do with the old solar panels when they stop working will become an issue in the future, Yifei Li added.

Li Shuo agreed this would become a “hot topic” in the near future but said “by then, low labor cost, economies of scale, and some of the other factors that enabled the rapid development of the renewable energy industry in the first place will make China a leading performer”.

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In its first report on climate impacts since 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says some impacts are already “irreversible” and that 3.3-3.6 billion people live in “contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change” – a total that is projected to rise.

The report notes there is “very high confidence” that climate change has adversely affected the mental health of people in assessed regions. 

Mental health challenges, including anxiety, stress and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are predicted to increase as temperatures continue to rise and people experience more extreme weather events, the IPCC scientists said. Children, adolescents, elderly people and those with underlying health conditions are particularly vulnerable to mental health risks associated with climate change. 

“It is a huge step that we see mental health mentioned for the first time in the most influential report on climate change,” Gesche Huebner, lecturer in sustainable and healthy built environments at University College London, told Climate Home News. “Climate change is the biggest mental health threat in the decades to come,” she said. 

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Scientists expressed “high confidence” that there is an association between high temperatures and worsening mental health. Mental health outcomes associated with high temperatures include suicide, psychiatric hospital admissions, and experiences of anxiety, depression and acute stress. 

“There is a lot of research linking higher temperatures to psychiatric admissions, but we need more evidence for the causal mechanisms,” Susan Clayton, one of the lead authors of the health chapter in the IPCC report and professor of psychology at the College of Wooster in Ohio, told Climate Home News. “We don’t yet have good data to say what the exact link is.”

According to a report by Imperial College’s Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, people with a pre-existing mental illness, particularly psychosis, have a two to three times higher risk of death during heatwaves than people without.

Hotter temperatures can impact blood flow, affect how well medication works, worsen sleep and increase conflict in society. These factors all increase mental health risks, Emma Lawrance, co-author of the report and a mental health innovations fellow at Imperial College London, told Climate Home News. 

Exposure to extreme weather events, such as floods and hurricanes, can lead to a wide range of mental health problems, including depression and PTSD, according to the IPCC report. “[These events] are often very stressful and traumatic, [resulting] in ongoing changes to communities and forcing people to move from their homes,” said Lawrance. 

For every one person affected physically during a disaster, 40 people are affected psychologically, according to the Grantham Institute report. 

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To help people cope in the aftermath of an extreme event, countries should invest in providing “psychological first aid” and bolstering emotional resilience within vulnerable communities, said Clayton. “People who are not mental health professionals can be trained to provide that.” Investing in physical infrastructure, such as emergency shelters, can also help people feel safer and “better mentally” ahead of an event hitting, she said. 

According to the IPCC report, there is less scientific evidence that anxiety about the climate crisis, also known as solastalgia, leads to an increase in mental health problems. 

“There is lots of evidence that people are concerned, worried and fearful about climate change, but does it affect their mental health? Just being anxious about climate does not mean you have a mental illness,” said Clayton. 

While the research focus on the topic has increased in the western world, there are major data gaps across Africa, Asia and South America – regions where many communities are highly vulnerable to extreme weather. In many countries, mental illness is stigmatised and suicides may not be logged, said Huebner. “That is a huge issue… It will take quite some time to overcome this. It is really important to work with the countries in question on this.” 

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According to India’s latest State of the Forest report, India’s overall forest cover increased by 1,540 square kilometres between 2019 and 2021, while its tree cover increased by 721 sq km. But plantations, orchards and urban green areas are misleadingly counted as forest, while mature forests are being cleared for industrial use.

In 2019, the government changed the methodology for the first time to include trees outside the forest area, both on public lands or private land, Kanchi Kolhi, a researcher at the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research, told Climate Home News. An area of land over one hectare with as little as 10% canopy density is included in the tally.

“It gives a skewed picture of how much land is actually under forests. By this definition, palm oil plantations will be designated as forest cover when it comes to showing compliance with domestic forest policy and international climate commitments,” Kolhi said.

This allows the government to claim that it is making progress towards achieving its 2030 forestry targets, which are critical to its long-term climate strategy.

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The government has set a 2030 target of having 33% of its land under tree cover, as part of its National Mission for a Green India, and has pledged to restore 26 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030. In its 2030 climate plan, India committed to creating a carbon sink to sequester an additional 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2, through increasing tree and forest cover.

With the latest survey the government “can show an increase in forest growth and carbon stocks, and [efforts] to reduce deforestation,” Souparna Lahiri, climate policy advisor at the Global Forest Coalition, told Climate Home News. 

“But it hides the continuing deforestation that is happening due to mining and industrial projects,” Lahiri said, adding that the ministry has given environmental clearance for forests to be cleared for development purposes.

Between 2008 and 2019, 253,179 hectares of forest land were cleared for non-forestry purposes, such as the construction of roads or industrial projects, a government official told Indiaspend. “That is an average of 46,000 hectares of forest being cleared each year,” said Lahiri. “If deforestation is happening, then what is this reality of increasing forest cover? It doesn’t match up.”

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The government can use the claim of increased forest growth to pitch for funding from the UN and other international donors, under the scheme known as Redd+, Rajkamal Goswami, research associate at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), told Climate Home News.

“The government is looking to leverage the increase in forest cover in the form of payments under Redd+ or increase their net emissions reductions,” he said. 

“[The] methodology is a wicked mix of historical obsession of forestry with growing trees and casting the net wide to access climate adaptation or carbon offset funds,” said Kohli. “It allows the government to make a pitch for Redd+ and other climate adaptation funds by showcasing a commitment to forest conservation and increasing carbon stocks.”

From 2000-2015, India was the largest recipient of international development aid for forestry, securing 23% of funds from sources including Japan, EU and multilateral development banks.

Donors including France and the UK are earmarking an increased share of their budgets for “nature-based solutions” that both absorb carbon and support wildlife.

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“A true reflection of the state of India’s forests will need to be a multidisciplinary exercise which acknowledges threats, records data and assesses its ecological status,” said Kohli. 

“I am very sceptical that things will change for the better soon,” said Goswami. For the government to improve its forest monitoring “intense pressure” is needed, “from the public, scientists and international forest, climate, and carbon governing bodies to make the data public and open to peer-review,” he said. 

The ministry of forestry and environment did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.

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Ana made landfall in Madagascar on 24 January, before hitting Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. The storm caused extreme flooding, which destroyed infrastructure, homes, hospitals and forced up to 800,000 households to evacuate, said Chikondi Chabvuta, Care International’s Southern Africa advocacy lead, who is based in Malawi. 

“We are yet to establish the full extent of the damage, but it is definitely in the billions [of dollars],” Chabvuta told Climate Home News. 

In Malawi, the intensity of the storm was only forecast two days before it hit, giving communities in its path little warning to evacuate. 

“We didn’t have enough time to go down to the communities to share the [news] with everyone,” said Chabvuta, adding that people in disconnected regions, without access to a radio or Whatsapp, were left in the dark.

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Ana was spotted developing as early as 15 January, but at that time the intensity and track of the storm were uncertain, Liz Stephens, associate professor in climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading, told Climate Home News.

“It is more difficult to forecast the intensity of tropical cyclones than their track,” she said. “On top of that there are aspects to the impact that are incredibly difficult to predict, like which bridges or dams might fail.”

A study published in 2020 suggested that 2C of global warming would lead to tropical cyclones in the region becoming less frequent but more intense and wet – conditions associated with worse damage.

Chabvuta said humanitarian aid alone would not be sufficient to help communities in Malawi rebuild their lives and livelihoods. “Crops have been washed away or are waterlogged,” she said. “Food insecurity in the next few months is a given.”

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The country is still reeling from Cyclone Idai in 2019, one of the worst tropical cyclones on record to hit Africa, which affected almost a million people in Malawi. “Storm Ana is bringing up the trauma from Cyclone Idai,” Chabvuta said. “When the cyclone hit Malawi, it opened up those memories from 2019.”

To build communities’ resilience and ensure they are better prepared for future storms, insurance mechanisms should be introduced, which enable quick payouts when a disaster hits, according to Chabvuta.

For example, the African Risk Capacity scheme paid out to the government of Madagascar in 2020 to help farmers cope with anticipated losses of crops and livestock to drought. 

Preparing people for storms by running evacuation drills also helps reduce losses, Chabvuta said, noting that the two districts in Malawi with such a scheme in place experienced no fatalities.

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Anticipatory action, before a hazard strikes, is critical to minimise losses and damages, said Jurg Wilbrink, forecast-based action project manager for the Red Cross’ southern Africa delegation.  

In Mozambique, the Red Cross used early warning systems to protect people before storm Ana hit. “We had finance in place, ready to be disbursed to affected communities and evacuated the most vulnerable before the disaster hit,” he told Climate Home News. “Anticipatory action avoids a lot of human suffering and it is cost effective.”

The Red Cross distributed chlorine tablets to purify drinking water and prevent cholera outbreaks, diverted water from vulnerable locations, and helped people protect important documents such as passports, Wilbrink said.

The region is bracing for more storms. “Madagascar is currently preparing for a cyclone apparently more dangerous than Ana, Betsirai, which may displace more than 140,000 people,” said Timothy Irwin from Unicef Madagascar. 

“It is likely to reach Mozambique within a week,” said Wilbrink. “We are on high alert for the next event.” 

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The category 5 cyclone, which made landfall in mid December, killed more than 400 people and caused at least half a billion dollars in economic losses and damages. It was the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines in 2021.

Oxfam reports that people are begging for scraps of food in the regions ravaged by Rai, known locally as Odette. Almost seven million people have lost their homes or main source of income. The typhoon caused widespread flooding which affected more than 420,000 hectares of land and damaged or destroyed 925,000 houses.

“We live here because our only livelihood comes from the sea. We pulled out all the boats for safety, but the waves still reached them and reached the roads. Typhoon Rai was bigger and stronger than the two previous ones,” Petronilo Bohol, a fisher from Malitbog village in Southern Leyte, told Oxfam. 

The country’s agriculture ministry estimates the damage to farming and fishing at $230 million, while the disaster risk reduction authority puts the toll on infrastructure – homes, roads, electricity and water lines – at $350m.

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Jermaine Baltazar Bayas, Oxfam’s humanitarian lead in Asia, told Climate Home News the aid agency had seen a “drastic increase” in the severity of typhoons in the past decade. “We are seeing a real manifestation of climate change.”

Bayas said recovery efforts in many regions could take up to six months and humanitarian aid would not be sufficient to help communities rebuild their lives and livelihoods. 

“Humanitarian aid covers the immediate need, what people need to survive, but [we also need support] for the mid and long-term recovery,” he said. “This has to be embedded in regions’ development programmes and there has to be [focus] on protecting assets and helping people restart their livelihoods.”

Emergency food distribution in Surigao del Norte (Photo: Care International Philippines)

Kerry Emmanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Climate Home News that the total loss and damages caused by tropical storms is expected to increase in upcoming decades.

This is partly due to demographics: the number of people living in coastal regions and floodplains has increased rapidly since the 1970s. Another reason is that the intensity of tropical storms is increasing globally, with more storms reaching the highest categories (3, 4 and 5) in recent decades, according to 2020 study. The increased intensity linked with heavier rainfall, which can lead to severe flooding, according to Kerry.

It is more difficult to attribute tropical storms directly to climate change than in the case of heatwaves and flooding because of a lack of historical data and inaccurate forecasts of their intensity, said Kerry. “We are doing a great job at detecting hurricanes from space, but a poor job at measuring their intensity.”

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Sven Harmeling, policy lead on climate change and resilience at Care International, said that loss and damage finance should not be contingent on climate attribution. “If you first need to fully establish the level of climate change, it would be very impractical and [result in] help being delivered far too late,” he told Climate Home News. 

Instead clear mechanisms should be established, which enable quick payouts when a disaster hits, he said. This could take the form of an insurance pool, supported by international finance, that offers immediate payouts in the case of certain impacts, he said.

Anticipatory finance, provided before a hazard strikes, also helps minimise losses and damages, said Bayas. Oxfam partnered with local governments in Rai’s path to provide immediate cash grants, through a parametric insurance system, and technical assistance to strengthen people’s houses ahead of the storm hitting. “That was a really good investment,” said Bayas.

Globally, campaigners are calling on rich nations to mobilise support to vulnerable nations for loss and damage of $300 billion a year by 2030, on top of humanitarian aid and climate adaptation finance.

A study commissioned by Christian Aid projects that the GDP of the 65 most climate vulnerable countries will take a 20% hit by 2050 and 64% by 2100 if global temperatures rise by 2.9C, a scenario in line with current policies. Even if warming is held to 1.5C, poor communities that did little to cause climate change will be most exposed to its impacts.

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When burned, heavy fuel oil emits black carbon – sooty particles that absorb sunlight and trap heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. It is a particular problem in the Arctic, where it darkens the ice so it reflects less light back into space. Between 2015 and 2019, black carbon emissions from ships increased by 85% in the Arctic, according to the Clean Arctic Alliance.

Campaigners welcomed the move, which they said could significantly cut pollution, but noted it was a voluntary measure and relied on governments to introduce supportive policies.

“If all shipping currently using heavy fuel oils while in the Arctic were to switch to distillate fuel, there would be an immediate reduction of around 44% in black carbon emissions from these ships,” said Sian Prior, from the Clean Arctic Alliance. 

“If particulate filters were installed on board these vessels, black carbon emissions could be reduced by over 90%”, she added.

“It is questionable how many private companies will act as a result,” John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, told Climate Home News.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Russia resisted binding action on black carbon, according to Maggs. “There is likely to be ongoing hostility towards and blocking of the much needed mandatory measures at IMO, but now individual states have been given a green light to take action themselves,” he said. 

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Despite mounting pressure during Cop26, little headway was made on decarbonising the shipping industry – which emits around one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. The agreed IMO target is to halve that by 2050 – and without further action, shipping emissions are projected to reach 90-130% of their 2008 levels.

Countries considered strengthening a global climate goal to reduce shipping emissions, but deferred a decision until 2023, when the IMO is set to review its long-term strategy.

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While countries including the UK, US and Panama – which has the biggest flag registry – backed the Pacific resolution, major emerging economies including India and South Africa objected on equity grounds. They said rich countries should act first and provide finance to help them transition to cleaner fuels.

Despite the pushback, campaigners said the parameters of ambition were shifting. Several years ago, there was strong resistance to setting an absolute emissions goal for industry. At last week’s meeting, the debate centred on whether the target should be zero or net zero emissions. 

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“Most of those who spoke were talking about absolute zero by 2050 and not net zero with ‘get out of jail free’ offsets,” said Maggs. 

India, the UAE, Bahamas and Liberia were among the countries wanting to leave the door open to carbon offsets.

“It’s important that the IMO moves forward, focused on real in-sector emission reductions and not think it can instead use accountants to spirit away its climate impact,” said Maggs.

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That was the upshot of talks in the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) environment committee on Monday and Tuesday.

There was no consensus behind a specific proposal by three Pacific island nations – the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Kiribati – to make international shipping emissions-free by 2050.

While countries including the UK, US, Canada, Japan and Panama, which has the world’s largest flag registry, backed the resolution, major emerging economies including India, China, South Africa and Turkey, objected on equity grounds. They said the strategy needed to reflect differentiated responsibilities for climate change and deliver finance to help them decarbonise, with targets based on scientific data.

There were signs of broader support in principle for setting a zero, or net zero, target for the sector, which is responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions. This was influenced by the latest science and pressure emerging from this month’s Cop26 climate summit to do more.

“We have a clear majority for zero by 2050,” said Aoife O’Leary, a long-time observer of IMO negotiations and head of Opportunity Green, a non-profit focusing on international climate issues, including shipping. “I’m pleasantly surprised that the Cop26 momentum is holding, although it could be better and stronger.”

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Ships emit around one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. Without further action, shipping emissions are projected to reach 90-130% of their 2008 levels by 2050.

The IMO has a target of reducing international shipping’s emissions by at least 50% by 2050, compared to 2008 levels, which campaigners say is woefully inadequate and far from what is needed to limit global heating to 1.5C.

In the run-up to Cop26, UN chief Antonio Guterres singled out the shipping and aviation sectors for failing to set global targets consistent with meeting the 1.5C goal and called for shipping to be zero emissions by 2050.  “[These sectors’ targets] are more consistent with warming way above 3 degrees,” he said. 

At the summit in Glasgow, 14 nations, including the US, UK and several European countries, endorsed a declaration calling for zero emission shipping by 2050.

However some EU countries that signed the Cop declaration did not support the Pacific islands’ proposal, describing it as “waste of time”. They said efforts should instead be directed towards defining clear short-term targets and mandatory measures to implement these.

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“We believe it is not only important to highlight the need for an ambitious target for 2050 but also for absolute emission targets for 2030 and 2040,” one of Germany’s delegates at the IMO told Climate Home News.

“We are in favour of the adoption of a dedicated work plan for the revision of the initial strategy which includes [absolute 2030 and 2040] targets,” said the German delegate. Delegates for Spain and France told Climate Home that they opposed the resolution on similar grounds.

The IMO has a goal of reducing the sector’s carbon intensity – rather than its absolute emissions – by 40% by 2030, on 2008 levels. This translates to just a 2% reduction each year, whereas a 6–7% annual reduction is needed to be compatible with 1.5C, according to analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

While supportive of short term action, campaigners said a review of long term ambition could not wait until 2023.

“That’s two years lost during which a clearly stated new higher level of IMO ambition could have been influencing the development of appropriate new measures to cut shipping’s climate impact,”  John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, told Climate Home News. 

“In those two years the industry will have emitted around 20% of its total 1.5C carbon budget,” he said. 

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The main barrier to action is the belief that the transition can take place in the 2030s, said Maggs. “It has to happen in the 2020s. Shifting to zero by 2050 will help with this but only make a big difference if the logic of 1.5 degrees is translated into an ambitious 2030 target.”

“At the moment there are too many shipowners passing the buck and waiting for alternative fuels,” he said.

There was debate over whether a target should be for net zero or absolute zero emissions. India, the UAE, Bahamas and Liberia were among countries wanting to leave the door open to carbon offsets.

“The language regarding increased ambition and getting to zero by 2050 is very muddled at this point and, so far, has no teeth. There are references to net zero and carbon neutrality which are worrying, but currently countries are only making general comments about their positions,” Jim Gamble, the Arctic programme director at non-profit Pacific Environment, told Climate Home News,

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Under the agreement from Cop26, countries are asked to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate plans by the end of 2022 to align with the Paris temperature goals, “taking into account different national circumstances”.

The onus is on climate laggards such as Australia, China, India, Brazil and Russia, whose targets are all ranked as “highly” or even “critically insufficient” to meet the Paris Agreement goals by Climate Action Tracker (CAT). CAT analysis suggests that current policies put the world on course for 2.7C heating, an 0.2C improvement compared to last year but far from the 1.5C aspirational target of Paris.

Australia, the biggest laggard among rich nations, has already made it clear that it has no intention of strengthening its 2030 plan, which aims to reduce emissions by 26-28%, compared to 2005 levels. If all other countries followed a similar trajectory, it would set the world on a path for 4C of warming, according to CAT.

In a statement released just one day after the negotiations finished, Scott Morrison’s government said: “Australia’s 2030 target is fixed and we are committed to meeting and beating it, as we did with our Kyoto-era targets.”

During an interview with Australian media, the country’s deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said “we are happy with our 2030 targets… they are fixed.” When asked why his government adopted the pact, he said: “I didn’t sign it, I wasn’t there.”

The breakdown: What is in the Glasgow Climate Pact? 

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s former prime minister and president of the Asia Society, condemned the remarks, saying: “Countries like my own have not simply been granted a leave pass to do nothing for another five years — and they will now need to come back to the table by Cop27 next year.”

The climate minister of New Zealand, which has a “highly insufficient” 2030 climate target of 30% compared to 2005 levels, has also said they have no intention of revisiting it. James Shaw told national media that the pact encouraged countries to revise their targets, “but it doesn’t mean you have to”.

Shaw said: “There are some countries including the larger emitters, that didn’t upgrade their commitments and so that piece of language is really aimed at those countries.”

India is the biggest emitter not to have submitted an updated nationally determined contribution (NDC, in the UN climate jargon) to the Paris Agreement ahead of the Glasgow talks.

Prime minister Narendra Modi announced stronger targets in Glasgow, but has yet to formalise them – and national media later quoted an official saying the increased ambition was contingent on rich countries suppling $1 trillion of finance.

Cop26: After tense huddles in Glasgow, countries strike ‘uncomfortable’ climate deal

Others like China, Russia  and Brazil went through the motions of updating their NDCs but with no strengthening of headline targets.

“Only 25% of the emissions gap [to 1.5C] has been closed by the enhanced NDCs,” Deborah Ramalope from Climate Analytics told Climate Home News. “Most major emitters have the capabilities to aim higher,” she said, adding that new finance would help unlock ambition from countries such as India and Indonesia. 

One emerging economy that significantly increased its ambition before Cop26 was South Africa, boosted by an $8.5 billion package of support to reduce its reliance on coal.

“What we will need to see next year to enable any of the big emerging economies to come forward with more ambitious targets is more confidence that the finance they are going to need to implement those shifts will be available,”  Alex Scott, E3G’s climate diplomacy programme leader, told Climate Home News.

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The UK presidency has a key role to play over the next year to make it politically feasible for countries to increase their targets, said Scott.

Ahead of Cop27 in Egypt next year, the presidency should create “spaces for conversation” not just on emission reduction but also on developing country priorities like finance for climate-induced losses, added Scott, “so that when countries come together in Egypt they are able to have a serious dialogue on what finance looks like, rather than it ending up being a talking shop.”

A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency did not respond to Climate Home’s questions.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma told reporters: “This is an international agreement. All countries have signed up to this. Every country will be judged by whether or not they stick to the commitments they made.”

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The UK presidency’s aim for the talks was to “keep 1.5C alive”, referring to the most ambitious temperature target of the Paris Agreement.

Analysis by Climate Action Tracker suggests that current policies put us on course for a 2.7C world. The most optimistic reading of national commitments before and during the Cop26 summit bends the curve to 1.8C.

That leaves a gap that the deal seeks to narrow by requesting another round of national climate plans – both stronger 2030 targets and long-term strategies – next year. The package makes incremental progress on how to cope with the impacts already brought by 1.1C warming and mobilise support for developing countries.

“We can say with credibility that we have kept 1.5C within reach but its pulse is weak,” said Cop26 president Alok Sharma as the conference closed. “It will only survive if we keep our promises, if we translate commitments into rapid action and if we deliver on the expectations set out in this Glasgow Climate Pact to increase ambition to 2030 and beyond.”

On the Paris rulebook, common emissions reporting standards aim to prevent cheating. A compromise on carbon trading rules enables cash to flow to climate projects across borders and avoids some of the biggest potential loopholes, while still carrying a risk of greenwash.

Here is a breakdown of what was agreed.

Cop26: After tense huddles in Glasgow, countries strike ‘uncomfortable’ climate deal

Naming coal

The pact states that “limiting global warming to 1.5C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.” This means cutting emissions by 45% by 2030 and net zero by 2050, compared to 2010 levels.

It gets more specific than previous UN climate agreements on how to achieve that, calling for a scaling up of clean energy and “efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. The direct reference to coal is a first for the process, with the caveats around it reflecting the fact that many big emerging economies rely heavily on the fuel.

India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav said it was reasonable for developing countries to use fossil fuel subsidies, for example on cooking gas for low-income households. “Developing countries have a right to their fair share of the carbon budget,” he told ministers.

Despite the watered down language, Laurie van der Burg from Oil Change International told Climate Home News the reference to fossil fuels was an “important symbolic breakthrough”.

“This is a foot in the door for an urgently needed conversation about winding down coal, oil, and gas and ending all subsidies,” she said.

As part of the phasedown plans, the pact recognised the need to support a “just transition” away from fossil fuels, which can mean retraining coal miners or providing social security.

In another first, the document stresses the need to cut non-CO2 gases such as methane. And it emphasises the importance of “protecting, conserving and restoring nature” – avoiding the contentious phrase “nature-based solutions”.

India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav talks to Cop26 president Alok Sharma about changing the language of the final text from coal “phase out” to “phasedown” (Photo: Kiara Worth/UN Climate Change)

An extra ratchet

Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to review their climate plans every five years, with a view to raising ambition. Glasgow was the first test of that “ratchet” mechanism. While most countries brought some improvements to their targets and/or policies, there were some notable exceptions and collective action remained well off the pace to 1.5C.

Under the new pact, countries are asked to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate plans by the end of 2022 to align with the Paris temperature goals, “taking into account different national circumstances”.

David Waskow from the World Resources Institute said the clear time frame “would put the world on a path that will accelerate action”.

How much it can close the gap depends on which governments heed the call – with Australia for one quick to assert its 2030 target was “fixed”. Major emerging economies have indicated they are not keen to do yet another round of homework, particularly given the developed world has not come up with the cash it promised.

There was also a request for countries that have not yet done so to submit long-term strategies for reducing emissions “towards just transitions to net zero emissions by or around mid-century, taking into account different national circumstances”.

“Despite the Covid-19 crisis, we have accelerated action, the Cop has responded to the IPCC’s call to close the gap towards 1.5C, and coal is in the text,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement.

Late payment plan

Wealthy nations arrived in Glasgow having failed to deliver on a pledge to mobilise $100 billion a year between 2020 and 2025 to help countries cut emissions and cope with climate impacts. They were on track to pass the $100bn threshold in 2023 and promised to deliver $500bn over the period 2021-25.

Under the Glasgow climate pact, countries “noted with deep regret” that the finance goal had not been met and agreed to “significantly increase support” for developing countries beyond the $100bn annual target.

The pact “urges” developed countries to fully deliver on the goal “urgently and through to 2025”, emphasising the importance of transparency in setting how the pledge will be met. It “calls” on developed countries to provide greater clarity on their finance pledges.

The agreement doesn’t explicitly refer to meeting the shortfall of the $100bn goal as demanded by vulnerable nations. But Lorena Gonzalez, of the World Resources Institute, said the expression of “deep regret” was “unusual and encouraging”.

Glasgow kicked off a process to define a long-term climate finance goal beyond 2025, with biennial high-level ministerial dialogues on the topic to keep it in the political spotlight, starting in 2022.

China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and the Chinese delegation at Cop26 (Photo: Kiara Worth/UN Climate Change)

Cash to cope

The delivery of finance to adapt to the impacts of climate change was one of the most critical issues for developing countries.  

Developed countries pledged $356 million to the Adaptation Fund at Cop26, including first-time contributions from the US and Canada. While a record, it is far cry from meeting countries’ needs which are estimated in the trillions. The agreement “notes with concern that the current provision of climate finance for adaptation remains insufficient”.

About three quarters of the fund were pledged by the EU and its member states. The European Commission alone committed more than double the US pledge.  

A refusal by the US and other wealthy nations to link the provision of adaptation finance to bilateral carbon trading nearly derailed the talks in the final hours of negotiations on Saturday. African countries, which had pushed hardest for the measure, ultimately made do with a call for doubling adaptation finance from national contributions.

The pact “urges” developed countries “to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country parties from 2019 levels by 2025 in the context of achieving a balance between mitigation and adaptation”.  

The late inclusion of the 2019 baseline, the latest finance delivery data, in the text provides a concrete benchmark for quantifying the increase of finance that is committed – a clear call from vulnerable nations. But doubling on a national basis allows low contributors like the US to keep lagging Europe.

Taylor Dimsdale, programme director for risk and resilience at E3G, said: “The most climate vulnerable countries have thrown the major economies a lifeline by accepting an agreement that doesn’t go far enough but does take a step forward, particularly by doubling finance for adaptation. This must be met by more concrete plans and action next year.”

Cop26 president Alok Sharma discusses last-minute changes to the final Glasgow pact with delegates (Photo: Kiara Worth/UN Climate Change)

Defining adaptation

Countries agreed that more work was needed to define what a global goal on adaptation would look like. To do so, they established a two-year Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh work programme, passing the baton to the Egyptian presidency of the next Cop.  

The move was widely welcomed by developing countries.  

While there are well established methods for monitoring emissions and efforts to limit global temperature rise, finding a common metric for various ways of adapting to regional climate impacts is challenging.

As business leaders like to say, what gets measured gets managed – and finding a way to judge performance on adaptation is important for vulnerable communities to be able to hold their governments and the international community to account.

Under the text, countries recognised the value of combining both qualitative and quantitative approaches to review progress on adaptation. The objective of the work programme is to set out methodologies, indicators, data and metrics, and support needed to assess progress and it will aim to strengthen the implementation of adaptation actions in vulnerable countries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is due to release its next major scientific report on impacts and adaptation in March 2022, has been invited to inform this work.

Carbon trading is go

There were large cheers on the plenary floor when the gavel came down on the rules to establish a global carbon market and govern bilateral carbon trading. The fraught and complex issue had eluded consensus at the previous two UN climate summits.

The core tension was between countries like Brazil and India keen to attract finance for climate projects by selling carbon credits, who wanted to minimise obstacles to scaling up the market, and European and vulnerable countries defending its environmental integrity.

Brazil backed down from a proposal that would have allowed significant double counting of emissions reductions, undermining collective ambition.

But a push by Brazil, Russia, China and India to allow old carbon credits from the Kyoto Protocol era to transition to the Paris carbon market was partially successful. Under the rules, credits registered from 2013 will be allowed to be traded and used by countries towards meeting their climate plans.

Gilles Dufrasne, policy officer at Carbon Market Watch, said that would mean around 300 million cheap and poor-quality credits being allowed under the new market. This is “cleansing climate targets on paper but spoiling the atmosphere in reality,” he said.

The deal requires that 2% of credits traded under the centralised carbon market be cancelled, to tighten the overall reduction in emissions, but the measure is voluntary for credits trading bilaterally between countries. Carbon Market Watch says this means markets “will be used to shift pollution from one place to another” with little benefit for the climate.

Carbon market rule negotiators pose for a photo at the end of the Cop26 climate summit
(Photo: UN Climate Change/Flickr)

In a separate dispute over whether to earmark a share of revenues from bilateral and voluntary carbon trading to the Adaptation Fund, the US came out on top, quashing the proposal. African countries had hoped to gain a more predictable source of adaptation finance, but instead had to settle for assurances on voluntary contributions.

Finally, language on respecting, promoting and considering obligations on human rights, the right to health and of indigenous peoples and local communities made it into the text.  

Rachel Kyte, co-chair of an initiative calling for more rigour and transparency in voluntary carbon markets, said the agreement closed down some of the more outrageous loopholes that had been considered, “but the language remains unclear in some areas and we have much to do to stop companies and countries gaming the system”.  

“We have no room or time for markets like buckets of water, with 100 tiny holes. It will spill out and dilute the Paris Agreement and make keeping warming to 1.5C that much harder,” she said.

Dialogue for disaster

One of the most contentious issues during Cop26 was loss and damage: support for the victims of extreme weather and rising seas.

Developing countries fought hard for dedicated funding to those who lose their homes, lives and livelihoods as a result of the global overheating caused by fossil fuel burning and deforestation.

In the final days of the summit, a group known as the G77 and China, which represents 134 developing countries, put forward a proposal for a funding facility dedicated to the issue.

That was blocked by the US and EU. Rich countries have long resisted opening up another channel of climate finance, insisting that humanitarian aid can do the job.

Instead, they conceded to establish a Glasgow Dialogue “to discuss the arrangements for the funding of activities to avert, minimise and address loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change.”

Harjeet Singh from Climate Action Network said that some progress had been made, but without finance “we are walking in inches, when we must move in miles.”

There is also a plan to get the Santiago Network up and running to provide technical advice, and provide it with necessary funding. Germany has pledged €10 million ($11.5m) to the network.

“We are leaving empty handed but morally stronger and hopeful that we can sustain the momentum in the coming year to deliver meaningful support which will allow the vulnerables to deal with the irreversible impacts of climate change created by the polluting world who are failing to take responsibility,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Kenyan thinktank Power Shift Africa.

Patricia Espinosa celebrates the signing of the Glasgow Climate Pact (Photo: UN Climate Change/Flickr)

Deadlines optional

Countries agreed to “encourage” nations to set climate plans that cover a five-year time period beyond 2031. The issue of whether countries’ climate plans should cover a 5, 10-year period or whether each country should be free to decide was one of the last unresolved issues of the Paris rulebook.

Developing and vulnerable countries called for the next rounds of nationally determined contributions to cover a five-period, in line with the ambition cycle of the Paris Agreement. With backing from the EU, the US and China, a majority of countries supported the proposal. They see regular reviews as supporting urgent action.

But the language of the text was watered down, allowing nations like Russia wiggle room to determine the length of their next plans, which they are expected to submit to the UN in 2025.  

The final text “encourages” countries to communicate in 2025 a climate plan with an end date of 2035 “and so forth every five years thereafter”. 

“It’s complacency,” Yamide Dagnet, of the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home News.  

The no-cheat charter

Agreeing on a transparency framework to report greenhouse gas emissions reductions may sound like a simple task but it proved one of the most difficult negotiations in Glasgow.  

The US wanted to make sure China was held to rigorous reporting standards, while Beijing was not keen to be pinned down. Arguments came down to details like the structure of spreadsheets.

It matters because weak carbon accounting can allow countries to cheat, particularly when it comes to forests and methane – two areas where many are promising action. An investigation by the Washington Post estimated that global emissions are 16-23% higher than reported.

A push by Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Arab Group and China on behalf of a group of “like-minded” developing countries for nations not to all have to use the same tables and format in their reporting was scrapped from the final deal.

Developing countries with low emissions have been granted some flexibility if they don’t have the capacity to meet all the reporting criteria. The agreement further “recognises” the need for enhanced financial support for developing countries to comply with the rules, including though the Global Environment Facility.  

Countries are expected to use the new framework to report their emissions by 2024.

The post The breakdown: What is in the Glasgow Climate Pact? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate justice activists hope that a Cop in Africa will raise awareness about the severe climate impacts facing the continent and deliver more support for adaptation and loss and damage.

Under the UN system of regional rotation, it is the turn of an African nation to host the climate summit. On Thursday, Egypt was officially approved to hold the presidency of Cop27, followed by the United Arab Emirates in 2023.

“The hard work put in by the UK presidency deserves to be rewarded and will be rewarded,”  Egypt’s environment minister Yasmine Fouad told ministers. “Our commitment as the next president is to carry the torch and build on the success of the current presidency…

“Egypt has and continues to be a strong believer and supporter of multilateralism. In today’s world nothing becomes more challenging, active and dynamic in multilateralism than climate change.”

Draft Glasgow pact calls on countries to submit new climate plans by 2022 

The agenda will include work to develop a global goal on adaptation to the impacts of climate change and a post-2025 climate finance target from 2025.

“We are inheriting a heavy [legacy] from Glasgow,” Egypt’s lead climate negotiator Mohamed Nasr told Climate Home News. “If you look at the decisions coming out here, a lot of follow up is needed in Egypt.”

Nasr added: “It is a Cop in Africa so resilience and adaptation will be at the core of it.”

Egypt is a member of the Adaptation Action Coalition launched by UK prime minister Boris Johnson this year. 

“It’s a big job – the UK has raised the bar too high. This was much better than any other Cop I’ve attended. There is collective understanding and commitment to move forward,” Nasr said.

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African activists and observers told Climate Home News they were hopeful an African Cop would deliver a more positive outcome for them than Cop26.

“The fact that Cop is going to be in Africa is one of the opportunities for the most affected people to raise their voices,” Patience Nabukalu, a 23-year-old climate justice activist from Uganda, told Climate Home News.

“When we were coming to Cop26, we hoped for a lot because between 2018 and 2021, we have seen wildfires, floods and seen people dying. When we came to Cop26, they had no solutions,” she said.

“Cop26 was meant to keep 1.5 alive, yet the current draft text would deliver a 2.4C world. That is a death sentence for communities like mine,” said Kenyan youth activist Elizabeth Wathuti.

“I don’t know what Cop27 in Egypt will bring, but it cannot succeed unless it is people-centred and delivers an outcome that protects the lives and livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

‘Nature-based solutions’ prove divisive at Glasgow climate talks

“An African Cop gives us a good opportunity to address some of the issues that have not been given prominence here at Cop26, issues of importance for people in Africa and voices from the south like finance for adaptation and loss and damage,” Obed Koringo, Care International’s civil society coordinator, told Climate Home News.

“Cop27 is do or die for us, the ultimate Cop where key elements that haven’t been completed here in Glasgow will have to be dealt with. It’s a great opportunity for us in Africa to mobilise and push for a Cop that reflects the needs and rights of those from the region,” he said.

In 2023, it is the turn of UAE to host.

“We have an even better relationship with the UAE [than the UK]: same region, same climate challenges,” Nasr said. “It will be the perfect time to show the world that this region is also part of the global action towards climate change,” Nasr added, in a nod to the reputation of Gulf oil and gas producers as blockers.

“It will be a good chance to show what this part of the world is really doing,” he said.

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The document, which is an updated version of an earlier proposal, recognises that national pledges to date are insufficient to hold global warming “well below 2C” and aiming for 1.5C, the goals agreed in Paris.

The text “requests parties to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their nationally determined contributions as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022.”

“This is definitely a stronger and more balanced text than a few days ago,” Helen Mountford, vice president for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute (WRI), said in a press briefing.

“It maintains the language around coming back to revisit and strengthen targets in 2022. Setting a time frame around that is absolutely essential to putting us on a path that will accelerate action,” said David Waskow of the World Resources Institute.

There was a flurry of debate over whether the verb used – “requests” – was stronger or weaker than “urges” in the previous draft. A Cop26 presidency official said “requests” was stronger and in line with language in the Paris Agreement.

It is all subject to change as Cop26 talks reach their endgame. Experts said many elements of the draft would breach countries’ red lines, requiring negotiators to call their capitals and seek a mandate to compromise.

‘Nature-based solutions’ prove divisive at Glasgow climate talks

The proposal reflects the urgency of the situation and the need for a rapid increase in ambition, the WRI experts said. The latest pledges for action this decade set the world on track for 2.4C of warming, according to analysis published by Climate Action Tracker this week. 

The text states that different national circumstances will be taken into account. “That is helpful for the most vulnerable, least developed countries who are simply not in a position to revisit and strengthen [their targets]. This needs to be aimed at the largest emitters,” Waskow said. 

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However, big emerging economies are resistant to being held to the same standard as the rich countries responsible for the majority of historic pollution.

In a stocktaking plenary on Friday afternoon, China’s environment minister Zhao Yingmin said countries should be allowed “space and time” to implement their climate targets.

Bolivia, speaking for the like-minded developing country grouping, stressed the principle of common but differentiated responsibility: rich countries should act first and fastest.

A space is opening up to discuss oil and gas exit at Cop26. Lobbyists are pushing back

Language around phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies remains in the second draft, with more caveats. It calls for the phase out of “unabated” coal power and of “inefficient” subsidies for fossil fuels.

The new language could help some countries that try to keep fossil fuel subsidies for low-income households, but it could also allow polluters to retain subsidies, the WRI experts said.

“The key line on phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies has been critically weakened, but it’s still there and needs to be strengthened again before this summit closes. That’s going to be a big tussle and one we need to win,” Greenpeace’s Jennifer Morgan said.  

Strong pushback is expected from countries like Australia and Saudi Arabia.

For others like India, acceptance of strong language on cutting emissions will be conditional on clearer commitments by rich countries to scale up climate finance. The draft text “notes with deep regret” that a target to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 has not been met.

“With every year of delay in climate action, we are reducing the available carbon space for developing countries to grow,” said Arunabha Ghosh, head of Delhi-based think-tank CEEW, in an emailed statement.

“If developed countries are serious about the climate crisis, they need to fulfil past promises and rapidly scale up support for loss and damage. The delivery of $100 billion can also no longer be delayed.”

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A draft decision published on Wednesday emphasised “the critical importance of nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches, including protecting and restoring forests, to reducing emissions, enhancing removals and protecting biodiversity”.

While the importance of nature featured in the negotiated outcome of Cop25 in Madrid, if adopted it would be the first time “nature-based solutions” made it into a UN climate pact.

On Friday, the term nature-based solutions was replaced with the phrase “protecting, conserving and restoring nature” in an updated version of the text.

Supporters see nature-based solutions as a way to connect the climate and biodiversity agendas, setting the scene for an effective biodiversity deal in Kunming, China next year. Critics object to the implied commodification of the natural world and say the term is misused by big business to justify continued pollution.

Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement, said at a press conference on Thursday that she hoped nature-based solutions would make it into the final pact. “It’s good that we are going away from the vision of nature being offsets – and more towards the idea of restoration, of nature being an important element of the climate package,” she said. 

“More and more we will see that it is impossible to distinguish between biodiversity and climate. They’re two parts of the same problem,” she said.

A space is opening up to discuss oil and gas exit at Cop26. Lobbyists are pushing back. 

An observer of the talks told Climate Home News that the UK, Colombia, France, the EU, US, Singapore, Fiji, DRC, Mexico, Norway, Australia, Canada and Liberia are all pushing for nature-based solutions to be included in the final Cop26 text.

At a meeting of heads of delegation on Wednesday, Bolivian negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza objected to the phrase on behalf of the like-minded development countries (LMDCs).

“This text assumes that nature is only in service of people’s needs, but nature has an intrinsic value. It is sacred. That must be reflected. ‘Nature-based solutions’ were never negotiated here,” Bolivia’s negotiator said, as reported by an observer who attended the meeting. 

China, the host country for biodiversity talks in April, is a member of the LMDCs. The Chinese delegation did not make anyone available to comment.

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Gavin Edwards, WWF’s nature lead at Cop26, told Climate Home News that the inclusion highlights that “nature has truly arrived in the climate discourse” and helps “bridge the silo between the nature and climate community”.

He said that if the final Cop26 text references nature-based solutions, it will “strengthen the hand for it to be included in the CBD [Kunming biodiversity agreement]”. It was removed from an early draft of the biodiversity convention following opposition by some African governments, Brazil and Argentina.

“It will be very hard for [nature-based solutions] not to be an outcome in the CBD if it is agreed at Cop[26],” said Edwards. “More governments are keen to link these two agendas, of biodiversity and climate. Nature-based solutions [provide] that linkage.”

Indigenous delegates at Cop26 (Photo: UNFCCC/Flickr)

Indigenous leaders from forest regions have mixed feelings about the concept, stressing that it must come with safeguards for their rights.

“Our position is that indigenous governance is the quintessential nature-based solution. Therefore, indigenous peoples’ governance should be recognised and supported as a nature-based solution. For other nature-based solutions projects, there should be safeguards and full respect for indigenous peoples’ rights,” Jing Corpuz, an Igorot leader from the Philippines and policy lead at the non-profit Nia Tero, told Climate Home News.

Genilda Maria Rodrigues, an indigenous observer from the Kaingang community in southern Brazil, said she welcomes nature-based solutions as restoration of forests is urgently needed in her region. “We are approaching the point of no return,” she said. “We want someone to help our community reforest the area…

“But it’s very important that it is done in a transparent way. We don’t want it [done in] any way, but in the right way, with the consultation of the indigenous community,” she added.

China-US announce deal at Cop26 to accelerate climate action this decade

There are also concerns that polluters could use nature-based projects to offset rather than reduce their own emissions.

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International, told Climate Home News, that nature-based solutions often “become synonymous with carbon offsets”.

“When they do, they end up compounding the injustice of climate change,” she said, adding that there is currently no official definition, criteria or safeguarding mechanism for nature-based solutions. 

“We’d rather see language that recognises the critical importance of biodiversity and ecosystems to addressing the climate crisis, that doesn’t set up nature for being a solution to corporations’ pollution,” she said.

This article was updated on 12 November 2021 to reflect new language in the Cop26 cover text. 

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Electrifying the car industry took centre stage on “transport day” of the climate summit, in line with UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s slogan for the summit of “coal, cars, cash and trees”. There were also headline events on decarbonising shipping and aviation.

But an announcement on phasing out the internal combustion engine on Wednesday underwhelmed – leading many delegates to question why bikes, buses, trains and walking had not been given higher billing.

While a group of governments and companies signed up to eliminate new car emissions by 2040, the world’s top two automakers and major markets Germany, China and the US were not among them.

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In European cities, choosing a bike over a car for one journey a day cuts an average person’s transport emissions by 67%, according to research by the University of Oxford.

Outside the conference centre, campaigners gathered on their bikes, calling for increased funding in public transport as well as walking and cycling paths.

How much focus will there be today on #transport day at #COP26 on #bikes #cycling #mobility shift #publictransport #buses #trains or will it be all about #cars? We can’t just replace petrol/diesel cars with #ElectricVehicles pic.twitter.com/A29yfKKXN8

— Philippa Nuttall (@PhilippaNuttall) November 10, 2021

“I’m genuinely shocked by the absence of active travel in the COP26 transport discussions. Decarbonising road transport is a key part in tackling the climate crisis. We need fewer motor vehicles and those we do have, need to be cleaner/greener,” Will Norman, the mayor of London’s walking and cycling commissioner, said on Twitter.

“So unbelievably disappointing and elitist to present EV cars as the solution,” tweeted Sophie Eastwood.

Climate scientist Richard Betts tweeted in praise of the host city’s hire bike scheme and said better infrastructure was needed to make cycling an easier choice.

Public transport must double in cities over the next decade to meet the 1.5C target, according to analysis by C40 cities published on Wednesday.

Daniel Firth, transport and urban planning director at C40 Cities, told Climate Home News: “If we stopped the sale of fossil fuel vehicles tomorrow it would take 15-20 years to have 100% [zero emission vehicles] because of the time it takes to change the whole fleet. So it would take too long if that was our only strategy. Whereas we could start putting in bike lanes and bus lanes tomorrow.”

https://twitter.com/bikingbotanist/status/1458385857338122242

“It’s a missed opportunity,” Henk Swarttouw, president of the European Cyclists’ Federation, told Climate Home News. “Cycling is low-tech, low-cost and low-investment and provides quick climate wins,” he said.

“At the political level, leaders must confirm that the solution to reducing emissions needs to be a package that includes the electrification of vehicles, public transport and cycling,” Swarttouw said. “It’s not either or.”

The coronavirus pandemic led to a huge surge in cycling. In the UK, miles cycled per person increased by 62% during 2020, the highest levels since 2002. Each kilometre travelled by bike instead of car saves an average of 150 grams of CO2 emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme. “You could reach half a tonne over the year,” said Swarttouw.

Transport week at #COP26 so I think it’s time we started talking VERY LOUDLY about this wonderful crisis-beating machine and what it can give us all https://t.co/VCPDFms7mt

— Chris Boardman CBE (@Chris_Boardman) November 8, 2021

Increasing investment in green public transport, cycling and walking is part of the UK government’s 10-point plan for a “green industrial revolution, along with accelerating a shift to zero emissions vehicles. A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency had not responded to Climate Home’s questions at time of publication.

The post As Cop26 car pledge underwhelms, delegates ask: where are the bikes? appeared first on Climate Home News.

They say there is a serious risk of misinformation derailing the Cop26 presidency’s efforts to keep 1.5C hopes alive and global efforts to reduce emissions.

In an open letter, they urge the Cop26 presidency to adopt a universal definition of climate misinformation and include action to address this in the text published at the end of the summit. That definition would cover deceptive or misleading online content, which either denies human influence on climate change or publicises greenwashing.

“The threat to Cop26 and climate action is not abstract, we have seen misinformation derail conferences before,” the letter states. In 2018, a far-right misinformation campaign pressured European parties to drop support for a UN global compact on migration.

“The compact was actively derailed by coordinated attacks via social media platforms,” Harriet Kingaby, co-founder of the Conscious Advertising Network who launched the campaign, told Climate Home News. “The [false] message being spread was that it was a legally binding contract, that anyone criticising migration at all was going to be jailed.”

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The letter has more than 250 signatories, including Cop sponsors Sky and SSE, Tubiana and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, president of Cop20 in Lima and WWF’s global climate lead. It urges social media giants to introduce climate misinformation policies and enforcement, similar to those published in response to the widespread problem of misleading posts about Covid-19 vaccines.

“The impact of climate misinformation is not merely neatly contained within the edges of a social media post: it distracts from real climate solutions, and wastes time presenting false ones,” Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, told Climate Home News.

“Misinformation threatens progress on climate by undermining public trust and support for the urgent action needed to limit global warming to 1.5C. We cannot let it take the wind out of the sails of the climate movement,” Pulgar-Vidal said by email. “Cop26 must commit governments to taking real action to tackle deceptive and misleading climate claims.”

The issue was not on a list of potential elements of a Glasgow agreement published on Sunday. To be added, it would need the backing of a national delegation. A first draft of the summit outcome was due to be published on Tuesday night.

Comment: To keep 1.5C alive, the super rich must change their high carbon lifestyles

Recent examples of climate misinformation include US rightwing pundits blaming power outages in Texas on frozen wind turbines, when in fact gas plants were a bigger problem, and trolls falsely claiming on Facebook that arson by environmental campaigners was to blame for the Australian bushfires.

Misinformation on Facebook is “rampant” and “increasing quite substantially”, according to a report published last week by the Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent watchdog and the environmental NGO Stop Funding the Heat.

Analysis of 48,700 Facebook posts found between 818,000 and 1.36 million daily views of climate misinformation. Just 3.6% of the misleading content identified had been fact-checked. Facebook pledged to flag climate denial content earlier this year and pass it onto its Climate Science Information Centre.

Analysis by Newsguard and Comscore published this summer found that each year an average of $2.6 billion is being spent by big brands advertising on misinformation sites.

Canada, US, Italy among 20 countries to stop financing fossil fuels internationally

During a speech to the climate summit on Monday, former US president Barack Obama referenced the threat climate misinformation poses to global negotiations. 

“International cooperation has always been difficult. It’s made more difficult by all the misinformation and propaganda that can flood out through social media these days. Business leaders, let’s face it, are typically rewarded for boosting short term profits, not addressing major social issues,” he told world leaders.

Kingaby said that the US has an important role to play in tackling misinformation as many major social media companies are based there. “If they are as committed to climate action as they say they are, this is a hugely important step towards fixing the problem,” she said.

The US delegation declined to comment.

The post Laurence Tubiana leads call for crackdown on climate misinformation in Glasgow pact appeared first on Climate Home News.

One week ahead of Cop26, the Gulf state announced it will slash its emissions to net zero by 2060 and strengthen its carbon target this decade – subject to revenue from exporting oil and gas.

Neither target counts the emissions from the burning of huge amounts of oil that Saudi Arabia exports to other countries, leaving climate watchers unimpressed. The Gulf state pumps one in 10 oil barrels consumed each day in the world.

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman announced he would invest 700 billion riyals ($187 billion) in climate action this decade and stressed that Saudi Arabia would continue producing oil and gas. The targets would be achieved “while preserving and reinforcing the kingdom’s leading role in the security and stability of global energy markets, with the availability and maturity of required technologies to manage and reduce emissions,” he said at an environment summit in Riyadh on Saturday, before meeting with US climate envoy John Kerry on Monday.

In its submission to the UN, the Kingdom said that by 2030 it would reduce, avoid and remove 278 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year. That is more than double its previous target of 130 million tonnes, which was ranked “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker.

Observers at the Riyadh event tweeted that this amounted to a 35% reduction in emissions from business as usual.

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Half of the country’s electricity in 2030 will come from renewables, according to the updated plan. Today less than 1% of Saudi Arabia’s power comes from solar, with the rest generated by burning oil and gas. The Kingdom said in March that it would plant 10 billion trees over the coming decades to combat desertification and reduce emissions. 

To cut its emissions, the government said it would use a “circular carbon economy” approach, which means relying on carbon capture and storage to allow continued use of fossil fuels.

Following the government announcement, state oil firm Saudi Aramco said it would cut emissions from its operations to net zero by 2050. That applies to oil production and processing, known as scope 1 and 2, but not the much higher emissions when the fuel is consumed, scope 3.

In its new climate plan, the Kingdom signed up to a global methane pledge, joining more than 30 countries aiming to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030. At the same time, Aramco is considering an increase its oil production from 12 million to 13 million barrels a day.

“The Saudis see robust long-term demand for their crude oil, even as global oil demand shrinks. Saudi Arabia has enormous resources as well as the world’s lowest production costs. As non-Opec supply gradually declines, their comparative advantage will be clear and their market share should grow,” Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Climate Home News. “At the same time, the net-zero pledge raises the pressure for Saudi Arabia to decarbonise its oil and gas production.”

“Saudi Arabia makes no plan to reduce its fossil fuel exports. In fact the Saudi announcement makes its climate commitments conditional on its ability to maintain its fossil fuel exports,” Karim Elgendy, associate fellow in the environment and society programme at Chatham House, told Climate Home News.

Revealed: Cop26 sponsor National Grid spewing methane across England

Climate campaigners said to be truly ambitious, Saudi Arabia needed to phase down oil production.

“We question the seriousness of this announcement, as it comes in parallel with plans for the Kingdom to increase its oil production to 13 million barrels per day,” Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa campaigns manager Ahmad El Droubi said in a statement. “[It] seems to simply be a strategic move to alleviate political pressure ahead of COP26,” he added.

“Scopes 1, 2 and 3 and then there is Scope Saudi,” Rachel Kyte, former adviser to the UN secretary general on sustainable energy, wrote on Twitter. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that investors should not fund new oil, gas and coal supply projects beyond this year if the world is to meet net zero by 2050, in line with a 1.5C global warming limit. Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman previously mocked the IEA’s 2050 target, calling it “a sequel to [the] ‘La La Land’ movie”.

The target depends on using oil revenues to diversify the economy. The climate plan outlines two scenarios. In one, oil export revenues are used to build high value industries like financial services, tourism and clean energy. In the other, oil and gas are used at home as a feedstock for petrochemicals or energy source for heavy industry. The speed and extent of economic diversification could depend on oil prices and export revenues, said Elgendy.

According to analysis by the state-backed think tank Kapsarc, oil’s share of Saudi Arabia’s total GDP has declined from 65% in 1991 to 42% in 2019.

Jim Krane, energy geopolitics expert at Rice University in Houston, said: “Saudi Arabia is serious about cutting emissions and fossil fuel use, but mostly inside its own borders. For the Saudi net zero goal to succeed, Riyadh needs the world to continue buying and burning its oil.”

Saudi Arabia and UAE, which made a similar commitment earlier this month, are using their goals to “buy influence in climate talks,” said Krane.

The post Saudi Arabia pledges net zero by 2060, but no oil exit plan appeared first on Climate Home News.

In 2014, more than 200 governments, companies, civil society and indigenous organisations signed up to the New York Declaration on Forests, promising to halve tropical deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030.

A progress report on the declaration found that a majority of forest nations have not embedded those goals in their latest climate pledges to the UN.

The report analysed the climate plans of the 32 countries with the greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions through three activities: curbing deforestation, improving forest management and restoring or planting new forests. Twelve of the 32 had signed up to the NY declaration. Just 10, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, set explicit targets for forest protection.

“We found that they cover approximately half of the [combined mitigation] potential with their ambition. If we take out India, which has a very ambitious target for tree planting, it’s only 16%,” Franziska Haupt, lead author of the report and managing partner at Climate Focus, told Climate Home News. India has pledged to increase its forest cover by 95 million hectares by 2030. 

Green Climate Fund: Board fights over net zero condition for accessing finance

There have been some successful policies, such as moratoria on timber exports and palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Laos, but much bolder reforms are needed to prevent further forest loss, the report says.

“It is clear that all these positive steps have not been able to curb the powerful drivers of unsustainable land use,” said Haupt. In several countries, such as Brazil and Peru, the government has rolled back environmental safeguards and monitoring in recent years, leading to an increase in deforestation, she added.

Land use change, including deforestation and degradation, accounts for around 10-12% of global emissions, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Around 12.2 million hectares of tropical forests were lost in 2020, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year, according to data from the University of Maryland and Global Forest Watch.

“Forests have not been recognised for their potential. They offer an essential climate solution, we cannot miss them. That has not really arrived in mainstream policymaking,” said Haupt. 

Between 2001-2020, forests removed up to 7.35 gigatonnes of CO2 a year from the atmosphere, according to the report. Forests managed by indigenous communities in Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are net carbon sinks and can play a key role in helping these countries meet their climate goals, it says.

UAE sets net zero by 2050 target, promises renewable investments

One major obstacle to ramping up global forest protection is the lack of finance, said Haupt. 

Since 2010, countries have spent an average of $2.4 billion a year on national and international forest and climate goals. That is between 0.5%-5% of what is needed to protect and restore forests, estimated to be as high as $460 billion per year. Around a quarter of the 32 countries analysed say that their forest targets can only be met if they have access to international finance. 

“Forests offer the third highest mitigation potential, after the industry and energy sectors, yet they receive only a fraction of climate finance,” Haupt told Climate Home. “In 2017 and 2018 the land use sector – including forests and agriculture – received only 21 billion annually in public and private climate finance. The energy sector received 16 times as much.”

“When it comes to protecting forests, there is a yawning gap between where governments are and where they need to be. We won’t tackle climate change without looking after forests and the people who depend on them,” said Allison Hoare, senior research fellow on forest governance at Chatham House.

“We have the solutions to tackle deforestation, but they are still not being implemented at scale. Land use decisions are often made by the elite who prioritise short-term economic interests,” said Hoare, adding that forest-dependent communities must be included in consultation processes.

The post Countries failing to protect forests, 7 years after New York declaration appeared first on Climate Home News.