Brazil is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon forest, which is being cleared at an increasing rate to create more cropland.

The Amazon is vital to the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – a check on global warming – but concern about the forest has grown since Bolsonaro took office in January.

“They can use this money as they see fit. Brazil doesn’t need it,” Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, told journalists in Brasilia.

His comments came after Germany on Saturday said it would block payment of €35 million ($40 million) to Brazil for forest conservation and biodiversity programs until the Amazon’s rate of decline attained encouraging levels once again.

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Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said on Tuesday that roughly 2,254 square kilometres of the Amazon were cleared in July, a spike of 278% from a year earlier.

“Brazilian government policies in the Amazon raise doubts about continued, sustained declines in the rate of deforestation,” German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze told the television news show Tagesspiegel.

From 2008 until this year, Berlin paid 95 million euros in support of various environmental protection programs in Brazil.

Germany nonetheless plans to continue supporting the Amazon Fund, a forest preservation initiative created in 2008.

Norway, which has contributed the most to the fund, has threatened to withdraw, and said last year that payments to Brazil would be cut in half and might be eliminated altogether.

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

Asked Sunday by a reporter about Brazil’s image abroad, Bolsonaro replied with another provocation.

“You think that the big countries are interested in Brazil’s image, or do they want to appropriate Brazil?” he said.

A week before the INPE numbers were released, the institute’s chief Ricardo Galvao was fired, and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles charged that INPE published its data in a way that satisfied “sensationalist interpretations” aimed at getting “more donations from foreign NGOs”.

Bolsonaro has been accused of favoring his supporters in the logging, mining and farming sectors. He has pledged to allow more farming and logging in the Amazon, and to grant more licenses to the mining industry.

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The threat came as Indonesia faced pressure from its neighbours to douse the blazes, which are blamed for sending air quality plummeting in parts of Southeast Asia.

“I’ve told the military and police chiefs to sack people who don’t tackle forest fires,” Widodo told a ministers meeting on the issue in Jakarta.

“We’ll be humiliated in front of other countries if we can’t solve this haze problem.

“No matter how small the fire is, put it out immediately,” he added.

Indonesian authorities are deploying thousands of extra personnel to prevent a repeat of the 2015 fires, which were the worst for two decades and choked the region in haze for weeks.

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

The blazes are an annual problem during the dry season but they have worsened in recent weeks. Many of the worst fires occur in carbon-rich peat, which is highly combustible once drained to make way for agricultural plantations.

Widodo said the 2015 fires caused some 221 trillion rupiah ($15.5 billion) in financial losses and burned about 2.6 million hectares of land.

“That should never happen again,” Widodo said.

Officials from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei discussed the pollution issue at an annual meeting in Brunei which wrapped up Tuesday, Malaysia’s environment ministry said.

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Malaysia will ask participants to “take pro-active action” to make sure that forest and peat fires in Southeast Asian countries can be controlled to avoid haze, the ministry said in a statement ahead of the gathering.

Malaysia said smog had appeared around Kuala Lumpur and on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia due to fires on Indonesia’s Sumatra island and the Indonesian part of Borneo island.

Air quality dipped to unhealthy levels in some parts of Malaysia last week. Conditions were better Tuesday afternoon, with air quality recorded as “moderate” in many places.

Stinky seaweed chokes American coast due to hotter oceans and deforestation

Skies over Singapore looked hazy with the environment agency saying that air quality was moderate.

Last week, Indonesia sent almost 6,000 extra personnel from the military, police and disaster agency to fight the blazes while an emergency has been declared in six provinces.

“We’re working hard and doing everything we can to stop the fires so [the haze] will not reach neighbouring countries,” Indonesian disaster agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was out at sea, however.

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

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

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

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

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

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

July breaks global heat record, on scorching European weather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“While July is usually the warmest month of the year for the globe, according to our data it also was the warmest month recorded globally, by a very small margin,” Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.

“With continued greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impact on global temperatures, records will continue to be broken in the future.”

Searing heatwaves saw records tumble across Europe last month, with unusually high temperatures within the Arctic Circle as well.

Temperatures averaged across July rose highest compared with a 1981-2010 benchmark in Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, central Asia, Iran and large swathes of Antarctica, Copernicus reported.

Africa and Australia were also well above average across most of each continent.

Poland faces threat of water crisis as rivers dry up

Globally, July 2019 was marginally warmer – by 0.04C – than the previous record-hot month, July 2016.

The new record is all the more notable because the 2016 record followed a strong El Nino weather event, which boosts average global temperates beyond the impact of global warming alone.

The Copernicus service is the first of the world’s major satellite-based climate monitoring networks to report average July temperatures.

The margin of increase is small enough, it noted in a press release, that other networks -such as the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – may report temperatures equal to or slightly below the July 2016 record.

“Typically, there is a difference between the values provided by the global temperature datasets of various institutions, and the Copernicus difference between July 2019 and 2016 temperatures is smaller than this margin,” the agency said in a statement.

Accurate temperature records extend into the 19th century, starting around 1880.

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The data follows analysis from an international team of scientists on Friday concluding the heatwaves across much of northern Europe in July were 1.5-3C hotter due to manmade climate change.

The three-day peak saw temperature records tumble in Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain and the city of Paris experienced its hottest ever day with the mercury topping out at 42.6C (108.7F) on July 25.

The ferocious heat came off the back of a similar wave of soaring temperatures in June, helping that month to be the hottest June since records began.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution team combined climate modelling with historical heatwave trends and compared it with in situ monitoring across the continent.

They concluded that the temperatures in the climate models were between 1.5-3C lower than those observed during the heatwave in Europe.

“In all locations an event like the observed would have been 1.5 to 3C cooler in an unchanged climate,” the WWA said, adding that the difference was “consistent with increased instances of morbidity and mortality.”

Marseille airport expansion stalled on climate grounds

Global warming also made the July heatwave in some countries between 10-100 times more likely to occur, compared with computer simulations.

Such temperature extremes in northern Europe, without the additional 1C centigrade humans have added to the atmosphere since the industrial era, would be expected on average once every 1000 years.

“Climate change had therefore a major influence to explain such temperatures,” the WWA said.

The July heatwave caused widespread disruption, prompting train cancellations and emergency measures in many cities. Several heat-related deaths were reported, though a precise toll is likely to take weeks to materialise.

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Glacial melting and maritime traffic are threatening multiple species off the coast of Baffin Island, in Canada’s northeastern Arctic archipelago.

“Populations of belugas, narwhals, walruses, seals, polar bears and thousands of other species who depend on year-round sea ice to survive are now migrating, dwindling, or in some cases, disappearing,” Trudeau said during a visit to Iqaluit, in the eastern territory of Nunavut.

The prime minister, who is seeking reelection in three months, has made environmental protection and reconciliation with indigenous populations two main priorities.

“For Inuit who have relied on hunting and harvesting to feed their families, climate change imperils their livelihoods and their way of life,” he said.

According to Trudeau, the protected region would help the Canadian government surpass its goal to protect 10% of marine and coastal regions by 2020.

The liberal leader also pointed out his government had recently invested in modernising the Coast Guard, launching two Arctic patrol vessels to increase protection for national interests in the region.

“Our government is committed to enforcing Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic in partnership with the people who have lived here for (millennia),” Trudeau said.

The Arctic region is highly coveted by multiple global powers for its resources and access to navigation in the far north, made easier by melting glaciers.

The post Trudeau announces protected marine area in Canada’s Arctic appeared first on Climate Home News.

Abiy is leading by example as Ethiopia plans to plant a mind-boggling four billion trees by October, as part of a global movement to restore forests to help fight climate change and protect resources.

The country says it has planted nearly three billion trees already since May.

On Monday, state employees were given the day off as Abiy sought to get the rest of the country involved, and the government claimed a “record-breaking” 350 million trees were planted in only one day.

“I think we demonstrated the capacity for people to come together collectively and deliver on a shared vision,” Billene Seyoum, Abiy’s press secretary, told AFP.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

The figure has attracted scepticism about the sheer number of volunteers this would require, and the logistics involved.

“I personally don’t believe that we planted this much,” said Zelalem Worqagegnehu, a spokesman for the opposition Ezema party.

“It might be impossible to plant this many trees within a day.”

Yet Zelalem also noted that hundreds of members of his party planted trees of their own on Monday, and suggested the actual total was beside the point.

“We took this as a good opportunity to show solidarity with the citizens,” he said. “Our concern is the green legacy, making Ethiopia green.”

Ethiopia’s forest cover declined from around 40% half a century ago to around 15% today, said Abiyot Berhanu, director of the Ethiopian
Environment and Forest Research Institute.

“Deforestation has become very grave in many parts of Ethiopia,” he said.

EU moots crackdown on deforestation through supply chains

The recent tree-planting drive has targeted areas that have been stripped of their trees over the years, Billene said. The types of new trees planted have varied from region to region.

“A lot of nurseries have been working on producing more saplings over the past couple months,” Billene said, while some of the saplings and seedlings had come from abroad.

Reforestation is a major component of global initiatives to recapture carbon emissions. It can also purify water, produce oxygen and bolster farmers’ incomes, said Tim Christophersen, chair of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration.

But Christophersen said planting trees was only the first step.

“The most important factor is grazing pressure. If you plant a tree and a day later the goats come along they will absolutely eat the tree first before they eat the dry grass next to it,” he said. “We don’t speak so much about planting trees but about growing trees.”

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He said planting 350 million trees would require about 350,000 hectares (864,000 acres) — an area bigger than Luxembourg — and added that a volunteer could realistically plant about 100 trees a day.

“It is not impossible, but it would take a very well organised effort,” he told AFP.

He said that Ethiopia was one of only five countries ranked as having a “sufficiently ambitious” contribution to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the UN’s pact to curb global warming.

Trees take in carbon from the air as part of the process of photosynthesis and store it in their leaves, branches and trunks.

Abiy’s tree-planting drive is part of a national environmental campaign, known as the Green Legacy Initiative, that includes cleaning waterways and making agriculture more sustainable.

164 land defenders murdered in 2018, Global Witness reports

Billene said the turnout Monday indicated that the prime minister’s environmentally-friendly message was resonating.

“Everyone was clear and understood the long-term vision,” she said. “They actually bought into the benefits of what it means to have a green country.”

If Ethiopia really did plant 350 million trees on Monday, it would have smashed the current world record of around 50 million held by the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

However an official determination may have to wait. So far, Ethiopia has not attempted to register its achievement with Guinness World Records Limited, spokeswoman Jessica Dawes told AFP in an email.

“We are always on the lookout for new record breaking achievements however, and so we would encourage the organisers of this event to get in touch with us to register an application,” Dawes said.

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The charity watchdog’s annual land defenders report found “countless” more people were silenced through violence, intimidation and the use and misuse of anti-protest laws across the world.

By far the most dangerous place for activists and indigenous communities was the Philippines, which saw 30 murders in 2018, the report said.

Colombia and India saw 24 and 23 deaths linked to environmental activism in 2018, while Guatemala was the deadliest nation for land defenders per head of population with 16 confirmed killings.

Greta Thunberg to sail to New York climate summit in racing yacht

“This is a phenomenon seen around the world: land and environmental defenders, a significant number of whom are indigenous peoples, are declared terrorists, thugs or criminals for defending their rights,” said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples.

“This violence is a human rights crisis but it is also a threat to everyone who depends on a stable climate.”

The biggest single massacre documented by the group in 2018 occurred in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, with 13 people murdered after protesting the environmental impact of a copper mine.

At least eight land defenders involved in disputes with representatives of the soy industry were killed in 2018 in the Brazilian state of Para alone, the report said.

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In the Philippines, which overtook Brazil as the deadliest place for land defenders, one incident saw a group of gunmen shoot dead nine sugarcane farmers including a number of woman and children on the island of Negros.

The lawyer representing families of the victims was shot dead days later, Global Witness said.

A week ahead of a landmark UN report expected to emphasise the vital role indigenous peoples play in protecting nature, the charity also highlighted what it said was a “worrying global trend” in the intimidation and jailing of defenders.

It said investors including development banks were fuelling the violence by financing abusive projects and sectors, and named a number of well-known companies accused of facilitating rights violations.

“It’s not good enough for foreign multinationals that are connected to these land grabs to profess ignorance,” the report said.

“They have a responsibility to proactively ensure that the land they are profiting from has been leased legally, with the consent of the communities who have lived on it for generations.”

EU moots crackdown on deforestation through supply chains

In Britain, the charity documented the case of three anti-fracking activists who in September were sentenced to jail for protesting at a site run by the energy firm Cuadrilla.

They were freed in October but have still not had their convictions for the crime of “public nuisance” overturned.

One of the protesters, Simon Blevins, said their case set a worrying precedent for environmental activists in Britain.

“There has been a lot of scaremongering that even turning up with a placard can put you in trouble and stop you getting jobs, which of course has a deterrent effect on future protest.”

The overall land defender death toll in 2018 fell from a peak of 207 in 2017, but Global Witness stressed the true number of deaths could be far higher and go unreported or occur in remote regions.

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“I can’t remember water levels being as low as what we’ve seen in recent years, it’s tragic”, says the pensioner, sporting a fisherman’s vest and cap for protection against the blazing sun.

“Further north, it’s even worse, the Vistula looks like puddles,” he told AFP on a part of the waterway passing through the capital Warsaw.

Hundreds of rivers in Poland are drying up little by little.

According to experts, the central European country of 38 million people risks a serious water crisis in the coming years.

Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (NIK) warned in a recent report that already there is only 1,600 cubic metres of water available for each Pole per year, which is only slightly more than the EU average.

“Our (water) resources are comparable to those of Egypt,” it said in the report bearing the ominous title: “Poland, European Desert”.

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Contrary to popular belief, Poland, which is located at the confluence of oceanic and continental climate zones, has never had much water.

It receives less rainfall than countries further west, while the rate of evaporation is comparable. Warmer winters with less snow mean that groundwater is not being replenished by spring melts.

And Poland captures little of this water, which experts say is a big part of the problem.

The result is that a vast strip of land across the country is slowly turning into steppe – semi-arid grass-covered plains, that threatens agriculture, forests and wildlife.

With climate change, more frequent droughts and only brief and often violent rainstorms, experts insist the situation is reaching a critical threshold.

“In 2018, a very, very dry year, water levels fell to 1,100 cubic metres per capita, per year, nearly below the safety threshold,” says Sergiusz Kiergiel, spokesperson for Wody polskie (Polish waters), the state institution responsible for water policy.

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The situation is likely to be even worse this year.

The Polish Hydrological Service sounded the alarm in July, warning that groundwater levels in 12 out of 16 Polish provinces could be too low to fill shallow wells.

Over 320 municipalities have already imposed water restrictions carrying heavy fines. Some have banned filling swimming pools, watering gardens or washing cars.

Skierniewice, a town of 47,000 people some 80 kilometres southwest of Warsaw, had to cut water in some districts in early June. For days, water was only available to ground-floor flats.

With no running water on upper floors, municipal authorities were forced to distribute ten-litre water bags to furious residents.

The shortages are triggering social conflict.

Residents of Sulmierzyce in central Poland accuse a local open pit brown coal mine of syphoning off water.

Harare: Two million in Zimbabwe’s capital have no water as city turns off taps

In Podkowa Lesna, a small leafy town near Warsaw, resident are up in arms against their neighbours in nearby Zolwin, whom they accuse of using too much water from a common source to water their gardens.

“Parts of the country are already experiencing hydrogeological drought – a situation when water doesn’t enter the deep layers of the soil and is not filtered in springs,” says Wody polskie’s Kiergiel.

Experts insist that capturing more water is crucial.

Lacking sufficient reservoirs, Poland retains only 6.5% of the water that passes through its territory, while Spain manages to keep nearly half.

To ward off a crisis, the government plans to spend 14 billion zlotys ($3.6 billion) to build around 30 holding tanks. These should double Poland’s water retention capacity by 2027.

Farmers will be able to build small tanks up to 1,000 cubic metres without special permits.

“We’re only just discovering that Poland has an issue with water… We thought it was a sub-Saharan Africa problem, not a European one,” says Leszek Pazderski, an environmental expert with Greenpeace Poland.

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But booming car sales may impact efforts to preserve its rare status as a carbon negative country – and an increase in traffic is testing the good humour of its citizens.

Bhutan has seen a more than five-fold increase in cars, buses and trucks on its roads in the past two decades, according to transport authority director general Pemba Wangchuk, with capital Thimphu hardest hit by the influx of vehicles.

Phuntsho Wangdi, a media consultant, says the congestion and lack of parking now makes driving stressful in the tiny Himalayan kingdom where there are no traffic lights.

“I wish there were fewer cars. It wasn’t like this before,” he adds of life in Thimphu, which is home to half the cars in the country.

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The nation’s economy has grown 7.5% each year in the past decade, according to the World Bank. Officials estimate there is now one car for every seven people in Bhutan, which has a total population of 750,000.

But the nation’s narrow country lanes and outdated city roads can barely cope. A lack of infrastructure, along with poor driving etiquette – some simply leave their cars parked in the middle of the road – compounds the problem.

“Every year the number of cars and the number of people are increasing, and the roads have remained the same, and it’s a problem for us,” Lhendup, a taxi driver, tells AFP.

Morning rush hour journeys that once took five minutes now take more than half an hour.

This may seem a small figure compared to the hours of gridlock faced by commuters in Manila, Jakarta, and Bangkok, but it is a step-change for the Bhutanese, who say the situation has rapidly deteriorated in the past year.

“Its chaotic. I eat my breakfast in the car now to save time,” says Kuenzang Choden, who drops her four-year-old daughter at school every day before heading to work.

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The traffic jams are a sign of the wider economic changes the nation is facing. Bhutan is renowned for prioritising Gross National Happiness over GDP, and has captured tourists’ imagination as a tranquil, idyllic land, but there are signs of malcontent.

According to the World Bank’s 2018 report, the youth unemployment rate is high, as is rural to urban migration, which puts a strain on the resources of towns and cities. And despite it’s reputation as a place where well-being is prioritised, it ranked 95th out of 156 countries in the 2019 UN World Happiness Report.

The proliferation of the internet and smartphones are fuelling modern desires, while dealers are filling their showrooms with new brands and models from Japan and South Korea to lure buyers.

And while taxes have increased and restrictions put on vehicle loans, car buyers are not discouraged.

Local financial institutions gave 3.2 billion ngultrum ($46 million) in car loans in 2015, but by last year the amount had reached 6.7 billion ngultrum ($96 million).

The figures please local businessmen but worry environmentalists keen to ensure Bhutan remains one of the world’s greenest countries.

Environmental activist Yeshey Dorji explains: “As a nation that prides itself on being a carbon-negative country, the increase in the number of fossil fuel vehicles speaks poorly of our leadership position in environmental conservation.”

Bhutan and Suriname, both with lush forests, are the only two countries to claim they are carbon negative, absorbing more carbon pollution than they give off.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

Methane from cows, the burning of crops and other farm activities used to be Bhutan’s main source of greenhouse gases. But that has changed in recent years to industry and cars.

Bhutan’s constitution dictates that at least 60% of the country must be forest and the figure is currently above 70%.

But Bhutan is now importing more in fossil fuels than it exports in hydropower to India — the country’s biggest revenue earner.

Public transport is poor, particularly in Thimphu, which is home to 100,000 people but barely 40 buses.

The capital’s mayor Kinlay Dorji plans to introduce bus-only lanes on city roads and wants to buy more buses.

“Its time for radical measures,” he says.

“We have to make public transport more attractive and discourage owning cars,” he adds, warning that unless action was taken Thimphu risked grinding to a standstill.

To ease congestion, the city is also constructing its first two multi-storey car parks that will each take about 600 cars.

The National Environment Commission insists Bhutan is still carbon negative despite the traffic jams and vehicle boom, but wants to stop things worsening.

Commission secretary Dasho Sonam P Wangdi explains: “We cannot stop people from buying cars, but we can introduce alternative, less polluting cars such as the hybrid and electric ones to reduce carbon footprint.”

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The new tax, the first of its type in Africa, was cautiously introduced last month in the first of several gradual steps and is scheduled to come into full force in three years’ time.

The tax has been planned for almost a decade. But it was delayed in a country that is struggling to boost economic growth while also being the 14th largest polluter in the world, according to Greenpeace.

Canada, France, Colombia and Sweden all have carbon taxes, with the World Bank saying a total of 46 countries now have such levies or similar schemes in place or scheduled for implementation.

The tax puts a price on releasing greenhouse gases from fuel combustion and industrial processes as countries work to meet the global climate change targets negotiated in Paris in 2015.

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In South Africa, environmental groups such as the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) hailed the new tax as “a significant first step”, but said it was far too weak at its present level.

Set at 120 rand ($8.30) per tonne of carbon dioxide, the tax will be largely offset by allowances to lower it to an effective rate of between six and 48 rand per tonne in the first three years. That is far below the $40 to $80 cost per tonne the Carbon Market Watch non-profit group says is necessary to reach the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

“It is pretty weak but very important symbolically,” said Ismail Momoniat, deputy director general of the National Treasury, promising that a reassessment would be held after four years.

Nevertheless, industry is indignant that the tax has been introduced by a government that says its priority is to foster growth and create jobs by promoting investment.

France announces tax on air travel in climate push

South Africa’s key mining sector, which is in long-term decline, fears the tax will further hasten its demise as one of the country’s main employers. The Minerals Council South Africa, which represents mining companies employing 450,000 people, said the tax could wipe out 6,800 jobs in the next two years and then about 6,000 jobs annually after that.

It described the tax as “the wrong method at the wrong time — a time of already deep financial stress”, adding it would “erode profitability through increasing costs resulting in a shrinking sector”.

Trade unions have taken a more mixed stance. Matthew Parks, of the umbrella union Cosatu, said it was “worried about the impact of pollution and global warming on poor working class communities”.

But he added there were also major fears of the impact on jobs. South Africa’s unemployment rate is at near record highs of more than 27%, with youth joblessness above 50%.

Parks said climate change could be “a perfect opportunity” to create jobs in South Africa through the manufacture of environmentally-friendly cars and solar energy exploiting the country’s abundant sunshine. But he said that “we feel that businesses just want profit and are reluctant to change”.

Zimbabwe: two million have no water as capital turns off taps

At shop floor level, the tax has created uncertainty and resistance.

“For me, the only way I can reduce my emissions is literally by switching furnaces out,” said Theo Morkel, the boss of Transalloys, an iron alloy manufacturer in Mpumalanga province that employs 400 people.

The cost of the tax is already being passed on to motorists. Fuel prices have been put up by 0.09 rand a litre for petrol and 0.10 rand for diesel, according to the Automobile Association.

The national energy supplier Eskom, already on the brink of collapse as it struggles with $30 billion in debt, will not be hit until 2023. But then Eskom’s carbon tax liability is projected to be in the region of 11.5 billion rand ($830,000) a year, according to Gina Downes, Eskom’s environmental economics advisor.

Eskom, which produces more than 90% of South Africa’s electricity and more than a third of its greenhouse gas emissions, said the national plan to meet Paris Agreement targets included winding down its coal-powered stations and boosting low carbon energy production. But Eskom is still finishing two huge new coal power stations that are far behind schedule and over budget.

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Noelle Garcin, project manager at African Climate Reality Project, said the squabbling over the tax bore no relation to the threat of climate change.

“The costs will be very low for industries and the big emitters in the next three years,” she said.

“When we look at the timeframe that we have, I feel like it is three years lost, which we can’t really afford,” said Garcin. “The burden will be much more on the next generation. I don’t even know if we can talk about the next generation anymore.”

The post Campaigners and industry criticise South Africa’s new carbon tax appeared first on Climate Home News.

In an interview with AFP, Cecilia Malmström said the EU-Mercosur treaty was a “good deal that does not sacrifice” European agriculture, hailing one of the last agreements under her mandate, which ends on October 31, after those reached with Japan and Canada.

Last month, after two decades of talks, the EU announced a preliminary trade agreement with Mercosur countries – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – one of the biggest such pacts ever negotiated.

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Malmstrom, who led negotiations in the final stretch, has since faced a barrage of criticism, notably by European farmers afraid of a flood of beef imports and environmentalists alarmed over Brazil’s rampant deforestation of the rain forest.

At the centre of these concerns is Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, an unabashed climate change sceptic who has ramped up deforestation and threatened to follow Washington by dumping the climate accord.

This trade agreement “does not mean that we agree with all the policies of these countries, but it is a way to anchor Brazil in the Paris Agreement,” Malmstrom said.

A brutal murder reveals the chaos spreading in Bolsonaro’s Amazon

US president Donald Trump “tries to get other political leaders to join him and leave the Paris Agreement. Here, president Bolsonaro chose, and came with us,” she said.

Pressured by France, Malmstrom and her teams made adherence to the Paris climate deal a condition of the trade deal, a position Brussels says will now apply to all such pacts. Under the Paris accord, Brazil is committed to delivering 12 million hectares of reforestation in the Amazonian forest that plays a crucial role in regulating the earth’s climate.

On Monday, Reuters reported Brazil’s vice president Hamilton Mourao said he now considered it “impossible” for Brazil to leave the Paris Agreement.

Malmstrom acknowledged that the deal faces a torturous ratification process, with about 40 national or regional parliaments across Europe as well as the European Parliament needing to approve it.

While it is “hard to know… I believe that at least two years” will be necessary before implementation, she said. Malmstrom also staunchly criticised opponents to the deal, who had not read the agreement.

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“Some have not really read the agreement and spread rumours, false interpretations that frighten people,” she said.

“Those who work in agriculture today are worried about the future. That’s normal. But, in fact, agriculture is not sacrificed in the agreement,” she insisted.

For Europe, the deal would mean greater access to large South American automobile markets and respect for so-called protected geographical indications such as Cognac or Manchego cheese.

Mercosur countries in return hope to export up to 99,000 tonnes of beef to Europe a year before they have to pay tariffs, alongside stronger exports of ethanol, sugar and poultry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plaintiffs, who say climate change poses a threat to their homes and livelihoods, saw their case thrown out in May by the General Court of the European Union, which said individuals do not have the right to challenge the bloc’s environmental plans.

“The appeal challenges the first instance court’s (European General Court) narrow interpretation of ‘direct and individual concern’ which is a procedural reason to dismiss the case,” according to the Climate Action Network (CAN), which is behind the case.

“In their appeal to the European Court of Justice, the plaintiffs argue that each and every one of them are individually and directly affected by climate change in many different ways depending on where they live, their age, occupation and health situation.”

The European Court of Justice is the highest tribunal in the 28-nation bloc.

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Experts have said the May 8 lower court ruling in Luxembourg on the “People’s Climate Case” could have a major impact on future climate litigation.

The families filed suit last May against the European Union, claiming it must do more to limit climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions and to mitigate the resulting droughts, floods and sea level rises.

The plaintiffs’ lawyer Roda Verheyen voiced hope the high court “will adapt its interpretation of the EU treaties on access to justice” to shield citizens from the impact.

The lower court “denied to provide access to justice for the families and young people hit by the devastating impacts of climate change, essentially because there are many other people hit by the climate crisis,” Verheyen said.

“This simply disrespects the very rationale of fundamental rights which is to grant protection to every single person,” she said in a statement sent by CAN.

The plaintiffs include a Portuguese forester who had all his trees destroyed by wildfires in 2017 and a family from the Italian Alps which has
seen the tourists their livelihoods depend on dwindle due to warmer winters.

Another complainant, Sanna Vannar, is a 23-year-old reindeer herder from Sweden’s indigenous Sami group, which joined the suit.

In their ruling in May, the general court’s judges acknowledged that “every individual is likely to be affected one way or another by climate change”.

But it decided that this did not provide grounds for suing the EU, which has already committed to reduce emissions.

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