Two lakes in Nepal burst last Friday, destroying dozens of homes in a village known for its Everest sherpas, raising fears that global warming is likely to cause more such disasters as glaciers melt in high mountain ranges.

After last week’s flood, Jagadishwor Karmacharya, the head of Nepal’s hydrology and meteorology department, told Climate Home the Chinese government has not shared “essential” information about its glacial lakes and the risk of floods that threaten Nepal.

In 2016, for example, Gongbatongshacuo Lake in Tibet burst, causing a flood along the Bhote Koshi River in Nepal’s northern district of Sindhupalchowk. It swept away 20 houses, a boarding school and parts of a customs office, damaging dozens more buildings and a hydropower plant and destroying large stretches of road, including a highway linking Nepal and China.

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Karmacharya said China, Nepal and India must collaborate to prevent such disasters, adding that Nepal has been asking China for many years to supply data about its glacial lakes but China has not met promises to do so made in bilateral meetings and other fora.

“If a lake in China bursts, the impact on Nepal could be unimaginable,” he said. “This information is essential for us to prepare and reduce the impact of floods.”

The Chinese embassy in Kathmandu did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Melting ice

A glacial lake is made up of water from melted glacier ice. Climate change has sped up the melting of glaciers which forms lakes and can cause avalanches, making it more likely that the water in these lakes bursts through the ice holding it back, causing what is known as a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF).

That’s what happened last week in a relatively small pair of lakes called Para Chhumo in Nepal. According to University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Amrit Thapa, warming air melted snow and glacier ice, causing an upper lake to form in the 2010s, adding to the lower lake which has existed since the 1980s.

Both lakes burst their banks on Friday, with water rushing 10 km down the mountain to hit the village of Thame, famous as the home of Sherpa mountaineers like Tenzing Norgay, where it destroyed 23 homes and damaged 40 more, according to the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality. 

The village of Toktok, about 50 km downstream from Thame, where three homes were swept away and two were damaged by the flood from the Dudkoshi River. (Photo by Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality.)

A bridge and tourist trails were also washed away and local business-owners told Climate Home they feared the tourist industry the village relies on will be hit, as there are fewer places for visitors and trekkers to stay. 

Basanta Raj Adhikari, an engineering professor at Tribhuvan University and director of its Centre for Disaster Studies, asked: “If a small glacial lake like this can cause such destruction, what would happen if a larger one bursts?”

A 2020 report from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Nepal identified 47 glacial lakes in the Himalayas as potentially dangerous. One, Tsho Rolpa, is 30 times bigger than Para Chhumo. Of these 47 glacial lakes, one is in India, 21 are in Nepal and 25 are in Tibet, which is governed by China.

Most of the potentially dangerous glacial lakes (red) are in the Koshi river basin which spans Nepal and Tibet (Screenshot/ICIMOD)

Between 1977 and 2020, Nepal experienced 26 GLOFs, 14 of which originated in the country, the inventory noted. 

Move the village?

To compensate local people for this month’s damage in Thame, the Nepali government has provided about $450 to each affected family and is preparing temporary accommodation. 

Anil Pokhrel, head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, said the government is studying whether the area is suitable for continued settlement. “If it is not safe, we will relocate the village to a safer place,” he said.

Other measures that can be taken to protect people from GLOFs include lowering water levels in glacial lakes and installing community-based early warning and response systems, according to ICIMOD and UNDP. 

In an ongoing court case in Germany, a Peruvian farmer is suing energy giant RWE over the contributions its planet-heating fossil fuel emissions have allegedly made to the threat to his village from Lake Palcacocha in the Andes, which burst in the 1940s killing 2,000 people.

The local government is planning to build a new dam and drainage system at the lake to reduce the risk of flooding, at a projected cost of around $4 million, and the lawsuit argues that RWE should contribute funding of about $20,000 in line with its share of global emissions.

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Whatever the outcome of this closely watched legal case, veteran Nepalese tourism entrepreneur Ang Tshiring Sherpa said climate change is already damaging Himalayan tourism, and Sherpa communities are bearing the burden. 

“Those who have contributed the least to climate change are facing the worst consequences,” he said. “Climate change is not in some distant future; it is already happening. Why do our voices always fall on deaf ears? And how is it fair that our remote mountain communities have to fend for ourselves?” 

(Reporting by Mukesh Pokhrel; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Nepal says China withholds “essential” info on bursting Himalayan glacial lakes appeared first on Climate Home News.

Speaking on Monday at an old London coal power plant-turned-shopping centre, IEA head Fatih Birol said he would be “very happy” to see new NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) that “include no new unabated coal and also early retirements of existing coal”.

In 2021, the Glasgow Climate Pact, agreed at the COP26 UN climate summit, called on countries for the first time to accelerate efforts “towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”. “Unabated” means power produced using coal without any technology to capture, store or use the planet-heating carbon dioxide emitted during the process.

Birol, a Turkish energy analyst, said that stopping coal-plant construction was “as our North American colleagues would say, a no-brainer”. Yet, he added, while “the appetite to build new coal plants is in a dying process, some countries still do it”. He singled out China’s plans to build 50 gigawatts (GW) of new coal plants.

Shutting down existing coal plants, particularly young ones in Asia, is more difficult because the companies that have built and operate them would lose money, Birol noted. There is almost $1 trillion of capital to be recovered from existing coal plants, “so who is going to pay for this?” he asked, calling it “a key issue”.

Birol praised the Just Energy Transition Partnerships that have been set up between wealthy countries and several coal-reliant emerging economies like South Africa and Indonesia to help address the problem. He added that “there are some countries in Asia who can, in my view, afford to retire their coal plants earlier”, without mentioning which.

Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Fadillah Yusof announced at the event organised by the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which includes 60 countries, that Malaysia aims to reduce its coal-fired power plants by half by 2035 and retire all of them by 2044. It will also tackle social and economic challenges through reskilling programmes for workers and promoting renewable energy adoption, he added.

Speaking later at London’s defunct Battersea power station, Indonesia’s deputy minister for maritime affairs and investment, Rachmat Kaimuddin, explained some of the challenges his country faces in phasing out coal.

Kaimuddin (right) speaks alongside Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan (centre) in London on June 24, 2024. (Photo: Powering Past Coal Alliance)

After China and India, Indonesia has the world’s biggest pipeline of new coal power plants under construction. Kaimuddin said the state energy company would not build any more but added that cancelling existing contracts is “very, very difficult” unless the company constructing the plant wants to pull out – which none have yet.

In addition, shutting down existing power power plants is expensive, he said, because many coal power plants have “take or pay” contracts signed in the 1990s under which the government pays them whether their electricity is required or not.

Another concern is that the Southeast Asian nation does not want to lose its energy security in the switch to renewables, Kaimuddin noted. Indonesia currently mines domestically most of the coal it uses. “We’re trying to partner with other people to try to build [a] renewable supply chain in the country,” he said.

Millions of people in Indonesia work in the coal industry, he added, so a shift towards clean energy will need to include new jobs for them. “It doesn’t have to be green jobs – it has to be jobs, right?” he said.

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Singapore’s climate ambassador Ravi Menon told the same event that the economies of China, India and Indonesia are growing and so are their energy needs, meaning that renewables have to be rolled out rapidly to meet demand.

Energy storage is also required to smooth intermittent supply from solar and wind, while electricity transmission infrastructure, including power lines, is needed to transport power from solar and wind farms to cities that account for a large share of consumption.

Both Kaimuddin and Menon said carbon credits should be used to offset losses for the owners of coal plants that are shut down early. “Retiring [plants] definitely will destroy financial value and… and we also need a better way to compensate them,” said Kaimuddin.

The event’s focus on coal raised concerns among some campaigners. Avantika Goswami, climate lead at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home that “singling out coal” in the NDCs, rather than including fossil fuels more broadly, “equates to giving a free pass to oil and gas-dependent countries, many of whom are wealthy”.

It could penalise many developing countries, where coal is a cheap source of fuel and energy needs are still growing, she warned.

“A global climate policy that allows unfettered use of oil and gas – which together account for 55% of fossil fuel emissions – is incomplete and inequitable,” she added.

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at advocacy group Oil Change International, said the IEA’s head should know that “the time to focus only on coal as a climate culprit is over”. He pointed to a subsequent agreement at COP28 last year where governments agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels in their energy systems, without setting a deadline.

“We need a full, fast, fair, funded phase-out of all fossil fuels. Setting such a low bar for ambition is out of touch and inequitable, keeping the door wide open for major oil and gas producers,” Ioualalen added in a statement.

He called on rich countries that are “most responsible” for the climate crisis to foot the bill for a just transition. “We know they have more than enough money. It’s just going to the wrong things like fossil fuel handouts,” he said.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

This story was updated after publication to include comments from Avantika Goswami at the CSE and Romain Ioualalen at Oil Change International,.

The post IEA calls for next national climate plans to target coal phase-down appeared first on Climate Home News.

But not everyone has been affected equally, as Climate Home found out when speaking to people living by the Mediterranean Sea, just an hour or two’s drive apart. The Israeli city of Tel Aviv has been largely unscathed by the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, while Gaza’s urban areas have been bombed heavily, forcing most residents to flee Israeli attacks.

Climate Home spoke to two Palestinian fathers, now living in Gazan refugee camps in Rafah and Deir al-Balah, who have lost children to the recent heatwave. Both had fled their homes before their children died and are living with their surviving families in makeshift wood and nylon tents, fanning themselves with plastic food containers for ventilation.

Boys carry water bottles in Gaza on May 28, 2024. (Photo: Naaman Omar)

Meanwhile, just to the north, on the beach-side promenade of Tel Aviv, Israeli locals told Climate Home they had waited out the heatwave in air-conditioned apartments. Their main concerns were the cost of cooling, the strain it places on the country’s electric grid and drooping house plants.

Not just temperatures

Friederike Otto is one of the scientists who worked on a study issued by the World Weather Attribution group which found that climate change made the April heatwave in the Middle East five times more likely.

She told a press briefing that heatwaves are “not just about the temperatures – it’s what these temperatures mean to people”.

Asked separately about Gaza, she told Climate Home: “If you don’t have access to water, if you don’t have access to shade, if you don’t have access to medication – the extreme heat just compounds so much the challenges that these people are already facing.”

The Gaza Strip, one of two Palestinian territories, is just 25 miles long and about five miles wide. Since a bloody attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7, the Israeli military has repeatedly bombed and invaded Gaza, killing over 35,000 people.

The attacks have caused 1.9 million people, nearly 85% of the Gazan population, to flee their homes. While air conditioning, electricity and clean water have long been scarcer in Gaza than Israel, the current conflict has worsened that inequality, development agencies have said.

Greenhouse tents

Many refugees are living in nylon tents. Without walls, fans or air conditioning, they told Climate Home they are battling heat by using expensive water to shower as often as they can and stripping children – nearly half of the region’s population – to their underwear.

“It is like living in a green house, and no one can tolerate living inside.”

We are just at the beginning of summer, and the temperatures are already unbearable in #Gaza

Access to fresh water is very limited, making hot weather an even bigger health threat#CeasefireNow pic.twitter.com/6Qtln9XPD0

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) April 25, 2024

Hilmi Basal, 41, and his wife and six children left their home in northern Gaza after Israeli warnings. They fled south, buying a makeshift tent to live in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp. On April 26, Basal said, his three-year-old son fell suddenly to the ground and entered a coma. Five days later, he was pronounced dead in the local hospital.

Basal told Climate Home he “lives a difficult life” after losing his child, feeling “despair, frustration and fear of losing more children”. He said the tents are like greenhouses, so his family spend their days outside, preferably at the seashore where they can swim and shower. 

He and his wife dress their five surviving children in only their undergarments and search for water to cool down. A 20-litre bottle of drinking water costs $1.50, which Basal says “is an amount that many families suffering from extreme poverty do not have”. 

A boy sits in a bombed-out area of the Rafah refugee camp after an attack by Israeli bombers in Gaza – May 27, 2024 (Photo: Hashem Zimmo/TheNews2/Cover Imag)

Ribhi Abu Salem, 39, also lost a child to the heatwave. The three-year-old fainted suddenly while he was inside the family’s tent and died at the hospital. Doctors said the cause of the death was direct exposure to sunlight.

Until Israel’s attack, the family lived in an air-conditioned house in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. This was built for Palestinians fleeing what they call the Nakba (meaning “catastrophe”) in 1948, when Zionist paramilitaries violently removed Palestinians from the newly-declared Israeli state.

Advised by the Israeli government to leave northern Gaza, Salem’s family fled south to the city of Rafah, where they sheltered in a tent. “Despite the scarcity of water, many tent residents resorted to buying large quantities of water to shower more than five times during the day,” Salem said.

After his family left, the Israeli government bombed their home, leaving them with nowhere to return to when the conflict ends. On May 6, Israeli forces began attacking Rafah and have since killed dozens of people sheltering there.

“It’s difficult to convey the scale of the humanitarian situation in Rafah. In every direction you look there are makeshift shelters.”@UNWateridge describes the sense of loss & fear people face in #Gaza as they look for water, food & safety.

Nowhere is safe in the #GazaStrip pic.twitter.com/OpH2YV7avk

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) April 25, 2024

For those with homes still standing, the usefulness of air conditioning and fans has been hindered by Israel’s blocking of fuel supplies to Gaza’s only power plant, leading to shortages of electricity. Solar panels continue to provide power for some, although they are also vulnerable to destruction by Israeli weapons.

AC the key

Across the border, Israelis are coping much better with the heatwave. Although the emergency services say 147 people have been treated for dehydration, fainting or heatstroke, none have been reported dead from the extreme heat.

When Climate Home visited Tel Aviv’s seaside promenade last week, beach-goers were sitting under umbrellas or stretched out on lawns listening to Spanish music blaring from a bar advertising frozen margaritas.

The beach in Tel Aviv on May 23, 2024 (Photo: Jessica Buxbaum)

Twenty-somethings Noam Sophia Samet and Tal Danon spoke to Climate Home still wet from a dip in the Mediterranean Sea. Both said they use air conditioning all the time. “It’s expensive but it’s worth it,” said Samet.

Timna Lalach, 70, said last month’s heatwave didn’t affect her, as she stayed inside her cooled apartment all day. Thirty-nine year old Anna Tarkovsky said she too stayed inside with the air conditioning on – the only problem was her plants died, she added.

Black-outs

While Gazans lack air conditioners, Israel’s main issue is that there are too many for its coal and gas-powered electricity grid to handle peaks in demand when residents all turn their cooling equipment on at the same time, 

During a heatwave last June, Israeli energy authorities imposed rolling black-outs. Last month, Samet and Danon’s electricity cut out once for a few hours while they were trying to work. 

Avner Gross, an environmental science professor at Ben Gurion University, said the Israeli government should plan better for hot days, with measures to store electricity or manage demand for it. “We need to be prepared and we are not even close,” he said.

Both Israel’s national government and Tel Aviv’s authorities want to expand vegetation cover and plant trees to provide shade. Tel Aviv is a member of the ‘cool cities’ network, which aims to tackle urban heatwaves.

Ficus trees provide shade on Dafna Street in Tel Aviv in 2017 (Photos: Avishai Teicher)

But Gaza, and the other Palestinian areas in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, are much further away from becoming more resilient to the same unbearably high temperatures.

The World Bank estimates that rebuilding the Gazan homes destroyed as of January this year will cost $13 billion. Far more have since been razed – and water, health and electrical infrastructure also needs to be restored.

The predicament of Gazans forced to endure sweltering conditions in ill-equipped tents is not an isolated problem. Across the world, climate change and war are forcing more and more people out of their homes and into makeshift camps. More than 75 million people are currently displaced inside their own countries – 50% more than five years ago.

The World Weather Attribution study notes that the recent heatwave made already precarious conditions for internally displaced people and conflict victims worse.

“With limited institutional support and options to adapt, the heat increases health risks and hardship,” the scientists wrote.

(Reporting by Taghreed Ali, Jessica Buxbaum and Joe Lo; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post On beaches of Gaza and Tel Aviv, two tales of one heatwave appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a statement, a gathering of EU ministers called the Council of the EU said the decision “unlocked the process of modernisation of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) for its non-EU contracting parties”.

The compromise allows the EU as a body to withdraw from the treaty, while individual EU member states can stay in and approve the green reforms at a conference due to take place this year, if they wish.

The ECT currently allows all energy companies – including coal, oil and gas firms – to sue governments over climate and other policies they see as a threat to their current and future profits.

The proposed reforms to modernise the ECT, which are due to be voted on in November, would make it easier for ECT countries to prevent the treaty being used as a basis for lawsuits involving fossil fuel assets that are affected by green economy measures.

However, with several European countries already filing their notice to leave the ECT, it is unclear whether a sufficient number of EU states will stay in the treaty long enough to get the reforms approved. As part of today’s EU Council agreement, the EU confirmed it would leave the treaty.

Other ECT member states, including Japan and Kazakhstan, only grudgingly agreed to back the reforms under pressure from the European Commission.

For the ECT “modernisation” proposal to be adopted, none of the treaty’s member governments – now numbering 49 – must vote against it at November’s conference. Then three-quarters of ECT members need to ratify the reforms for them to take effect.

If the reforms fail, the ECT’s members across Europe and Asia will be unable to remove its protection for fossil fuel investments and – due to a 20-year sunset clause – even EU countries that have left would be exposed to lawsuits for that period.

Post-Soviet treaty

The ECT was conceived in the 1990s to boost investment flows between Western and post-Soviet countries. But its provisions to deter states from grabbing private assets have since been used by energy companies to fight back against climate policies.

In 2020, a British oil and gas company sued Slovenia over what it called “unreasonable” environmental protections”, while German energy company Uniper threatened to sue the Dutch government for €1 billion ($1.1bn)  over its coal phase-out plans.

In lawsuits brought under the ECT last November, British oil company Kelsch is suing the EU, Germany and Denmark for at least 95 million euros ($102m) over a windfall tax on energy firms.

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The European Commission reacted to these and other cases by attempting to remove fossil fuels from the list of investments protected by the ECT – with the aim that it would apply only to clean energy assets.

For two years, efforts by EU negotiators were repeatedly blocked by Japan and Kazakhstan. But in June 2022, a “flexibility mechanism” was agreed that would allow ECT states to end protection for fossil fuels, as long as no other ECT state objected.

Europe divided

Despite European Commission negotiators finally winning this right, EU member countries were divided on how to apply it.

Governments like France, Spain and Luxembourg wanted to immediately end protection for fossil fuel investments but faced push-back from several Eastern European countries.

They agreed a compromise to stop protection for new fossil fuel investments but to continue it for existing investments for ten years – a decision that angered climate campaigners.

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Friends of the Earth’s Paul de Clerck said at the time it would “lock the EU in fossil fuel investment protection” for a decade.

Despite this agreement, by the time the annual ECT conference came around in November 2022, EU governments no longer unanimously backed the reforms the European Commission had negotiated, and so they were shelved.

Locking in Asian fossil fuels

The EU’s stalling on the reforms drew an angry response from then head of the ECT secretariat, Guy Lentz of Luxembourg.

In a letter to the leader of the European Parliament in February 2023, he warned that if the EU withdrew as a bloc before approving the modernisation, it would amount to “an express prohibition” for other ECT members to better align with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

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He added that failure to agree reforms would essentially allow fossil fuel companies to sue EU states for longer because of an existing 20-year sunset clause, which means energy companies can bring lawsuits against governments for two decades even after a country leaves the treaty.

EU states wanted to neutralise this sunset clause by agreeing a side deal between themselves not to apply the treaty. But Lentz said these attempts “may not provide the expected legal certainty”. Campaigners accused him of “bluffing”.

Numbers game

EU countries then continued to debate among themselves whether to stay in or leave the ECT and – if they withdrew – whether to modernise it before exiting.

Despite the ongoing talks, France, Germany and Poland officially left the ECT in December 2023. Luxembourg and Slovenia will leave in June and October 2024 respectively. Portugal, the UK, Spain and the EU will leave next year.

This debate was resolved today, with EU states’ ministers agreeing to a compromise, brokered by the Belgian government. Governments that want to can stay and support the modernisation, but the EU itself can start process of exiting right away.

Belgian energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten said her government had “worked tirelessly to break this complex deadlock and found a balance acceptable and useful to all”.

The deal essentially makes the reforms contingent on timing and EU countries’ commitment to reform.

By November, after Luxembourg and Slovenia exit, there will be 47 ECT member states, including 22 from the EU. Eleven more – including the United Kingdom and Switzerland – are in Europe but not in the EU. Nine others are in Central Asia and three in the Middle East, with Japan and Mongolia the remaining two.

E3G analyst Eunjung Lee said ECT modernisation “is still uncertain” but added “with the EU Council decision today, it is probable that the modernisation might pass, particularly if the voting takes place via correspondence”.  

The ECT approved this option in October 2022. It means the conference’s chair sets a deadline by which any objections should be sent in.

“This will make things easier than voting at a conference, because unless there is a clear objection, the modernisation will be adopted”.

But even if the reform is approved, Lee said the ratification by three-quarters of countries “could take forever”.

De Clerck of Friends of the Earth agreed, saying “it is unclear if the reform would ever be ratified”.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Despite exit, EU seeks to save green reforms to energy investment treaty appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh has been sweltering under 52°C heat in recent days. Not in the news however is that wet-bulb temperatures in the region – a more accurate indicator of risk to human health that accounts for heat and humidity – passed a key danger threshold of 30°C.  

Climate change is increasing the risk of deadly humid heat in developing countries like Pakistan, Mexico and India, and without international support to adapt, vulnerable communities could face catastrophe.  

What is wet-bulb temperature? 

Wet-bulb temperature is an important scientific heat stress metric that accounts for both heat and humidity. When it’s both hot and humid, sweating – the body’s main way of cooling – becomes less effective as there’s too much moisture in the air. This can limit our ability to maintain a core temperature of 37°C – something we all must do to survive. 

A recent study suggests that wet-bulb temperatures beyond 30°C pose severe risks to human health, but the hard physiological limit comes at prolonged exposure (about 6-8 hours) to wet-bulb temperatures of 35°C. At this point, people can experience heat strokes, organ failure, and in extreme cases, even death. 

Climate change and deadly heat 

Globally, around 30% of people are exposed to lethal humid heat. This could reach as much as 50% by 2100 due to global warming. To date, the climate has warmed around 1.3°C as a result of human activity, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels. And along with the extra heat, with every 1°C rise the air can hold up to 7% more moisture. 

A comprehensive evaluation of global weather station data reveals that the frequency of extreme humid heat has more than doubled since 1979, with several wet-bulb exceedances of 31-33°C. Another recent study predicts a surge in the frequency and geographic spread of extreme heat events, even at 1.5°C warming.   

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What this shows is that the humid tropics including monsoon belts are all careening towards the 35°C threshold, which is very worrying for countries like Pakistan. The city of Jacobabad has already breached 35°C wet bulb temperatures many times. More areas of the country are likely to be exposed to such life-threatening conditions more often due to climate change.   

At 1.5°C of warming, much of South Asia, large parts Sahelian Africa, inland Latin America and northern Australia could be subject to at least one day per year of lethal heat. If the world gets to 3°C, this exposure explodes, covering most of South Asia, large parts of Eastern China and Southeast Asia, much of central and west Africa, most of Latin America and Australia and significant parts of the southeastern USA and the Gulf of Mexico.  

Areas of the world that will experience at least one day of deadly heat per year at different levels of warming   

Source: ScienceAdvances 

 Even at 1.5°C of warming, there will be high exposure to lethal heat in large regions where billions presently live. This terrible threat to human life calls for urgent action to limit warming and help at risk communities adapt.  

Adapting to hard limits 

 While 35°C can prove deadly, one study suggests a 32°C wet-bulb threshold as the hard limit for labour. More realistic, human-centred models found this overly optimistic, as direct exposure and other vulnerability factors were ignored. Vulnerable groups including unskilled labourers would be most at risk of losing their income.  

In densely populated urban centres, lethal humid heat is not just a future projection but a current reality. This calls for urgent adaptation measures which integrate the risk of deadly heat into urban planning, public health, early-warning systems and emergency response.  

Investments in green spaces, heat-resilient buildings and urban cooling are vital adaptation strategies. Community initiatives like awareness campaigns, indigenous cooling strategies and local heat action plans are also essential. Households could consider investing in cooling technologies or migrating – options mostly available to the wealthy.  

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As climate change makes lethal humid heat a growing threat in some of the world’s most populous areas, more attention must be paid to understanding its risks – especially in vulnerable regions with huge data gaps. This demands a multidimensional response that combines scientific research, policymaking and community engagement.  

The potential scale and level of risk to human life also reinforces the importance of ensuring that the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming limit is met. To do this, we need to halve emissions by 2030. Countries should therefore strengthen their 2030 emissions targets in line with the warming limit as they prepare equally ambitious 2035 targets in updated NDCs. 

The Pakistan heatwave is a terrible reminder of this often-underestimated threat. We must act now to limit warming while we adapt to the growing danger of deadly heat if we are to avoid potentially wide-reaching tragedies in the future.  

The post Developing countries need support adapting to deadly heat appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last Wednesday and Thursday, China’s new top climate diplomat Liu Zhenmin travelled to Washington DC for two days of talks with his US counterpart John Podesta, also fresh in the job.

They discussed co-operation on climate issues, including plans for both sides to ramp up renewables, and vowed to “intensify technical and policy exchanges”.

But the day after, with Liu still in the country, the US State Department briefed journalists that Podesta had told Liu that China was producing too many solar panels and lithium-ion EV batteries.

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Then on Tuesday, the White House increased tariffs on Chinese EVs, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, accusing the Chinese government of “unfair, non-market practices” and “flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports”.

“Clear protectionism”

In response, the state-owned China Daily newspaper in an editorial described the tariffs as “a clear act of protectionism”.

The head of the China Automobile Association Fu Bingfeng agreed, adding that “the new energy industry is jointly created by mankind and can bring common benefits to mankind”, saying the tariffs were “very unreasonable”.

Asia Society analyst Li Shuo told Climate Home that, rather than thinking of over-supply of solar panels as a problem, “it is the world’s inability to deploy these products that is the problem”.

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The tariffs reflect “the new reality global climate politics needs to deal with” – that low-carbon products will not be made in the most cost-efficient way and distributed around the world, he explained. India also has trade barriers against Chinese solar panels, designed to boost its domestic solar manufacturing.

Research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies has found that such trade barriers can, in general, delay the competitiveness of low-carbon technologies against their market rivals – like solar against gas, or EVs against internal combustion engines.

Limited effect on solar, batteries bigger

The US-imposed measures are designed to increase the cost of Chinese goods needed for the energy transition – and could therefore slow down America’s shift away from fossil fuels.

But BloombergNEF solar analyst Jenny Chase told Climate Home that the increase in the tariff on solar cells and modules from 25% to 50% would “have little effect”.

She noted that tariffs of 25% have been in place “for ages – and as a result the US imports almost no cells or modules directly from China, instead importing from Southeast Asia”.

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The Biden administration is currently weighing whether to impose tariffs on solar imports from four Southeast Asian countries over concerns that China is routing its panels through these nations.

US solar panel manufacturers are lobbying the government in favour of those tariffs, while US solar panel installers are lobbying against them. A decision is needed by June 6, two years on from a pause on tariffs affecting the Southeast Asian nations.

Similarly, the US already imports relatively few electric vehicles from China, as it already has Trump-era tariffs on them. The US’s adoption of electric vehicles is far slower than in Europe or China.

But US car-makers do import lots of lithium-ion EV batteries for their vehicles despite existing 7.5% tariffs. China produces about three-quarters of all the world’s EV batteries, with the US producing less than a tenth.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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Now frustrated Indigenous rights groups are trying a new tactic to speed up change: creating their own funds in a push to boost the flow of money to frontline communities and shift away from what some see as an outdated colonial-style model driven by donors in the Global North. 

Since 2020 – and especially last year – more than half a dozen new Indigenous-led funds have sprung up, largely in forest-rich Brazil but also in developing countries from Indonesia to Mexico.  

Many are still in a start-up phase, but a few have already begun pushing money to frontline communities. They include the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund (MTF), which invested $1.3 million in 32 projects – from chocolate production to tourism and protecting traditional knowledge – in communities from Mexico to Panama last year. 

“We are aiming not only to make the funds reach the real guardians of the forest and the real guardians of mitigating and adapting to climate change, but also to support sustainability, democracy and good governance of all these territories,” said María Pía Hernández, a lawyer and regional manager for the MTF. 

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Multilateral funds can take years to approve projects and often struggle to funnel big pots of nature and climate finance into the smaller-scale projects communities need, Indigenous leaders said.  

The new funds aim to fill the gap by gathering large amounts of money, distributing it nimbly and leap-frogging the barriers faced by forest communities in dealing with traditional funds, such as onerous paperwork. 

“We aim to improve not just the condition of the territories and people who live there but also promote global climatic justice,” Hernández said on the sidelines of last week’s Skoll World Forum, a gathering of social innovators.  

Bypassing the giants 

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund hold their Spring Meetings in Washington this week, focused in part on reshaping lending for climate action, Indigenous communities are already rethinking how to better access the resources they need to protect nature and the climate – and to ensure those on the frontline benefit from changes such as new clean energy infrastructure. 

Along the way, they are setting up new rules and structures in line with their own traditions and beliefs, after years of chafing against constraints imposed by big donors, some of them former colonial powers. 

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In Canada, for instance, many Indigenous governing bodies now run their own renewable energy utilities, providing a fifth of Canada’s renewables, said Joan Carling, executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International. 

“If we transform the business-as-usual and create the enabling environment and conditions to put Indigenous people at the centre of this, then we can have a truly just, equitable renewable energy for all,” she said. 

A new dashboard released last week by the Rights and Resources Initiative and the Rainforest Foundation Norway shows climate finance for indigenous and local communities rose between 2020 and 2023 to about $517 million per year, a 36 percent increase over the previous four years. 

That increase comes after governments and charitable donors promised $1.7 billion back in 2021 to Indigenous and local communities by 2025 for their role in protecting land and forests, which are considered key to protecting both the climate and biodiversity. 

Yet with much new funding still moving through big international environment organisations and other intermediary agencies, rather than directly to communities, “there is no evidence yet indicating a systematic change in funding modalities,” the groups noted in a report.

Connecting communities with cash 

Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, said improving direct access to funding is the key issue. At least $10 billion in finance for Indigenous and local communities will be needed to meet a global pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, she added. 

Indigenous-led funds believe they can be pivotal to achieving that ramp-up. 

Shandia, established by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities uniting 35 million people from 24 countries, is still in a start-up phase but aims to serve as a conduit for much larger-scale finance to Indigenous and other frontline groups. 

“Millions of dollars are moving in the world. We want to connect claims on the ground to those millions,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach, a Shuar indigenous leader from Ecuador and the alliance’s executive secretary, who was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his work on behalf of Indigenous communities. 

Indonesia’s main Indigenous alliance similarly in 2023 helped establish the Nusantara Fund, while in Brazil a range of Indigenous-led vehicles, including the Podáali Indigenous Amazonian Fund, were launched last year.

Guardians of the forest – and finance?  

Anthony Bebbington, who runs the Ford Foundation’s international natural resources and change change programmes, said the last few years had seen the emergence of substantial new funds, with the potential to grow, that are challenging the traditional ways donors have worked.  

“Funds are saying to us, ‘If you trust us to be guardians of the forest – a role for which we are often harassed and sometimes killed – then there is no justification for you to also not trust us to be guardians of the finance’,” he told an event on the sidelines of the Skoll World Forum. 

In projects backed by the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, for instance, indicators of success are changing from a simple focus on hectares of forest replanted to include things like whether more water is flowing through key rivers, said Hernández, whose fund so far gets 80 percent of its support from philanthropies. 

An Indigenous Ramas man lifts a crayfish trap in the Rio Indio river, San Juan de Nicaragua, Nicaragua on February 16, 2022.(Photo: Reuters/Antoine Boureau/Hans Lucas)

The MTF also actively seeks out and helps prepare applications from Indigenous and local communities that could benefit from its support rather than just accepting grant proposals, as traditional donors often do.  

David Rothschild, senior director of partnerships for Nia Tero, a US non-profit that works with Indigenous groups, said avoiding heavy paperwork was key to enabling the new funds take off. 

“What they don’t want is to become another entity in the system operating in a colonial way. How do they not fall into the same patterns that have been destructive, while still reporting to donors?” he asked. 

Hernández said new ways of working are developing, if sometimes too slowly. “We are not asking for blank cheques,” she emphasised. “But we deserve a little bit of consideration.”

(Reporting by Laurie Goering; editing by Megan Rowling)

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Then last Saturday in Dubai, a much bigger group of nations signed a similar pledge. Over 120 countries gave the document their signature but G20 nations like China, India and Indonesia were not among them.

That’s despite China dominating the renewables supply chain and the International Energy Agency forecasting that both China and India are already going to double their renewables by 2027, putting them on course to triple capacity by 2030 without any extra effort. So why the reluctance?

Well, the Cop28 pledge came in a package with anti-coal language and a more challenging target to double energy efficiency, with no quantified finance target to match. Experts told Climate Home major emerging economies were concerned about costs and reluctant to make commitments outside the formal UN climate process.

Coal and costs

Unlike the G20 agreement, the Cop28 pledge calls on signatories to “end the continued investment in unabated new coal-fired power plants, which is incompatible with efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C”.

Between them, the four G20 nations that didn’t sign the Cop28 pledge are building over four-fifths of the world’s new unabated coal-fired power plants, according to Global Energy Monitor.

“That could be why large emerging economies are concerned about the renewable energy declaration because it is tied to coal-based power generation,” said Centre for Science and Environment researcher Avantika Goswami.

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While the pledge does not require any individual country to triple their own renewable capacity, a source familiar with the Indonesian government’s position said it feared it will pressure them to do so.

For Indonesia, this could require early closure of coal-fired power plants and investment in grid stability in the Java-Bali area. “Both implies increasing financial burden to [state-owned energy company] PLN and to the government,” they said. “The reason that this pledge doesn’t come with financial and technical support has made Indonesia reluctant to support.”

The Asia Society’s climate lead Li Shuo told Climate Home that China would struggle to meet the target to double energy efficiency by 2030, which was not in the G20 agreement or in the US-China Sunnylands agreement.

Energy efficiency is calculated by dividing the size of an economy by its energy consumption and China’s economic growth has slowed down in recent years, making the target harder to reach.

Negotiating position

Li said that China “has not been a fan of side deals and declarations at the [UN climate talks]. They often feel these deals deviate from the [UN climate convention] and Paris Agreement and may be held against them in the future”.

Joyce Lee, policy director at the Global Wind Energy Council said that, as the pledge was launched at the start of the Cop28 climate talks “there’s a lot of public posturing”.

“In a negotiation dynamic, you don’t put yourself too close to where your ultimate position might be at the outset,” she said.

She added that in these countries “there’s a feeling that they’re doing a lot already on [reducing emissions]” and “may even be doing more than their fair share” given that they’ve contributed less to historic emissions than wealthy nations.

The post Why didn’t China and India sign Cop28 tripling renewables pledge? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Non-binary campaigners told Climate Home News they would not attend Cop28, which starts on 30 November, or were wavering due to the host country’s record.

Non-binary foreigners have been detained at the UAE’s borders and deported and non-binary Emiratis have reported difficulties expressing their gender in public 

Rani is a non-binary Pakistani who works for an umbrella group of NGOs on climate issues. They are grappling with whether to attend the talks or not.  

Rani read reports from 2022 that Thai trans model Rachaya Noppakaroon was detained at Dubai airport because her passport had a male gender marker. She endured a nine-hour interrogation at the airport before being sent back to Thailand. 

Slow start for Indonesia’s much-hyped carbon market

Rani fears something similar will happen to them as their  passport identifies them as non-binary.

That’s an option in her native Pakistan as well as several other South Asian nations and developed countries like the USA and Australia.

In January, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that two Pakistanis with this identification stopped over for a layover at Dubai airport but were denied boarding for their onward flight just 15 minutes before takeoff.

One of them, Zehrish, told Climate Home at the time that the state-owned airline FlyDubai cited the UAE’s immigration policy when refusing them boarding.

‘I am numb’

The UAE has no explicit policy addressing the entry restrictions for gender non-conforming individuals but Zehrish said that fact was no help to them in practice

Rani, who also missed out on Cop26 in the UK because of problems getting a visa unrelated to their gender identity, told Climate Home they were disappointed.

“I just don’t know how to feel anymore,” they said, “I am numb. No matter how hard I work in life, something will be there to prevent me from going further, from helping my community, from helping myself.”  

James is a young non-binary climate activist from the Pacific island of Tuvalu who has attended many summits but will stay away from this one.

“Climate negotiations are very important to me and my whole nation,” they said, “but I will not be going for this. I am uncertain about the risks that are involved and cannot justify these risks”..

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James said they had spoken to young people from the UAE about “intersectional aspects of activism and it is warming to know that many young UAE citizens are not like the government – though I am sure I am only interacting with a certain demographic online”.

Unwritten rules

Climate Home spoke to a non-binary person who has lived in the UAE their whole life. They empathise with the challenges faced by queer, non-binary visitors navigating unfamiliar laws just to exist in the UAE.

“We who grow up here know how to ‘fit in’—for lack of a better word… it is about knowing the nuances of how to be here, unfortunately,” they said.  

They added that the “unwritten rule” is that you can do whatever you want in private but you can’t be “too loud” in public. ” If you cannot do that or don’t know how to, it will be impossible to exist here,” they said.  

All sexual acts outside of marriage are illegal in the UAE and same-sex marriage is not allowed, effectively criminalising gay people. Breaking this law is punishable with at least one year in prison. 

The United Arab Emirates government and FlyDubai did not respond to requests for comment.

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In the launch video, a calm female voice makes a plea over jangly guitar. “Join us to accelerate net zero with more transparency, liquidity and efficiency,” she says, as a headless businessman fondles a hologram of a globe.

Two months on, this call has been largely ignored. Climate Home’s analysis of trading data suggests most days see no trading at all. 

Carbon credit traders and experts blamed a lack of incentives to buy, administrative mistakes and muddled government priorities. 

A divisive solution

A carbon exchange allows the trade of carbon credits. One company takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and another pays to take credit for it.

Carbon credit supporters argue they are a way of financing climate action which wouldn’t otherwise take place while critics say their real-world benefits are overstated and they offer polluters an excuse to keep emitting.

The European Union and China’s exchanges are among the biggest in the world. President Widodo predicted in September that Indonesia’s could soon rival them.

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But the exchange has got off to a very slow start. Of the 19 trading days that Climate Home was able to obtain data for, there was no trading on 17 days.

This data was gleaned from IDX statements and from some of its daily reports, which regularly vanish from its website. IDX did not respond to repeated requests for the full data.

The price of carbon has remained the same since the launch, suggesting it is an inactive market.

Low demand

Demand for the credits is low. This is reflected by the price of carbon – just RP 69,600 ($4.50) per tonne of carbon dioxide.

Demand could be boosted if Indonesia implements a scheme to cap company's emissions and tax them on any excess.

The idea is to allow them to avoid tax by buying another company's unused emissions allowance or by buying carbon credits.

The government initially suggested a tax would be set up in 2022 but now says it will be set up next year or the year after, saying carbon markets must be set up first.

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The voluntary market has been launched and the compliance market will begin next year, when the cap and tax is piloted on coal-fired power plants.

The government has given out mixed messages on the extent to which companies will be able to buy voluntary credits to cover their cap and tax obligations. The energy ministry wants a limited role, while the environment ministry wants a more expansive one.

Suppliers kept out

All that has dampened domestic demand and the regulations to allow foreign companies to buy credits have yet to be put in place.

Dessi Yuliana is the director of CarbonX, a company which buys and sells credits. She told Climate Home that this is because of pending international trading regulations and divided priorities in the government.

While some groups in government are keen to attract foreign investment the main administration priority is ensuring that carbon credits issued are counted towards national carbon reduction commitments, Yuliana said.

So far, the exchange lacks sellers as well as buyers. The government has authorised just three companies to sell credits.

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Fifiek Mulyana from PWC Legal Indonesia said this was because, with more regulations on carbon trading to be issued soon, many companies are still in a “wait and see situation”.

One Indonesian carbon credit seller, who did not want to be named, complained that regulations are often vague and inflexibly enforced.

A lack of expertise and experience needed to swiftly assess projects credibility is a particular problem, they added, with only four verification and validation bodies signed up.

With carbon credit projects plagued by accusations of overcounting and human rights abuses, the role of verifiers will be crucial.

“A lot of investors basically use carbon credits as a form of green virtue signaling," says Bill Sullivan, a mining and energy lawyer with Christian Teo & Associates.

“Accordingly,” he added, “any scandals in this sector could undermine the whole point of carbon credits as far as they are concerned and, so, make buying carbon credits must less attractive for them."

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The plan was announced ahead of a US-China climate summit and outlines measures that will be taken to cut emissions from coal mines, rice paddies, landfills and other methane sources.

But it did not include any targets for emissions reductions. This stands in contrast to the over 150 nations who have promised to collectively reduce emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030.

Experts told Climate Home that China’s baseline estimate of methane emissions was unreliable and a target could invite unwelcome pressure to shut down its coal mines.

Coal’s other problem

Just under half of China’s methane is from its coal mines, as methane gas leaks out of the seams of black rock.

This gas is explosive and dangerous so mine operators suck it from underground mines up to the surface where it damages the earth’s atmosphere, causing climate change.

China’s methane plan says it will “encourage and guide” coal firms to capture more of this gas. It can then be burned to produce electricity, heat the mines or dry coal.

Colombia’s big green plans run into headwinds

But, coal mine methane analyst Anatoli Smirnov told Climate Home, the “only real solution to reduce methane emissions is to close coal mines”.

They then must be flooded or sealed, with a pump installed to capture the gas that still leaks and use it for something productive.

Lauri Myllyvirta is the co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. He told Climate Home that the Chinese government lacks the “political will and buy-in” to start controlling methane.

Since late 2021, he said, China’s priority has been to increase the amount of coal China produces to get the coal price down.

“So any obligations that would cover a significant part of coal mines don’t really fit into that paradigm,” he said, adding “the same goes for oil and gas”.

Bad measurements

About a year ago, China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said that China has “a little bit of a way to go so we can do surveillance and collect statistics as well as verification of our baseline”.

Li Shuo, an analyst at the Asia Society, told Climate Home that “in many of our emitting sectors, we simply don’t know how much methane emissions are there, and that makes setting reduction targets hard”.

But some analysts have accused China of under-counting its  coal mine methane emissions even though they have the ability to report more accurately.

Sabina Assan, an analyst at Ember said that, like many countries particularly in the developing world, China works out its coal mine methane emissions with a formula.

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It guesses how much methane leaks per ton of coal and multiplies that by how many tons of coal it produces.

Assan said China actually does measure the methane released from its underground mines, so it could improve reporting to the UN but hasn’t.

On top of this, China hasn’t reported its methane emissions since 2014 so its figures are out of date.

Myllyvirta said this hasn’t been reported since because China doesn’t want to “own up to the huge increase in emissions since 2014 and the Paris Agreement”.

The International Energy Agency and several other scientific studies come up with similar estimates to the Chinese government’s.

But Global Energy Monitor has done analysis based on the number and size of coal mines, how deep they are and what type of coal they have.

Using these variables, it estimates that the real figure for coal mine methane is almost double what the government claims.

The Chinese province of Shanxi alone, it estimates, emits about the same coal mine methane as the rest of the world.

The post China sets out methane plan, but no reduction target appeared first on Climate Home News.

As President Biden said at this year’s United Nations General Assembly, progress on some issues hinges on their common efforts and “nowhere is that more critical than the accelerating climate crisis.”

Much ink has been spilled debating whether the US and China should cooperate or compete on addressing climate change.

These debates obscure a more important question: if revived, what could US-China cooperation on climate actually achieve?

As it turns out — a lot.

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On one hand, as all countries work to implement their emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, global climate progress no longer hinges so heavily on US-China cooperation.

But a high-level US-China agreement could provide the much-needed “course correction” to keep world temperatures on track to remain below 1.5C.

And it could also set the stage for a successful outcome at the Cop28, the UN’s largest annual international climate conference taking place the first two weeks of December in Dubai.

Based on what both countries are already prioritising, there is room for significant partnership when it comes to keeping domestic emissions reductions on track, raising ambition in multilateral negotiations, and accelerating climate action in developing countries.

Methane controls

Leaders from both countries have an opportunity to show that climate cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters shouldn’t just mean searching for the lowest common denominator.

To start, China’s recent delivery on its 2021 pledge, made alongside the US, to develop a plan to control methane has helped to restore trust.

Integrating non-CO2 gases into China’s climate targets would further assuage concerns that methane leakage from coal mines and other sectors could undermine action elsewhere.

Likewise, a commitment to limit emissions from burning coal could provide assurance that new coal plants won’t compromise climate targets.

In these areas, the US could lend monitoring and mitigation expertise, including from the development of its updated Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan this year.

Hedging against a Republican administration

From China’s view, the potential for a Republican administration threatens the stability of US action and engagement.

To hedge against this, leaders on both sides could jointly endorse subnational and non-governmental cooperation.

This could pave the way for more partnerships that embed climate cooperation at multiple levels and across sectors, building on California’s recent agreement with a slew of Chinese provinces.

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US climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua are slated to co-host a local climate action summit during Cop28.

This could provide further opportunities to showcase and institutionalise multi-level cooperation on a global stage.

Unlocking higher global ambition

Finally, US-China cooperation could tackle thorny issues in the UN climate negotiations and unlock greater ambition.

Early, explicit communication of US-China consensus on the structure and ambition of NDC climate plans due in 2025 could lay the foundation for global consensus and position both countries as credible actors.

So too could joint communication of expectations for the new post-2025 goal on climate finance, known as the NCQG.

Doing so before Cop28 could inject important momentum ahead of a major milestone when countries will assess progress and gaps towards global climate goals – much like back in 2015, when the two countries helped lay the groundwork for the Paris Agreement by announcing their climate targets early, and together.

US raising climate finance

Perhaps US climate finance ambition could be the necessary show of goodwill to move talks forward.

This ambition was demonstrated by recent attempts to secure additional funding from Congress, supporting international financial reform at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in early October, and an unspecified commitment to the Green Climate Fund.

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For its part, China has expressed willingness to work with the US on green projects in developing countries.

Cooperation could address gaps by combining both countries’ respective strengths, such as China’s nimble construction capacity and US experience engaging with local stakeholders.

While joint projects may face hurdles, even conducting regular exchanges about shared challenges could improve investment outcomes for all sides – including, crucially, recipient countries – and create a multiplier effect.

None of this will be easy, but it is in both countries’ interests. Institutionalizing climate cooperation could weave a safety net for the US and China in light of other tensions.

New joint action could lend credence to their claims of being cooperative international players on climate – not to mention enabling substantive progress.

Kate Logan is associate director of climate at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a fellow at the institute’s Center for China Analysis.

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At the G20 summit on the island of Bali last December, Indonesia and a group of rich countries and banks announced a $20 billion deal to move the Southeast Asian nation from coal to clean energy.

But this announcement left a lot of the details vague. Since then, Indonesia has been pushing for the funders to provide grants instead of loans, which add to the country’s debt burden.

Yesterday, Indonesia published its investment plan which revealed that some of its climate commitments had been watered down.

The reason is that the funding made available by international partners was not adequate, according to Fabby Tumiwa, director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) and part of a working group advising the Indonesian government.

“I am disappointed because we expected the plan could be aligned with Paris Agreement targets”, Tumiwa told Climate Home. “This pushes the JETP further away from that”.

Targets watered down

A draft plan seen by Climate Home in August said Indonesia would retire a sixth of its coal-fired power plant capacity by 2030.

But that target was dropped from yesterday’s final version. Instead, Indonesia now plans to start shutting down coal plants before their scheduled closure no earlier than 2035.

Meanwhile, it plans a massive scale-up of renewables and a reduction of the capacity of existing coal plants in order to get to its 2030 emission reduction target.

In September, an Indonesian government official told Reuters: “It is very clear that they [Western nations] are not eager to provide financing for early retirement”.

The government has also dropped a target to peak its power sector’s emissions at 290 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030.

Captive plants headache

While the new target of 250 million tonnes looks more ambitious, Tumiwa said it is less so because it excludes coal power plants known as captive.

These are power plants that do not provide general electricity to the public but power specific industries like Indonesia’s fast-expanding nickel sector.

The blueprint unveiled this week excludes these so-called captive plants from its calculations altogether, as “more work is required to develop a viable decarbonization plan” for them, the document says.

Rich nations offer loans not grants for Vietnam’s coal transition

This issue, which delayed the publication of the plan in August, has been complicated by the use of wrong assumptions in the modelling for the targets agreed upon last year when the deal was first announced.

“The number of captive plants is way higher than what it previously thought”, said Tumiwa.

The consequence is that reaching the headline emission peaking target promised in the original commitment is “extremely difficult”, as the document now acknowledges.

“Indonesia’s power sector, accounting for the full extent of off-grid captive power, is likely to exceed this target”, it concluded.

Loans not grants

Despite Indonesia’s complaints, the investment plan reveals that the vast majority of the finance is in the form of loans and grants make up just 2.5% of the money.

About three-fifths of the money are loans on better than commercial terms while the rest is bank guarantees and ordinary loans at commercial interest rates.

The US is the biggest funder but its finance is dominated by commercial loans and a multilateral development bank guarantee.

The European Union and European nations like France, Germany – as well as Canada – are providing grants and concessional loans.

The investment plan is subject to public consultation so is not completely final.

The post Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations appeared first on Climate Home News.

The documents, which were finalised by donor countries in late October, reveal for the first time the breakdown of the $15.5 billion pledge that G7 countries and partners made in December to help the Southeast Asian manufacturing hub and heavy coal user reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Vietnam pushed for a large share of grants and cheap funding to smooth its planned costly phase-out of coal-fired power plants and replace them with wind farms and other renewables sources, but donors offered mostly expensive loans at market rates amid chronic delays in the country’s power projects.

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Donors have struggled in climate talks with other developing partners: an $8.5 billion plan for South Africa was adopted in 2021 but has yet to deliver concrete results, and Indonesia has delayed its investment plan linked to donors’ $20 billion pledges.

400+ projects

Vietnam remains committed to cooperating and has prepared a draft list, seen by Reuters, of reform commitments and over 400 projects which could receive G7 money, including 272 on energy infrastructure such as wind and solar farms, power grid upgrades and battery storage systems.

Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference which begins on 30 November in Dubai, the list needs the approval of international partners who have asked for more ambitious regulatory reforms and the involvement of the civil society in decisions to fight climate change, one official from a donor partner said.

The authoritarian government of Vietnam has jailed five environmental campaigners in the last two years.

Vietnam’s ministries of finance and environment did not reply to requests for comment.

The current G7 offer, which was circulated among selected experts last week, includes $321.5 million in grants, almost entirely from the European Union and EU states, which together are the top financial supporters.

Another $2.7 billion are in concessional loans at low interest rates, of which about two-thirds are provided by the EU, Germany and France, and the other third by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – with a small portion from Canada.

The overall public funding was slightly increased to $8 billion from the $7.75 billion pledged in December, but over half is in commercial loans at market rates, which Vietnam has been reluctant to accept – especially in the current global context of high interest rates.

The remaining $7.5 billion are expected to come from private investors in costly loans, but those investments hinge on regulatory reforms and the quality of specific projects, the documents said.

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Washington and Hanoi upgraded their relations to the highest diplomatic status in September, and the United States has pledged $1 billion, almost exclusively in loans at market rates.

Coal generation rising

A climate expert, who declined to be named amid the crackdown in Vietnam on energy experts and activists, said the amount of grants was very low and may not be enough to convince Hanoi to phase out coal.

To finance its power generation plans Vietnam needs roughly $135 billion until 2030 and much more by mid-century, according to government estimates. G7 funds are for an initial three-five year period and are meant to attract much larger private investments.

Under Vietnam’s plans which raised eyebrows among donors when they were published in May, energy generated from coal will increase until 2030, before falling in the following two decades. As a share of total power output, however, coal is expected to drop to 20% in 2030 from 31% in 2020.

The post Rich nations offer loans not grants for Vietnam’s coal transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

The ADB’s “energy transition mechanism” (ETM) makes use of private and public capital to refinance investments in coal-fired power, allowing power purchase agreements to be shortened and plants to be shut as much as a decade earlier than planned.

ADB’s senior climate advisor Warren Evans said negotiations on the Cirebon One project in Indonesia were now on schedule, and talks were also underway to launch similar projects in the Philippines and Vietnam.

“This is the first that has ever been done, so there are a lot of challenges and uncertainties to be resolved, but the negotiations are proceeding and we expect this to go forward soon,” he told Reuters.

“If we are successful across the countries we are having discussions with right now – if we are successful in reducing the lives of 50% of coal-fired power plants – this will be the largest decarbonisation initiative the world has seen.”

Loan-based finance

The mobilisation of climate finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change will be a major theme at Cop28 climate talks in Dubai this year.

Developed nations have not yet fulfilled a pledge to make $100 billion in annual funding available by 2020, but even when they do, it would not be enough, Evans said.

ADB recently launched its Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and the Pacific (IF-CAP), a donor-backed guarantee facility allowing it to free up billions of dollars of capital for loans to climate projects in the region.

IF-CAP, launched in May, was criticised by charity group Oxfam, which said it would pile more debt on Asia’s most vulnerable communities.

Evans said he agreed that more concessional and grant finance would also be required to help poor communities adapt, but “action needs to be taken now”.

“If somebody comes up with a different model, where there is funding available, we’ll be all for it,” he said.

The post ADB set to launch first coal early retirement scheme in Indonesia appeared first on Climate Home News.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong on Thursday to three years in prison for dodging $275,000 in taxes related to her climate campaign group CHANGE, her lawyer said. In addition to the jail term, she was fined 100 million Vietnamese dong ($4,100).

The 50-year-old is at least the fifth climate and environmental campaigner to be jailed on tax evasion charges in the last two years in Vietnam. The trial only lasted half a day after Hong pled guilty to charges of dodging tax payments during the 2012-2022 period.

“This conviction is a total fraud, nobody should be fooled by it,” Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project charity told Reuters. “This is yet another example of the law being weaponised to persecute climate activists who are fighting to save the planet”.

String of arrests

Hong’s imprisonment comes two weeks after the arrest of Ngo Thi To Nhien, director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition, an independent energy policy think-tank.

Nhien worked for the EU, the UN, and the World Bank and was reportedly providing technical advice for the development of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) – a $15.5 billion clean energy financing deal made between Vietnam and G7 nations plus the EU, Norway and Denmark.

Vietnam’s energy transition deal is a ‘black box’, partner warns

The continued crackdown on climate experts and activists poses serious questions to the group of rich nations and investors partnering with the Vietnamese government on a coal-to-clean energy transition.

The US government is “deeply concerned” by Hong’s sentencing, a State Department spokesperson said. “We urge Vietnam to ensure its actions are consistent with the human rights provisions of Vietnam’s constitution and its international commitments, including to consult with non-government stakeholders as part of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp)”, it added.

‘Just’ transition?

Announced in December 2022, the agreement stated the need for the media and NGOs to be included in the process “so as to ensure a broad social consensus” and ensure the transition to be “just and equitable”. Campaign group Global Witness has criticised the language as “weak”.

At UN climate summit big polluters’ absence speaks volumes

The treatment of civil society and energy experts had been a sticking point in negotiations. A spokesperson for the German government, which is also funding the JETP, told Climate Home in November 2022 it had raised human rights concerns with the Vietnamese government. A separate source with knowledge of those discussions said the Germans “received significant pushback”.

But the spokesperson also hoped that the deal could help activists. “With the agreement on the JETP, we also hope to be able to send a positive signal to climate activists,” the spokesperson said at the time.

The German government “will continue to demand” the active participation of civil society in the energy transition process, a spokesperson told Climate Home News after Hong’s imprisonment. “The German Government regularly takes its opportunities to raise and present its concerns to partners [of the Jetp] and the Vietnamese government”, it added.

Concerns over deal

Vietnam is a one-party state run by the Communist party without democratic elections. It ranks low on human rights indexes.

When Hoang Thi Minh Hong was first detained in June, the German government said it was concerned by the arrest and viewed it “critically” in regards to the implementation of the Jetp.

Norly Mercado is the Asia Regional Director of 350.org, a partner organization of CHANGE. She said the “unjust imprisonment of fearless changemakers like Hong not only imperils initiatives within Vietnam such as its JETP deal, but also undermines the country’s vital role in shaping a fair and equitable response to the urgent climate crisis”.

Climate Home News has reached out to the UK government and the European Commission for comment.

The article was updated on 29/9 to include comments from the German and US governments.

The post Vietnamese climate activist jailed in ‘unjust’ government crackdown appeared first on Climate Home News.

The leaders will convene for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit following a once-in-200-year heatwave that shut down schools and led to widespread hospitalizations across the region. 

But, at a time when ASEAN leaders must take strong action to transition to renewable energy, Japan is undermining Southeast Asia’s transition by promoting technologies that would expand and prolong the use of fossil fuels. 

Japan is using initiatives such as the “Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC)” and the “Asia Energy Transition Initiative” to supposedly support ASEAN partners’ decarbonisation efforts. However, these initiatives are vehicles to promote Japan’s so-called “Green Transformation” strategy, which relies heavily on fossil fuels and fossil fuel-based technologies.

Japan’s plans emphasize the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG), fossil hydrogen, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and co-firing ammonia and biomass at coal-fired power plants. These technologies will not help Asia reduce emissions.

Green debt swaps, explained

According to thinktank TransitionZero, co-firing ammonia at coal plants in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand will not cut emissions in line with the International Energy Agency’s 2050 net-zero target.

Similarly, switching from coal to gas power plants globally will not reduce emissions enough to meet climate targets, according to Global Energy Monitor. It will also delay the necessary transition to clean and renewable energy, such as solar and wind. 

Japan’s efforts to undermine Southeast Asia’s energy transition are extensive. Last year, Japan drafted a decarbonisation plan for Indonesia that prioritised the development of LNG, hydrogen, ammonia co-firing, and CCS. Japan is slated to develop a national decarbonisation plan for Cambodia, among others. Earlier this year, Japan convened an AZEC meeting to build support for its technologies amongst energy ministers across Asia. 

More recently, Japan’s hand was visible in the August joint statement of ASEAN Ministers on Energy Plus Three, which encouraged the deployment and utilization of “hydrogen, fuel ammonia, small modular reactor, bioenergy, clean coal technology (CCT), and carbon capture utilisation and/or storage (CCU/S)/carbon recycling” and emphasized the need for investment in LNG for “energy security and energy transition in the region.”

What climate funders must learn from Kenya’s wind power troubles

At the upcoming ASEAN Summit, member states must reject Japan’s self-serving push for fossil fuel-based technologies and strengthen their cooperation on increasing solar and wind capacity in the region. With the costs of solar and wind falling worldwide, this is the most cost-effective way to cut emissions and meet climate goals. 

ASEAN countries must also not waste precious public funds on technologies such as LNG, CCS and ammonia co-firing, which will prolong the use of fossil fuels and keep Asia’s skies full of smog. In addition, ASEAN governments must firmly demand that developed country governments like Japan deliver climate finance and fulfill their obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Climate finance should partly be used to support the acceleration of the equitable and just transition to solar and wind energy.

The ASEAN Summit will conclude on the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. If ASEAN leaders, led by Indonesian President Joko Widodo, are serious about improving air quality for millions of citizens and mitigating the climate crisis, they must make ambitious commitments to scale up solar and wind and reject Japan’s dirty fossil fuel-based technologies. 

Bondan Andriyanu is a Climate and Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia, Novita Indri is an Energy Campaigner at Trend Asia in Indonesia, and Lidy Nacpil is the coordinator of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development and convener of Don’t Gas Asia Campaign. 

The post Southeast Asia must not let Japan hijack its energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Machutar is one of the several dozens of villages across the Maharashtra state where the distribution of new stoves fuelled the production of carbon credits that are still being sold to big polluters today.

Nalband was told the new equipment would consume less of the firewood sourced from nearby trees as fuel. For villagers, this would mean fewer harvesting trips, supposedly bringing climate benefits in the process. 

But, as Abdul Nalband recalls now, “the stoves broke down soon due to rusting and nobody came to follow up or repair them”. Machutar villagers reverted to cooking with traditional stoves, while the few able to afford it gradually switched to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). 

Machutar’s experience is far from unique. Hundreds of carbon offsetting projects distributed so-called improved cookstoves across India, and other developing countries, over the last decade. As 2.4 billion people across the world still cook with highly polluting fuels, giving them access to more efficient firewood stoves can aid the transition to clean cooking.

However, experts suggest the climate benefits from a significant proportion of these projects have been severely overestimated. They say that lax rules, overinflated estimates and poor monitoring have likely created a flood of poor quality offsets linked to the cooking devices.  

Climate Home News analysed improved cookstove projects linked to one of the most active players in the sector: Enking, an Indian firm that claims to be the world’s biggest carbon offsetter. It found that the projects are likely overstating emissions reductions by as much as eight times. Buyers of these offsets include top polluters like oil giant Shell. 

“Everyone is technically playing by the rules, the issue is that the rules are bad”, Annelise Gill-Wiehl, co-author of a recent study on improved cookstoves, told Climate Home News. “The methodologies allow the books to be cooked by developers”. 

Booming carbon offsets

Improved cookstove projects are often confused with clean cooking schemes. But whereas the latter help households transition away from a polluting fuel to a cleaner one, like gas or, even solar, improved cookstoves simply hand out more efficient devices still powered by the same fuel, in this case firewood. 

The premise is that giving poor households better-designed stoves makes them consume less firewood resulting in fewer carbon emissions. That greenhouse gas prevented from being released into the atmosphere is then converted into carbon offsets that corporations, governments and individuals can buy to compensate their own emissions.

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On paper, such programmes can bring benefits. Especially in countries like India, where more than 40% of rural residents still rely on firewood for cooking and face barriers to switching to cleaner fuels.

But, in order to have a real climate impact, the projects have to accurately calculate the drop in CO2 emissions as a result of handing out the stoves.

Sheetal Kelgane sitting in her kitchen beside a firewood stove in Maharashtra state, India. (Photo: Saurabh Katkurwar)

Most improved cookstove projects follow a popular set of rules first established by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the UN’s official carbon offsetting scheme. Experts have pointed the finger at this methodology, arguing it has opened the floodgates to worthless offsets.  

A project distributing improved firewood stoves with those rules generates on average eight times more credits than it should, according to a recent pre-print study by the University of California, Berkeley. The paper is currently undergoing peer-reviewing. 

“I wouldn’t say that the projects are intentionally misleading their buyers,” says Rob Bailis from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), “but that weaknesses in the methodologies and oversight bodies allow developers to make assumptions that are probably not accurate, leading to inflated emission reductions”.

Revealed: How Shell cashed in on dubious carbon offsets from Chinese rice paddies

World’s largest carbon offsetter 

In a business park on the outskirts of Indore, a city in west-central India, lies the self-proclaimed world’s biggest developer of carbon credits. EKI Energy Services, or Enking as the company is commonly known, claims to control roughly 15% of the global voluntary carbon market. Enking has also played a major role in giving a new lease of life to thousands of junk credits from improved cookstove projects. 

Founded in 2008 by engineer Manish Dabkara, Enking started out buying and selling credits and helping other developers get their projects certified. It quietly built up a huge inventory and an ever-growing list of clients including the World Bank and major corporations such as Shell, Siemens and Volksgwagen. It also became the first carbon offset company listed on the stock exchange in 2021.  

We make a #great #team that sweats together, survives together, and wins together.

We #believe in the vision, harmony, and consistency. pic.twitter.com/tgp7ReCkrn

— Manish Dabkara (@manishdabkara1) May 7, 2022

Since then results for Enking have been much more mixed. The company has been mired in a spat with its auditor, which refused to sign off on its financial accounts after highlighting a “material overstatement of revenues”. Enking, which denies any wrongdoing, is now trying to oust the auditor. 

Climate Home News found Enking has also been betting big on improved cookstove projects, despite technical concerns from experts. The company has set up a manufacturing plant capable of producing up to 5 million cast iron stoves a year. The plan is to distribute them to rural households across India, and beyond, as part of carbon offsetting projects. This could lead to 5 million new credits every year. 

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Alongside developing its own activities, Climate Home News found that Enking has also been playing a major role in giving a new life to credits issued by old projects, originally started over ten years ago by a different Indian company under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. 

Based on flawed accounting, this type of project has long been subject to strong criticism. For this reason, Jess Roberts from carbon offsets rating agency Sylvera says they should not be used for offsetting claims, and, if bought, they should be seen as more philanthropic investments. 

But, since early 2021 Enking, acting as a consultant, has helped transfer two dozen of these projects onto the registry of Verra, the world’s largest carbon offsets certifier. Nearly 1.2 million credits have since been made available to polluters. Oil and gas giant Shell has been the biggest buyer so far, snapping up over 98,000 of them on a single day last February. 

Enking has not replied to questions sent by Climate Home News at the time of publication.

Verra told Climate Home News that it “takes any concerns about the integrity and quality of the carbon credits it issues seriously and is ready to address them if they turn out to be founded”.

It is not the first time Enking’s carbon credits activities have come under scrutiny. A report by Bloomberg highlighted how its portfolio is stuffed with offsets tied to renewable energy schemes. These products are generally acknowledged to be of poor quality because of the lack of additionality – meaning the projects would have been funded without the offsetting scheme. 

Overstated climate benefits 

Climate Home News found that both sets of projects – Enking’s own and the old ones from 2012 that they brought back to life – are highly likely to produce offsets that do not reflect real cuts in CO2 emissions, according to an analysis of their documentation by Berkeley’s Gill-Wiehl.  

The projects apply two slightly different versions of the much-contested CDM rules to calculate emissions reductions. They claim abnormally high levels of deforestation caused by firewood harvesting and unrealistic rates of usage when compared with comparable numbers found in scientific studies, the analysis shows.

When projects claim very high numbers buyers should ask hard questions, says SEI’s Rob Bailis. 

A traditional earthen stove (left) used in a rural household in India’s Maharashtra state alongside an improved cookstove (right). Photo: Saurabh Katkurwar

As with most other types of carbon credits, improved cookstoves start from a counterfactual scenario: what would have happened to CO2 emissions – in this case produced by collecting firewood – if the project had not existed? 

The methodologies compare the amount of wood consumed by each household before and after installing the efficient cookstoves. The cast iron cookstoves provided should be more efficient and consume less fuel. As a result, project developers claim villagers need to harvest less firewood from nearby forests, which should therefore be better preserved. 

But “it is extremely difficult to quantify the emissions reduced from avoided deforestation as a result of distributing the improved cookstove,” says Jess Roberts from carbon offsets rating agency Sylvera. Calculations heavily rely on modelling based on several different parameters, which are subject to uncertainty and at risk of manipulation, she added. 

Exaggerated forest loss 

One single key number, in particular, can hugely inflate emission reduction estimates and, as a result, produce vast amounts of worthless carbon credits. Experts call it the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB). In layman’s terms, this is the percentage of wood assumed to be lost for good when trees are cut down for fuel, leading to the depletion of carbon stocks. 

For example, if forests regenerated at the same rate at which firewood was collected, there would be no net change to CO2 levels and no negative climate impact. But the longer forests take to grow back – which implies a high fNRB value –, the bigger the threat to forests’ carbon-storing potential researchers expect. 

Experts say most low-quality credits from improved cookstove projects stem from the misuse of this factor. Several studies have found large discrepancies between the fNRB values used in carbon offsetting projects and those observed by independent researchers. 

According to Berkeley University’s Annelise Gill-Wiehl, this also applies to the projects analysed by Climate Home News.  

The 2012 CDM project declared a fNRB value of 87.9%, assuming therefore that nearly all harvested wood would not grow back. That value stands in stark contrast with the corresponding number – 24.2% – calculated by Gill-Wiehl through a more sophisticated and scientifically accepted model.  

The same level of discrepancy is found in the project currently being developed by Enking. 

Accounts heard by Climate Home News in villages across India’s Maharashtra state indicate the impact of the rural population’s firewood collection on forest loss is limited.

“The forest is protected and maintained by the government. So villagers collect just dead and broken twigs and branches,” Shantabai Deve said. “We are well aware of possible problems if we keep chopping trees, so we plant new ones as well.”

Vittal Barge using his improved cookstove at his house in India’s Maharashtra state. (Photo: Saurabh Katkurwar)

Poor monitoring 

The exaggerated forest loss estimates are not the only parameter fuelling questionable offsets.

“For this type of project the assumed emission reductions don’t happen unless the recipient actually uses the stove,” says Gill-Wiehl. For each stove not used as intended, the project developer needs to reduce the number of credits issued. 

That involves tracking recipients’ behaviour: whether they cook with the new stove at all, how often that happens and whether the traditional, less efficient, stove also remains in operation. This phenomenon, known as stacking, is relatively common because traditional stoves may be better suited for preparing a specific type of meal or may have a religious significance – like in some parts of India. 

Checking these metrics brings more problems. “Lots of over-crediting comes from the lack of robust monitoring”, Gill-Wiehl says.

Often this delicate exercise is done exclusively through surveys, asking a small sample of the recipients a set of questions once a year. These can be “really simplistic”, according to the Berkeley researcher. “They would literally ask a household ‘have you used the stove in the last month?’ and if the answer is ‘yes’, they get to credit it as if they used it all the time”. 

These surveys produce results that, on the face of it, appear excellent. 

In a monitoring report for its new project, Enking said its surveys showed everyone they had given a stove to has been using it all the time without ever combining it with a traditional one. The CDM projects report similarly high rates across the board, allowing them to issue nearly the maximum number of credits allowed. 

These results are starkly different from those generally observed by independent researchers on the field. According to the Berkeley report, studies have seen average adoption rates of 53%, usage rates of 48% and stacking rates of 76%. In other words, only about half of the recipients cook with the stove at all, and, if they do, it happens less than half of the time, most likely in conjunction with a traditional one. 

SEI’s Rob Bailis says that “projects claiming very high rates of fNRB, adoption, and exclusive use, should raise some red flags”.

Researchers say project developers could implement different methods to track the stoves’ usage: anything from just drafting better surveys to cross-checking answers with photos and videos, or even fitting the devices with remotely-controlled sensors.  

But it is easy to see why very few go the extra mile, experts said. “The incentive structure is to generate as many credits as possible, not to produce really high-quality data,” says Gill-Weihl.

In Machutar and in other neighbouring villages most improved cookstove users interviewed by Climate Home News didn’t recall the exact project that gave them their devices. But they do remember that most of them broke down quickly and were no longer in frequent use.

For the villagers, the abstract thought of carbon offsets is eclipsed by their immediate needs. Meager incomes from rice and strawberry farming put frequent supplies of gas canisters beyond the reach of most. Firing up the traditional mud stoves remains the only solution.

“It is convenient and faster to cook on LPG. But I cannot afford to refill it twice every month”, says Rajendra Jadhav, an electrician in the region. “So I use an earthen stove for boiling water, drying clothes, and even cooking food frequently”.

Saurabh Katkurwar contributed to report this story.

The post Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts appeared first on Climate Home News.

But disagreements between Indonesia and the wealthy countries backing it meant that the launch was delayed.

What were they arguing over? You guessed it – money. Specifically, how much of the $20 billion promised should be grants versus loans?

The wealthy countries represented by the US and Japan say 0.8%, while Indonesia says ‘a lot more than that please!’

While negotiations continue, the Indonesian government official in charge told Climate Home News they need to see how much is being put on the plate before committing to specific targets.

The pioneer of energy transition partnerships, South Africa, got 3%, which now looks positively generous in comparison. Is it any wonder India hasn’t followed through on talk about a similar deal?

This week’s news:

• Devastating Beijing floods test China’s ‘sponge cities’
• China plans to recycle solar panels and wind turbines
• Indonesia delays $20bn green plan, after split with rich nations on grants and new coal plants
• US sparks controversy by backing oil company’s carbon-sucking plans
• One of 2023’s most extreme heatwaves is happening in the middle of winter

Carbon removal hijacked?

While the US plays Scrooge in Jakarta, back in Washington it’s ‘hey big spender’!

The government is giving out up to $1.2 billion for companies to invest in machines that are meant to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

That’s all good in principle – the clever folks at the IPCC say we’re going to need this technology to compensate for the hardest-to-clean-up sectors.

But a big chunk will go to Occidental, whose CEO admits she sees these machines as a way to prolong their oil pumping business. Notably, this is not one of the hardest to clean up sectors.

With the Saudis lobbying the IPCC to emphasise carbon removal and Japanese coal plant owner Mitsubishi investing in it, is the fossil fuel industry hijacking the concept for its own ends?

The post Money row delays green plan – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Eight years after, the Indonesian government claims to have made huge progress, with as much as 3.66 million hectares of peatland declared “restored” in areas managed by plantation companies. But these claims are not supported by data the government has made public, an analysis by The Gecko Project has found. 

The government’s statements appear to hinge on a narrow definition of “restoration” that deems peatlands restored when groundwater levels have been raised to 40 centimetres below the surface.  

The analysis of government data indicates that even by this measure, the areas “restored” have never reached the figures cited in official documentation and may in fact be far lower. Many of these peats sit on land licensed to timber companies. 

​​The data also shows that the area of peatland that meets this 40cm threshold also fluctuates wildly as water levels rise and fall, sometimes dropping as low as half a million hectares – a fraction of the area claimed as “restored” by the government.

​​The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, known as KLHK, did not respond to written questions, or to extensive attempts to seek comment on our findings.​ 

Environmental researchers who spoke to The Gecko Project viewed the implementation of a system to monitor peatland restoration as a positive step. But some also expressed scepticism about the government’s claims of success and how it was arriving at its figures. 

In the meantime, with Indonesia heading into what meteorologists predict could be an extreme dry season this year, the findings suggest that large areas of peatland could be far more vulnerable to burning than the government has acknowledged.  

The coming months, said David Taylor, a professor and peatland expert at the National University of Singapore, would serve as “a good test” of the government’s claims. 

An excavator operates in peatland covered by haze from fires in a concession belonging to PT Kaswari Unggul (KU) in Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo: Greenpeace)

The repair job starts 

Despite covering only around three percent of the planet’s land surface, peatlands store around a third of all the world’s soil carbon.  

In Indonesia, where they cover more than 20 million hectares, peatlands have long been prone to fire during the dry season, especially during El Niño events. But the risks have ​been worsened by the draining of peatlands ​to allow cultivation of oil palm and timber plantations. 

The government set out to undo some of that damage by issuing a series of decrees and regulations, beginning in 2016, which aimed to rewet drained peatlands and replant vegetation.  

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According to these guidelines, success would be assessed through multiple metrics, including plant growth and keeping the groundwater level at no lower than 40cm below the surface. Some research has suggested that higher water levels offer better protection against fires. 

A specially-established government body, now named the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency, or BRGM, was given authority for overseeing peat restoration in land controlled by communities or the government. 

However, several million hectares of peatland fall within land already licensed to plantation companies. ​KLHK​ ordered companies to restore peatlands within their concessions and report back their progress.  

Mission accomplished? 

According to KLHK reports, companies have made progress in restoring peatlands. The KLHK website, for example, states that 3.4 million hectares of peatland within concession areas were “restored” between 2015 and 2019. 

A more recent KLHK report from 2022 states that “as of December 2021 (peatland restoration) had reached 3.66 million hectares.” 

But the KLHK’s methods for assessing which peatlands are restored can be narrow, experts say, as they appear to focus only on rewetting lands and not on other metrics. 

While companies are required to raise peat groundwater levels to at least 40cm belowground, other phases of restoration work, such as replanting native vegetation, appear to have been sidelined, leaving “rewetting” to be used as a proxy for restoration.  

In a 2022 report, the ministry registered fewer than 6,000 hectares as having “vegetation rehabilitation”. 

“Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia

A data analysis by The Gecko Project also shows that, even under the more generous approach of counting only rewetted peatlands as restored, the numbers still fall short of what the government says has been restored. 

Still, KLHK has claimed that by 2019, rewetting work alone had already reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than 190 million tons – equivalent to the annual national emissions of the United Arab Emirates. KLHK did not respond to questions about the data supporting these calculations. 

Restoration falls short? 

KLHK has not made public a list of areas deemed to be restored and did not respond to requests for this information. However, it has published the areas that have been rewetted to various levels. 

Using this data, The Gecko Project identified peatlands within concession areas and compared their water levels to the 3.66 million hectares that KLHK claims have been restored.  

At a more detailed glance, the data shows big fluctuations in the “rewetted” area, suggesting that water levels are not being maintained on a stable basis.  

For example, at the beginning of 2019, during a wet season that saw torrential floods in many parts of the country, KLHK registered that around 3.5 million hectares of peatland inside concession areas had groundwater levels at 40cm belowground or higher.  

But in the middle of the 2022 dry season, the area rewetted was down to around just half a million hectares. 

Fire risk 

The data analysis also identified multiple “dry” concession areas in which water levels fell consistently below 40cm in the past year, highlighting a possibly heightened fire risk as this year’s El Niño event progresses.  

As an example, PT Rimba Hutani Mas, a pulpwood plantation company and supplier of the major paper and pulp firm Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), manages nearly 70,000 hectares in South Sumatra province, the majority of which is on peatlands according to government maps.  

Large sections of PT Rimba Hutani Mas’s peatland had water levels below the 40cm threshold​ over the last year​, KLHK data shows. According to ​the ​ministry, concession holders that have groundwater at this level “should carry out field checks immediately and improve or repair water management infrastructure in the field.” 

In 2015, army officers and firefighters try to extinguish fires in peatland areas outside the city of Palangka Raya in Borneo’s Central Kalimantan province. Photo: (Aulia Erlangga/CIFOR)

But the company was subject to legal action by Singapore’s National Environment Agency after evidence emerged that fires in its concession had contributed substantially to the haze of 2015. APP argued at the time that almost all the fires in its concession areas had been started outside those areas. 

APP did not respond to specific questions about water levels in this supplier’s concession area. The company said it has been submitting “all the required data” to KLHK and pointed to its 2022 Sustainability Report. 

Job not done 

Peat researchers agree that fluctuations in water level are to be expected in peatlands, whether or not land is being managed. This complicates the use of groundwater level as a standalone measure of restoration success.  

Water levels are highly dependent on external climate conditions, noted Muh Taufik, a tropical peatland researcher at IPB University. In the wet season, the water table could be at ground level or even above ground, while in the dry season it can fall to a metre or more below the surface, he said. 

The topography of the land itself can influence the water table, too – valleys are more likely than slopes to remain wet. “It’s very difficult to maintain the water table around 40cm,” Taufik said. 

Such variability reinforces some researchers’ concerns about judging restoration success on the basis of water level data alone. 

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

While getting water back into dried-out peatlands is important, “it’s definitely not ‘job done’” once the water table reaches 40cm, said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions at the University of Leeds. Rather, he said, “it is a good proxy for things moving in the right direction.” 

David Taylor, from the University of Singapore, suggested that rewetting should be seen as a first step.  

While having a monitoring system for peat rewetting is a positive step, he said, it’s important to take a more holistic approach to peat restoration that acknowledges the time and multiple steps involved – particularly reintroducing plants and allowing natural vegetation to grow in the absence of peat-damaging plantation activities. 

Uncertain figures 

Gusti, the professor at Tanjungpura University said it’s “very complicated” to determine whether the ministry’s peatland restoration claims have been achieved or not.  

Separate KLHK documents appear to acknowledge much lower success rates than claimed by officials. A 2020 report, for example, noted that, out of 280 concession areas, just 60 were found to have “actually improved their performance of peatland ecosystems management.” 

Fieldwork published in 2021 by the nonprofit Pantau Gambut concluded that “most companies” had failed to implement plans to restore peat. 

The implications of these failings, and the fluctuations in water levels, may become apparent in the coming months, as dry weather continues to intensify in Indonesia in the first El Niño year since 2019.1 By mid-June, KLHK reported that fires in 2023 had already affected more than 28,000 hectares of forest and other land. 

“Big El Niños over the last thirty years or so have been associated with drought here in southeast Asia [and with] peatland fires,” said Taylor.  

Fires can burn even on pristine peatlands, he said, but if Indonesia’s restoration work has been successful, it should help limit some of the damage. “I think it’s going to be a test of claims that have been made that these peatlands have been restored.” 

This story was published in partnership with The Gecko Project.

The post Indonesia falls short on peatland restoration, risking destructive fire season appeared first on Climate Home News.

There was no outcome document and no grand announcements. Nothing to impress the Republican congressmen who gave Kerry a grilling over China’s alleged climate failings last week.

But Xie was never going to get up and say that Kerry had talked him into abandoning new coal plants – any more than Kerry ever going to say Beijing had pressured him into giving more climate finance and removing American tariffs on Chinese solar panels.

The gains were more incremental. With expectations low, the meetings were cautiously hailed by experts as a “small win” and “an important step in what will be a complex rescue operation”.

US-China cooperation on climate had long withstood geopolitical tensions, but talks froze after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022. Since then, they have slowly resumed.

Now, the “rescue operation” will continue with two more meetings planned before Cop28. In a press conference, Kerry said they’ll talk about two US priorities – coal and methane.

Success would be if China finally publishes its methane strategy. Or reforms of its electric grid to translate its booming number of solar panels and wind turbines into growth in renewables’ share of China’s electricity, a link that isn’t as automatic as you might think.

But, as China reiterated this week, the talks are still hostage to the wider relationship. Any high-profile US defence of Taiwan’s sovereignty could set them back to square one.

This week’s news:

• Biden’s union-friendly green jobs pitch meets sceptical response
• Frans Timmermans steps down from EU’s climate leadership
• Dozens of oil & industry lobbyists attended secretive shipping emissions talks
• Under record heatwave, US and China “unstick” climate talks
• EU and Argentina strike gas, hydrogen & renewables deal
• Australia will update the ‘fantasy’ net zero plan it inherited

…and comment:

• Open letter from 14 countries to G20: Safeguard a liveable future
• The EU-Mercosur trade deal will harm Brazil’s indigenous communities

While Kerry and Xie were dining in Beijing, another big hitter was preparing to leave the climate diplomacy stage.

Frans Timmermans has been the straight-talking, passionate face of the EU’s climate policy since 2019.

But now he’s leaving Brussels to try and become the next prime minister of his native Netherlands.

Who will lead the EU at Cop28 is unclear and, with Xie suffering health problems and Kerry considering retirement, it could be all change at the top by Cop29.

The post US-China talks thaw in heatwave – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

 Some experts suggested that China has “only delivered 10%” of the China South-South Climate Cooperation fund since it was announced eight years ago, calling the pace “quite slow”.

Others said it would be “hard to tell” how much of the pledge has been fulfilled due to a lack of official updates. 

Li Shuo, senior global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, described the fund’s details as “confusing” but believed that China “has not delivered as much as it promised”. 

In 2015, China’s President Xi Jinping announced the fund during a state visit to the USA, months before unprecedented US-Chinese climate cooperation helped the world agree to the Paris agreement.

Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in California in 2015

 At the time, Xi said that China would “make available” 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) to help other developing countries tackle climate change. But he did not set a deadline for the fund’s delivery. 

 Delivery ‘not as promising’ 

China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said at Cop27 that China had provided 2 billion yuan ($310 million) to other developing countries, which are otherwise known as the Global South, to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change.

Xie did not give more information about the figure. But E3G, a thinktank focused on climate change policy, interpreted Xie’s words as an update on the China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund. 

It said in a recent analysis that China’s climate finance to the Global South “falls short” of its own pledge because the nation has delivered just one-tenth in seven years. 

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Byford Tsang, senior policy advisor at E3G, told Climate Home News that “at the current pace, I think it would take quite a long time [for China] to fulfil its pledge”. But he acknowledged that, as a developing country, China is not obliged to provide any formal climate finance.

Although it is possible that Beijing would give “an injection” to the fund to accelerate its delivery, “based on what has been achieved so far, it was not as promising as people were thinking during the start”, Tsang continued. 

 Institutional challenges 

 Tsang of E3G pointed to “institutional challenges” as reasons for the fund’s sluggish progress because it is managed by different ministries, which makes it complicated to disperse.

According to a study  published by China’s National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC), an affiliation to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment “multiple departments” are “involved” in China’s south-south cooperation on climate change. 

“Apart from the newly established Ministry of Ecology and Environment (established in 2018), it also involves China International Development Cooperation Agency, the ministries of commerce, finance and foreign affairs, as well as the National Development and Reform Commission,” the study said. 

It added that the China South-South Climate Cooperation had yet to be set up for various reasons, including lack of coordination – a fact that “had affected the progress of the south-south climate change cooperation and international reputation” of China. 

“A common understanding is that the promised amount would need to be distributed by the fund. If the fund has not been established, then its delivery is an open question,” Li of Greenpeace East Asia told Climate Home News. 

 He said the overall situation is “unclear” because China has not reported the fund’s progress regularly. “On the other hand, China is not obliged to give such reports internationally,” he added. 

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Duan Hongbo is a professor at the School of Economics and Management at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He said that the politics and attitude of potential recipient countries – most of which are the least developed in the world – also play a role. For example, some countries constantly change their points of contact and others “are more interested in projects that would boost their economy than combat climate change.” The Covid-19 pandemic also delayed global cooperation, he said. 

But some observers urge China to make bigger strides. Belinda Schäpe, policy adviser at E3G, told Climate Home News: “China hasn’t put a timeline on the fund. But for it to actually have an impact, it should happen faster.” 

As China sees the south-south climate cooperation as a way to “portray itself as the responsible leader power”, to keep that leadership of the developing world and its credibility as the climate leader, accelerating the delivery of its climate fund is the “rational next step”, she added. 

Ten-hundred-thousand

The Chinese government has not specified how the fund would be spent, but experts from a Chinese state-affiliated thinktank NCSC said China has been funnelling it through the so-called “Ten-Hundred-Thousand” projects announced by President Xi at the opening ceremony of the 2015 Paris climate talks. 

Xi said that from 2016, China would “launch cooperation projects to set up 10 pilot low-carbon industrial parks and start 100 [emissions reduction] and [adapting to climate change] programs in other developing countries and provide them with 1,000 training opportunities on climate change”.  

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Xi’s statement clarified the scope of the fund, wrote Li Yan, an NCSC analyst, in a 2020 report. 

China said in its most recent climate change “white paper” that by July 2022, it had signed 43 agreements on climate change cooperation with 38 developing countries, agreed to build low-carbon industrial parks in Laos, Cambodia and Seychelles, and carried out 40 emissions reduction and adaptating to climate change projects in more than 30 nations. 

The paper said China had allocated 1.2 billion yuan ($170 million) to the south-south climate change cooperation by last July but did not explain whether the money had been dispersed through the fund. It also remains unclear if Xie’s statement was an update for this figure. 

A fund ‘out of goodwill’ 

Developed countries – including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and much of Western Europe — have been condemned for failing to live up to their long-standing promise of providing $100 billion a year to developing countries by 2020 to help the latter reduce and adapt to the impact of climate change. 

The pledge was made in 2009 to reflect wealthy nations’ historical responsibility for causing climate change during their industrialisation. They are responsible for half of all historical carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally despite always being a small minority of its population. 

As China is considered a developing country, it is not obliged to provide climate finance, according to the principle of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the foundation of international climate negotiations which was set up in 1992.

In theory, it is also eligible to receive aid from developed countries. But at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, China said that small island states, the least developed countries and African nations should be “prioritised” in receiving financial support, indicating that it would not fight for climate finance shelled out by developed countries. 

Furthermore, China launched its South-South Cooperation on Climate Change mechanism in 2011 to support other developing countries. Since then, it has provided aid mainly through donating materials, sharing knowledge and offering training programmes. 

US backs Indonesian oil refinery despite pledge to end fossil fuel finance

Duan told Climate Home News that it was “crucial” for any evaluation of the fund to understand that China’s position and obligations are different from that of developed countries. 

“China is not responsible for providing any climate finance to developing countries,” Duan said. “Its commitment is completely voluntary and out of goodwill. Therefore, any contribution [from China] should be viewed as a positive impact.” 

Regarding the “confusing accounts” of climate finance, Duan said that “not only China, but the entire global climate community” is facing this problem. 

 “There are different ways to calculate climate finance depending on how a country defines its scope and how much pressure it is under to deliver it,” he explained.  

The post Confusion surrounds China’s pledged climate finance towards the Global South  appeared first on Climate Home News.

The money has been used to help an Indonesian conglomerate, Medco Group construct a biomass power plant that makes electricity from burning wood.

Medco has already cleared large tracts of rainforest, establishing timber plantations in its place.

Deforested land (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

As a result of the financing, it plans to expand its plantations by at least 2,500 hectares – seven times the size of New York’s Central Park – and cut down more rainforest.

The project has made it harder for Marind people, hunter-gatherers indigenous to the lowlands of Papua, to find food to eat.

With food in the shops expensive, many families are going hungry, eating meals consisting solely of rice. Children have died of malnutrition.

Rainforest to wood chips

Medco’s project started in the late 2000s, as part of Indonesia’s push to convert southern Papua into a source of food and energy.

The company’s initial plan was to plant a vast timber plantation that would produce wood chips for export.

Medco obtained a licence for some 170,000 hectares of land, overlapping substantially with the ancestral territory of Marind people living in Zanegi village.

FSC’s rehab scheme for forest destroyers under fire after fresh allegations

Before the deforestation began, villagers said, they could find food a few steps from their homes.

It was common to see cassowaries – a flightless bird similar to a turkey – in their backyards.

Boar and kangaroos roamed around the village, and the swamps were full of fish.

Early promises

Still, some villagers welcomed the arrival of Medco. The company assuaged concerns by handing out cash and promising jobs, support for children’s education and a new school, church and health facilities.

The company signed a written agreement in 2009 committing it to protect sacred places, areas of cultural importance, hunting grounds, and what Medco described as “other places considered important to the community.”

“At the beginning, it was good, because the people got jobs,” said Amandus Gebze, a Marind father of nine. “Everyone was involved in the work, there were no exceptions.”

Amandus Gebze, a Marind father of nine. Two of his children have passed away and two were suffering from malnutrition, as of April 2022. (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

But within a few years, the villagers were fired. The regular income Medco had provided dried up, replaced mostly with irregular work picking up small pieces of wood for $5 a cubic metre.

Asked why the employees had lost their jobs, Medco said that it stopped clearing the forest in 2014 because it was losing money. But it added that it had switched from employing staff directly, to working through “contractors or third parties.”

The company then suggested the villagers had lost their jobs because they were unable to “comply with company regulations” and were “often absent,” and were therefore considered to have resigned.

Food sources wrecked

Some villagers returned to hunting to provide food for their families. But Medco had replaced a ten kilometre wide stretch of natural forest with a man-made plantation of identical trees.

In interviews, nine villagers said it had become significantly harder to source their traditional foods.

They now had to roam up to 15 kilometres away to hunt cassowaries or deer and often returned empty-handed several days in a row.

The Marind are hunter-gatherers who sourced game from the forests around their village. Since Medco’s operations began they have been forced to travel further in search of food. (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

The groves of sago, which produce a starchy staple food like tapioca, had been spared from clearing. But the denuded landscape meant they’d been ruined by mud and chemicals.

With free local food sources drying up, the villagers are forced to buy food that comes in by pick-up track and often costs more than it would in a high-end supermarket in Indonesia’s big cities.

Empty rice

Without a secure income and their traditional food sources declining, some villagers told us it has become common for them to eat only rice, a meal they refer to as nasi kosong or “empty rice.”

The Gecko Project observed Amandus Gebze’s family prepare a breakfast of rice with two packets of noodles, split between the parents and six siblings.

Some families living in the village of Zanegi, in the shadow of Medco’s plantation, now regularly consume meals consisting solely of rice, supplemented by instant noodles when they have cash. (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

Some families will sprinkle pepper on the rice to make it edible. Others will pour salt water on it or just drink large quantities of water to help them swallow it.

In April 2022, health workers stationed in the village told the Gecko Project that four children were stunted and eight pregnant women were suffering from chronic energy deficiency, a health risk to them and their babies.

Health records obtained during an investigation by the Indonesian newspaper Kompas in August last year showed that around a third of young children measured were stunted.

A Marind child at his home in Zanegi. Marind families tend to be large, with more than 20 people sharing a single small home in some cases. (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

Since 2012, there have been reports of a total of nine malnourished children from Zanegi dying. Indonesian newspaper Kompas found that between 2019 and 2021, one family alone lost three children.

Not our fault

Medco rejected the suggestion that this could be linked to its project. “Medco Papua’s operations do not cause malnutrition,” it wrote. “No community food sources were disturbed.”

However, it also said that the “allegations presented by The Gecko Project regarding malnutrition incidents require further in-depth investigation”.

Medco denied making promises to the community, beyond the written agreement to protect their food sources and other key areas.

It insisted that it had made efforts to help improve the plight of the community, despite its project losing money.

Green funding boost

Medco claimed that its project’s progress was limited to 3,000 hectares of land because it was not financially viable.

This is supported by satellite imagery, which shows the forests around Zanegi being cleared rapidly after 2010, then largely stopping in 2014.

But in 2017, the Indonesian government gave Medco’s failing project a new lease of life.

A Medco truck carries wood along a road between the forest and a clearing. (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

It provided financing to help Medco construct a new biomass power plant 20 kilometres away from Zanegi while the state-owned electricity company committed to buying the energy it would generate.

Satellite imagery shows the new power plant emerging, 20 kilometres south-east of Zanegi, in late 2018. In 2021, it also shows deforestation resuming, north of Zanegi.

The backers – SMI

The first tranche of government funding came from PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (SMI), a state-owned company under the control of the Ministry of Finance.

In 2017, it provided 60 billion rupiah ($4.5 million) in “project financing” for the power plant.

SMI was established in 2009 to provide infrastructure financing, but has been increasingly focused on helping Indonesia meet its climate change commitments.

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Its 2017 sustainability report suggested that Medco’s power plant could help Indonesia deliver on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In a 2020 presentation, an SMI director presented the plant as an example of “financing to contribute towards climate change mitigation”.

This was despite nonprofits saying publicly, including to the UN, that the Medco project was making the Marind go hungry.

SMI declined to comment.

The backers – IEF

In 2021, the energy ministry and Medco said that another government fund, the Indonesian Environment Fund (IEF), had also provided “funding support” for the biomass power plant.

Budi Basuki, a senior Medco executive, said that the total funding had reached 140 billion rupiah, more than $9 million.

The IEF was established in 2019 as a body that could be used to channel investments to protect the environment.

When it received IEF’s support, Medco had already cleared an estimated 3,000 hectares of forest.

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The company said it needs to almost double the size of its plantation to meet the demands of the power plant, and that it would continue to use wood harvested from the forest as it is cleared.

It also hopes to triple the capacity of the plant, creating demand for more land and wood.

Government maps show that as of 2012, large areas of its concession were intact, or “primary”, rainforest and swamp forests.

Analysis of satellite imagery by The Gecko Project indicates that the area remains largely undisturbed. These landscapes hold large amounts of carbon that are released if they are cleared.

Endah Tri Kurniawaty, of the IEF, said that the area had been designated a “production forest” and said that it was therefore legitimate for Medco to cut the forest and replace it with a plantation. “According to the existing laws and regulations, they may do that,” she said.

Co-firing to net zero

The Indonesian government’s support for biomass in Papua is not an aberration.

Rather than shutting down its coal-fired power plants, it plans to keep the furnaces burning but phase out a portion of the fossil fuels by “co-firing” with biomass.

Last June, the energy minister Arifin Tasrif, identified this kind of “co-firing” as central to its strategy for reducing emissions from coal.

While the Merauke operation is small compared to the network of vast power plants spread across Indonesia, dozens of them are also burning biomass.

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The state energy company, PLN, announced in 2022 that it planned to increase its use of biomass five-fold over the next year, and had set a target of burning 10.2 million tonnes across more than 50 power plants by 2025.

According to PLN, by 2022 the majority of its biomass came from waste, like sawdust, rice or palm oil husks. But to meet the massively growing demand it needs timber plantations.

The environment ministry has rallied behind the policy.

At the UN climate conference in Egypt last November, Agus Justianto, the director general of sustainable forest management, said that it would “promote plantation forests for energy development” and that more than a million hectares of “production forest” could be used.

Trend Asia, a nonprofit organisation that has been monitoring the policy, calculated that meeting this demand would require at least 2.3 million hectares of land to be converted to plantations – an area half the size of Denmark.

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Timber plantations can be established on “degraded” lands, as the government has suggested could happen now. But as with Medco’s project, they have often been planted in place of rainforests, which has the advantage for investors of generating a steady-stream of timber before the plantations reach maturity.

“The use of biomass is renewable in theory, but in practice it is not,” said Yuyun Indradi of Trend Asia. “Timber plantations have been a major driver of deforestation. So our concern is that it’s very likely this will trigger deforestation.”

“There’s no hope”

In Zanegi, the Marind have now spent more than a decade observing how policies decided thousands of miles away – and the whims of a corporation – can influence their lives.

Natalia Mahuze, wife of Amandus Gebze, stood barefoot with her three-year old son Efrem under the shade of a tree outside the Zanegi village health centre in April 2022.

Natalia Mahuze and her five sons. Two of them were malnourished as of April 2022. One was stunted and received supplementary food from local health workers. (Photo: Albertus Vembrianto)

The midwife emerged with a digital body-weight scale. She called Efrem’s name and his mother guided him into the scale: 10.7 kilograms – underweight for his age.

The midwife handed Efrem a pack of biscuits to supplement his diet, and took a photo of him holding the packet with her mobile phone. She gave another to his mother.

“Please don’t share these with his siblings,” the midwife told Natalia. “They’re only for him.”

Efrem was born around the time Medco completed construction of its power plant in Merauke.

“It used to be good,” Natalia said. “It’s really hard now.”

Her husband Amandus, once optimistic about Medco’s project, questioned whether it would ever deliver for his family.

“If they want to develop the community, they’ll need more of our territory,” he said. “If we have to give them more land, is there any chance they’ll show more concern for us? There’s no hope.”

This story was published in collaboration with Gecko Project, Project Multatuli, Mongabay and Climate Home News.

The post “Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia appeared first on Climate Home News.

At its assembly last year, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) agreed to give their stamp of approval to companies that have cut down trees between 1994 and 2020 if they restore part of the forests and compensate communities. The move was backed by logging companies and green campaigners.

The programme will officially start in July, but preparatory work has already begun with companies interested in regaining the valuable certification, which opens loggers up to more customers. These companies include two Indonesian pulp and paper giants which had cleared vast areas of the tropical rainforest for decades.

Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) now say they have turned a new leaf and have now eliminated deforestation in their supply chains.

But environmental groups doubt their commitment and accuse both companies of sourcing wood from suppliers which continue to cut down intact forests. April and APP refute the accusations.

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Any evidence of deforestation since 2020 should immediately disqualify the companies from obtaining certification.

Grant Rosoman, a campaigner at Greenpeace and former FSC board member, says the certification body needs to first look at evidence on the ground before allowing companies to proceed with the scheme.

“If the FSC finds any companies associated with them have continued deforestation over the last two or three years that should be an immediate stop to the process”, he added. “The big danger is that this could become a marketing operation”.

FSC told Climate Home News it “will not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities”.

Coveted green symbol

From books to toilet paper, millions of goods across the world boast the FSC’s tick-tree symbol. For the consumer its presence should guarantee the product originates from sustainable and ethical sources.

For companies seeking the certification body’s recognition the symbol is a business opportunity. It opens up wider access to markets as many governments and major retailers, especially in Western countries, require the use of FSC-certified products.

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As the rule-setter and enforcer, the FSC plays the crucial role of upholding the integrity of the system. At its general assembly last year its members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a historical change: it moved from 1994 to 2020 the cut-off date by which companies need to have stopped clearing forests in order to get a certification.

Crucially, however, this would only apply if companies restored the same amount of forests that had been cut in their concessions during the period, and provided remedy for the social harm done in the process.

Problem companies engaged

The FSC said this change would “provide a route by which millions of hectares of forests can be restored and then become FSC certified and managed in a responsible manner”.

In March the FSC announced that that it was “engaged in a dialogue” with April and APP to plan their involvement in the remedy process.

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Part of large South-east Asian conglomerates selling products in hundreds of countries, both APP and April used to hold FSC certifications. But they lost them, respectively in 2007 and 2013, when the FSC concluded they had been destroying pristine rainforests.

Since then, both companies have vowed to reform themselves. April committed in 2015 to eliminating deforestation from its supply chain and to protecting forests and peatlands. APP similarly pledged to halt all natural forest clearance.

Deforestation allegations

But separate investigations from campaigners and media have repeatedly accused the two companies of breaking their promises.

In the latest instance, last week a coalition of environmental groups accused April of receiving “significant volumes of wood” from two suppliers with evidence of deforestation. In particular, the report points the finger at Adindo Hutani Lestari, an April supplier located in north-eastern Borneo.

The investigation detected over 10,500 hectares of natural forest loss in its concession area since 2016. That’s roughly the equivalent of 20,000 football pitches. In the last month alone, over a hundred hectares of trees have been cut down in the area, according to Nusantara Atlas, which tracks deforestation using satellite images.

Grant Rosoman says this evidence “throws into question” April’s ability to be part of the FSC remedy scheme. “It’s very easy to make a commitment but delivering it on the ground is another story,” he says. “The FSC should not waste its time and do a preliminary screening to see if there is even a basis for moving forward”.

‘Baseless claims’

In a statement published on its website, April said: “claims made in the report related to April were baseless”. The company added that, based on its own analysis, no deforestation occurred in areas controlled by its supplier Adindo Hutani Lestari.

APP has faced similar accusations of backsliding on its commitments. Last year a report by a group of campaigners claimed two timber suppliers controlled by APP destroyed natural habitats in a protected reserve to grow acacia trees for pulpwood.

Over 220 hectares of forest have been cleared over the last 12 months in the concession areas of those two companies, according to Nusantara Atlas.

APP did not reply to our request for comment. But, in a statement published last year in response to the report, it said deforestation does not take place on any of its supplier concessions. It also said no natural forests were turned into pulpwood cultivations in the areas controlled by the two suppliers.

Loophole risks

FSC told Climate Home News evidence of the progress in implementing remedy work “must be present and verified” before companies can apply for a new certification.

It also said it would “not engage with any organisation that continues to be part of destructive activities, considered as serious violations, within its corporate group”.

Environmentalists worry the narrow focus only on operations directly controlled by companies seeking association could be exploited as a loophole.

That’s because – they claim – companies like April and APP hide their direct links to third-party suppliers through complicated corporate structures stretching into secretive offshore countries.

Timer Manurung from the Indonesian environmental group Auriga says the FSC must take into consideration any deforestation in the groups’ supply chains or this could be an escape route.  “The FSC should prepare itself not to be fooled”, she added.

A previous version of the story included maps from deforested areas, but these were removed due to deforestation happening before the images were taken.

The post FSC’s rehab scheme for forest destroyers under fire after fresh allegations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nguy Thi Khanh, the founder of the GreenID Vietnam campaign group, was sentenced to 24 months in prison for alleged tax evasion in June 2022, later reduced to 21 months.

She was accused of not paying enough tax on the prize money she received for winning the Goldman environmental award.

But, after 16 months of imprisonment, a message was posted to her personal Facebook page on Saturday which said: “Endless happiness to be back in the midst of family’s love, to meet and hug loved ones after 16 months of being isolated. Sincere thanks to everyone who has cared, shared and helped me personally and my family during the past year and a half.”

Khanh’s fellow GreenID campaigners Dang Dinh Bach and Mai Van Loi remain in prison on similar tax evasion charges.

Vietnam is a one-party state without democratic elections which ranks low on human rights indexes.

Khanh’s campaigning style focussed on working with the government and state agencies to revise official energy plans rather than on criticising the government or companies.

Awkward obstacle

The imprisonment of leading anti-coal activists was awkward for the Vietnamese government as it negotiated a $15.5 billion coal-to-clean energy financing deal, known as a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), with wealthy nations and investors.

The US, which co-chaired the JETP talks with Vietnam, condemned the imprisonment of Khanh and her fellow campaigners last June. “Civil society partners are a crucial part of helping countries like Vietnam meet their climate change and environmental protection goals,” the US state department said.

So happy my dear colleague Nguy Thi Khanh was released, 5 months before her due date. Hope she will rest well, and continue her heroic work for #climate.
I wonder if the gov will consider the same favor for the other three, while working toward #Just #Energy #Transition #JETP pic.twitter.com/U18qGeqniO

— Hong Hoang (@honghoangchange) May 15, 2023

A spokesperson for the German government’s BMZ ministry, which is also funding the JETP, told Climate Home in November it had raised human rights concerns with the Vietnamese government. A separate source with knowledge of these discussions, said the Germans “received significant pushback”.

But the BMZ spokesperson also said in November that the deal could help activists. “With the agreement on the JETP, we also hope to be able to send a positive signal to climate activists”, the spokesperson said at the time.

US climate envoy John Kerry has said that “some forces are fighting to keep coal” in Vietnam. The country’s coal mines are owned by state-owned company Vinacomin, while state-owned oil and gas group PetroVietnam has built several coal-fired power stations in recent years.

The role of civil society

Due to the sensitivity of the issue, Climate Home News did not try to contact Vietnamese campaigners. But thousands of people liked Khanh’s Facebook post, expressing relief that she was out of prison.

Leo Roberts, who leads E3G’s fossil fuel transition team, told Climate Home: “Environmental advocates in Vietnam are key in analysing and articulating Vietnam’s transition to a low carbon future, and their energy expertise is vital for the country’s energy transition.”

He added: “Vietnam signed the Cop26 Global Coal to Clean Statement, agreed to coal “phase down” and committed to net zero, but must now translate this into practical steps. Energy experts from Vietnam’s civil society, able to operate in a safe, supportive and collaborative environment, are absolutely essential participants in achieving this.”

The post Vietnamese anti-coal campaigner freed early from prison appeared first on Climate Home News.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The benefits of vulnerability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Measuring vulnerability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The move comes a little over a week before the committee on loss and damage is due to hold its first meeting in Luxor, Egypt, on 27-29 March. It means every position on the committee has now been filled.

In a breakthrough deal at the Cop27 climate talks, countries agreed to set up a fund dedicated to support vulnerable countries address climate-related losses and damages. But how the fund will operate, who will pay, who will benefit and how it will be governed remain to be worked out.

To do so, countries agreed to appoint a 24-member committee to make recommendations ahead of the next round of UN climate talks in the UAE.

Vulnerable nations set up alliance to prepare loss and damage action plans

Regional tensions

The make-up of the committee carefully reflects geographies and groupings of countries based on wealth. It includes 10 members from developed countries and 14 from developing nations.

The Asia-Pacific group was the last to nominate its members. The group has three seats, including one for a representative of the UAE Cop28 presidency. Sources told Climate Home News that competition between Asian countries caused the delay.

“It’s a fractious region,” a committee member from a different grouping told Climate Home. “Everyone hates each other. They have almost each had a war with the other and border skirmishes.”

Compromise

To resolve the issue, the group appointed representatives from six countries to share attendance to three planned meetings this year. India, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia will share one seat, while China, South Korea and Pakistan will share the other.

The Asia-Pacific group is not the only one which has had to compromise. Countries from Latin America and the Caribbean and wealthy nations are also sharing seats to allow more governments to join the discussions.

Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s lead climate negotiator and a committee members, said: “This issue is of extreme importance to everybody, so everybody wants to be sitting at the table.”

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Seo-kyung is now a 21-year-old adult but the court has still not made any decisions about the case. “As individuals, there is not much we can do that is different from before,” she told a press conference on Monday. “I earnestly hope that the constitutional court can play a role while there is still something that can be done.”

In the three years since the lawsuit was filed, the Korean government and the national assembly have announced a target to be carbon neutral by 2050, passed a climate change law and strengthened the country’s nationally determined contribution under the UNFCCC.

The government is currently working on its first detailed carbon neutrality strategy, as required by the legislation, which is expected to be published at the end of the month.

Vanuatu gathers support for UN climate justice statement

But campaigners are not satisfied. Climate Action Tracker deems the country’s progress “highly insufficient”, saying it lacks the necessary speed and stringency needed to be compatible with Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature limit.

Most of Korea’s emissions come from the energy sector, which is highly dependent on fossil fuels for electricity generation. In 2021, the country was the third largest gas importer in the world, behind China and Japan.

Climate lawsuits

Youth4Climate’s petition in 2020 argued that the Korean government wasn’t doing enough to curb rising global temperatures and to protect their basic constitutional rights, including the right to life and pursuit of happiness, from the effects of climate change.

The group’s lawyers have sent ten further submissions to the constitutional court since, adding new information to their case. Among other things, they drew the court’s attention to landmark rulings in the Netherlands, Ireland, France, and Germany, all of which have recognised government responsibility to address climate change.

Yoon Se-jong, a lawyer for Plan 1.5 and one of the main legal representatives for the Youth4ClimateAction case, says German justices visited their Korean counterparts last November and climate litigation was one of the key topics under discussion.

A further three climate lawsuits have also been filed challenging the constitutionality of the government’s emission-cutting commitments. One, submitted last year, was fronted by a group of small children and what was then a 20-week-old foetus.

Swift ruling

Becoming increasingly frustrated at the court’s silence, Youth4ClimateAction campaigners delivered a letter earlier this week urging it to make a “swift ruling”, which was signed by more than 200 legal professionals from Korea and abroad.

Signatories included Baek Bum-seok, professor at Kyung Hee University and a UN Human Rights Council advisory member, and So Byung-cheon, president of the Korean Environmental Law Association and a professor at Ajou University Law School.

Legal professionals from France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Nepal also voiced their support, including Roda Verheyen, a lawyer involved in Germany’s landmark climate lawsuit.

Sejong said the delay was understandable given the gravity of the issue and the implications the court’s decision could have on Korean policy and law. “But what we are really emphasising is that every month and year we lose is a lost opportunity for litigation that we really, really need. Leaving this question to the political process is not going to be enough.”

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Youth climate campaigners filing the case who had initially been buoyed up by the idea of taking legal action were despondent at the press conference.

“When I first learned about the enormous problem of climate change, I felt that I had to do something, and I participated in the climate lawsuit with the hope of making a practical change,” said Oh Min-seo, a 17-year-old from Chuncheon city.

“However, over the past three years, as I witnessed people dying in unprecedented floods and the Soyang River drying up due to the worst drought, my fears about climate change became more tangible, and the feeling of powerlessness has been accumulating in my heart because politics and law don’t seem to exist for our benefit.”

Their legal team seems more optimistic. Sejong noted that abortion was only decriminalised in Korea two years ago only after the constitutional court deemed it was infringing people’s rights.

‘Fundamental obligation’

In December, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea said the government had a “fundamental obligation” to protect human rights from the climate crisis and must actively respond to it. “It is necessary to set higher national greenhouse gas reduction targets and also to set reduction obligations for the post-2030 period to protect the basic rights of future generations,” it concluded.

Lucy Maxwell, co-representative of the Climate Litigation Network, noted that the lawsuit was the first of its kind in East Asia and said it offers “a really important opportunity to clarify the governmental obligations to protect constitutional rights in the face of the climate crisis”.

She said affected communities and even courts in other countries would be looking to the court for a judgment.

The post Lawyers and activists build pressure on Korean court to rule on climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the G20 leaders summit on the Indonesian island of Bali in November, a group of governments and banks announced they would give $20 billion to move Indonesia away from the coal that currently generates most of its electricity.

Indonesian investment minister Luhut Pandjaitan said the just energy transition partnership (JETP) was a “groundbreaking model of international cooperation” which would fulfill a promise to his granddaughter to “make policy that would benefit future generations”.

Vanuatu gathers support for UN climate justice statement

But the governments would not reveal who was paying which part of the $20bn or what form the support would take. One bank said its stated contribution to the figure was only the amount it was “willing to consider”.

Tight lips

A spokesperson for one of the governments told Climate Home they would not reveal how much they were giving because “we agreed among the partner countries that we communicate only our cumulative contribution as a group at this point”.

The Indonesian government has been sworn to secrecy too, according to a source close to it.

“Indonesia is being hostage by [the other governments] not to disclose their funding commitment and the financial modalities,” they said.

Just an estimate

One of the few entities to reveal its contribution is the EU-funded European Investment Bank (EIB), whose commitment is counted  as €1bn ($1.06bn).

But a spokesperson told Climate Home that this amount was just what it is “willing to consider committing” and is “subject to agreement on key policy aspects and to a suitable pipeline of eligible investments”.

IMF warns against ‘protectionism’ in rich world’s green subsidies

The only breakdown of the $20bn that that has been publicly revealed is that $10bn will come from the public sector and $10bn will be from private banks that are part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz).

When a similar deal with South Africa was announced at Cop26, only the public money ($8.5bn) was included in the announcement. But subsequent deals with Vietnam and Indonesia have pumped up the headline figure by including private money.

As with Indonesia, the details of this South African deal were kept secret until Climate Home revealed the figures.

Grants vs loans

They showed that only 3% of the funding was grants and the rest are loans, which will add to South Africa’s debt.

The breakdowns of loans versus grants for Indonesia has not been revealed.

But the EU has revealed that just 1% of its $2.5bn, which includes the EIB’s contribution, will be grants.

UN sets date for loss and damage talks, risking Asian no-show

The UK says its $1bn contribution will be a World Bank guarantee.

The US, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Norway have not announced how much they are contributing or how it will be spent.

Political risk

Despite the lack of transparency, implementation of the financial agreement is now stepping up.

On 16 February, the US and Japanese governments sent officials to Jakarta to commemorate the establishment of a JETP secretariat, hosted by Indonesia’s energy ministry.

A delegation of bankers from Gfanz is expected to visit Indonesia on a scoping mission next week and a full investment plan should be drawn up by September.

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However, the source close to the Indonesian government said the money may come too slowly due to donor country conditions.

Under the deal, the Indonesian government has to implement reforms first, to the satisfaction of these countries. But the reforms are complicated and risky, particularly with a presidential election scheduled for February 2024.

So the risks will be taken before the election while the rewards will only start flowing afterwards, the source said.

The post Governments sworn to secrecy on ‘$20bn’ for Indonesia’s energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Years ago, Japanese officials waltzed into our countries – the Philippines and Indonesia – and cut deals to develop dirty coal power plants that would enrich Japanese corporate interests.

After years of resistance, people’s movements from the Philippines to Bangladesh and Indonesia succeeded in pressuring the Japanese government last year to stop exporting its dirty coal technologies to our vibrant, rich and extremely climate vulnerable countries.

We won. But now Japan is at it again.

After decades of inaction on the climate crisis, the Japanese government led by prime minister Fumio Kishida approved a so-called “Green Transformation” (GX) strategy on 10 February to purportedly support the transition to clean energy.

Vanuatu gathers support for UN climate justice statement

But this strategy is an exercise in greenwashing and relies heavily on the expansion and use of fossil fuels.

Japan’s flawed GX strategy outlines how it will achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and support the energy transition across Southeast Asia.

The strategy aims to mobilise over $1.1 trillion in public and private capital over the next ten years to overhaul 22 industrial sectors in Japan and provide partner countries like ours with Japanese technology and finance.

However, Japan’s toxic plans rely on the use of fossil fuel-based technologies, including liquified natural gas (LNG), the co-firing of ammonia at coal-fired power plants, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

IMF warns against ‘protectionism’ in rich world’s green subsidies

These technologies would prolong the use of fossil fuels at a time when renewable energy solutions are cheaper, more reliable and available.

Furthermore, they would not cut emissions to limit global heating to 1.5C, which is crucial to avoiding climate disaster. Investors are reportedly wary of greenwashing in Japan’s strategy and transition bonds.

Nevertheless, Japan is ploughing forward by convening an Asia Zero Emissions Community meeting on 4 March to promote these fossil-based technologies to energy ministers from across the region.

Japan is also leveraging its G7 presidency this year to increase financing for LNG and upstream gas projects and further advance its dirty energy strategy for Asia. Japan’s ammonia and hydrogen technologies rely almost exclusively on the use of fossil gas.

UN sets date for loss and damage talks, risking Asian no-show

Japan wants us to believe that gas is cleaner than coal, but the truth is far from this. Building gas is an affront to our moral duty to protect the environment and would derail efforts to limit global heating to 1.5C.

In the Philippines, 34 gas power plants and 11 new LNG import terminals are planned. Much of the development is centered in the Batangas region which is home to the Verde Island Passage, a biodiversity hotspot.

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Osaka Gas and Mizuho are supporting the LNG buildout, which would destroy rich livelihoods and ecosystems, as well as thriving businesses.

Japan is also treating Indonesia as a testing ground for its dirty fossil-based technologies. The Japan International Cooperation Agency developed a decarbonisation plan to supposedly help Jakarta achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

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This flawed plan places strong emphasis on developing LNG, hydrogen and ammonia co-firing and CCUS. Japanese corporation Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is testing the co-firing of ammonia at the Suralaya coal power plant. The extended operation of coal plants would prolong the adverse health and livelihood impacts on neighbouring residents.

These technologies are being peddled by Japan as cutting-edge climate solutions, but at their core they are the same dirty fossil fuels that got us into this mess.

We join 140 groups from 18 countries urging Japan to stop financing fossils and support a just, equitable and direct transition to renewable energy. We stand firm in our opposition to fossil fuels and Japan’s dirty energy strategy for Asia with its “false solutions”, which are nothing but greenwashing lies.

Gerry Arances is convenor of the Power for People coalition and the Executive Director of the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development in the Philippines.

Dwi Sawung currently serves as Infrastructure and Spatial Planning Campaign Manager at WALHI – Friends of the Earth Indonesia.

The post Japan’s ‘green transformation’ would derail the energy transition in Asia appeared first on Climate Home News.

As summer turned to winter, some parts of the country have seen snow. “For children and old age people without shelter, it’s terrible,” said Concern Worldwide’s Sherzada Khan.

Young women and girls are still “forced to live without roof and walls,” he added, putting them at risk of sexual assault.

On top of this, he said “[a] severe food security crisis [is] looming now and will be there until the next harvest”.

People affected by the flood queue up for relief items (Pic: Abdul Majeed/EU civil protection and humanitarian aid)

With stagnant flood water still around in some places, malaria is rife at the time of year it should be minimal, according to Ed Taylor from Médecins Sans Frontières.

Taylor and his colleagues are giving out bed nets to vulnerable people to keep the mosquitos out. But, he says, this needs to be done on a bigger scale by the UN.

“We haven’t scaled up nearly enough to meet the size of the challenge,” he said.

Asif Sherazi, head of Islamic Relief Pakistan, agreed. “Humanitarians have failed in this disaster”, he told Climate Home.

Several relief workers involved in the response to the floods said this failure was partly because the cash-strapped UN cut back its humanitarian team in Pakistan just before the floods hit.

Ocha’s budget cuts

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) has headquarters in Geneva and New York and staff in 60 countries, mostly in low and middle income countries.

Ocha has staff in 60 countries, mostly in the global south

When disaster strikes – through storms, earthquakes, war or disease – its job is to raise money from around the world and coordinate an international relief effort.

This job has been getting harder, as climate change kicks in. The number of climate-related disasters like floods and storms in the 2010s was double what it was in the 1980s.

Climate-related disasters doubled in the 2010s compared to the 1980s (Photo: Ocha/Screenshot)

While needs have soared, the amount of money Ocha gets from wealthy governments – about 95% of its total income – has stagnated. In 2015, it got $334 million. By 2020, this had dropped to $307m.

Since 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic and energy inflation took an economic toll, several rich countries tightened their belts further.

As Ocha’s budget fell, so did its staff numbers. The organisation employed 2,300 people in 2015 and now employs 2,000.

Ocha in Pakistan

Pakistan was not spared from these cutbacks. At the end of 2021, Ocha downgraded its presence from a full "country office" to a "humanitarian advisory team" reporting to Ocha's regional office in Bangkok, Thailand.

That meant its team in Islamabad didn't produce a humanitarian response plan for 2022, as they had for the years before.

In 2016, Ocha had around 35 staff in Pakistan and a budget of more than $5m. By 2021, its budget was $1.1m and in 2022 it employed seven people.

In September 2022, large parts of the country were covered with water - not all of these flood waters have yet receded (Photo: Abdul Majeed/EU civil protection and humanitarian aid)

So when flooding started in July 2022, it had a netball team's worth of people in the country to survey the damage. Ocha sent staff over from Bangkok and elsewhere, upping the headcount to 25-30 people by the end of the year.

But Abid Suleri, who sits on the board of directors of Pakistan's National Disaster Risk Management Fund, told Climate Home that cuts to Ocha in Pakistan "did have an impact" on its response.

Anam Zeb, who worked at the National Disaster Risk Management Fund when the floods hit, said Ocha was "not as visible as it was before", particularly in carrying out needs assessments.

Another humanitarian, who works with Ocha and so did not want to be named, said: "Ocha did not have the presence in Pakistan to co-ordinate everything." They added that they did not have the right "speed and scale".

Fundraising failures

In particular, they said Ocha did not do enough to raise funds. "For funding, you need to do some extra efforts," they said, " you use your media contacts, you use your other contacts."

Floods started in July and intensified in August. Ocha put out an appeal on 30 August for $160 million. That was quickly met by foreign governments - but fell well short of what survivors needed.

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A spokesperson for Ocha said it was put together just six days after flooding escalated and "was therefore produced using a preliminary understanding of the situation".

On 19 September, Ocha upped this appeal to $820 million. “We need all of these funds, and we need them quickly,” said the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Pakistan Julien Harneis.

But the world's media quickly moved on and governments lost interest. UN data suggests $262 million has been promised so far and less has actually reached the ground.

Charities have responded by rationing essential supplies. A UN report found that NGOs were having to hand out just one tarpaulin for each household to shelter from the sun and rain rather than the usual two.

Where Ocha goes next

At the start of the year, Ocha upgraded its presence in Pakistan back to a full country office. But, with a limited budget, that will mean cutbacks elsewhere.

Ocha's office in the Philippines, for example, was downgraded at the same time as Pakistan's. That's despite Ocha's 2020 annual report describing the south-east Asian nation as "one of the world's most natural-hazard prone countries".

A spokesperson for Ocha said it "continues to enhance the coordination and effective and efficient delivery of humanitarian assistance, together with humanitarian organisations".

"To implement its mandate, Ocha relies heavily on voluntary contributions, mostly from governments," the spokesperson added.

The post UN budget cuts hindered response to Pakistan’s extreme floods appeared first on Climate Home News.

China’s southern regions need to brace for more persistent high temperatures and ensure that energy supplies are available to meet the summer demand peak, while northern regions need to prepare for heavy floods, said Song Shanyun, spokesman at the China Meteorological Administration, at a briefing on Monday.

“At present, global warming is accelerating… and under the impact of climate change, the climate system is becoming increasingly unstable,” Song said.

China was hit last June by a heatwave that lasted more than 70 days, damaging crops, drying up lakes and reservoirs, and causing devastating forest fires throughout the Yangtze river basin. In August, as many as 267 weather stations registered their highest temperatures to date.

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A sharp drop in rainfall in the southwestern regions of Sichuan and Chongqing also forced hydropower facilities to cut output. Local industries had to restrict operations and electricity deliveries to the eastern coast were also affected.

Danson Cheong, a reporter from The Straits Times, said that the soles of his shoes had melted in the heat in Sichuan’s main city Chongqing while Sohu reported that a field of grapes in the province had dried to raisins in the heat.

Hello from Chongqing, where it is 43 degrees Celsius and the heat has literally melted the soles off my feet pic.twitter.com/dNDfeOLpZa

— Danson Cheong (@dansoncj) August 22, 2022

Average temperatures in China over the whole of 2022 reached 10.5 degrees Celsius, 0.62 Celsius higher than average, Jia Xiaolong, a government expert told the same briefing on Monday, with mean temperatures in spring, summer and autumn at their highest on record.

Average rainfall in China last year was 5% lower than normal, he added.

Campaigners said that last year’s heatwave increased public awareness of the dangers of climate change, pointing to increased media coverage.

Climate attribution expert Friederike Otto told Climate Home in August: “Heatwaves in China have definitely become more common and more intense as well as longer in duration because of human-induced climate change.”

The year before was also marked by climate disasters. In July 2021, flooding in Henan province killed 25 people. Twelve drowned as flood waters filled up the subway carriage they were trapped in.

The post China warns of more floods and heatwaves in 2023 appeared first on Climate Home News.

But the island is important in its own right too. It is the 22nd biggest emitter in the world and is highly at risk from storms and sea level rise.

Taiwan’s government has made two big moves on climate recently, but these might not guarantee success unless the country cleans up its biggest source of emissions: industry.

Key moves

First, on December 28, it allocated US$30 billion for climate investments up to 2030.

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Known as the 12 key strategies, this money will be spent on renewable energy, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency, mobilising lifestyle change and making the energy transition fair to workers.

Then, on January 10, the government passed the climate change response act. This made Taiwan the 18th country to set a legally binding net zero target. It aims to reach that target by 2050.

It introduced a carbon levy, bulked-up the country’s institutional capacity to adapt to cliamte change and established governing structures and funds for a just transition.

Industrial footprint

This is all progress. But it’s still insufficient to ensure that Taiwan meets its climate pledges.

Azerbaijan weaponises conservation law in conflict with Armenia

The biggest failure is that the 12 key strategies do not have a coherent action plan to decarbonise industry – despite the sector producing more than half of the country’s emissions.

Instead of a specific strategy, measures to cut emissions in difficult industries are just scattered across plans on hydrogen, energy efficiency, carbon capture and other areas.

On top of this, the funding isn’t guided by mission-oriented principles. It should focus on speeding up the market readiness of hydrogen – but it only provides $150m for the technology.

There’s flaws in the climate change response act too. It doesn’t set up an independent advisory body on climate, like the UK and at least 21 other nations have.

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It makes companies pay only part of the social cost of their emissions through the carbon levy. The proposed reforms of fossil fuel subsidies were scrapped because of the energy crisis and the finance ministry blocked broader tax reforms.

Finally, the introduction of climate litigation was blocked because of the judicial and administrative system’s lack of familiarity with the concept.

Carbon pricing

But there were wins for climate campaigners too. The criteria for carbon offsets were tightened in the carbon levy scheme and the share of revenues which goes back to large emitters was limited.

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The European Union’s proposal to tax polluting goods at the border from countries without carbon prices helped Taiwanese climate campaigners.

Taiwan is reliant on exports and the EU is a major customer. So polluting industries softened their traditional opposition to carbon pricing.

But industry is still lobbying for low levy rates, loose offset rules and subsidies.

So the government must develop more policies – like carbon contracts for diference and purchase commitments – to help industry transition to climate-friendly technologies.

The G7 group of big, wealthy countries is trying to speed up the cleaning up of industry through what it calls a climate club.

Those countries must set up hubs to help share knowledge with big manufacturers like Taiwan.

The post Taiwan’s failure to clean up industry endangers its net zero pledge appeared first on Climate Home News.

The two countries fought a six-week war over the region in 2020. After thousands of deaths, Azerbaijan’s military emerged victorious. Its government now claims it is suing Armenia for alleged environmental destruction during the 30 years it previously controlled the territory.

On 18 January, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry accused Armenia of “widespread deforestation, unsustainable logging, and pollution through significant construction and mining” in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It claimed in a press release this was the first known inter-state arbitration under the Council of Europe’s Bern Convention on the conservation of wildlife and natural habitats.

Today, Azerbaijan has launched the first known arbitration case regarding failure to conserve habitats and species under the Bern Convention on Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats – https://t.co/T9w2EiYUkO

— Elnur Mammadov (@ElnurIMammadov) January 19, 2023

Experts told Climate Home that no arbitration request had been officially filed, forests fared better under Armenia’s control than Azerbaijan’s and the case had an “element of propaganda” to it.

‘Environmentalists’ blockade

The two sides have fought over the region, on and off, for more than 100 years. During the Soviet era, it was an autonomous enclave inside Azerbaijan, with an ethnic Armenian majority population. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Armenia took over. In 2008, the UN general assembly took Azerbaijan’s side.

The conflict reignited in 2020 and Armenia gave up control to Azerbaijan and to Russian peacekeepers. Fighting has now stopped and talks over a long-term settlement continue.

There is only one road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. People claiming to be Azerbaijani environmental activists are blocking it.

Armenian leaders have accused them of being Azerbaijani and Turkish nationalists, encouraged by Azerbaijan’s government to blockade the territory.

One of the protesters is the chair of the Women, Development, Future Public Union Gulshan Akhundova. She told Climate Home that Armenians were extracting “our minerals (gold and copper)” and sending them to Armenia and cutting down trees.

She said that most of the protesters were from Azerbaijani environmental NGOs and there are also represenatives of Azerbaijan’s environment ministry there.

Human Rights Watch said the blockade could have “dire humanitarian consequences”. It prevents Armenians in the region getting essential food and services or leaving for Armenia.

A Russian peacekeeper overlooks Azerbaijani protesters blocking the main road to Armenia (Pic: Mahammad Turkman/WikiCommons )

Unep report

The government of Azerbaijan invited the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) to visit Nagorno-Karabakh in March 2022.

The visit was organised between Azerbaijan’s environment ministry and Mahir Aliyev, Unep’s regional co-ordinator for Europe. Aliyev is from Azerbaijan, although he does not represent its government.

Unep’s team was accompanied by environment ministry staff throughout the trip, who organised all meetings and facilitated all visits. Parts of the region are covered with land mines.

The Unep team produced a 45-page report. In its press release announcing the arbitration, the government of Azerbaijan quoted selectively from this report.

It correctly said that Unep had noted Armenia’s mining had caused “chemical pollution of water, soil, and [plants and animals]”. But it left out Unep’s conclusion that the abandonment of farms because of the conflict had led plants and wildlife to “re-establish themselves”.

A forest in Nagorno-Karabakh, as viewed from Gandaszar monastery (Photo: Adam Jones)

Victory Road

Unep further reported that “new road construction – launched as part of the reconstruction drive in January 2021 – is also having a significant impact on forest cover; particularly the approximately ~80-kilometer highway segment between Fuzuli and Shusha”.

Zaur Shiriyev, an analyst from the International Crisis Group in Azerbaijan, explained Azerbaijan’s government began building this road as soon as it took over the region in 2020. It is known as “victory road” in Azerbaijan. The authorities plan to build 1,500 km of roads in the “liberated lands”.

After looking at satellite data, Liz Goldman from Global Forest Watch, told Climate Home: “There does not appear to be significant tree cover loss in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.”

In fact, she said that between roughly 2000 and 2020, the region had gained more tree cover than it lost. It lost 355 hectares and gained 2,310 hectares.

Global Forest Watch’s data covers just 20 years of the 30-year occupation. But it suggests that Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev was wrong to claim that “fifty to sixty thousand hectares of forest have been completely destroyed” by Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Tree cover loss has been especially low in recent years but did increase to about 50 hectares in 2021,” Goldman said, “with loss appearing along roads.” Satellite data shared with Climate Home confirms that this tree loss is along Azerbaijan’s “victory road”.

‘Pressure point’

Shiriyev told Climate Home that both countries were making claims and counter-claims against each other in international forums as leverage in peace talks. “They see it as a pressure point,” he said, adding “there is an element of propaganda for both sides”.

Speaking through British public relations firm Portland Communications, the government of Azerbaijan told Climate Home it had served papers directly to Armenia.

A spokesperson for the Bern Convention’s secretariat said that arbitration requests had to be made to them and “we haven’t received any request so far”.

The government of Azerbaijan declined to be interviewed for this article and, at the time of publication, had not responded to written questions. The government of Armenia did not respond and the Unep declined to comment.

This article was edited on 30 January to remove references to particular articles of the Bern convention

The post Azerbaijan weaponises conservation law in conflict with Armenia appeared first on Climate Home News.

Flooding returned stronger every year since, upending the city in both 2021 and 2022. “We never know what kind of damage to expect when it rains,” said Razia Sunny, who lives by one of Karachi’s nullahs – narrow channels that drain wastewater from the city to the sea.

“Residents here have gotten sick because of the waste flooding into our homes during urban flooding, we’ve even had people slip and fall [into the nullahs],” Imran Gill, another resident of the informal settlement, told Climate Home News.

Since 2017, the World Bank has poured millions of dollars into Karachi. The city, population 16 million, is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. But come monsoon season much of the city is submerged – not least during the extreme flooding of 2022.

A major problem is trash clogging the nullahs, so stormwater overflows. Sweep was supposed to help by improving solid waste management, but two years into the five-year project, there is no sign of progress. Less than 3% of its $100 million budget has been spent, and none of it on new infrastructure.

Slum clearance

Project officials took the promise of funding as a cue to clear slums alongside the waterways. The provincial authority demolished thousands of homes without, residents say, any consultation or plan to find them somewhere else to live.

Climate Home reviewed dozens of official documents, interviewed officials inside the projects and visited the sites affected by flooding. In the sites near Karachi’s sewage infrastructure, Climate Home found several cases where residents of informal housing got injured or even died during extreme floods in 2020 and 2022.

When human rights organisations raised concerns about the demolitions, the World Bank distanced itself from the project.

The Sweep project should have executed millions of US dollars (green line) by 2022, but the actual disbursed amount (in blue) was much lower (Photo: World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Dec. 2022)

Government officials insist things are not going too badly. “We’re only delayed by three or fourth months,” Sweep director Zubair Channa said.

The World Bank seemingly agrees: its project reports in March 2021 and November 2021 declared progress “satisfactory”, even though no work had been completed on the ground. This rating changed to “moderately satisfactory” for both the June 2022 and December 2022 reports, after further inaction.

In response to Climate Home’s request for comment, the World Bank defended the project and said the consultancy was “fairly advanced and expected to deliver their outputs soon”.

“Based on the current schedule, we expect the construction of the waste disposal facility and transfer stations to commence in early 2023,” said the bank’s press office.

Karachi’s nullahs carry waste from the city to the sea, and are often surrounded by informal settlements. (Photo: Shakeel Afridi)

This is a climate adaptation issue. Global heating “likely increased” the intensity of monsoon rains in 2022, when flooding hit 33 million people across the country, an international group of scientists found. More extreme events are expected under a 2C warming scenario.

The money trail

So what has happened to the promised funding? The money comes in the form of loans to the provincial government of Sindh.

Among a few feasibility studies and some operational costs, documents show the authorities have so far spent $91,891 (which at the time was converted to almost PKR 16 million) on furniture. An official source associated with Sweep, who asked not to be named, said the number was too high and seemed out of place.

A report of operational costs by the Sweep project shows more than $91,000 spent on furniture. (Photo: Solid Waste Emergency and Efficiency Project – Procurement Plan by Zubair Ahmed Channa)

“We’re a poor country; we can’t afford to spend like this on operational costs, not when that money will be paid back by citizens who already can’t afford it,” said architect and urban planner Dr Noman Ahmed, chairperson of Department of Architecture and Planning at the NED University Karachi.

The Sindh Government’s procurement plan earmarks $8 million for equipment ranging from bins to waste collection vehicles. Another $30 million is destined for implementation “works”. This money has yet to be disbursed.

On all aspects of these expenses, bank oversight is meant to come once the project is concluded. Yet related projects raise red flags.

In November, the Sindh High Court barred the provincial government from awarding any more contracts under the World Bank’s Competitive and Liveable City of Karachi (Click) project, citing a lack of transparency over where the money was going.

Fahad Saeed, South Asia and Middle East lead at the policy NGO Climate Analytics, said: “Pakistan needs to do some introspection as to why they were unable to tap into the funds that were available. Was their own house in order to access these funds?”

In 2021, the world’s governments agreed at COP26 to double the amount of international adaptation finance by 2025, which stands at around $20 billion per year.

Why does Karachi flood?

Decades of neglect in Karachi’s sewage and waste disposal systems created the perfect recipe for flooding in the city. Every year, come monsoon season, the city’s debilitated drainage system clogs and water overflows.

More than 6 million people in Karachi live in informal settlements, many of which have encroached the city’s nullahs – the riverbeds that carry waste from one end of the city all the way to the sea.

These populations are the first victims of urban flooding, and also major contributors to the problem.

Gujjar nullah residents use a community-funded makeshift bridge to get around. The bridge can be torn down at any time by authorities. (Photo: Shakeel Afridi)

“In 2019, when the Sindh Government took the issue to the World Bank, we realised that there was a serious requirement to clean the nullahs once or twice a year,” Sweep director Channa told Climate Home News.

After bad urban flooding in 2020, the Sindh Government reached out to the World Bank to speed up the cleaning of nullahs. “We asked to be allowed to work and they agreed, so despite Sweep not having been signed yet work began, and we were to get the money back through retroactive funding,” Channa said.

The World Bank announced the decision to finance these efforts in December 2020, saying they would “improve solid waste management services in Karachi” and “upgrade critical solid waste infrastructure”. This would help to reduce floods “especially in vulnerable communities around drainage and waste collection sites.”

The reality on the ground was different.

Destroyed homes

Instead of protecting the vulnerable, the provincial authorities started by bulldozing homes that had been built without planning permission.

The World Bank denied responsibility. “There were meetings between civilians and WB officials, who claimed to us that they had never sanctioned any encroachment removal,” Zahid Farooq, senior manager at Karachi’s Urban Resource Centre, told Climate Home.

KBT PRESS RELEASE
In their recent correspondence with KBT, World Bank has confirmed that they will neither retroactively nor prospectively finance any nullah cleaning activities because affectees have still not been involved in the rehabilitation process pic.twitter.com/sk2dqLsl1U

— Karachi Bachao Tehreek (@StopEvictionKHI) July 9, 2021

The World Bank’s press office told Climate Home their projects “will be prohibited from financing any future investments on the affected nullahs. Sweep will not retroactively or prospectively finance any nullah cleaning works, or any studies related to the nullahs.”

Then, in 2022, extreme flooding hit informal settlements the hardest, turning the water filled area around the nullahs into quicksand, according to resident Imran Gill. “No one has ever died because of the nullahs before all this construction took place. And yet, the area has now seen several people lose their lives.”

Bhutta Masih died in flooding this year when the ground beneath his feet went out. He leaves behind five children and his widow, Parveen. His youngest son helped pull his father’s body out with ropes and has found it difficult to recover from the trauma.

“He used to have a job but lost it. He hasn’t been okay mentally since that day. We can’t afford this,” Parveen said.

Bhutta Masih’s widow Parveen stands next to the barricades that were added after his
death (Photo: Shakeel Afridi)

Owners of the broken homes are not permitted to rebuild what remains of their homes – even by hanging curtains.

But some have nowhere else to go. Ruksana and Sadayat, a couple in their 80s who have lived most of their lives on the nullahs, used broken bricks they found to do some repair work.

“We know they can break this down, but we have no other choice but to rebuild it. We can’t afford the rent [elsewhere], and when they come to tear it down, they will tear it down. What can we do?” Ruksana asked.

Sweep’s future

Despite all its troubles, Sweep director Channa told Climate Home that Karachi’s flooding wasn’t as bad as previous years.

Urban planning expert Ahmed said this was “completely untrue” and infrastructure under the WB’s Competitive and Livable City of Karachi (Click) project had caused flooding to worsen.

“They’ve done improvement projects, for example, the green belts, which themselves created bottlenecks,” he said. “It seems that this was nothing more than an emergency cleaning effort with no long-term thought process for solutions. When the WB is intervening with such a large portfolio, why aren’t they providing a plan to help the people who are being displaced?

Ruksana and Sadayat sit in what used to be their living room (Photo: Shakeel Afridi)

Lawyer and activist Abira Ashfaq has worked with the affected communities. She said the World Bank failed to use its influence on the Sindh government to help people living on the nullahs.

“We filed a complaint with the WB, and they deemed our case eligible. We held five meetings with WB officials and with the stakeholders,” she recalled. “Nevertheless, they distanced themselves and said their project was only meant to address waste disposal, and they eventually dismissed our complaints, claiming no responsibility,” she said.

The result of this interaction was that the nullah cleaning work was once again thrown back to the Sindh government, which has now handed it over to the Frontier Works Organization (FWO), the engineering wing of the Pakistan Army.

For now, residents can expect little more in the way of flood aid than tarpaulins from local NGOs to cover their damaged homes. They rely on each other and wait for the next flood.

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Officials from some 40 countries as well as private donors and international financial institutions are gathering for a meeting in Geneva as Islamabad seeks help covering around half of a total recovery bill of $16.3 billion.

Waters are still receding from the floods caused by monsoon rains and melting glaciers which killed at least 1,700 people and displaced around 8 million.

Pakistan Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb sent a tweet saying that pledges had reached $8.57 billion – more than the $8bn it had initially sought.

The Pakistani government will provide $8bn from its own funds towards the “resilient Pakistan” programme.

The first plenary of day-long Geneva conference culminated in generous outpouring of int’l community, EU pledged $93 million, Germany $88 million, China $100 million, IDB $4.2 Billion, WB $2 billion, Japan $77 million, ADB $1.5 billion #ResilientPakistan

— Marriyum Aurangzeb (@Marriyum_A) January 9, 2023

Of the $8.6bn of international funding, around $7bn came from multilateral development banks. Among the donors were the Islamic Development Bank ($4.2 bln), the World Bank ($2 bln), the Asian Development Bank ($1.5 bln).

Governments promised smaller amounts. France pledged $0.35bn, the US and China pledged $0.1bn each and Japan, Germany and the European Union made lesser commitments.

Shelter needed

Sherzada Khan leads the Concern NGO’s work in Pakistan. He told Climate Home on Friday that shelter was the top priority for Pakistanis displaced by the floods. “It’s a chilly winter and for children and old age people without shelter, it’s terrible,” he said.

He added that young women are forced to live without roofs and walls, which puts them at risk of sexual assault. He added that there is a severe food crisis “looming now” which will be a threat until the next harvest.

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Money promised previously by donor governments has been distributed slowly.

Earlier, United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres called for massive investments to help Pakistan recover from what he called a “climate disaster of monumental scale”.

“Pakistan is doubly victimized by climate chaos and a morally bankrupt global financial system,” he added. He later elaborated saying the current system was “biased” towards the rich countries who conceived it.

Additional funding is crucial to Pakistan amid growing concerns about its ability to pay for imports such as energy and food and to meet sovereign debt obligations abroad.

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Pakistan’s finance minister is meeting an International Monetary Fund delegation on the sidelines of the Geneva meeting.

‘A new lifeline’

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the country was committed to the IMF programme but that he was asking the IMF for “breathing space” to meet its commitments, without elaborating.

In comments to the conference earlier on Monday, Sharif said Islamabad was willing to provide around half of the $16.3 billion bill but wanted donors to contribute the rest.

“I am asking for a new lifeline for people who need to power our economy and re-enter the 21st century with a future that is protected from such extreme risks to human security,” he said.

Millions of homes, tens of thousands of schools as well as thousands of kilometres of roads and railways still need to be rebuilt, the UN says.

Efforts to secure funding for the initial emergency phase of the disaster response were disappointing with a humanitarian aid package of $816 million less than half funded, UN data showed.

United Nations’ Development Programme administrator Achim Steiner said the next phase of the Pakistan response represented a “monumental moment of reckoning for the entire world”.

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Japan and the US coordinated financial contributions from seven other national governments and the EU, as well as private sector partners.

The money will be spent retiring some of Indonesia’s huge, young fleet of coal-fired power stations and installing renewable energy to meet the country’s electricity demand instead.

Indonesian minister Luhut Pandjaitan announced the “just energy transition partnership” (JETP) on the sidelines of a G20 leaders summit in Bali on Tuesday.

It is a “groundbreaking model of international cooperation,” Pandjaitan told media, which would fulfill a promise to his granddaughter to “make policy that would benefit future generations”.

Fabby Tumiwa is director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) and advised the Indonesian government on the deal. It “could help Indonesia to meet its net zero emissions goal by 2060 or sooner,” he said. “As one of the largest emitters, this means a lot to global climate efforts to limit warming to 1.5C.”

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Indonesia will aim to peak emissions from its power sector by 2030 rather than the previous target of 2037. It has raised its 2030 target for the renewable share of electricity generation from 17% to 34%.

The government will “freeze the existing pipeline” of coal-fired power plants. Those already under construction are expected to be completed, but others in early stages of development will not go ahead.

Mafalda Duarte heads the Climate Investment Funds, which supported the deal. She told Climate Home: “If we were to allow these [already operating] plants to continue their economic life, then certainly we are out of this Paris Agreement goals of 1.5[C] and even more so if they continued to develop them.”

Financial terms unclear

Roughly half the $20bn package is to come from governments: the US, Japan, UK, Canada, Denmark, the EU, Germany, France, Norway and Italy. Banks are mobilising the rest.

The joint statement between Indonesia and its partners did not reveal who was contributing what, or on what terms. It said the package includes grants, loans at both concessional and commercial rates, guarantees and technical assistance.

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The partners will continue talks on the financial terms and investment plan in the next three months.

The share of grants, as opposed to loans, is a point of contention – as with a similar deal in South Africa. In June, Tumiwa told Climate Home: “The government expects to have grants. It doesn’t really want to have a loan – for sure.”

Esther Tamara, from the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia, told Climate Home: “Any financing is good news at this point. I am just wondering what kind of financing the JETP will be.”

She said that South Africa’s JETP “was much lauded at first but then not so much afterwards”. In both, there was “no transparency, little room for civil societies to contribute,” she added.

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As of July 2022, Indonesia had 19GW of new coal capacity under construction and 7GW in planning stages, according to data compiled by Global Energy Monitor.

The partnership agreement states that support is “contingent on no new coal power capacity for instances where timely, zero-emissions, affordable, and reliable alternatives are available”.

The $20bn is due to be invested in the next three to five years. IESR estimates the total cost of Indonesia’s energy transition at $1.2 trillion – 60 times what’s on offer here.  Duarte told Climate Home “this is a first move – a first package of support and more will be needed”.

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The Climate Investment Funds’ (CIF) governing board has approved Indonesia’s investment plan for how it will spend $500 million in concessional funding designed to unlock public and private investments to rid the economy of coal.

The CIF estimates the money will leverage $2.2 billion in funding from multilateral development banks and over $1.3bn in private co-financing.

The funding package is expected to form part of the CIF’s contribution to an energy transition partnership being negotiated between the Indonesian government and wealthy nations on a similar model to what was agreed in South Africa. An announcement could be made during the G20 leaders’ meeting in Bali, which takes place on the second week of the Cop27 climate talks next month.

Under the plan, the proposed retirement and repurposing of coal plants would help avoid 50 million tons of carbon dioxide (Co2) equivalent from 2029 – equivalent to the annual emissions of 13 coal plants.

“As a country, we are strongly committed to transition away from coal to cleaner forms of energy,” said Indonesia’s finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati.

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Indonesia is the world’s largest coal exporter. In 2021, the southeast Asian nation exported 441.5 million tonnes of coal, about a third of global coal exports, mostly to Asia’s largest economic powers China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

Unlike in South Africa, Indonesia’s  coal fleet is relatively young –  12 years old on average – and could potentially continue to operate and pollute for decades.

Under the country’s current energy plan, coal would still provide a quarter of the power mix by 2050.  Indonesia has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2060.

CIF has agreed to partner with state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to repurpose coal plants with solar energy and battery storage. PLN has pledged not to build new coal plants from next year and to phase them out by 2056.

The plan further aims to reclaim 150 hectares of coal mines, roll out 400MW of installed renewable energy capacity and support policy reforms to decommission further coal assets. The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank will help implement it.

The money would also provide income security to 1,160 workers affected by the plant and mine closures and roll out reskilling support for 2,200 people.

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The money is part of a $2bn pilot scheme funded by G7 countries and split evenly across four coal-dependent emerging economies: South Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The US has committed $1bn towards the scheme.

The Accelerating Coal Transition programme, which was launched at Cop26 in Glasgow, aims to act as a first investor and de-risk projects for public and private investors to help finance the transition from coal to cleaner industries. Part of the funding is also earmarked to support workers affected by the shift.

The Indonesian government is in the midst of negotiations with the US and Japan over a multi-billion package from wealthy nations to kickstart the country’s transition away from coal. They offered an initial $10bn, according to leaked reports of the EU’s diplomatic service, seen by Politico.

The Jakarta-based Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) estimates that replacing all of Indonesia’s coal capacity with renewables will cost around $1.2 trillion by 2050. Its director Fabby Tumiwa previously told Climate Home an energy transition partnership worth $15bn would be “a fair amount”.

But Indonesia’s ongoing coal-buildout is threatening the deal with wealthy nations. As of June, 10.8GW of coal projects were under construction, according to IESR.

The government recently greenlighted a 5GW coal projects in the Northern Kalimantan province despite partner countries warning the deal would be off the table if the projects went ahead, the leaked EU diplomatic documents reportedly say.

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But the wealthy nations who bear most responsibility for causing climate change have yet to deliver all the funds they have promised, let alone enough funds to cover the damage done.

Immediately after the floods, Pakistan’s planning minister Ahsan Iqbal said a conservative estimate of the damage done was $10bn. “It is a preliminary estimate likely to be far greater,” he said.

Despite this, Pakistan and the United Nations (UN) put out an appeal on 30 August for just $160m, a figure roughly 60 times smaller than Iqbal’s estimate for damages.

Oxfam's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen told Climate Home this figure was low because the UN's assesment "didn't include some of the worst affected districts as they were not hit by the first floods".

Last week, the UN upped its appeal to $816m. “We need all of these funds, and we need them quickly,” said the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Pakistan Julien Harneis.

UN data analysed by Climate Home shows that rich countries have so far failed to deliver even enough aid to meet the UN's original appeal. This data relies on donor countries to report to it so is not comprehensive but it is used by the UN and updated daily.

A UN spokesperson told Climate Home that governments have pledged more than $160m, but the data shows they have only actually delivered $51m. They have signed contracts for a further $39m.

Of this, only $28m comes directly from governments, with $26m of that from the US government.

A further $16m comes from a group of British charities called the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), whose funding comes from the government and from ordinary citizens.

The UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) donated a further $7m. They are funded by governments, mainly in northern Europe, and distribute funds to humanitarian relief as they see fit.

This lack of funding is having an impact on the ground. Gul Wali Khan leads the Catholic Relief Service's response in Pakistan. "It's a couple of months now," he said, "and assistance is not coming to the speed or to the level which is required."

After a recent visit to an affected area, Khan said: "There are 7.9 million people displaced, mostly standing on the road side. On one side it's a sea and the other side it's the sea and the vehicles cross in the middle, so there's not much privacy, not even a latrine available."

Khan said his NGO is prioritising handing out cash, trucking in clean drinking water, building latrines and providing shelter with funds part-provided by the US government.

Displaced people take refuge on the roadside in the village of Thatta (Photo: Islamic Relief)

If he had more money, he said he would expand this help to more areas of Pakistan and would try to enable more children to return to school, by fixing the sanitation in flood-damaged schools and by building temporary schools. UN data says no money has been donated for education.

Khan is not the only one making tough choices. A UN report found that "enormous needs" and "extremely limited resources" meant NGOs were having to hand out just one tarpaulin for households to shelter from the sun and rain under rather than two.

The World Food Programme's James Belgrave told Climate Home that the WFP, government and NGOs had assessed hunger across the whole of Pakistan, based on measures like how many people are skipping meals.

They prioritise the areas where hunger is most severe and, he said, "based on how much funding is forthcoming, we'd be able to scale up and provide more food to more people".

Funded by USAID, Concern Worldwide hands out cash in Pakistan (Photo: Concern Worldwide)

Sherzada Khan is Concern's Pakistan country director. He said his NGO has also had to do some "very unfortunate prioritisation" because the money is "insufficient".

He said the response has focused on giving out cash and, while this kind of "flexible assistance is very welcomed", people need more long-term help.

The floods wrecked many crops which were about to be harvested. If the next harvest is to be a success, farmers need seeds and fertilisers to plant crops in the next few weeks, he said.

With Pakistan being the world's fourth-biggest rice exporter, failure will bump up already high prices globally.

Children fill up water from a truck. (Photo: Action against hunger)

Needs on the ground have grown and changed over the last two months, Khan said.

Water-borne diseases have spread among displaced people and now, with winter coming, respiratory illnesses are likely to rise.

"Winterisation kits", like warm clothes for children, are also now needed as the country cools.

"We understand that [donor governments] will have their own mechanisms and bureaucratic procedures and administrative hurdles...but if you translate the impact of [relief] not hitting the ground timely and efficiently, it’s going to cost a lot more,” said Khan.

None of the humanitarian groups Climate Home spoke to said the slow pace of the donor response was unusual. "Funding for these things can often come fairly slow, it takes a while to trickle in", said Belgrave.

One solution, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development's Clare Shakya, is to scale up the CERF. While the damage caused by disasters has soared, its funding has flat-lined.

Donations to the CERF (Photo: CERF/Screenshot)

"Countries suffering loss and damage as a result of climate impacts that they can’t adapt to, should receive finance ideally in advance of a forecast emergency or at least within days of it happening," she said.

Shakya added that countries should be able to access sovereign insurance for disasters which are likely to happen once in every ten years or so and that Pakistan's lenders should suspend its debt repayments.

Pakistan has pled for debt relief with prime minister Shehbaz Sharif warning "all hell will break loose" without it. But his government dropped this call after credit rating agency Moody's cut its rating, meaning it will have to pay more to borrow.

Climate Action Network's Harjeet Singh said: "The response to Pakistan floods is a clear example of how impacted communities are now at the mercy of individual pledges that may or may not be delivered".

He called for a loss and damage financing facility to be set up, a key demand of many developing nations in climate talks which is set to dominate Cop27 next month.

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This would assess the needs after a climate-caused catastrophe and request specific amounts of money from governments based on factors like their contribution to climate change.

A spokesperson for Canada's development minister Harjit Sajjan said that the government was "ensuring that those funds are delivered in a timely manner to enable partners to respond to urgent needs" and "we remain in close contact with our humanitarian partners and continue to look at ways to provide support to the people of Pakistan.”

A spokesperson for the UK's foreign, commonwealth and development office said: “We have committed over £16m ($17.7m) of funding to deliver life-saving aid to those most affected by these devastating floods.” Asked if this includes DEC funding, the spokesperson had not responded at the time of publication.

This article was updated on 14 October to include a table showing pledges made against pledges delivered.

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With winter just weeks away, half a million people are living in camps after being displaced by the flood, which destroyed 1.7 million homes. So far, the government’s priority has been to deliver food, tents and cash to the victims. The floods have killed 1,481 people since mid-June and affected 33 million.

“We will do our best to financially help you so that you can rebuild homes” and return to a normal life, prime minister Shahbaz Sharif told several families living in tents and makeshift homes in the town of Suhbatpur in Baluchistan. “Those who lost homes and crops will get compensation from the government,” he said in his televised comments.

Sharif also told dozens of school children, who were studying in a tent with help from the UN children’s agency Unicef in the town of Suhbatpur, that they will get a new school in the next two months.

“Pakistan never witnessed such huge climate-induced devastation,” Sharif told a gathering of lawyers in Islamabad on Wednesday. “It was painful to see inundated villages, towns and cities.”

Sharif said the winter season will start in Pakistan after 15 days, and “then another challenge for the flood victims will be how to survive in the harsh cold” as currently they were living in tents in summer.

Even providing clean drinking water to flood-affected people has become a challenge, he said.

Counting the damage

The floods have destroyed 70% of wheat, cotton and other crops in Pakistan. Initially, Pakistan estimated that the floods caused $10 billion in damages, but now the government says the economic toll is far greater. The United Nations has urged the international community, especially those responsible for climate change, to send more help to Pakistan.

The monsoon rains have swept away entire villages, bridges and roads, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. At one point, a third of the country’s territory was inundated with water.

Multiple experts have blamed climate change for unprecedented rain-related damages in Pakistan.

Also Wednesday, Pakistan’s minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, told a gathering of lawmakers from the Asia Pacific in the capital, Islamabad that right now the entire world is facing a threat from climate change which, she said, “knows no border”.

She called for reducing emissions to save other countries from the damage that her country is facing now.

Meanwhile, the first planeload of aid from Saudi Arabia arrived in Pakistan overnight.

So far, UN agencies and various countries, including the United States, have sent about 90 planeloads of aid.

On Wednesday, Julien Harneis, UN resident coordinator in Pakistan, told a news conference that member states had committed $150 million in response to an emergency appeal for $160 million.

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