Alicia Villamizar presents the findings of the Second Academic Report on Climate Change. Credit: Margaret López/IPS

By Margaret López
CARACAS, Dec 15 2025 (IPS)

A group of 55 researchers gathered and analyzed 1,260 bibliographic references to compile the Second Academic Report on Climate Change in Venezuela. Their final conclusion is that more local studies are still needed to record the direct impacts across different Venezuelan regions and, in particular, to provide data to design the adaptation plans necessary to address climate change.

“Vulnerability varies greatly across the country. If an adaptation policy is to be defined, it cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. Adaptation is tailor-made, which is why local data is so important,” warned Alicia Villamizar, general coordinator of the research carried out by the Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Acfiman), in an interview with IPS.

The review of scientific papers, university research, books, global reports, and specialized databases on the impacts of climate change took four full years.

This research involved professionals from 25 different institutions, including the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) and Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB). It was presented at the Palace of Academies in early December.

The researchers highlighted the lack of historical and recent data on changes in temperature, precipitation, and sea level rise at the local level, three key elements for understanding climate change in the country.

They also reported the lack of scientific studies on the risk assessment of heat waves, droughts, and forest fires for different climate scenarios in Venezuela. Nor did they identify any recent research on the genetic improvement of crops to safeguard the country’s food security following changes in national temperature.

Corals Affected by High Temperatures

Among the findings of the report that are noteworthy is that Venezuela’s average temperature increased by 0.22°C per decade between 1980 and 2015.

The southern part of Lake Maracaibo (Zulia), the Paraguaná Peninsula (Falcón), and the western plains (Apure, Barinas, and Portuguesa), all located in western Venezuela, were the areas most affected by this temperature increase, which provides evidence of climate change.

Estrella Villamizar, coordinator of the first chapter of the report and researcher at the Institute of Zoology and Tropical Ecology at the UCV, highlighted the impact that this temperature increase had on Venezuelan coral reefs.

“There is not a single coral reef that has not been affected,” said Estrella Villamizar, a specialist in the study of marine ecosystems, during the public presentation of the results in Caracas.

Higher sea temperatures are another factor that has allowed the rapid expansion of the soft coral Unomia stolonifera in Venezuelan waters. This invasive species arrived from the Indian Ocean to the coasts of Anzoátegui and Sucre in eastern Venezuela and also to the waters of Aragua in the center of the country.

It is estimated that half of the seabed of Mochima National Park (Anzoátegui) is already covered with this soft coral, according to a report by the civil association Unomia Project.

The death of native corals in this area is a consequence of the colonization of this invasive species, which has been favored by climate change conditions. The rapid expansion of Unomia stolonifera also affects starfish, sponges, and marine worms.

More Economic Risks

The research also highlighted that climate change contributed to a reduction of between 0.97 percent and 1.30 percent in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) between 2010 and 2020, partly due to rising temperatures and increased rainfall.

Venezuela faced, for example, more than 20 flooding events between 2000 and 2019. The most direct consequences of these floods resulted in economic losses valued at more than USD 1 billion.

The GDP projection, in fact, is that Venezuela will lose another 10 points by 2030, due to rising sea levels that threaten port infrastructure, fishing activities, and tourism.

“The substantial value of this Second Academic Report is that it offers invaluable information for those who make decisions on city and national issues,” said agricultural engineer Joaquín Benítez, who participated in the project as a researcher on the sustainable development chapter, in an interview with IPS.

The main challenge with climate change in Venezuela, not surprisingly, is to get more attention from the government. The country still does not have a national law on climate change, a national climate strategy, or a national plan for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

That is why Alicia Villamizar repeated during the presentation that her goal is for this scientific report “not to remain confined to academia,” but rather to serve as a catalyst for more local scientific research and to strengthen the institutional muscle in charge of directing climate adaptation in Venezuela.

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Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley speaks up for augmenting the resources of climate finance. Credit: Isaac Atkin-Mayne|UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

By Margaret López
BAKU, Nov 19 2024 (IPS)

The global climate aid fund is not the only option discussed at the World Climate Change Conference (COP29). Imposing a new tax on cryptocurrencies and the plastics industry could help close the money gap needed to address the impacts of climate change, especially in the countries of the Global South.

The pool of proposals presented by the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force at COP29 speaks of a potential combined collection of USD 41 billion per year between these two sectors, which are high-polluting industries in the release of greenhouse gases.

This organization, led by France, Kenya and Barbados, promotes the idea that these new “solidarity levies” are fundamental to making the international arena “more inclusive, equitable, and responsive to the needs of countries most affected by the climate crisis.”

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley noted that these solidarity levies could help raise up to USD 690 billion per year if new taxes on fossil fuel extraction, maritime shipping, and global financial operations are also considered.

“We must change the rules of the game, shock-proof vulnerable economies, and indeed, review debt sustainability while at the same time augmenting resources,” said Mottley at the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Crypto Pays

These proposals to increase climate resources include a cryptocurrency tax that can be set between 0.1 percent and 20 percent of financial transactions made with Bitcoin, which is the cryptocurrency that just broke a price record by reaching USD 80,000 per unit, or Tether (USDT), which is the cryptocurrency used for financial hedging in Latin American countries with high inflation such as Venezuela or Argentina.

The collection potential is between 15.8 and 323 billion dollars per year only when considering transactions with cryptocurrencies, according to a report prepared by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Another option is to impose a tax on Bitcoin cryptocurrency mining activities, which is an electricity-intensive activity. The proposal is to create a tax of USD 0.045 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity consumption that could raise USD 5.2 billion per year, as reported in the same IMF report.

Although the Global Solidarity Levies Task Forces recognise that the nature of anonymity inherent in the world of cryptocurrencies works against the effective collection of this tax, especially in countries with less monitoring of these operations.

Focus on Plastics

Another of the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force’s innovative proposals speaks about a new tax of between 5 percent and 7 percent of the final price of plastics, which it estimates could help raise between 25 and 35 billion dollars per year.

“Implementing a levy on polymer production has several strategic advantages, particularly when applied upstream in the production chain where the product is homogenous and involves fewer companies. If designed accordingly, the levy could also narrow the price difference between virgin plastics and the currently more expensive recycled or biobased plastics, encouraging a shift toward more sustainable options,” explained the report.

The group’s goal is that the discussion of the Global Plastics Treaty (INC5) at the end of November and December 2024 will also include some mention of taxation for the sector and its interconnection with climate change impacts.

The document presented at COP29 also addresses one new 2 percent tax on the wealth of billionaires. The proposal is that it should be set as a global minimum standard and that a percentage of its collection should be earmarked for climate finance. In the end, Global Solidarity Levies Task Forces propose to shift the debate on climate finance from “voluntary contributions” to “systematic, fair, and impactful funding” mechanisms.

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More than 700 authors representing 90 different nationalities written the AR6 for IPCC | Credit: Margaret López/IPS

By Margaret López
CARACAS, Oct 29 2024 (IPS)

Climate finance will be at the epicenter of the discussion at the UN Climate Change Conference 2024 (COP29). The focus will be on strengthening the fund and defining the conditions under which the countries of the Global South will be able to access this money. However, little is said about the scientific research that is required to gather the evidence and data to prove the loss and damage caused by the impact of climate change in developing countries.

One of the points under discussion is the need for countries of the Global South to provide comprehensive, scientifically backed reports on how they are being directly affected by the impacts of climate change. This requirement guarantees that money will flow to the most affected countries, but it ignores the inequality present in scientific research networks in the Global South.

Floods and the effects of storms or hurricanes are not the only topics we are discussing.  For example, will Latin American countries, such as Brazil or Argentina, be ready to provide data and evidence of how global warming precipitated an increase in dengue cases among their citizens in 2024?

Dengue cases in Latin America tripled compared to the same period in 2023. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) compiled reports of more than 12 million cases of dengue fever in the region up to middle October and, undoubtedly, this additional health burden is part of the less talked about impacts of climate change.

Research centers in Brazil or Argentina, two of the countries with the best scientific networks in the region, can surely deliver the studies to support a financial request to cover these health-related damages. But the scenario is very different if we look at the scientific networks of other Latin American countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, or my native Venezuela.

More than 3,000 Venezuelan scientists have left the country for lack of support and financial problems in its laboratories since 2009, according to the follow-up done by researcher Jaime Requena, a member of the Academy of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Acfiman, its acronym in Spanish). This is equivalent to half of the Venezuelan scientific force, considering that Venezuela had 6,831 active researchers in the Researcher Promotion Program (PPI) in 2009.

Only 11 Venezuelan scientists participated as authors in all the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In AR6, the most recent IPCC report, only three authors were Venezuelan.

Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay were also represented by three researchers in AR6, while other countries such as Paraguay and Bolivia did not even manage to add a scientist to the group of more than 700 authors.

Climatologist Paola Andrea Arias was part of the Colombian representation. She is one of those promoting that the IPCC broaden the diversity of authors in the next report on the effects of climate change in the world.

“We all do science with different perspectives; we will follow the same methods and the same standards, but we have different perspectives. We ask different questions and have different priorities. We see in science the possibility of answering or solving different problems and, obviously, that will be very focused on your reality, the world in which you live, the country or city where you are,” said Arias when I asked her about her participation in AR6.

The low participation of Latin American scientists in global research on climate change, such as that of the IPCC, also means less space and dissemination for those studies that try to track the impacts of climate change in the region. This pattern is also repeated in Africa and Asia.

Promoting more research on the damages and impacts of climate change in the Global South, in the end, is not something that can be separated from climate finance. A clear example is that the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) has just created a scientific committee for its biodiversity conservation fund, as announced during COP16 on biodiversity in Cali, Colombia.

CAF explained that this new biodiversity committee will have “a key role” with recommendations based on scientific evidence to invest in environmental projects. The first tasks of this scientific committee will be focused on providing recommendations for conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of ecosystems in the Amazon, Cerrado, and Chocó, a program that will have access to 300 million dollars.

The creation of a scientific committee to deliver climate finance can be a first step, as shown by CAF’s experience in biodiversity. To move forward on this path, however, it is necessary to promote more funding for Latin American, African, and Asian scientists to do more local research on the impacts of climate change. It’s the only way to gather the scientific evidence to support the contention that the climate crisis represents an obstacle to development in those countries with the largest populations and the greatest number of disadvantages.

This opinion piece is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
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This photo of the Caribbean Sea taken in 2021 is the above view of the western side of Venezuela's Paraguaná Peninsula. The smoke plume running across the middle of the image appears to originate at a gas flare (mechurrio) of the Paraguaná Refinery Complex. Credit: NASA

By Margaret López
CARACAS, Sep 18 2024 (IPS)

The most visible part of gas flaring in Venezuela is the so-called “Monagas illuminated nights.” These are red and orange skies, which are visible from the homes of the locals at night and which show the gas flaring in the oil fields of Monagas, a state located in the east of the Caribbean country and key in its oil production.

Venezuela was the fifth country in the world with the highest gas flaring by volume during 2023, according to the Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report carried out by the World Bank.

The estimate was that Venezuela flared 8.31 billion cubic meters of gas (bcm) during 2023. This is just 1.32 bcm less than that flared by an oil giant like the United States, which ranked fourth in the global gas flaring ranking and produced at least 10 times more oil than Venezuela.

Reducing gas flaring in Venezuela is a key fact in the coming years of the Paris Agreement, considering that its energy sector (mostly powered by oil and gas) accounts for 66.2% of its total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Emission Index.

Gas flaring is a practice to remove gas associated with oil production, used mostly in small and dispersed oil fields. It is a method that is usually evidenced by the burning flares that are often seen at a distance from oil fields.

It is considered a safe method to avoid explosions in oil installations, but polluting because in the process carbon dioxide (CO2) and also methane (CH4) are released into the atmosphere. This concentration of gas emissions is what allows the skies to turn red and orange at night, as occurs in Monagas.

As in the rest of the oil-producing countries, gas flaring has been used in Venezuela for several decades. “The Venezuelan oil industry saw gas as a burden, not as a solution. It was not even used in the reinjection fields to extract more crude,” explained engineer Oswaldo Felizzola, coordinator of the International Energy and Environment Center of the Institute of Higher Studies in Administration (IESA), in an interview with IPS.

Russia ranks first among the world’s largest gas flaring countries. Credit: Margaret López/IPS

How much gas is flared in Venezuela?

The state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) pledged to reduce its gas flaring between 2016 and 2017. However, there is currently no official Venezuelan data on how much gas is flared in the fields of Monagas and Anzoátegui, two states with extensive daily gas flaring and whose nighttime lighting is so powerful that it was captured by NASA satellite images.

It is also unknown how much gas is being flared at Amuay and Cardón, the main Venezuelan refineries located in the northwest of the Caribbean country.

The private firm Gas Energy Latin America has an estimate that PDVSA loses 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas daily between what is flared and what is simply vented into the atmosphere. This practice was consolidated in Venezuela thanks to the low prices associated with gas compared to oil.

“Gas has had no real value and was always subsidized in Venezuela. The large quantities of leftover methane gas extracted from the fields have no economics. There are no facilities to collect it and, for that reason, it was not sold,” said Juan Szabo, an international energy consultant and former president of production for PDVSA between 1995 and 1999, in an interview with IPS.

Szabo also explained that the 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas lost daily in Venezuela are equivalent to more than the amount of gas consumed in all of Colombia in one day.

Gas flaring is also recognized as a practice of oil companies that wastes natural resources because part of these gases could be used for everyday activities such as cooking in homes or powering thermoelectric plants that provide electricity in the regions of the Caribbean country.

What options does Venezuela have to reduce its gas flaring?

The World Bank highlighted in its most recent report that Venezuela has been decreasing its gas flaring volumes for three consecutive years. During 2023, for example, there was a total reduction of 4% of its gas flaring volumes, mostly from oil fields located in the north of the Monagas state. The big question, however, is how a sustainable policy can be put together to minimize this polluting practice.

Experts Felizzola and Szabo agree that a cost-effective option would be to capture this gas and then re-inject it into fields to improve oil production in the Caribbean country.

“You have to rehabilitate the compression plants and the extraction plants, which would no longer have to be so sophisticated because the reservoir pressure has also dropped. This would help reinject methane gas into the system and improve oil production,” Szabo explained.

Another option is to install pipelines to recover gases such as propane and butane, which can be used directly for sale in the local market, both to industries and to ordinary citizens for their kitchens. However, this project requires a high initial investment, which Venezuela does not have and which could be obtained through financing from multilateral entities interested in promoting a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in small oil-producing countries.

The third option to reduce gas flaring volumes would be creating a system to capture, process, store, and export these gases to markets such as Colombia, Brazil, or Trinidad and Tobago, all countries bordering Venezuela.

However, Felizzola and Szabo also warned that none of these options would be viable without Venezuela first establishing a gas price governed by international standards and cutting subsidies. A public policy more focused on gas as a valuable asset depends on reducing its flaring and its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The irony is that the least costly and easiest plan to implement is just to re-inject this gas to increase oil production in this Caribbean country.

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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Alejandro Álvarez says the Latin American region is dangerous for environmental defenders. Credit: Margaret López/IPS

By Margaret López
CARACAS, May 30 2024 (IPS)

Venezuela is one of the few countries outside the Escazú Agreement, a treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean ratified by 16 member countries that guarantees access to environmental information, public participation in environmental decisions, and environmental justice.

“The failure to sign the Escazú Agreement is a symptom of this general situation of lack of environmental rule of law in the country,” said Erick Camargo, researcher of the Observatory of Political Ecology, in an interview with IPS.

For the past seven years, the Observatory of Political Ecology has been part of a group asking the Venezuelan State to embrace this international treaty. The petition of civil organizations aims to ensure that the environment and threats such as illegal mining, deforestation, or the murder of indigenous defenders are not forgotten, amid a complex humanitarian emergency that this Caribbean country is experiencing.

What is the Escazú Agreement?

It is the first treaty on environment and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its full name is Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. Although it is better known by the name of the place where it was signed on March 4, 2018: Escazú, Costa Rica.

The Escazú Agreement ratifies that all Latin Americans have the right to know if the water they receive in their homes is potable, if the air they breathe daily is safe for their health, or if a community should have a veto over companies for activities such as mining, oil exploitation, or tourism in biodiverse areas.

Its 26 articles entered into force in 2021. This treaty is also a recognition of the role played by Latin American environmental defenders in the preservation of nature and the problem of violence experienced by these defenders in the region.

“Latin America is the most dangerous area in the world to defend environmental human rights. These are not only people who work for environmental organizations, but also environmental journalists and people from indigenous communities who defend the territory and habitat where they live”, explained Alejandro Alvarez, biologist and coordinator of the non-governmental organization Clima 21, in an interview with IPS.

Statistics compiled by Global Witness, an independent organization that monitors deaths in defense of the environment, speak of 1,335 environmental defenders murdered in Latin America between 2012 and 2022. That is, 70 percent of all killings of environmental defenders in that decade. In the Venezuelan case, 21 people were killed defending nature in the same period, most of them belonging to Indigenous communities.

For researcher Liliana Buitrago of the Observatory of Political Ecology, the central point of this treaty is that it helps to “make visible a fundamental narrative in the climate crisis (…) because environmental defenders are decisive actors to protect, fight, and stop environmental and ecological collapse.”

What benefits do Venezuela bring to this agreement?

As with other international environmental bodies, the Escazú Agreement provides for a Conference of the Parties (COP) to be held every year. At COP 3, its most recent edition held in Santiago, Chile, the Regional Action Plan on environmental human rights defenders was approved.

The implementation of this special plan for environmental defenders will take six years. This is the first multilateral agreement that requires States to ensure that the defense of the environment can take place in freedom and its implementation will strengthen the protection of environmental defenders in the Latin American region. This environmental protection plan is part of what Venezuelan organizations want to obtain with the country’s adhesion to this agreement.

“Venezuela has quite robust environmental legislation for the protection of its natural areas or its defenders, but it is neither complied with nor known. The importance in the Venezuelan case is that the Escazú Agreement would give us an international tool to put pressure on our state,” said Camargo.

If Venezuela were to adopt the Escazú Agreement in the coming year, this would give an international legal instrument to organized groups to demand greater security for indigenous peoples defending their territories in the Venezuelan Amazon. This is an area that is now threatened with deforestation for the establishment of new illegal mining sites for the extraction of gold, according to the independent organization SOS Orinoco.

Another benefit would be the establishment of an updated environmental information system. Such a public and accessible environmental system should include, for example, key data on the impacts of climate change in the country as well as a list of the most polluted areas, as established in Article 6 of the Escazú Agreement.

Transparency in the environmental field, not in vain, is one of the most common requests from Venezuelan organizations such as Clima 21, the Venezuelan Society of Ecology, the Observatory of Political Ecology, and Espacio Publico.

“There is no guarantee that the Venezuelan state will comply with environmental commitments. Many international agreements were signed and the standards have not been met, but their signature is already a step. The signing of the Escazú Agreement would show a certain willingness to be transparent in environmental management and, therefore, it would be good to sign it,” explained Carlos Correa, executive director of Espacio Público, in an interview with IPS.

Now, the Venezuelan government has 10 months ahead of it to evaluate its position and join the next COP of the Escazú Agreement as another of the countries in the region that are truly committed to the defense of nature amid the climate crisis.

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