Various states, and many environmental campaign groups, suspect that carbon markets weaken the overall effort to reduce emissions. Credit: Bigstock.

By External Source
Dec 20 2021 (IPS)

One surprise from COP26 – the latest UN climate change conference in Glasgow – was an agreement between world leaders on a new set of rules for regulating carbon markets. This would allow countries to trade the right to emit greenhouse gases.

Carbon trading is part of how countries intend to meet their obligations for reducing emissions under the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, the manner in which countries agreed these rules may hobble the Agreement in its goal of averting catastrophic warming.

Carbon markets were central to the design of the Paris Agreement’s predecessor, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which created three different mechanisms for trading carbon. Developing countries had become accustomed to attracting investment via one called the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) which allowed industrialised countries to invest in projects to reduce emissions in developing countries and count them against their own targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Many industrialised countries wanted to retain this sort of flexibility in how they met their own treaty obligations.

As a result, most governments were keen to keep carbon markets as part of the Paris Agreement. In Paris in 2015, the bare bones of mechanisms similar to those in the Kyoto Protocol were agreed, but without the details needed to put them into practice.

Why then did it take six years to agree the rules which would govern these markets? This was more than the four years it took countries to do the same in the Kyoto Protocol and, in effect, they were recreating the same mechanisms. The problems in reaching an agreement this time were three-fold, and they weren’t satisfactorily resolved in Glasgow.

Going backwards from Kyoto

Various states, and many environmental campaign groups, suspect that carbon markets weaken the overall effort to reduce emissions. As climate change has accelerated over the past decade these concerns have become more acute. Why trade emissions if everyone is trying to get them to zero? There is considerable evidence that carbon offset projects – such as wind farms, which emissions trading can fund – have failed to deliver a reduction in overall emissions. A 2017 study led by the EU Commission found that 85% of projects funded by the CDM hadn’t reduced emissions.

There are also fundamental design issues in the Paris Agreement that make setting up carbon markets under it much more difficult. The Kyoto Protocol expressed the obligations of industrialised states to reduce their emissions as targets. These could be translated into a fixed number of emissions allowances that provided carbon markets with a clear set of accounting rules and indicators of market demand.

No such set of rules exists in the Paris Agreement. Instead, all states submit their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – national plans for reducing emissions. They may or may not have an emissions target and they vary in how they account for emissions or which sources of emissions they include in their plans.

How can a market function if there is no clear way of measuring what is being traded? And how should a country trading with another adjust its own NDC to avoid double-counting, when the design of each country’s NDC varies so much?

And what should countries do with all the credits created in the Kyoto Protocol’s system? Should they just be rolled over to be used in the new markets? Should they be simply abandoned? Or is there some way of allowing them in but controlling their use? A lot of CDM credits in particular remain, and they could flood the new markets and undermine the integrity of the NDCs.

A cop out

In the first week of COP26, it looked like these issues would continue to dog the negotiations. India supported unrestricted use of CDM credits in the new mechanism while the Solomon Islands (representing the Least Developed Countries group) opposed using them at all. In week two, these issues were either fudged or hastily agreed. The carbon traders were happy, as were the managers of the COP26 process – the UN secretariat and the UK government. We can now see the cost of failing to grapple with these thorny issues.

The Glasgow decisions on both Article 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Agreement are extraordinarily unclear compared with the equivalent ones for the Kyoto Protocol. Specialists in this field are still decoding precisely what they mean in practical terms. It’s likely that states will be able to use this opacity to double-count and claim credit for the same emissions-reducing activities.

Countries are supposed to set new NDCs regularly. At the same time, countries will be negotiating individual emission trades. The possibility for a country to game its NDC – making it appear more ambitious than it really is by counting already agreed trades within them – is impossible to avoid. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t fundamentally weaken the ambition of countries when updating their NDCs.

Monitoring how these mechanisms work in practice and whether they have the desired effect will be important over the coming years. While heralded at the time as a breakthrough in implementing significant tracts of the Paris Agreement, the Glasgow pact on carbon markets might instead be remembered as its undoing.

Matthew Paterson, Professor of International Politics, University of Manchester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nature-based solutions for climate change was a major outcome of the COP26 summit. These include people working with nature to manage forests, mangroves and farm sustainably. Credit: Yoel Kahssay - Unsplash

By Ruth Kattumuri
London, Dec 17 2021 (IPS)

A key outcome of COP26 climate summit is the enhanced focus on “nature-based solutions” – the plans for people to work closely alongside nature to avert a planetary catastrophe.

While there is emerging consensus around nature-based solutions (NbS), the overarching concept encompasses a wide range of approaches and actions that involve the ecosystem, which address societal and biodiversity challenges while also benefitting human well-being and nature.

In terms of climate change, it implies working with nature’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases that cause global warming. This includes sustainable land-use practices and management of forests that can remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it for millions of years. It can also entail transformations in major sectors such as agriculture, livestock, land, water and waste management to ensure the protection of our planet.

Nature-based solutions not only help to mitigate climate change by expanding natural carbon sinks, they enhance biodiversity, provide food and water, help clean the air and sustain other resources, as well as provide job opportunities, whilst also protecting communities against flooding and landslides. Some estimates state that NbS have the potential to supply up to 37 percent of our climate change mitigation needs.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri is Senior Director, Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Across the 54 countries of the Commonwealth, governments, communities and the private sector are keenly adopting NbS approaches, with most countries incorporating NbS actions in their national climate plans. Some examples of NbS include Pakistan’s Ten Billion Tree Tsunami programme, which aims to restore about 600,000 hectares of forest and create thousands of jobs; Sri Lanka’s response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami by rehabilitating vast areas of mangrove swamps; and the “We Plantin’” campaign of Barbados to plant one million trees.

To make natural climate solutions truly effective, there are several issues that we must address. One key challenge is the lack so far of an agreed framework or standard as to what constitutes an effective NbS. As IUCN points out, “misunderstanding and misuse of NbS have led to applications that cause harm to biodiversity and communities and threaten to erode stakeholders’ trust in the approach.” Examples include mass reforestation of single-species or non-native species, land grabbing for reforestation, and curtailing of rights of Indigenous peoples through conservation projects.

Further, NbS should not support or encourage carbon offsetting by polluting industries, as a way to justify their continued or growing emissions. A strong framework and standards have to be developed to guard against the misuse of “nature-based” to ensure effective climate action.

There is also a need to enhance awareness and knowledge about the different ways to include NbS in national climate plans. A recent study suggests that though large-scale tree planting and reforestation have become the most popular route for many governments, other solutions such as sustainable farming and animal-rearing practices, sustainable land and water conservation and management, reducing food waste and engaging indigenous communities in NbS would be more beneficial. The conservation of high-carbon ecosystems – such as peatlands, wetlands, rangelands, mangroves and forests – also deliver the largest and most timely climate benefits.

Finally, there is a massive financing gap to be filled, for, despite our significant dependence on nature, the sector receives very little investment. Estimates by UN environment shows that if our world is to meet targets for climate change, biodiversity and land degradation, it needs to close a US$4.1 trillion financing gap, requiring tripling investments in NbS over the next 10 years and quadrupling them by 2050. This amounts to an estimated US$536 billion worth of funding required every year.

There were some promising announcements at COP26, including a US$12 billion pledge in public financing for ending deforestation, however, we are far short of the required target. At the moment, the total falls significantly short, and private sector funding, in particular, needs to be scaled up.

Former CYEN Special Envoy for Climate Change Jevanic Henry with fellow delegates at the Youth4Climate Summit 2021. Involving people in finding solutions for climate change is at the heart of Nature-based Solutions adopted during COP26 climate summit. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Of the estimated US$133 billion per year directed towards NbS globally, only 14 percent is private sector finance, compared to 86 percent from public funds and subsidies. Lack of private sector funding is partly related to the complex nature of NbS projects and financial instruments and the long-time frame for returns on investments. The public sector thus has a crucial role to play in leveraging increased private sector funding by de-risking investments in NbS.

Innovative financing mechanisms such as green bonds, credit swaps for climate, debt-for-nature swaps, and carbon markets are also being actively explored in Commonwealth countries.

The Commonwealth through its ‘Call to Action on Living Lands’ is leading on tackling the climate change challenges. Addressing the issues in the context of meeting the targets of the three Rio conventions, leaders from member countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific expressed their support during the COP26 summit for a proposed Commonwealth Living Lands Charter.

The proposed Charter is a progression of the on-going programme on land, biodiversity and climate change of the Secretariat since 2017. The Charter will be discussed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda in 2022, with a potential to spur cooperation among all 54 Commonwealth nations to manage land use sustainably, protect the natural world and fight climate change. Focus areas being explored include climate resilient agriculture, soil and water conservation and management, sustainable green cover and biodiversity, low carbon livestock management and active engagement of indigenous people.

Nature-based solutions for acceleration of action around land, climate change and biodiversity need judicial attention and support, not least in terms of finance. NbS do not offer a silver bullet to resolve the climate crisis, but they are extremely vital to drastically curtail greenhouse gas emissions and meet the Nationally Determined Contributions to 2030.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri is Senior Director, Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

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Gladys Habu on the beach in the Solomon Islands. She has filed a deeply personal story about how climate-change-induced sea-level rises have submerged her grandparents’ island home. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Dec 15 2021 (IPS)

On Gladys Habu’s birthday, she filmed a message to world leaders while standing waist-deep in the sea next to a dead tree stump – the only remnant of Kale Island now submerged underwater due to climate-change-induced sea-level rise.

Climate change impacts have deeply personal meaning for this young climate activist from the Solomon Islands – Kale Island was her grandparents’ home.

“I strongly believe an investment in youth is a direct investment into the climate workforce. An active force that will enable the marked difference we all hope to see in the fight for a climate-safe future,” Habu says.

Habu is a Commonwealth Points of Light award winner, the Queen’s Award for activism for her climate change work in the Pacific. She is one of 1.5 billion young people in Commonwealth countries under the age of 30 who are among the most vulnerable to climate change, but least involved in decision-making.

“Climate change is a multifaceted, cross-cutting issue that affects all aspects of life, and therefore is one of the most challenging to face. Despite increased scientific knowledge and evidence of climate change on the ground, there is still a trending rise in investments into profit-oriented industries that contribute critically to the problem,” she tells IPS.

Habu says youths have the numbers to be effective agents of positive change in climate action. But beyond their role as advocates, they must act from the forefront of climate action, taking part in policymaking and implementation.

However, she says, there needs to be a large-scale investment in young people.

Addressing climate change is crucial and urgent. The UN’s State of Food Security and Nutrition says that as many as 161 million more people faced hunger in 2020 than in 2019, driven by increased climate variability and extremes, conflicts and economic slowdowns, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UN says that an estimated 21 percent of the population in Africa, 9.0 percent in Asia, and 9.1 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean are affected by hunger. As Commonwealth youth leaders recently highlighted, these regions are also the most affected by climate change.

As the debilitating effects of climate change unravel, the report shows that compared to 2019, an estimated 46 million more people in Africa, 57 million in Asia and approximately 14 million more in Latin America and the Caribbean were affected by hunger in 2020.

Young climate activist Lucky Abeng speaking at the Commonwealth Pavilion at COP26. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Youth can play a crucial role in halting the fast pace of climate change and reversing its devastating effects – such as accelerated world hunger and malnutrition, Nigerian youth leader Lucky Abeng says.

However, this will need increased youth participation in all levels of climate action.

Abeng was excited to see the level of youth engagement at the recently concluded COP26.

“I was personally impressed to see the interest shown by youth in Glasgow. Joining voices to call for climate justice and bridging the gap on intergenerational equity.”

As the Commonwealth Climate Change Network (CYCN) Chair for Grassroots Engagement and Participation, Abeng is hopeful that position papers submitted by youth activists to various governments will be mainstreamed in plans and programs for implementation post-COP26.

The Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network has over 2000 climate, sustainability, and environment youth leaders and youth-led organisations focused on climate adaptation and mitigation and sustainable development.

Abeng’s hope could well be realised through the Commonwealth Secretariat’s mandate to include young people in national development policies and plans at all levels of decision making.

Former CYEN Special Envoy for Climate Change Jevanic Henry with fellow delegates at the Youth4Climate Summit 2021. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Jevanic Henry, an Assistant Research Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat, tells IPS that through the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub, all the Commonwealth Regional and National Climate Finance advisers seek to consider gender and youth concerns in all climate finance initiatives.

Henry, who served as a Special Envoy on Climate Change for the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN),  says the Commonwealth Secretariat is “uniquely placed to further advance this mainstreaming, building on the political will by the Commonwealth Heads (of State), technical expertise available within the Secretariat to support member countries and its convening power to work with other development partners at all levels.”

On the sidelines of COP26, Abeng witnessed various events on the nexus between youth, marginalised people, and climate change.

Beyond these events and progressive discussions, Abeng hopes to see realistic and sincere youth-focused implementation plans embedded into countries’ national plans, including their Nationally Determined Contributions to limit global warming.

He says genuine commitment to youth participation in climate action should be demonstrated through funded capacity-building and empowerment opportunities for young people.

Henry believes it can be done. First, “we need a good policy environment that recognises the needs and potential role of young people.”

While there is progress, it is crucial that in Commonwealth funded projects, youth and women are equal in decision-making and beneficiaries of climate action.

“We are aware that youth are change-makers in many ways and need practical support to advance those ideas,” Henry says, and proper funding is crucial.

Commonwealth Assistant Research Officer Jevanic Henry joins a Beach Cleanup with community youth council in St Lucia. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

“There is a need for improvement in the design of new and existing climate and disaster risk reduction international financing pools to ensure they are made more accessible for young people,” Henry says.

Within the Commonwealth Secretariat, there are efforts to put youth in the forefront to independently drive national climate action and advance towards integrating and adopting youth-sensitive budgeting.

For these reasons, Henry explains, the Commonwealth Secretariat is advancing a training programme on enhancing access to sustainable financing for green entrepreneurship, focusing on youth.

“For example, ahead of COP26, in conjunction with the Government of Saint Lucia, we run a youth entrepreneurship training,”  he says, giving them the information to take advantage of the opportunities that come with a green economy and accessing financing for projects and ideas.

Habu says youth have made great strides in climate advocacy and influencing policy change.

“Imagine how much more can be achieved by youths from the forefront of climate action.”

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Georgina Wabano and her mother cooking traditional food for school children in Peawanuck, ON, December 18, 2019. : © 2019 Daron Donahue

By Shantha Rau Barriga
Nov 15 2021 (IPS)

“Nothing about us without us” – that was the call from the indigenous rights advocate Ghazali Ohorella from the Alifuru people in the Maluku Islands, Indonesia during a panel at the climate summit in Glasgow.

This plea was echoed by many activists from groups marginalized by systemic oppression whom I met at COP26: young activists, women, people with disabilities, older people, refugees, people from the Global South – all of whom are the most affected but have contributed the least to the climate crisis.

These experts spoke firsthand of the impacts of the climate crisis on their communities, the ongoing struggle to have their voices heard, and the concrete actions needed to solve this existential crisis which affects us all.

Worldwide, women farmers make up nearly half of the agricultural labor force, and produce up to 80 percent of food crops in developing nations yet, in many countries, women have less access to resources, such as land rights, credit, markets, education and technology

Instead of shutting out these voices, governments should listen and learn from them.

The slogan I heard from Ohorella has long been used by disability rights advocates and the session reminded me of the negotiations toward the UN treaty on the rights of people with disabilities, which was adopted in 2006.

During that process, I saw firsthand the benefits of inclusion. Governments came to respect and recognize the expertise of people with lived disability experience, which led to major advancements on their rights. It also resulted in changed mindsets, where people with disabilities were no longer seen as objects of charity, but holders of rights.

Fifteen years later, climate activists at COP spoke about the disconnect between the knowledge held by those with lived experience and the governments seated at the table making decisions on their behalf. Activists like Gabriele Peters from British Columbia and Ayakha Melithafa from South Africa urged world leaders to work with them and learn from them.

We should listen to and incorporate this know-how to build the kind of systems change we need to respond to the climate crisis, with equity. For example, involving women in local forest management has had positive effects for both livelihoods and conservation. This is already happening in Indonesia and Brazil.

Worldwide, women farmers make up nearly half of the agricultural labor force, and produce up to 80 percent of food crops in developing nations yet, in many countries, women have less access to resources, such as land rights, credit, markets, education and technology.

By leveling the playing field through legal reforms, targeted investments, and increased women’s meaningful participation, according to Project Drawdown, a resource for climate solutions, farm yields will rise and there is less pressure to deforest. Ensuring that women are included in the design and implementation of climate planning would heighten chances of success.

Overall, lands securely held and managed by Indigenous peoples also have lower rates of deforestation than comparable areas, evidencing their successful forest management practices. Advancing the rights of marginalized groups – an urgency in and of itself – has major climate benefits for the planet.

Not every impact of climate change can be solved with new technologies. Front line communities with deep knowledge of their lands are also carrying out successful adaptation strategies. In Australia, first responders are learning from aboriginal people, who lower the risk of bushfires by reducing fuel levels on the forest floor. In Mexico, farmers hit by increasingly long droughts and diminishing crop yields are developing groundbreaking solutions to restore degraded land to productivity.

In Canada, some First Nations maintain strong traditional food sharing networks that have helped address climate-driven loss of food through sharing harvests with at-risk members of the community, while others have built up community science programs that monitor climate change impacts on their environment.

Frontline communities are also developing healing practices to process grief caused by the permanent loss or alteration of ecological features that once sustained livelihoods and cultural practices. Artists are also leading the movement from artistic expression to policy change. As the climate crisis increasingly takes a toll on mental health, particularly among youth, we should support the arts, culture, and healing advanced by climate and environmental justice and Indigenous rights movements.

Meaningful participation in decision-making processes that affect citizens’ lives is not only a demand, it’s a right. While the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement recognize the importance of participation, including “a country-driven, gender-responsive, participatory and fully transparent approach” for adaptation, states (and COP organizers) aren’t meeting these requirements. For Indigenous people, their free, prior, and informed consent is required for implementation to be successful.

As Ridhima Pandey, a youth climate activist from India, told us this week: “If we really want to treat the climate crisis as a crisis, it’s really important for the governments, organizations and activists to all come together, to start taking concrete action.”

Wise words from a 14-year old. Will governments listen?

Excerpt:

One of the family photos taken after the laborious end of the 26th climate summit in Glasgow, which closed a day later than scheduled with a Climate Pact described as falling short by even the most optimistic, lacking important decisions to combat the crisis and without directly confronting fossil fuels, the cause of the emergency. CREDIT: UNFCCC

By Emilio Godoy
GLASGOW, Nov 13 2021 (IPS)

Developing countries will surely remember the Glasgow climate summit, the most important since 2015, as a fiasco that left them as an afterthought. That was the prevailing sentiment among delegates from the developing South during the closing ceremony on the night of Saturday Nov. 13, one day after the scheduled end of the conference.

Bolivia’s chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco, questioned the outcome of the summit. “It is not fair to pass the responsibility to developing countries. Developed countries do not want to acknowledge their responsibility for the crisis. They have systematically broken their funding pledges and emission reduction commitments,” he told IPS minutes after the end of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) on climate change in Glasgow.

The 196 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ignored the public clamor, which took shape in the demands of indigenous peoples, young people, women, scientists and social movements around the world for substantive measures to combat the climate crisis, even though the goal of containing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is barely surviving on life support.

The Glasgow Climate Pact that came out of the summit finally mentions the need to move away from the use of coal. But it had to water down the stronger recommendation to “phase out” in order to overcome the last stumbling block.

In addition, COP26 broke a taboo, albeit very tepidly, after arduous marches and counter-marches in the negotiating room and in the three drafts of the Glasgow Pact: there was a mention of fossil fuels as part of the climate emergency. And it also stated the need to reduce “inefficient” subsidies for fossil fuels.

But the summit, where decisions are made by consensus, avoided a strong stance in this regard. It also avoided moving from recommendations to obligations for the next edition, to be held in Egypt, and those that follow, while the climate crisis continues causing severe droughts, devastating storms, melting of the polar ice caps and warming of the oceans.

In a plenary session that was delayed by several minutes, the final declaration underwent a last-minute change when India, one of the villains of the meeting – along with Saudi Arabia, Australia and Russia – asked for the phrase “phasing out” of coal to be replaced by “phasing down”, a change questioned by countries such as Mexico, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

A paradoxical fact at the close of COP26, where civil society organizations complained that they were left out, was the decision of several countries to endorse the final text even though they differed on several points, including the fossil energy face-lifts.

“Today, we can say with credibility that we have kept 1.5 degrees within reach. But its pulse is weak. And it will only survive if we keep our promises. If we translate commitments into rapid action,” said conference chairman Alok Sharma, choking back tears after a pact – albeit a minimal one – was reached by negotiating three drafts and holding arduous discussions on the fossil fuel question, right up to the final plenary.

COP26 chair Alok Sharma blinked back tears during his closing speech at the climate summit, expressing the tension of negotiating the Glasgow Climate Pact, due to the hurdles thrown in the way of a consensus by the big coal and oil producers. CREDIT: UNFCCC-Twitter

The South is still waiting

Lost amidst the impacts of the climate emergency and forgotten by the industrialized countries, the global South failed to obtain something vital for many of its nations: a clear plan and funding for loss and damage, an issue that was deferred to COP27 in Egypt.

Mohamed Adow, director of the non-governmental Power Shift Africa, said the pact is “not good enough…There is no mention of solidarity and justice. We need a clear process to face loss and damage. There should be a link between emission reduction, financing and adaptation.”

The final decision by China, the United States, India and the European Union to turn their backs on a global fossil fuel exit and deny climate support to the most vulnerable nations left the developing world high and dry.

“There are things that cannot wait to COP27 or 2025. To face loss and damage, the most vulnerable countries need financing to battle the impacts on their territories,” Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, global climate and energy leader for the non-governmental World Wildlife Fund, told IPS.

Climate policies were, at least on the agenda, the focus of COP26.

The summit focused on carbon market rules, climate finance of at least 100 billion dollars per year, gaps between emission reduction targets and needed reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans, and the working platform for local communities and indigenous peoples.

But the goal of hundreds of billions of dollars per year has been postponed, a reflection of the fact that financing for climate mitigation and adaptation is a touchy issue, especially for developed countries.

The corridors of the Blue Zone of the Scottish Events Campus, where the official part of the 26th Climate Conference was held in the city of Glasgow, were emptying on Saturday Nov. 13, at the end of the summit, which lasted a day longer than scheduled and ended with a negative balance according to civil society organizations. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Offers and promises – on paper

One breakthrough at COP26 was the approval of the rules of the Paris Agreement, signed in the French capital in December 2015, at COP21, to form the basis on which subsequent summits have revolved. By 2024, all countries will have to report detailed data on emissions, which will form a baseline to assess future greenhouse gas reductions.

The agreement on the functioning of carbon markets creates a trading system between countries, but does not remove the possibility of countries and companies skirting the rules.

Industrialized countries committed to doubling adaptation finance by 2025 based on 2019 amounts. In addition, COP26 approved a new work program to increase greenhouse gas cuts, with reports due in 2022.

It also asked the UNFCCC to evaluate climate plans that year and its final declaration calls on countries to switch from coal and hydrocarbons to renewable energy.

Apart from the Climate Pact, the summit produced voluntary commitments against deforestation, emissions of methane, a gas more polluting than carbon dioxide, and the phasing out of gasoline and diesel vehicles.

In addition, at least 10 countries agreed to put an end to the issuing of new hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation licenses in their territories.

Furthermore, some thirty nations agreed to suspend public funding for coal, gas and oil by 2022.

Demonstrations demanding ambitious, substantive and equitable measures to address the climate crisis continued throughout the 14-day climate summit in Glasgow, which ended on the night of Saturday Nov. 13 with disappointing results for the global South. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Finally, more than 100 stakeholders, including countries and companies, signed up to the elimination of cars with internal combustion engines by 2030, without the major automobile manufacturers such as Germany, Spain and France joining in, and a hundred nations signed a pact to promote sustainable agriculture.

All of the 2030 pledges, which still need concrete plans for implementation, imply a temperature rise of 2.8 degrees C by the end of this century, according to the independent Climate Action Tracker.

The climate plans of the 48 least developed countries (LDCs) would cost more than 93 billion dollars annually, the non-governmental International Institute for Environment and Development said in Glasgow.

In addition, annual adaptation costs in developing countries would be about 70 billion dollars, reaching a total of 140 to 300 billion dollars by 2030, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

But the largest disbursements are related to loss and damage, which would range between 290 billion and 580 billion dollars by 2030, and hence the enormous concern of these nations to obtain essential financing, according to a 2019 study. And their disappointment with the results of the Oct. 31-Nov.13 conference.

During his presentation at the closing plenary, Seve Paeniu, a climate envoy from Tuvalu, an island nation whose very existence is threatened by the rising sea level, showed a photo of his three grandchildren and said he had been thinking about what to say to them when he got home.

“Glasgow has made a promise to guarantee their future. It will be the best Christmas gift that I can bring home,” he said. But judging by the Climate Pact, Paeniu may have to look for another present.

IPS produced this article with the support of Iniciativa Climática of Mexico and the European Climate Foundation.

Extreme weather like widespread drought is causing economic losses amongst farmers in Africa. Credit: UN Photo/Albert González Farran

By Nibal Zgheib
LONDON, Nov 11 2021 (IPS)

Targeted action in agriculture could have a massive impact on climate change, according to a joint brief by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Investment Centre of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), published at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow scheduled to end November 12.

The mitigation potential of crop and livestock activities, including soil carbon sequestration and better land management, is estimated at 3 to 7 percent of total anthropogenic emissions by 2030.

The potential economic value of mitigating these emissions could amount between US$ 60 billion and US$ 360 billion, the two institutions say.

“Agriculture must become the focus of a global coalition for carbon neutrality and we need to support both mitigation and adaptation. We must enable smallholder farmers to adapt and to benefit economically through the provision of environmental services,” said Mohamed Manssouri, Director of the FAO Investment Centre.

“Now is the time to grasp this vital opportunity to reduce emissions and increase carbon sequestration, while restoring biodiversity, supporting health and nutrition and generating new business opportunities through food and land-use systems.”

The brief highlights the huge potential for engaging food and land-use systems in the fight against climate change. It also shows how the agriculture sector is uniquely placed to be part of the carbon-neutral solution by reducing emissions, while maximizing its potential to act as a carbon sink by absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. A full report will be published in early 2022.

The agriculture sector generates a high amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with agri-food systems causing an estimated 21 to 37 percent of total global emissions. But agriculture is also a victim of emissions.

Farmers are often among the first witnesses to climate change. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and supply-chain disruptions are already impacting food production, undermining global efforts to end hunger.

The EBRD/FAO brief shows how sustainable, targeted investments and interventions will make agriculture part of the climate solution. Reaching carbon neutrality for agri-food systems essentially means lowering GHG emissions throughout the entire value chain, improving farming practices, using agricultural lands for carbon sequestration, promoting sustainable agriculture and avoiding land clearance.

The brief sets out key action areas for policymakers and investors, including the development and enhancement of sound governance mechanisms and the mainstreaming of carbon neutrality in corporate strategies.

Achieving the right policy mix and agreeing on carbon accounting methods can unlock major investments in greening across agri-food systems.

“The investment universe is evolving quickly, as banks align their lending with the net zero objective and asset managers look for opportunities to decarbonise their portfolios while managing risks associated with climate change,” said Natalya Zhukova, EBRD Director, Head of Agribusiness.

One of the main actors in addressing climate change is the private sector. Country policies, strategies and roadmaps are all important in signalling regulatory changes and creating incentives to drive the accurate valuation and pricing of carbon.

While the private sector will be needed to mobilise billions, equally, it stands to gain by reducing costs, mitigating risks, protecting brand values, ensuring long-term supply-chain viability and gaining competitive advantage.

Nibal Zgheib is Communication Adviser, EBRD and former Programme Assistant, World Food Programme

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The climate summit COP26 was accompanied by protests by social movements, with demonstrators arriving in Glasgow from all over the world and expressing themselves in their own language or dressing up as dinosaurs to symbolize their criticism. But government delegates did not listen to their demands for ambitious and fair action to contain the global warming crisis. CREDIT: Laura Quiñones/UN

By Emilio Godoy
GLASGOW, Nov 11 2021 (IPS)

One element that runs through all social movement climate summits is their rejection of the official meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the low ambition of its outcomes – and the treaty’s 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) was no exception.

The leaders of the UNFCCC gladly welcome those responsible for the crisis and “COP26 hasn’t done anything more than simulation and greenwashing,” Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a member of the non-governmental organization Youth Advocates for Climate Action from the Philippines, told IPS during a rally at the Glasgow Screening Room, a few blocks from the venue where the official meeting is being held until Friday, Nov. 12.

The COP26 Coalition, the alternative summit to the climate conference, has been a motley crew of organizations and movements whose common demand was a real effort to fight the climate crisis through concrete and fair measures and whose 200 events in this Scottish city included workshops, forums, artistic presentations and protests, which ended on Wednesday, Nov. 10.

Among the demands with which the alternative meeting in Glasgow lobbied the 196 Parties to the UNFCCC were the abandonment of fossil fuels, the rejection of cosmetic solutions to the climate emergency, the demand for a just transition to a lower carbon economy and the call for reparations and redistribution of funds to indigenous communities and the global South.

The movement also called for a gender perspective in policies, climate justice – that those primarily responsible (developed nations) take responsibility and pay for their role -, respect for the rights of indigenous peoples, and a halt to air pollution.

Due to logistical issues and the limitations imposed by the covid-19 pandemic, which postponed the official summit for a year, the parallel sessions of the social movements were held in this Scottish city in a hybrid format, combining face-to-face and virtual participation. Exhibitors and online participants struggled with the quality of their internet connections.

One of the most unanimous and loudest criticisms from non-governmental social and environmental organizations focused on the exclusion of civil society groups from Latin America, Africa and Asia, due to the UK host government’s decision to modify the admission criteria according to the level of contagion in each country and the extent of vaccination.

In addition, they complained about the strict hurdles imposed by the COP26 presidency, held by the United Kingdom, supported by Italy, to the presence of NGO observers at the official negotiating tables, which undermined the transparency of the Glasgow process, whose agreements are to be embodied in a final declaration, which is weakening every day and whose final text will be released on Nov. 12 or 13, if the negotiations stretch out.

The alternative movement also had a formal but unofficial space in the so-called COP26 Green Zone, located in the same area as the official negotiations, in the center of Glasgow.

In the forums parallel to COP26 in Glasgow, indigenous women were major protagonists with their demands for respect for their rights and effective participation in the negotiations. In the picture, indigenous women delegates take part in a forum on women of the forest at the peoples’ summit. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

In-depth solutions

One of their key proposals was for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty aimed at moving towards the end of the era of coal, gas and oil, the consumption of which is primarily responsible for the growing planetary climate emergency.

The initiative, which imitates the name of the treaty against nuclear weapons, demands an immediate end to the expansion of fossil fuel production, a fair phase-out and a just energy transition.

“Countries and corporations keep investing in the production of the stuff. We need to see efforts to leave out fossil fuels, stop financing, subsidies and exploitation of fossil fuels,” Tzeporah Berman, the Canadian chair of the anti-fossil fuel initiative, told IPS.

The idea for the treaty emerged in 2015 from a call by leaders and NGOs from Pacific island states – whose very existence is threatened by the climate crisis – and it was formally launched in 2020.

So far it has received the support of some 750 organizations, 12 cities, more than 2,500 scientists, academics, parliamentarians from around the world, and religious leaders, indigenous movements and more than 100 Nobel Prize winners.

Climate policies are the focus of COP26 which has addressed carbon market rules, at least 100 billion dollars a year in climate finance, gaps between emission reduction targets and necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans, and the working platform on local communities and indigenous peoples.

The International Rights of Nature Tribunal tried the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), parallel to COP26. In the case, Philippine activist Mitzi Jonelle Tan testified to the lack of effective action against the climate emergency. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Indigenous people and rights of nature tribunal in the spotlight

Indigenous people, especially from the Amazon jungle, have been key participants at the latest edition of the alternative summit, with at least 40 activists present in Glasgow to complain about harassment by the government of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and demand more protection for the rainforest, whose destruction can have dramatic effects on the environmental health of the planet.

“Our main demand is demarcation of our territories,” because this guarantees a number of rights, Cristiane Pankararu, a member of the Pankararu people and leader of Brazil’s non-governmental National Association of Indigenous Women Warriors (ANMIGA), told IPS.

Her organization belongs to the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, whose demands are demarcation, climate solutions based on indigenous peoples’ knowledge and practices, and investment in forest protection.

One of the most symbolic activities of the counter-summit was the Fifth International Rights of Nature Tribunal, which tried the cases of “False solutions to the climate change crisis” and “The Amazon, a threatened living entity”.

In the first verdict, the tribunal, which sat for the first time in 2014 and was composed this time of seven judges from six countries, found the UNFCCC at fault for failing to attack the roots of the climate emergency.

In the second ruling, the jury, composed of nine experts from seven countries, accused developed countries and China, as well as agricultural, mining and food corporations, of destroying the Amazon, the planet’s main rainforest ecosystem, which is threatened by these extractive activities.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, listed three serious problems: the role of large corporations, the protection of corporate intellectual property, and the power of corporations to sue states that want to protect the environment, in international arbitration tribunals.

“It’s a deep symptom of how the global economy protects the interests of big corporations, especially the extractivists, and that’s not in the COP,” he told IPS.

A dialogue of the deaf has prevailed between the UNFCCC and civil society, as the official summit has ignored the demands of social movements.

“They haven’t heard us. We are here to demand actions. We don’t need another COP to resolve the climate crisis, we need changes,” Tan complained.

Despite the obstacles, “we will not stop participating actively. The women’s movement is unifying. It is a slow process, because people are not used to being led by women,” Pankararu said.

IPS produced this article with the support of Iniciativa Climática of Mexico and the European Climate Foundation.

By External Source
Nov 10 2021 (IPS-Partners)

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland has appealed to world leaders attending the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 to close the gap in ongoing negotiations this week in Glasgow, with millions of lives and livelihoods on the line in climate-vulnerable countries.

Secretary-General Scotland delivered her statement today to the resumed high-level segment of the conference, hours after a draft outcome document was released by the United Kingdom, as chair of the summit.

She said: “If we lose vulnerable nations who have battled with courage and resilience, we lose the fight against climate change.”

“If the gaps on emissions are not closed, if improved access to climate finance does not materialise, we risk the most vulnerable nations amongst us being subsumed by sea level rises and being engulfed by debt, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“Do not grow weary and lose heart. Dig deeper, come together, and close the gap in these negotiations.”

More than 2.5 billion people live in the Commonwealth’s 54 member countries, 60 percent of whom are under age 30. That includes 32 small states and 14 of the least developed countries of the world which are facing the brunt of the climate change impacts.

The Secretary-General added: “Millions are already losing lives and livelihoods from the impacts of climate change, but they are fighting. We must too.

“They know that, without action, the force and frequency of violent weather, fire, shortages of food, water and the threat of rising seas will continue to intensify until it overwhelms them. They require inclusive, just and equitable actions.”

Climate-related disasters in the Commonwealth doubled in number from the period 1980-1990 (431) to the period 2010-2020 (815), with economic damages increasing from US$39 billion to $189 billion over the same time frames.

In earlier discussions at COP26, the Secretary-General reiterated the call for developed countries to deliver the promised US$100 billion in annual climate finance to support developing nations, both for adaptation as well as mitigation purposes.

She added that funds also need to be accessible to the smallest and most vulnerable countries, who currently have difficulties tapping into finance due to lack of capacity and data.

She highlighted key Commonwealth initiatives responding to the climate crisis, including the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub, the Commonwealth Blue Charter, the Call for Action on Living Lands and the Disaster Risk Finance Portal.

Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

By External Source
Nov 10 2021 (IPS-Partners)

A new toolkit launched in the margins of the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 aims to unlock clean energy investments for small island nations, many of whom rely heavily on imported fossil fuels for power generation.

Small island developing states (SIDS) made a collective commitment in 2019 to achieve 100 percent renewable energy targets by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. However, they lack sufficient funding to achieve this transition, with private and public funders yet to step up investments in the clean energy sector.

The SIDS Clean Energy Toolkit, developed under a joint project by the Commonwealth Secretariat and Sustainable Energy For All (SEforAll), helps countries translate clean energy transition plans into investable business opportunities.

It supports analysis to help tackle hurdles such as the small size of projects and lack of interest from key international investors, the lack of adequate capital in local financial institutions and restrictive legal conditions for foreign investment. It enables users to carry out cost-benefit analyses and build robust business cases for energy investment in their countries.

Launching the toolkit, Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland said:

“Of the 38 countries classified by the UN as Small Island Developing States, 25 are Commonwealth countries. Despite significant clean energy resource potential, SIDS have a heavy dependence on imported fossil fuels that result in some of the highest electricity costs in the world, along with significant supply chain challenges that put pressure on already-strained economies.

“This toolkit can assist SIDS develop business cases and strategies to facilitate investment in clean energy projects, particularly in the power sector.”

The toolkit is being trialled in Seychelles. Using the toolkit, a country business case has been developed for Seychelles that identifies the scale of investment required to transition to clean energy. It also provides an objective basis for credible strategies to attract and maximise the investment required to achieve its clean energy goals.

Welcoming the opportunity, Minister for Finance, Economic Planning and Trade, Naadir Hassan, said: “I cannot stressed enough that there is an urgent need for us to prepare for the future and unless we invest in developing and exploiting renewable energy sources today, we might face a situation where we become victims of severe energy shortages. The cost of transitioning at that point may be beyond our means. The Call for Action is now.”

The launch event also included a roundtable for investors and financial institutions such as the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), who discussed the business case for investing in clean, affordable reliable electricity in Seychelles.

Forestry loss: Up to 65 per cent of productive land is degraded, while desertification affects 45 per cent of Africa’s land area. Credit: FAO/Luis Tato.
Meanwhile, well over 100 countries (representing over 85% of the world’s forests) have signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, committing to work collectively to halt and reverse forestry loss and land degradation by 2030, while promoting an inclusive rural transformation.

By Tina Nybo Jensen
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Nov 10 2021 (IPS)

With the UN climate change conference – COP26 – continuing this week in Glasgow, it’s obvious that there is consensus among a majority of world leaders and key stakeholders that much more needs to be done, if the ambition of keeping global warming to a 1.5-degree increase is to have any chance of being met. Yet talk, as they say, is cheap. Or, in the words of Greta: too much “blah, blah, blah” and not enough action.

Responding to the global climate crisis demands a global response, with public commitments backed up by resources and collaboration. We cannot have countries or organizations working in silos.

And we cannot de-couple climate considerations from the broader sustainability agenda, as exemplified by the Sustainable Development Goals – and SDG 13 (climate action), in particular.

Widening perspectives to understand all impacts

A catch-phrase doing the rounds on social media lately, coined by Jan Konietzko of Cognizant, is ‘carbon tunnel vision’. A clever play on words, yes, but beyond that it is a highly pertinent observation.

If we achieve net-zero emissions yet overlook human rights, or fail to safeguard biodiversity, what will this mean for the wellbeing of people and planet?

At Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), we provide the global common language for organizations to communicate their impacts. The GRI Standards broadly address a company’s impacts on the economy, environment and people, in a holistic and comprehensive way.

That is why, through GRI’s engagements at COP26 we have focused on how sustainability reporting can inform decision-making that achieves faster action on climate change and related sustainability issues.

At the heart of this is strengthening and highlighting the synergies between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. It will only be through concerted and connected action on these commitments, informed by evidence and data, that we can seize the opportunities for an inclusive and sustainable future for all.

Collaboration between public and private sectors

Alongside transnational coordination between governments, we need to further engage the private sector as a key partner in the realization and implementation of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. Working closely with the UN Global Compact and other international organizations, GRI strives to highlight and increase the importance of corporate sustainability reporting for the SDGs.

Encouragingly, the Climate Confidence Barometer, published in September by WBCSD and FREUDS, highlights that 98% of companies surveyed reported confidence that they will meet net-zero targets by 2050. In addition, 55% are confident that the global business community will do so as well.

However, the transition does not stop at emissions; as identified in a recent report from the Future of Sustainable Data Alliance, there is a ‘ESG data hole’ when it comes to biodiversity and nature. KPMG research from December 2020 also found that less than a quarter of large companies at risk from biodiversity loss disclose on the topic.

In this context, GRI’s plans to launch a new Biodiversity Standard in 2022 are timely and much needed, while October’s UN Biodiversity Conference set the stage for work to resume next year to adopt a post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

Action that delivers tangible results

However, it is encouraging that well over 100 countries (representing over 85% of the world’s forests) have signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, committing to work collectively to halt and reverse forestry loss and land degradation by 2030, while promoting an inclusive rural transformation.

This is a commendable vision – but we need to hold all parties to these commitments.

To secure tangible results – from safeguarding the environment to wider progress on the sustainability agenda – the action needs to start today. It cannot become a carte blanche to maintain ‘business as usual’ until 2030.

Regular and comprehensive reporting on sustainability impacts, with accountability from all organizations with an involvement, is essential to measure progress.

Effective sustainability reporting offers a unique perspective on the role of the private sector, helping countries to work towards the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. While a multi-faceted approach is needed to reach these goals, we should be no means downplay the significance of reaching net-zero.

It is not a matter of either/or – we need to dramatically cut emissions and secure broader sustainable development in the process.

It’s time for true leadership

There are strong signs that business is already convinced of the urgency of the situation – and is, in fact, pressing governments to do much more. The We Mean Business Coalition call to action urges the G20 to limit average global temperature rise to 1.5°C. It has been signed so far by 778 business leaders – representing US$2.7 trillion in annual revenue. Furthermore, one-in-five companies around the world have set net-zero targets.

Last week, WBCSD launched a manifesto that calls for a new ‘Corporate Determined Contributions’ mechanism to measure the private sector’s role in the global climate recovery. With a core focus on the imperatives to reduce, remove and report GHG emissions, this reflects a growing and welcome trend of responsible companies pressing for greater influence in support of climate action.

As COP26 draws to close, GRI calls on all stakeholders to raise their ambitions, act now on their commitments, and work together to deliver a holistic approach to the challenges of climate change. One that takes account of the environment and society – cutting emissions while also securing sustainable development. Failure on either front will mean tragic consequences for all.

Tina Nybo Jensen is International Policy Manager at Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). She leads on the development, management and implementation of GRI’s Sustainable Development Program, with a special focus on the SDGs and engagement with multilateral organizations.

Prior to joining GRI in 2014, Tina worked for the Danish Red Cross Youth in Jordan and the Westbank, and at the Danish Embassy in Thailand. She holds Master’s Degrees in Development & International Relations (Aalborg University, Denmark), and Political Science with Specialisation in Environmental Governance & International Relations (Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

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Datong, in China’s Shanxi Province, was an old-fashioned coal mining city. It has been a key city for an environmental clean-up. China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2. Credit: Trevor Page

By Marwa Awad
OTTAWA, Canada, Nov 9 2021 (IPS)

Look up any map showing today’s global humanitarian crises and you’ll find it awash in red alerts more than ever before. Climate emergencies are fast emerging in new areas that have never previously witnessed them, and they are accelerating humanity’s march towards the precipice in regions long battered by conflict, hunger and displacement.

While developed countries are responsible for the lion’s share of CO2 emissions, developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are the ones suffering the most from the devastating effects of these climate-induced emergencies.

The adverse effects of climate change are already at an advanced stage, with many developing countries around the world living in climates 3 degrees higher than normal such as Mali and Burkina Faso. It is no longer enough to focus only on mitigating climate crises through reducing fossil fuels and transforming food systems.

Cracked earth due to drought in India’s north-eastern State of Bihar. Bihar was the epicenter of India’s last major famine in the mid 1960s. Credit: Trevor Page

With only a few days left of the UN COP26 climate talks, world leaders and experts negotiating mitigative measures to cap global warming at 1.5 C or face irreversible disaster would be remiss not to prioritize helping developing countries already devastated by the impact of global warming to quickly adapt to climate change.

“In parallel with mitigation, we need to help countries adapt to the new climactic stresses brought about by global warming,” says Amir Abdulla, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme. “Climate change adaptation is urgently needed in countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people face climate extremes.”

Without the ability to adapt, people will have no other choice but to migrate to where they can survive. In 2020, 30 million people were internally displaced due to weather-related events, primarily storms and floods. That is three times as many as conflict, according to the Norwegian Refugee Committee.

“At WFP, we recognize that if we can keep people in their homes and on their land, we help reduce the number of people who become climate migrants and climate refugees. But to do so, we have to enable people not only survive but also thrive on their land,” said Abdulla.

Entire villages in the Fangak region of South Sudan have been submerged due to record floods that have swept across the country for the third consecutive year, displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Credit: Marwa Awad

WFP has had a strong record of working with communities to recover from climactic shocks and stresses that jeopardize their food security. In some of the most arid regions, WFP helps smallholder farmers and communities establish free nurseries to hold back the desert and recover agricultural land.

In central America and the Dry Corridor of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, WFP helped more than 32,000 people adapt to their changing climate by creating livelihoods and income generating activities that are suitable for the drought condition, while also implementing community projects on land restoration the result of which has been the reforestation of more than 1,300 hectares of degraded and marginal land as well as the construction of nearly 3,000 water harvesting systems.

Another pathway towards climate change adaptation is providing climate risk insurance, whether for drought or floods, to smallholder farmers who cannot buy insurance to protect their crops. Since the past couple of years, WFP has protected 1.5 million people in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and the Gambia from catastrophic drought events with climate risk insurance, through its African Risk Capacity Replica Initiative. Smallholder farmers received payouts from climate risk insurance, without which they would have been forced to move. These insurance schemes have also benefited vulnerable people coping with the impact of COVID-19.

Conclusion

In a post-COVID-19 world compounded by an increase in climate emergencies, humanitarian needs will always outpace available resources and finances. Meanwhile achieving zero hunger by 2030 has already become a dream out of reach. But those with influence can carve out pathways to a safer, more stable future for all by working with humanitarian organisations and actors in a globally coordinated manner to establish early warning systems that can anticipate risk and map out preventative measures to mitigate climate hazards before they spiral into natural disasters. As for the sake of those living on the frontlines of the climate crisis who have not the luxury of time and cannot wait for developed countries to deliver on their promise of cutting down their CO2 emissions, these vulnerable communities need immediate help to adapt to their already changed and riskier world.

Marwa Awad, a resident of Ottawa, Canada, works for the World Food Programme. She is the co-host of “The WFP PEOPLE Show”.

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At an event in the so-called Green Zone, Canadian native leaders and the non-governmental Indigenous Clean Energy launched a global hub of social enterprises to pass on knowledge and advice during the Glasgow climate summit. In the picture, Mihskakwan James Harper (R) of the Cree indigenous community explains a mixed battery energy storage project built by a private firm and an indigenous company in the province of Ontario, Canada. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
GLASGOW, Nov 9 2021 (IPS)

In the community of Bella Bella on Turtle Island in the western Canadian province of British Columbia, the indigenous Heiltsuk people capture heat from the air through devices in 40 percent of their homes, in a plan aimed at sustainable energy sovereignty.

“We use less energy, pay less, and that’s good for our health,” Leona Humchitt, a member of the Heiltsuk community, told IPS during a forum on indigenous micro-grids in the so-called Green Zone of the climate summit being hosted by Glasgow, Scotland since Oct. 31. “The project coincides with our view. We need to have a good relationship with nature.”

For native groups, these initiatives mean moving towards energy sovereignty to avoid dependence on projects that have no connection to local populations, combating energy poverty, paving the transition to cleaner sources and combating the exclusion they suffer in the renewable energies sector due to government policies and corporate decisions.

The modernisation process that began in the first quarter of 2021 lowered electricity rates from 2,880 dollars a year to about 1,200 dollars for each participating household.

In addition, the switch to heat pumps eliminates five tons of pollutant emissions per year and has reduced the community’s annual diesel consumption of 2,000 litres per household, which is usually supplied by a private hydroelectric plant.

Funded by the Canadian government and non-governmental organisations, the “Strategic Fuel Switching” project is part of the Heiltsuk Climate Action plan, which also includes measures such as biofuel and biomass from marine algae and carbon credits from marine ecosystems.

In 2017, more than 250 remote indigenous communities, out of 292 in Canada, relied on their own electricity microgeneration grids, dependent especially on diesel generators.

The venture in the Heiltsuk community, which is part of the three major Canadian native peoples, is included in a portfolio of indigenous transitional energy initiatives that have been incorporated into the non-governmental Indigenous Clean Energy (ICE) social enterprise in Canada.

A global hub for social entrepreneurship was one of the initiatives launched in the Green Zone, an open event held parallel to the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose annual session ends Nov. 12.

ICE has a list of 197 projects – 72 in bioenergy, 127 in energy efficiency, and 19 in other alternative sources – with more than one megawatt of installed capacity. These initiatives together represent 1.49 billion dollars in revenue over 10 years.

Mihskakwan James Harper, an indigenous man from the Cree people of Sturgeon Lake in the western Canadian province of Alberta, said it is not only about energy sovereignty, but also about community power to dispose of their own resources.

“We change our self-consumption and the communities benefit themselves from the energy, and the earth get benefits as well. Without us, we are not going to reach the climate goals. We show that indigenous peoples can bring innovations and solutions to the climate crisis,” Harper, who is development manager at the NR Stor energy company, told IPS.

NR Stor Inc. and the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation in the Canadian province of Ontario are building the Oneida battery storage project – with a capacity of 250 MW and an investment of 400 million dollars – in the south of the province.

The facility, which will prevent some 4.1 million tons of pollutant emissions, the largest of its kind in Canada and one of the largest in the world, will provide clean and stable energy capacity by storing renewable energy off-peak for release when demand rises.

ICE estimates 4.3 billion dollars in investments are needed to underpin this energy efficiency that would create some 73,000 direct and indirect jobs and would cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than five million tons over 10 years.

Electric vehicles are still a pipe dream in many indigenous communities, due to their price and the lack of charging infrastructure. In the picture, an electric car is charged at a station in downtown Glasgow, near COP26. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Slow progress

The increase in clean sources plays a decisive role in achieving one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in 2015 by the international community in the 2030 Agenda, within the framework of the United Nations.

SDG 7 is aimed at affordable, modern energy for all.

But processes similar to Canada’s ICE are proceeding at a slow pace.

Two projects of the Right Energy Partnership with Indigenous Peoples (REP), launched in 2018 by the non-governmental Indigenous Peoples Major Group for Sustainable Development, are being implemented in El Salvador and Honduras.

In El Salvador, the project is “Access to photovoltaic energy for indigenous peoples”, carried out since 2020 in conjunction with the non-governmental National Salvadoran Indigenous Coordination Council (CCNIS).

It is financed with 150,000 dollars from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme to provide 24 solar power systems to three communities in the town of Guatajiagua, in the eastern department of Morazán.

In Honduras, the Lenca Indigenous Community Council and the Pro Construction Committee are installing a mini-hydroelectric plant to benefit two Lenca indigenous communities in the municipality of San Francisco de Opalaca, in the southwestern department of Intibucá.

The project “Hydroelectric power generation for environmental protection and socioeconomic development in the Lenca communities of Plan de Barrios and El Zapotillo”, launched in 2019, received 150,000 dollars in GEF funding.

Clean alternative sources face community distrust due to human rights violations committed by wind, solar and hydroelectric plant owners in countries such as Colombia, Honduras and Mexico, including land dispossession, contracts harmful to local communities and lack of free consultation and adequate information prior to project design.

Amazonian indigenous people participate in protests by social movements in Glasgow, in which they claimed that their voices were not adequately heard at COP26. CREDIT: Arturo Contreras/Pie de Página

The evolution of energy initiatives has been slow, due to funding barriers and the limitations imposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

“Our main interest is to enable access to affordable renewable energy and for indigenous peoples to participate in the projects,” Eileen Mairena-Cunningham, REP project coordinator, told IPS.

“These processes should be led by indigenous organisations. Of course we are interested in participating in the global networks,” added the Miskita indigenous woman from Nicaragua.

After the always difficult first step, indigenous communities want to accelerate progress towards these goals.

In Bella Bella, Canada, the hope is to progressively replace diesel with biofuel in vehicles and in the boats that are vital to the fishing community.

“We are not going to electrify transportation overnight,” Humchitt said. “But we see an opportunity in biodiesel. We have to go forward on this issue.”

Harper concurred with that vision. “Of course we want EVs, as they become accessible and satisfy our own needs. We want to get rid of diesel. The communities have to lead the process of the local transition,” he said.

Mairena-Cunningham stressed that indigenous peoples attach primary importance to participating in global networks.

“Existing projects leave us with lessons of what can be done in our territory,” said the activist. “There is a need for policies that facilitate indigenous participation and special safeguards for access to the land. Capacity building is also needed.”

Renewable energies can be added to ecological measures that indigenous peoples already use, such as forest protection and biodiversity and water conservation. But their local implementation requires more than just willingness.

IPS produced this article with the support of Iniciativa Climática of Mexico and the European Climate Foundation.

A woman in Madagascar walks for up to 14km a day to find clean water. Credit: UNICEF/Safidy Andrianantenain

By Kumi Naidoo
GLASGOW, Scotland, Nov 9 2021 (IPS)

As the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) is swiftly moving to its conclusion on Friday, climate justice could not be more urgent or timely.

The health of our planet and our very survival are at stake. How can we ensure that this meeting achieves real action that improves people’s lives in rich and poor countries alike?

More than empty political rhetoric, what we need is a new social contract between decision-makers and people, one that achieves genuine mass support for climate action and connects people with their planet.

Leaders need to ensure that their climate action plans will tackle inequality, poverty, injustice, and promote the implementation of human rights above all.

After all, climate change threatens the enjoyment of a range of human rights, including food, health, housing, culture and development. And there is one human right in particular that is at risk from climate change and could have a domino effect on all the others: the human right to clean drinking water.

This is the most basic of all human rights (together with sanitation), and a key one in the fight against climate change.

90 % of climate change is happening through weather related events which have a profound impact on the hydrological cycle – often resulting in too much water or too little water.

All this in a world where two billion people, or 1 in 4, lack access to safe drinking water, nearly half the world’s population (3.6 billion people) don’t have adequate sanitation, and 2.3 billion people can’t wash their hands at home for lack of water or soap.

The most outrageous injustice is that the same people who lack access to water and sanitation are usually the ones most vulnerable to the effects of climate change – and the least responsible for causing it in the first place.

One report estimates that by 2040, almost 600 million children are projected to be living in areas of extremely high water stress. And the odds are against the most vulnerable, as under 1% of the billions pledged to address climate change goes to protect water services for poor communities.

In the end, those left furthest behind end up bearing the brunt of increasing water scarcity and poverty. These marginalized populations – women, children, and those living in extreme poverty – face a vicious and unjust cycle, in which a lack of access to water and sanitation is aggravated by extreme weather events, leading to more expensive, and unaffordable, services.

Connecting the Dots

But where the problem starts may also be where the solution begins. We need a radical approach that guarantees the human right to water by tackling inequalities and putting people’s needs front and center – especially the needs of those whose voices continue to be marginalized and disregarded.

This is both a necessary response, and a step toward ending the climate change crisis, as it offers benefits both for mitigation (stopping climate change) and adaptation (adjusting to the new normal).

The good news is that the solutions are well known and readily available. Well-managed water systems can protect access to reliable water supplies during times of drought. Strong sanitation systems can resist floods.

And protecting water and sanitation services from extreme weather is highly cost-effective – for every $1 spent upgrading flood-resistant infrastructure, $62 is saved in flood restoration costs.

If world leaders were to prioritize universal access to climate resilient water and sanitation infrastructure, it would be a long-term investment, yielding net benefits of US $37–86 billion per year and avoiding up to 6 billion cases of diarrhoea and 12 billion cases of parasitic worms, with significant implications for child health and nutrition over the next twenty makers understand the adaptation needs and mitigation opportunities of water and sanitation systems, as well as the risks that climate change poses to sustainable services.

And, they must align climate and water policies so that access to water is equitable, climate risks are reduced, and there is more money available for adaptation.

After all, ensuring effective climate action and sustainable access to water and sanitation are matters of human rights. This means that we must years.

Just Add Water

As we look to COP26, we need to ensure that climate decision- tackle the root causes of the water crisis globally and ensure prioritization of water for the realization of human rights, over other uses, such as large-scale agriculture and industries, including extractive industries.

To realize these rights, municipalities and villages also must be supported to improve their capacity to manage their water sources sustainably and efficiently.

Without urgent measures to slow climate change and adapt to the damage already done to our planet, there is a real risk that people’s access to water and sanitation will worsen rather than improve. And, without sanitation, we cannot guarantee the right to education; without hygiene, our health is diminished, and without reliable access to water, gender equality can never be achieved.

COP 26 is an opportunity for a reset, not only for the planet, but also for the social contract between governments and people. Eliminating inequalities, including in access to water and sanitation, is a foundational requirement for effective climate action. We hope that decision makers in Glasgow are champions for this vision of a better world.

Kumi Naidoo is a Global Leader for Sanitation and Water for All and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy. He is also former Secretary-General of Amnesty International and former Executive Director of Greenpeace.

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Addressing global warming requires cutting carbon emissions by almost half by 2030! For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions must fall by 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5°C, instead of the 2.7°C now expected.

Instead, countries are mainly under pressure to commit to ‘net-zero’ carbon (dioxide, CO2) emissions by 2050 under that deal. Meanwhile, global carbon emissions – now already close to pre-pandemic levels – are rising rapidly despite higher fossil fuel prices.

Anis Chowdhury

False promise
At the annual climate meetings in Glasgow, carbon pricing is being touted as the main means to cut CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The European Union President urged, “Put a price on carbon”, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau advocates a global minimum carbon tax.

Businesses are also rallying behind one-size-fits-all CO2 pricing, claiming it is “effective and fair”. But there is little discussion of how revenues thus raised should be distributed among countries, let alone to support poorer countries’ adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Carbon pricing supposedly penalizes CO2 emitters for economic losses due to global warming. The public bears the costs of global warming, e.g., damage due to rising sea levels, extreme weather events, changing rainfall, droughts or higher health care and other expenses.

But there is little effort at or evidence of compensation to those adversely affected. Therefore, poorer countries are understandably sceptical, especially as rich countries have failed to fulfil their promise of US$100bn yearly climate finance support.

The CO2 price market solution is said to be “the most powerful tool” in the climate policy arsenal. It claims to deter and thus reduce GHG emissions, while incentivizing investment shifts from fossil-fuel burning to cleaner energy generating technologies.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Only 22% of GHGs produced globally are subject to carbon pricing, averaging only US$3/ton! Hence, such price incentives alone cannot significantly discourage high GHG emissions, or greatly accelerate widespread use of low-carbon technologies.

Powerful fossil-fuel corporate interests have made sure that carbon prices are not high enough to force users to switch energy sources. Thus, existing CO2 pricing policies are “modest and less ambitious” than they could and should be. Meanwhile, several factors have undermined carbon taxation’s ability to speed up ‘decarbonization’.

First, carbon taxes have never actually provided much climate finance. Second, CO2 taxes misrepresent climate change as due to ‘market failure’, not as a fundamental systemic problem. Third, it seeks efficiency, not efficacy! Thus, it does not treat global warming as an urgent threat.

Fourth, market signals from carbon taxation seek to ‘optimize’ the status quo, rather than to transform systems responsible for global warming. Fifth, it offers a deceptively simplistic ‘universal’ solution, rather than a policy approach sensitive to circumstances. Sixth, it ignores political realities, especially differences in key stakeholders’ power and influence.

Unfair to poor
Even if introduced gradually, the flat carbon tax will burden poorer countries more. Worse, carbon pricing is regressive, hurting the poor more. Thus, the burden of CO2 taxes is heavier on average consumers in poor countries than on poor consumers in ‘average’ countries.

A UN survey showed a seemingly fair, uniform global carbon tax would burden – as a share of GDP – developing countries much more than developed countries. Thus, although per capita emissions in poorer countries are far less than in rich ones, a flat CO2 tax burdens developing countries much more.

Also, a standard carbon tax burdens low-income groups more, by raising not only energy costs directly, but also those of all goods and services requiring energy use. With this seemingly fair, one-size-fits-all tax, low income households and countries pay much more relatively.

Analytically, such distributional effects can be avoided by differentiated pricing, e.g., by increasing prices to reflect the amount of energy used. Also, compensatory mechanisms – such as subsidies or cash transfers to low-income groups – can help.

But these are administratively difficult, particularly for poor countries, with limited taxation and social assistance systems. Furthermore, effectively targeting vulnerable populations is hugely problematic in practice.

Mission impossible?
Selective investment and technology promotion policies are much more effective in encouraging clean energy and reducing GHG emissions. Huge investments in solar, hydro and wind energy as well as public transport are required, typically involving high initial costs and low returns. Hence, public investment often has to lead.

But most developing countries lack the fiscal capacity for such large public investment programmes. Large increases in compensatory financing, official development assistance and concessional lending are urgently needed, but have not been forthcoming despite much talk.

Climate finance initiatives generally need to improve incentives for mitigation, while funding much more climate adaptation in developing countries. Potentially, a CO2 tax could yield significantly more resources to cover such international funding requirements, but this requires appropriate redistributive measures which have never been seriously negotiated.

Carbon taxes can help
Even without an ostensibly market-determined CO2 price, taxing GHG emissions would make renewable energy more price competitive. The UN advocated a ‘global green new deal’ in response to the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. It noted a US$50/ton tax would make more renewables commercially competitive, besides mobilizing US$500bn annually for climate finance.

A mid-2021 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff note has proposed an international carbon price floor. This would “jump-start” emissions reductions by requiring G20 governments to enforce minimum carbon prices. Involving the largest emitting countries would be very consequential while bypassing collective action difficulties among the 195 UN Member States.

The scheme could be pragmatically designed to be more equitable, and for all types of GHGs, not just CO2 emissions. But even a global carbon price of US$75/ton would only cut enough emissions to keep global warming below 2°C – not the needed 1.5°C, the Paris Agreement goal!

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Accelerate climate finance for nature-based solutions in step with the pace of climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss, experts. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Glasgow, Nov 5 2021 (IPS)

Climate change experts and leaders from the Commonwealth member states rallied behind calls to accelerate climate finance for nature-based solutions to arrest the pace of climate change, land degradation, and biodiversity loss.

Featuring prominently at the global COP26 climate talks during a high-level event hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, in conjunction with the government of Zambia and Namibia, speakers emphasised at the heart of the nature-based solutions approach is human survival and well-being.

Titled ‘Accelerating Climate Finance for Nature-based Solutions-Climate, Land and Biodiversity Targets’, participants heard that nature-based solutions play an essential role in stopping and reversing the unprecedented loss of ecosystems while building resilience against climate change.

Patricia Scotland, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, lauded nature-based solutions as an effective and immediate remedy to pressing societal and development challenges.

“Many societal changes and challenges are now presenting to us, and we are currently facing them boldly and bravely. They touch on human health, climate change, biodiversity loss, food and water security, and environmental degradation not just on our land but in our ocean,” Scotland said.

“They are all tied to state and functioning of the natural environment. So multi-impact scenarios, like those that the world has experienced over the last two years, have unfortunately shown us what happens when this in-extricable link is broken.”

The high-level panel included representatives from the Governments of Zambia, Namibia, Seychelles and Australia. It was followed by a second-panel discussion with partner organisations, including the Green Climate Fund, World Wide Fund for Nature, the Development Bank of Rwanda and the Department of Climate Change of Mauritius.

Nature-based solutions, panellists said, involve actions that protect, sustainably manage, and restore all ecosystems, including oceans and forests. In this regard, sustainable land management, for instance, is prioritised to tackle land degradation and promote climate-resilient land use.

Within this context, discussions centred on identifying gaps, challenges, and solutions for advancing sustainable financing mechanisms around nature-based solutions for climate action.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland in The Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian. Scotland expressed concerns about the impact of climate change on exacerbating superstorms, like this 2019 event which took a massive human toll. Credit: Commonwealth

Australia was the first country to contribute to the Commonwealth’s Climate Finance Access Hub. In a statement, Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, reiterated the country’s unwavering commitment to advancing nature-based solutions.

Morrison said that Australians understood the need to act against climate change and get to net-zero by 2050, and the country had a plan to do it, and nature-based solutions were an essential part of this plan.

He stressed the significant benefits of adopting nature-based solutions such as reaching net-zero within a set timeline, boosting agricultural productivity, protecting biodiversity, and supporting communities and job opportunities.

Pohamba Penomwenyo Shifeta, Namibia’s Minister of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, said Namibia was not far behind because the Southern Africa nation was implementing an interconnected approach to land management, climate change and biodiversity conservation.

“Namibia has so far accumulated significant knowledge and experience from ongoing projects and initiatives that can be scaled up to build resilience at the community level and ecosystems,” he said.

Scotland said the time to act was now – especially in light of the recent Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1 contribution to the sixth assessment report, which “provides further irrefutable evidence of the immense threat confronting us all.”

She also spoke of the 2021 Emissions Gap report “released just last week and is yet another thundering reminder of the need to act urgently to curb emissions.”

In this regard, the high-level panel emphasised the urgent need to deploy an array of sustainable solutions to benefit people and the planet.

One approach, Scotland said, is through nature-based solutions, which offer a cost-effective way to simultaneously tackle the interlinked climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crisis.

Scotland said that is especially critical in the COVID-19 pandemic as the world strives to adopt blue and green recovery strategies.

Speakers called for coordinated and urgent action to boost biodiversity conservation, reduce land degradation, and enhance land-based climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts through sustainable development.

Participants heard that climate change amplifies biodiversity loss and land degradation. Despite nature-based solutions gaining visibility and traction across Commonwealth countries, there is still not enough up-take and, specifically, not enough financing to quiet nature’s wrath.

According to experts in a recent UN report titled ‘State of Finance for Nature’, $133 billion per year is directed towards nature-based solutions, representing 86 percent public financing and 14 per cent private sector finance.

This falls significantly short of the annual investment required to meet cross-cutting targets under the three Rio Conventions targets on biodiversity, climate change, and desertification.

To meet these targets, estimates show that up to $8.1 trillion worth of investment in nature-based solutions was required, representing $536 billion worth of funding every year.

The UN experts say reaching an annual funding target of $536 billion translates to tripling investments by 2030 and quadrupling by 2050.

Climate financing experts this is possible and that these estimates are cost-effective. Benefits include nations being able to meet human needs such as food and water security and accelerate long-term social and economic development.

For instance, nature-based solutions can positively contribute 37 per cent of the mitigation effort required up to 2030 to limit temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius. This is mainly within the agriculture, forestry, and land-use sectors as per 2019 estimates by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Nevertheless, there are critical steps in the right direction. In addition to Australia, the UK and current Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting Chair-in-Office has committed to spending at least £3 billion worth of its international climate finance on nature-based solutions.

Under the Commonwealth Finance Access Hub, the Commonwealth Secretariat has already supported its member states to mobilise more than $44 million of climate financing, including for nature-based financing. More than $762 million worth of projects are in the pipeline.

Scotland said that there would be significant progress if every single member state who would wish to have a climate finance advisor were able to.

When curtains fall on COP26 Summit, experts say that protecting communities and natural habitats through concerted efforts towards the protection and restoration of ecosystems will be one of the critical goals.

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In Serbia, EBRD supported privately financed wind farms at Cibuk – the biggest in the Western Balkans region – and Kovačica, helping Serbia reduce its dependence on ageing coal-fired plants running on polluting lignite. Credit: EBRD

By Vanora Bennett
LONDON, Nov 5 2021 (IPS)

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has announced its intention to double the mobilisation of private sector climate financing by 2025.

The way to achieve this target was set out in an Action Plan on Mobilising Private Capital for Climate Finance, unveiled at COP26, the global climate summit. With this plan the EBRD will support the transition to a low carbon economy in its countries of operations.

The EBRD’s plan spans the full range of activities to stimulate investment from green and sustainability-linked bonds through innovative financing mechanisms for industrial decarbonisation to targeted loans to support for the circular economy.

At the heart is a focus on policy activities to develop a regulatory environment that makes low-carbon investments commercially viable.

These activities, from the implementation of renewable energy auctions to the design of low-carbon sector pathways, are intended to trigger sustainable demand for climate-friendly investment and in turn for private capital.

“Globally, there is a significant increase in private capital committed to green finance. The EBRD will help direct that money to its countries of operations. Its ability to do so rests not on a single approach or instrument, but on a broad range of bespoke interventions. Some seek to increase the supply of private capital to EBRD countries of operations,” said EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso.

“However, the key focus of the Bank’s work is to increase the demand for this capital: the supply of bankable investment projects that attract financial flows seeking a return. This requires approaches that respond to the specific situations of markets and clients.”

Together with other multilateral development banks (MDBs), the Bank plays a leading role in helping to decarbonise economies and enable the transition to a more sustainable future, with a focus on involving the private sector in tackling climate change.

A major challenge in emerging economies and developing countries is a shortage of bankable climate projects. Several factors limit the supply of such projects. The most fundamental is the lack of either an implicit or an explicit carbon price. Without a carbon price, many green investments are not commercially viable.

The 2021 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference is key to delivering climate action, with countries making more ambitious climate pledges to move closer to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, with the aim of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

Financiers, including MBDs like the EBRD, are preparing to deliver more support to realise those plans.

The EBRD is supporting these goals not only with investments in green energy, energy efficiency and energy savings. The Bank is also supporting especially exposed countries like Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan to develop roadmaps to low or zero carbon economies and it is addressing the need for a ‘just transition’ with recent investments, for instance in North Macedonia.

The EBRD brings two recent commitments of its own on enhancing its climate action. One is to increase the proportion of its green investments to more than 50 per cent of the total by 2025. The second is by 2023 to align all its operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The EBRD supports the green transition in the 38 economies in Europe, Asia and Africa where it currently invests.

Vanora Bennett is EBRD green spokeswoman

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In the face of substantial international offers of funding for indigenous lands and forests at COP26, indigenous peoples are calling for specific schemes for their participation. Shuar leader Katan Kontiak (left) of Ecuador and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of Chad took part in a Nov. 2 forum on the indigenous peoples and local communities platform. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
GLASGOW, Nov 4 2021 (IPS)

“For my people, the effects of climate change are an everyday reality. The rainy season is shorter and when it rains, there are floods. And we’ve suffered droughts.” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Wodaabe or Mbororo pastoral people of Chad.

For the founder of the non-governmental Association of Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, one pernicious effect is the violence generated, because “When people lose their resources, they fight for them, water, for instance,” she told IPS after a forum on the progress made by native groups at the climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Around the world, indigenous peoples face the ambiguity of protecting ecosystems, such as forests or coastal zones, while at the same time suffering the onslaught of climate fury unleashed by humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels, like droughts, destructive storms and rising sea levels.

For decades, native peoples have insisted that their traditional knowledge can contribute to the fight against climate change. The emergence of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 reaffirmed the results of treating nature as just another commodity.

Although in the last decade, indigenous representatives have gained a place at environmental summits, such as the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which began on Sunday Oct. 31 in this city in the UK, now they want to be more than just token participants.

“We hope that the summit takes indigenous communities into account. We need funds that go directly to indigenous peoples,” Graciela Coy, an indigenous woman from Ak’Tenamit (our people, in the Q’eqchi’ language), a non-governmental organisation that works in northern Guatemala, told IPS.

Representatives of indigenous organisations have gained a place in every part of the COP. They participate as observers in the official sessions where the agreements are debated, in the parallel summit of social movements and in all the other forums held during the two weeks of the climate conference.

One of the expectations this year among indigenous people is the approval of the three-year working plan of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform that emerged at COP21, which approved the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The proposal must be approved by the Facilitative Working Group, composed of seven indigenous and seven government representatives and endorsed at COP24, held in the Polish city of Katowice in 2018. It must then be ratified by the plenary of the 196 Parties to the COP and is to include capacity building activities for indigenous groups, the mapping of measures for their participation in the UNFCCC and financing.

Between 2019 and 2021, the group conducted 11 activities, with no physical sessions due to the pandemic.

Climate policies are the focus of COP26, which ends Nov. 12, after being postponed for a year as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

Government delegates at COP26 are addressing carbon market rules, climate finance of at least 100 billion dollars per year, gaps between emission reduction targets and necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans and the working programme for the local communities and indigenous peoples platform.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, an indigenous activist from the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Philippines, said the inclusion of human rights in the financing of emission reductions and adaptation to the effects of the climate crisis, as well as in the creation of carbon markets, is fundamental.

“Indigenous peoples suffer too the climate solutions, such as renewable energy projects. There should be effective safeguards, for guaranteeing indigenous peoples’ human rights” in climate policies, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples between 2014 and 2020 told IPS.

This respect has become urgent in areas such as the Amazon, the main jungle in Latin America shared by eight countries and a French territory, whose indigenous inhabitants have suffered the deterioration caused by the inroads made by agribusiness, livestock, soybean, hydrocarbon and mining companies, as well as the construction of dams, railroads, highways and river ports.

For this reason, Tuntiak Katan, a member of the indigenous Shuar people of Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC), told IPS that the removal of extractive activities from this ecosystem is a fundamental condition for making progress in protection of the climate.

“Indigenous peoples already protect 950 million hectares of land worldwide. What we are asking for is the protection of 80 percent of the Amazon by 2025. We are the voice of the women, children and elders” who suffer the impacts on the territories, said Katan, vice-coordinator of the non-governmental Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon River Basin (Coica).

The most recent scientific evidence shows that native peoples are the most effective protectors of tropical forests, which is why greater efforts are required for their conservation in the face of growing threats.

Q’eqchí’ indigenous activist Graciela Coy (R) from Guatemala called during the Glasgow climate summit for the promised international funds to go directly to indigenous peoples. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

More than empty promises

In the face of the abundant offers made during the first week of COP26 activities to promote indigenous land tenure and reforestation, indigenous peoples were skeptical and demanded direct participation in these schemes.

Oumarou Ibrahim and Coy agreed on the need to define mechanisms to ensure that the resources provided reach the territories directly.

“World leaders should be our partners. Financing should be adapted to people’s needs. The issue is how resources are going to reach directly to the indigenous peoples,” said Oumarou Ibrahim.

In Coy’s opinion, the fight against climate change requires the allocation of funds, which should be transferred “to indigenous peoples, as there is a lot of international aid” that does not always materialise in local communities.

In an acceptance of what native peoples have been demanding for years, the governments of Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States and 17 private funders announced on Nov. 1 the provision of 1.7 billion dollars to help indigenous and local communities preserve tropical forests between 2021 and 2025.

It is estimated that each year only 270 million dollars are allocated to forest care and just 46 million dollars go to the direct guardians of the forest: their ancestral inhabitants.

Direct multilateral funding to aboriginal populations has been a recurring barrier to efforts to protect natural resources.

For example, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), created at COP16 in Cancun in 2010, has financed 121 community livelihood projects and delivered a total of 1.4 billion dollars.

For a total of 190 projects, it has disbursed two billion dollars and another six billion are in the pipeline. In addition, it has committed another 10 billion for projects. It has also registered 113 institutions to receive funds, but none of them are indigenous.

Furthermore, on Nov. 2, more than 105 nations signed up to the “Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use” which sets the target of zero deforestation by 2030.

Indigenous peoples are also demanding to be included in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the voluntary commitments adopted by each country for 2030 and 2050 in order to comply with the Paris Agreement and on which the goal of containing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is based.

“We just need a push,” said Katan. “We are sure of what we do and that is why it is good that they are offering financing. But what needs to be done is to abandon extractivism and get the oil, mining and agribusiness companies out of our territories, and apply a holistic vision, combined with the vision of the indigenous peoples.”

Even if COP26 does not produce the results desired by indigenous peoples, they will continue to care for natural resources and to demand climate justice.

IPS produced this article with the support of Iniciativa Climática in Mexico and the European Climate Foundation.

Illegal fishing is not just about stealing livelihood; it is about forcing someone into crime. Coast Guard interdicts lancha crews illegally fishing in US waters. Credit: Creative Commons

By Geetika Chandwani and Purnaka L. de Silva
NEW YORK, Nov 4 2021 (IPS)

“Working together means we widen the number of like-minded actors towards a common good” –Dr. Azza Karam, Secretary-General of Religions for Peace International.

As global leaders and civil society actors participate in COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing is a significant problem that must be tackled.

In this regard, collaboration among the 55 member states of the African Union (AU) is crucial to successfully accomplishing a common goal to combat the problem of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the African continent’s coastal waters – overcoming a raft of complex and politically sensitive issues.

IUU fishing is an unprecedented problem in the time of climate change that decimates the livelihoods of local fishing communities. The AU must demonstrate strong leadership and present a united front for such collaboration to work, so that the establishment of the proposed Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone for Africa (CEMZA) can achieve impactful results and not be just a paper tiger.

African voices and indigenous expertise in producing scientific knowledge and policies have been marginalized since colonial times including vis-à-vis marine fisheries.

Africa continues to be at a disadvantage on account of the historical processes through which individual countries were integrated into the world’s economic and financial system – often driven by former colonizing powers – e.g., France, U.K.

Therefore, the needs and concerns of local African fishing communities were historically unseen and unheard in national and international deliberations over fisheries. The “new” scramble for African resources, brought a new player to the fore, namely the People’s Republic of China – triggering rapid expansion of Chinese investments, trade, development cooperation and loans aimed at exploiting Africa’s resources.

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing predominantly by Chinese, and European trawlers, endanger marine ecosystems, biodiversity, food security, and thus the survival of local African fishing communities. IUU fishing affects those countries that cannot effectively monitor and control their maritime waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).

An increasing number of organizations are exploring AI, data analytics, and blockchain to combat the threat of IUU fishing – as noted by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (2020) in “How Data and Technology Can Help Address Corruption in IUU fishing” – https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/tnrc-blog-how-data-and-technology-can-help-address-corruption-in-iuu-fishing.

The arrangements in place are often abused and thus fall short in fighting the impediment of IUU fishing. It is to tackle these significant problems at the operational level that Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy proposes to establish the Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone for Africa (CEMZA) – as noted by Vishal Surbun (February 2021) in “Africa’s combined exclusive maritime zone concept” in Institute for Security Studies, Africa Report 32 – https://issafrica.org/research/africa-report/africas-combined-exclusive-maritime-zone-concept.

CEMZA is a future project that remains on paper only for the time being, which needs to be implemented in full to facilitate economic and security benefits for target African countries.

A consequence of the inability of individual African states to maintain law and order, to varying degrees, opened the door to the possibility of some level of continental federalization in the form of CEMZA or combining other zones falling within the African Maritime Domain (AMD).

West Africa presents coastal countries where the problems are particularly felt. The area has attracted industrial fishing boats from all over the world, particularly from China, while controls have remained entirely inadequate in the last decade.

A series of non-transparent practices often make governmental checks and control difficult. Frequent changes of the shipowner, flag country, registration, low maintenance of databases, and navigation records represent a significant challenge for state authorities and non-governmental organizations (e.g., Sea Shepherd Global, Environmental Justice Foundation) concerned with fishing rights in Africa.

There are irregularities in the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and the non-use or improper use of the satellite-based vessel monitoring system (VMS). On July 22, 2021, the Defense Innovation Unit and Global Fishing Watch, a non-profit that uses satellites to view global fishing activities, announced a new AI challenge to combat IUU fishing to tackle this transnational crime.

Likewise, an international program to track illegal fishing from space has been launched by the Canadian government – as noted by Rosie Frost (January 2021) in “What are illegal ‘dark vessels’ and why are satellites spying on them?” in Euronews – https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/02/25/what-are-illegal-dark-vessels-and-why-are-satellites-spying-on-them. It can use environmental conditions, including the temperature of the water and chlorophyll levels, to work out where the fish will be.

With the fish comes the fishermen and fisherwomen who help narrow down the areas that governmental authorities need to fully concentrate on, thereby helping them locate, identify and interdict illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Such information must be shared with the central body of the combined EEZ not only to gather pieces of evidence but also to assist local fishing communities in earning their livelihood. The current focus on environmental concerns worldwide has drawn attention to the global crisis in fisheries and aquaculture, and the need to manage these industries in environmentally sustainable ways.

Indigenous communities have become vital partners to international climate, environmental and development missions seeking global sustainability. In many West African countries, fishing continues to be carried out through artisanal means often by poor fisherwomen.

An example is the wooden pirogues mainly in use in West Africa from Mauritania to Senegal, on which a crew composed of less than ten people usually embark and stays at sea for a few days. Canoes, gillnets, and handlines are used widely throughout Africa, while the use of indigenous industrial fishing vessels is still few, numerically.

The activities connected to the fisheries sector, characterized by high labor-intensity and low capital, employs millions of people throughout West Africa. In today’s world many people look to information and communications technology to go about their daily business. Fisherfolk in Africa also need access to technological solutions.

Having a combined EEZ and working with international partners and using technology enables them to maintain indigenous standards. Sustainable developments can be achieved only by working with local communities to create employment opportunities in an environment of trust.

In short, unity is needed for the survival of local fishing communities. Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) in Africa are shared by 33 coastal countries and 600 million people. Illegal fishing amounts to more than US $2 billion in lost profits annually – as noted by Vishal Surbun (February 2021) in “Africa’s combined exclusive maritime zone concept” in Institute for Security Studies, Africa Report 32 – https://issafrica.org/research/africa-report/africas-combined-exclusive-maritime-zone-concept.

On November 10, 2020, a new App was launched called DASE (which means “evidence” in the Fante dialect of Ghana) by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) – as noted by EJF Staff (November 10, 2020) in “New Phone App is Effective Weapon in Ghana’s Fight Against Illegal Fishing” in Environmental Justice Foundation –https://ejfoundation.org/news-media/new-phone-app-is-effective-weapon-in-ghanas-fight-against-illegal-fishing.

Communities in Ghana and Liberia can use this to gather evidence against illegal vessels, mostly industrial trawlers under foreign flags. When a vessel is spotted illegally fishing or damaging canoes, the user takes a photo of the boat through the app with its name/identification number and records the geo-satellite position.

The app uploads the report to a central database where the government can use the evidence to catch and sanction the perpetrators. A similar app must be introduced in Ajami, an Arabic script, in West Africa. Ajami is a form of literacy that remains widespread across West Africa with little or no government support. In East Africa and the Horn of Africa Swahili should be used. The idea is to find a medium to connect with local peoples to combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Fishing is not simply a livelihood it is a culture and a way of life. Collaborative management and decision-making can help indigenous people maintain vocational skills and pride in their culture. Organizations are formed to promote peace, values, and well-being of citizens.

Coordinating efforts to restore the economy, manage risks and remove barriers helps reduce costs and create a larger market for local fishing communities. While there are several challenges mentioned in operationalizing the Combined Exclusive Maritime Zone for Africa (CEMZA) in terms of sovereignty and maritime rights, a more significant challenge is the food insecurity and poverty that arises from increased transnational organized crime, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by countries like China.

In addition, there are environmental crimes, marine environmental degradation, disappearing biodiversity, and the dire effects of climate change and global warming. However, establishing CEMZA and using multiple technologies is absolutely, critical in developing and maintaining pan-African collaboration that brings about substantive change and protection for vulnerable local fishing communities. Africa needs CEMZA to be a tiger with teeth and claws.

Geetika Chandwani is finishing her M.A. at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, where Professor Purnaka L. de Silva lectures in the M.A. program.

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Agriculture accounts for over 25 percent of Africa’s GDP while employing over 70 percent of people that live in rural communities. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, Nov 3 2021 (IPS)

Local, national and world leaders, and committed climate change activists are in Glasgow for the 26^th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) to share the progress they’ve made since the COP21 in Paris six years ago and to discuss what comes next. One of the issues that must be on the table at COP26 is the worrying impact of climate change on agriculture in Africa.

Agriculture accounts for over 25 percent of Africa’s GDP while employing over 70 percent of people that live in rural communities. When agriculture is impacted, women, who work in the agricultural sector suffer the consequences. The entire agriculture value chain is threatened by climate change. According to a recent World Bank Report, unless urgent actions are taken, climate change could force millions of Africans to migrate to new areas.

At the production level, climate change is impacting agriculture via drought and flooding events. In 2020, flooding in East Africa impacted over six million people. In 2021, flooding has affected 669,000 people in West and Central Africa, over 700,000 people in Sudan and South Sudan and over 100,000 people in Nigeria.

At the foundation of climate-resilient agriculture is the need for smallholder farmers to have access to dependable and year round sources of water to support agriculture. At the moment African agriculture is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and because of climate change rains are no longer dependable

It is also having an impact through invasive and transboundary plant-eating insect pests such as the fall armyworm and the desert locust. Invasive insect pests cost the African continent U.S. $1 billion every year. Impacted the most are vulnerable groups that include African small holder farmers, women and girls, children, disabled and elderly people.

Without a climate-resilient agricultural sector, even the most ambitious climate initiatives will bear minimal returns. It is imperative for countries participating in the COP26 meeting to finance agriculture initiatives.

Looking at many developed countries, it is evident that it is possible to build climate resilient agriculture. This is particularly possible when several interlinked short-term and long-term strategies are put in place. At the foundation of climate-resilient agriculture is the need for smallholder farmers to have access to dependable and year round sources of water to support agriculture. At the moment African agriculture is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and because of climate change rains are no longer dependable.

Complementing access to water for agriculture are other important tools including access to most recent and improved agricultural technologies and resources. From improved and climate-smart seeds to drought, flooding, insects and plant disease-tolerant crops varieties to recent knowledge of agricultural practices and access to markets and financial help.

Important is the need for African countries to strengthen their early warning systems. These can only be achieved through strengthening African countries abilities to tap on big data and use it as a tool to stay ahead of all the climate linked disasters. Accompanying early warning systems is the need to lay out comprehensive climate adaptation initiatives.

At the center of all actions and strategies is the need to put the people on the ground and African countries at the center of climate action. As a founder to a startup, Oyeska Greens that is working with farmers at the Kenyan Coast I have seen firsthand the value of putting farmers at the forefront.  Putting them at the forefront ensures that the strategies and initiatives that are laid out are relevant and meeting the current challenges that small holder farmers and other vulnerable groups are facing as it relates to climate change. Without including the very people whom we are serving, we risk unsustainable and irrelevant solutions.

Climate change is the most urgent crisis of our times. While talk and meetings such as COP26 are important, in the end it is the initiatives and actual projects being implemented in African countries, particularly in the agricultural sector that will help move the needle and address the escalating climate change crisis.

All countries must work together and take action in the fight against climate change to avert many crises that are projected to happen if we fail to act.  Lives of vulnerable citizens including women, elderly and people with disabilities are at stake. Now is the time to ACT

Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Senior Food Security Fellow with the Aspen Institute, New Voices.

A wind farm in Port Victoria on the main island of Mahe in the Seychelles is contributing to the renewable energy transition of the small island state located east of the African continent. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia , Nov 3 2021 (IPS)

Breaking the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and accelerating the global uptake of renewable energy will play a decisive role in diminishing the threat of global warming to the survival of life on earth, according to experts. But turning the vision into reality will demand unwavering political will and, critically, massive investment, which can no longer be shouldered solely by aid and development partners.

It is a challenge that the Commonwealth Secretariat, the inter-governmental organisation representing 54 Commonwealth nations, has taken on. Now it is launching an initiative at the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow to propel the ability of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to attract major investors with sound compelling business cases.

The summit will be a key setting to leverage “the toolkit into different partner working platforms, such as the Climate Investment Platform, increase collaboration among partners and drive joint action with SIDS on energy transition ahead of other key milestones in 2022 and beyond, including the Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) Forum in Rwanda and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held in 2022 and COP27 to be held in Africa,” Alache Fisho, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Legal Adviser on Natural Resources in London told IPS.

The SIDS Toolkit, a digital tool for governments, developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the international development organisation, SEforALL, is currently being trialled in the Seychelles, an archipelago nation of 99,000 people, located in the Somali Sea east of the African continent.

Converting the country’s energy system to renewables is imperative for future stability and prosperity, as climate change threatens development gains. “The livelihood of the islanders is being threatened here with sea-level rise. What we are seeing is greater coastal erosion, increased temperature rises and coral bleaching. We are also getting an increasing frequency of cyclones in the region,” Tony Imaduwa, CEO of the Seychelles Energy Commission in the capital, Victoria, told IPS.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC, made an official visit to the Seychelles in June 2018. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

In Caribbean and Pacific Island nations, as well, air temperatures are becoming hotter, weather patterns more unpredictable, while sea-level rise is eroding finite land, destroying crops and contaminating freshwater resources.

Last year, an overwhelming 80 percent of the global energy supply was still generated by fossil fuels and only 12 percent by renewables. This puts the world on track toward a devastating temperature increase of 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, claims the International Energy Agency (IEA).

And the bill for importing oil, which comprises 95 percent of primary energy in the Seychelles, is an enormous fiscal burden on the government and its development goals. “It is a drain on our foreign exchange reserves, our earnings, and there is the whole volatile nature of the price. When the price goes up, you get the costs going up, the cost of food goes up, services go up, the electricity cost goes up, transportation goes up. There is the risk associated with the supply, too,” Imaduwa told IPS.

The Seychelles has a human development ranking of 67 out of 189 countries, the second-highest in the African region, and all citizens have access to electricity. But many other SIDS bear much higher levels of energy poverty. In the Pacific Islands, about 70 percent of households lack access to power.

It is, therefore, no surprise that clean energy, which will be more affordable to islanders, is a national priority. The majority of SIDS are committed to achieving 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

Renewables, ideal for standalone systems, are a good fit for island nations where populations are often scattered across numerous islands separated by vast areas of the ocean. And weather conditions are a great advantage, especially for wind and solar energy. Despite clean energy only comprising 5 percent of the energy mix in the Seychelles, the momentum has begun. The first wind farm was established near the nation’s capital, Victoria, in 2013, and increasingly homes and businesses are installing rooftop solar panels.

But there are challenges to securing the large capital investment needed for complete conversion. In many cases, the lack of strong institutions, enabling regulatory frameworks and small energy markets limit the appeal of the energy sector in SIDS to the private sector and international financiers.

The Seychelles is developing its clean energy sector and blue economy with the support of the Commonwealth and other partners. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

“The Seychelles is no longer considered a Least Developed Country; it is an emerging economy now. So, there is a slight concern from the government that it will not be able to access concessionary loans anymore from multilateral development banks and also that there will be fewer countries that are providing overseas development assistance to the country,” Dr Kai Kim Chiang, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s National Climate Finance Adviser in the Seychelles, told IPS. “The Seychelles is a small country, so they do have challenges in attracting investors because it is a really small market here, and so then the potential for the return of investment is potentially quite small.”

Yet, about US$4 trillion will have to be injected into clean energy growth by 2030, if the global temperature rise is to be restricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, reports the IEA. And 70 percent of this will need to be spent in developing and emerging countries.

To this end, the SIDS Toolkit empowers governments to draft investment-grade business cases. First, key data about the economic and energy status of the Seychelles, for example, about employment, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), utility electricity cost and carbon emissions, is entered into the digital application. The toolkit then analyses the data to provide a detailed cost-benefit analysis of development and transition scenarios and identifies the state’s key investment strengths. It also pinpoints where reforms are needed to boost investor confidence, such as deficiencies in legal and institutional capacity.

“It will assist in terms of formulating strategies to unlocking investment in the energy sector in the Seychelles, and that is something that is missing for us. We are focussing on a lot of plans and policies and implementation, but sometimes we struggle on how to bring these together and create a platform that allows us to say, OK, we have a plan, yes, we want to invest in this area, but how do we do it,” Imaduwa said.

The SIDS Toolkit is designed with a broad range of potential investors in mind, including multilateral and private sector financial institutions. However, Fisho emphasised that private sector involvement is “very important”, especially as many renewable energy technologies entail large capital expenditure. “Moreover, the renewable energy technologies are fast evolving. The private sector can bring the required finance and expertise in the deployment of modern technologies,” she said.

Despite the detrimental economic impact of the pandemic worldwide over the past two years, Fisho makes a strong case for the priority of spending on the energy transition. “The pandemic has highlighted the need to transition towards clean energy in SIDS to increase energy security and economic resilience. Investment in renewable energy is consistent with supporting recover better and more resilient economic development, thereby creating more sustainable green jobs and decent income opportunities for current and future generations,” she declared.

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Credit: Laura Berman, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, 2020

By Ruth Richardson
TORONTO, Canada, Nov 2 2021 (IPS)

Unless food systems transformation is put at the center of climate action, commitments governments have already made, and could make at COP26, will be jeopardized.

Today’s industrialized food system — which includes the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items — makes us ill, doesn’t meet the needs of the global population, and has adverse effects on climate change.

Almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems. The industrialized practices — from chemical pesticide use to mono-culture crops — at the heart of the dominant global food system have also destroyed 66% of biodiversity, 61% of commercial fish stocks, and 33% of soils.

Then there’s food wastage which equates to 1.3 billion tonnes a per year and produces enough GHG emissions that, should it be a country, it would be the third-largest source of GHG emissions.

We know that waste and loss occur throughout the food supply-chain and mostly involve the waste of edible food by consumers in medium- and high-income countries and loss during harvest, storage, and transport in lower-income countries.

Both food waste and the resulting GHG emissions raise major equity and ethical considerations.

Of course, those detrimental climate impacts then come back to roost in a variety of ways, affecting weather patterns and the very land or seas that are heavily relied upon for crops, fish, and other food.

Ruth Richardson

The 2021 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World estimates that around a tenth of the global population – up to 811 million people – were undernourished last year. Do we really need any other signals that the industrialized food system is simply no longer fit for purpose?

The globalized food system must be overhauled so that food production can be delivered in a way that works with, rather than destroys, our natural resources and pushes planetary boundaries.

It is precisely action on food that is critical to restoring planetary health, radically reducing carbon emissions, protecting nature and biodiversity, and also delivering on all Sustainable Development Goals, from zero hunger to good health and wellbeing for all.

Despite a diversity of evidence making this need for transformation abundantly clear — from scientific reports and peer-reviewed literature to lived experience, oral histories, and ways of knowing — the action we need is still not where it should be on the political agenda: at the top.

The risk to climate commitments

There is hardly any mention of food systems in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) plans — the non-binding national plans that highlight countries’ actions to tackle climate change — that we’ve assessed to date.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform global food systems. Out of eight assessments of countries’ NDCs we have done so far, none fully account for emissions associated with food imports, particularly those related to deforestation.

Research shows that, in the average European diet, a sixth of the carbon footprint comes from deforestation emissions. Meat and dairy production already use 30% of the Earth’s land surface, driving unsustainable land-use as land is cleared to produce more and more livestock and the crops that feed them.

Only Germany provides a clear commitment to move away from harmful subsidies and to promote sustainable food consumption, and, just Colombia and Kenya have put forward ambitious measures around agroecology and regenerative agriculture.

These concepts promote sustainable farming approaches that compliment nature’s systems rather than diminish them and respect human rights.

Action to be taken

Unless others follow suit, all climate efforts will be undermined and any commitments negotiated in Glasgow that lack a systemic and global approach to food systems transformation will simply be inadequate given the vast mitigation and adaptation potential that the sector holds.

Governments worldwide must look at food systems through the lens of climate action and find new and restorative ways of feeding communities, without pushing the planet to the limits. Fortunately, approaching climate adaptation and mitigation in the context of food systems broadens the range of opportunities to achieve climate goals and facilitates the consideration of systems level effects and interactions.

A food systems perspective also enables engagement of the full range of stakeholders that should be involved in food systems transformation such as those from other sectors as well as local and Indigenous groups that have knowledge of the issues.

Such a perspective is critical to addressing climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which are all linked by food as the golden thread.

Tried and tested methods of agroecology and regenerative agriculture already exist for others to roll out and replicate. For example, in India, chemical-free farming has been used by the 600,000 farmers involved in the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming programme to tackle soil degradation — which includes erosion, desertification, and other changes in soil that reduce its capacity to provide ecosystem services — and produce more variety of crops.

Research shows that farming without the addition of synthetic fertilizer or pesticides is leading to incredible reductions in pollution and emissions, and better wages and earnings for farmers.

Meanwhile, while in Africa, in the Luangwa Valley of Zambia, COMACO — the social enterprise promoting agroforestry — is retraining poachers to be farmers, tackling deforestation, reporting significant impacts in carbon offset, and putting an end to wildlife killing.

Alongside these ‘beacons of hope’ governments could also promote nutritious, sustainable, whole-food diets adapted to local ecosystems and socio-cultural contexts, acting on the interconnections between food and climate.

There’s a growing body of research that shows that dietary change can help tackle climate change. For example, increased GHG emissions have been associated with diets higher in animal products.

Yet, historically, this has received less consideration in climate policy than, say, the energy and transport sectors. Policymakers have it in their power to catalyze initiatives that enable and create positive food environments that provide equitable access and dietary guidance.

There are steps governments can immediately take, ready-made policies they can adopt, partnerships they can forge. We have the evidence, we have the science, we have the urgency.

What we need now is to see the political will and climate finance moving alongside bravery and connected action from our leaders so that we can all live better, as well as sustainably, on this one Earth of ours.

Ruth Richardson is Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food

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Current climate mitigation plans will result in a catastrophic 2.7°C world temperature rise. US$1.6–3.8 trillion is needed annually to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5°C.

Creative accounting
Rich countries have long broken their 2009 Copenhagen COP16 pledge to mobilize “US$100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries”. The pandemic has worsened the situation, reducing available finance. Poor countries – many already caught in debt traps – struggle to cope.

Anis Chowdhury

Such ambiguity has enabled double-counting, poor transparency and creative accounting, noted the UN Independent Expert Group on Climate Finance. Thus, the rich countries’ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported US$80bn in climate finance for developing countries in 2019.

Fudging numbers
But OECD climate finance numbers include non-concessional commercial loans, ‘rolled-over’ loans and private finance. Some donor governments count most development aid, even when not primarily for ‘climate action’.

Also, the dispute over which funds are to be considered ‘new and additional’ has not been resolved since the 1992 adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Earth Summit.

Official development assistance redesignated as climate finance should be categorized as ‘reallocated’, rather than ‘additional’ funding. Consequently, poor countries are losing aid for education, health and other public goods.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Climate finance anarchy
Developing countries expected the promised US$100bn yearly to be largely public grants disbursed via the then new UNFCCC Green Climate Fund. Oxfam estimates public climate financing at only US$19–22.5bn in 2017-18, with little effective coordination of public finance.

Developing countries believed their representatives would help decide disbursement, ensuring equity, efficacy and efficiency. But little is actually managed by developing countries themselves. Instead, climate finance is disbursed via many channels, including rich countries’ aid and export promotion agencies, private banks, equity funds and multilateral institutions’ loans and grants.

Several UN programmes also support climate action, including the UN Environment Programme, UN Development Programme and Global Environment Facility. But all are underfunded, requiring frequent replenishment. Uncertain financing and developing countries’ lack of meaningful involvement in disbursements make planning all the more difficult.

Financialization has meant that climate funding increasingly involves private financial interests. Claims of private climate finance from rich to poor countries are much contested. Even the OECD estimate has not been rising steadily, instead fluctuating directionless from US$16.7bn in 2014 to US$10.1bn in 2016 and US$14.6bn in 2018.

The actual role and impact of private finance are also much disputed. Unsurprisingly, private funding is unlikely to help countries most in need, address policy priorities, or compensate for damages beyond repair. Instead, ‘blended finance’ often uses public finance to ‘de-risk’ private investments.

Putting profits first
The poorest countries desperately need to rebuild resilience and adapt human environments and livelihoods. Adaptation funds are required to better cope with the new circumstances created by global warming.

Needed ‘adaptation’ – such as improving drainage, water catchment and infrastructure – is costly, but nonetheless desperately necessary.

But ‘donors’ prefer publicizable ‘easy wins’ from climate mitigation, especially as they increasingly gave loans, rather than grants. Thus, although the Paris COP21 Agreement sought to balance mitigation with adaptation, most climate finance still seeks to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As climate adaptation is rarely lucrative, it is of less interest to private investors. Rather, private finance favours mitigation investments generating higher returns. Thus, only US$20bn was for adaptation in 2019 – less than half the sum for mitigation. Unsurprisingly, the OECD report acknowledges only 3% of private climate finance has been for adaptation.

Chasing profits, most climate finance goes to middle-income countries, not the poorest or most vulnerable. Only US$5.9bn – less than a fifth of total adaptation finance – has gone to the UN’s 46 ‘least developed countries’ (LDCs) during 2014-18! This is “less than 3% of [poorly] estimated LDCs annual adaptation finance needs between 2020-2030”.

Cruel ironies
The International Monetary Fund recognizes the “unequal burden of rising temperatures”. It is indeed a “cruel irony” that those far less responsible for global warming bear the brunt of its costs. Meanwhile, providing climate finance via loans is pushing poor countries deeper into debt.

Increasingly frequent extreme weather disasters are often followed by much more borrowing due to poor countries’ limited fiscal space. But loans for low-income countries (LICs) cost much more than for high-income ones. Hence, LICs spend five times more on debt than on coping with climate change and cutting GHG emissions.

Four-fifths of the most damaging disasters since 2000 have been due to tropical storms. The worst disasters have raised government debt in 90% of cases within two years – with no prospect of debt relief.

As many LICs are already heavily indebted, climate disasters have been truly catastrophic – as in Belize, Grenada and Mozambique. Little has trickled down to the worst affected, and other vulnerable, needy and poor communities.

Funding gap
Based on countries’ own long-term goals for mitigation and adaptation, the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance estimated that developing countries need US$5.8-5.9 trillion in all until 2030. The UN estimates developing countries currently need US$70bn yearly for adaptation, rising to US$140–300bn by 2030.

In July, the ‘V20’ of finance ministers from 48 climate-vulnerable countries urged delivery of the 2009 US$100bn vow to affirm a commitment to improve climate finance. This should include increased funds, more in grants, and with at least half for adaptation – but the UNFCCC chief has noted lack of progress since.

Only strong enforcement of rigorous climate finance criteria can stop rich countries abusing currently ambiguous reporting requirements. Currently fragmented climate financing urgently needs more coherence and strategic prioritization of support to those most distressed and vulnerable.

This month’s UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, can and must set things right before it is too late. Will the new Cold War drive the North to do the unexpected to win the rest of the world to its side instead of further militarizing tensions?

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The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Credit: Bigstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

Another Year Another Record! The emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, the land and sea temperatures are higher than ever since there are records, and the ecosystems could fail their role as vital sinks absorbing carbon dioxide and as a buffer against larger temperature increases.

“The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record last year, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average. That trend has continued in 2021.”

This is how the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns in the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, released just five days ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) (31 October – 12 Novembre) in Glasgow. In it, the world organisation reports that the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) –the most important greenhouse gas– reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 and is 149% of the pre-industrial level.

But what is carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now

Carbon dioxide is the single most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for approximately 66% of the warming effect on the climate, mainly because of fossil fuel combustion and cement production.

As long as emissions continue, global temperature will continue to rise. Given the long life of CO2, the temperature level already observed will persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero, warns WMO.

And what is methane?

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas which remains in the atmosphere for about a decade, the world organisation explains.

Methane accounts for about 16% of the warming effect of long-lived greenhouse gases, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Approximately 40% of methane is emitted into the atmosphere by natural sources (for example, wetlands and termites), and about 60% comes from anthropogenic sources (for example, ruminants, rice agriculture, fossil fuel exploitation, landfills and biomass burning)

Methane (CH4) is 262% and nitrous oxide (N2O) is 123% of the levels in 1750 when human activities started disrupting Earth’s natural equilibrium.

What is nitrous oxide?

According to the World Meteorological Organisation, nitrous oxide is both a powerful greenhouse gas and ozone depleting chemical. It accounts for about 7% of the radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases.
N2O is emitted into the atmosphere from both natural sources (approximately 60%) and anthropogenic sources (approximately 40%), including oceans, soils, biomass burning, fertilizer use, and various industrial processes.

Will ecosystems fail their role as sinks?

The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin flags concern that the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as “sinks” may become less effective in future, thus reducing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide and act as a buffer against larger temperature increases.

And it shows that from 1990 to 2020, radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – by long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 47%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of this rise.

But what are carbon sinks?

See what the World Meteorological Organisation says:

— Roughly half of the CO2 emitted by human activities today remains in the atmosphere. The other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems. The part of CO2 which remains in the atmosphere, is an important indicator of the balance between sources and sinks. It changes from year to year due to natural variability.

— Land and ocean CO2 sinks have increased proportionally with the increasing emissions in the past 60 years. But these uptake processes are sensitive to climate and land-use changes. Changes in the effectiveness of carbon sinks would have strong implications for reaching the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and will require adjustments in the timing and/or size of the emission reduction commitments.

— Ongoing climate change and related feedbacks, like more frequent droughts and the connected increased occurrence and intensification of wildfires might reduce CO2 uptake by land ecosystems. Such changes are already happening, and the Bulletin gives an example of the transition of the part of Amazonia from a carbon sink to a carbon source.

Ocean uptake might also be reduced due to higher sea surface temperatures, decreased pH due to CO2 uptake and slowing of the meridional ocean circulation due to increased melting of sea ice.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26. At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

Off track

“Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now. But there weren’t 7.8 billion people then,” said Taalas.

WMO concludes that, alongside rising temperatures, the world would witness more weather extremes including intense heat and rainfall, ice melt, sea-level rise and ocean acidification, accompanied by far-reaching socio-economic impacts.

Enough reasons to worry? And to act? Before judging, please know that Governments plan to double the production of energy from fossil fuels!

Credit: United Nations

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

When world leaders gather in Scotland next week for the COP26 climate change conference, activists will be pushing for drastic action to end the world’s catastrophic reliance on fossil fuels.

Consciousness about the climate emergency has skyrocketed in recent years, while government responses remain meager. But one aspect of extreme climate jeopardy — “nuclear winter” — has hardly reached the stage of dim awareness.

Wishful thinking aside, the threat of nuclear war has not receded. In fact, the opposite is the case. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been moving the “Doomsday Clock” ever closer to cataclysmic midnight; the symbolic hands are now merely 100 seconds from midnight, in contrast to six minutes a decade ago.

A nuclear war would quickly bring cataclysmic climate change. A recent scientific paper, in sync with countless studies, concludes that — in the aftermath of nuclear weapons blasts in cities — “smoke would effectively block out sunlight, causing below-freezing temperatures to engulf the world.”

Researchers estimate such conditions would last for 10 years. The Federation of American Scientists predicts that “a nuclear winter would cause most humans and large animals to die from nuclear famine in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.”

While there’s a widespread myth that the danger of nuclear war has diminished, this illusion is not the only reason why the climate movement has failed to include prevention of nuclear winter on its to-do list.

Notably, the movement’s organizations rarely even mention nuclear winter. Another factor is the view that — unlike climate change, which is already happening and could be exacerbated or mitigated by policies in the years ahead — nuclear war will either happen or it won’t.

That might seem like matter-of-fact realism, but it’s more like thinly disguised passivity wrapped up in fatalism.

In the concluding chapter of his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg warns: “The threat of full nuclear winter is posed by the possibility of all-out war between the United States and Russia. … The danger that either a false alarm or a terrorist attack on Washington or Moscow would lead to a preemptive attack derives almost entirely from the existence on both sides of land-based missile forces, each vulnerable to attack by the other: each, therefore, kept on a high state of alert, ready to launch within minutes of warning.”

And he adds that “the easiest and fastest way to reduce that risk — and indeed, the overall danger of nuclear war — is to dismantle entirely” the Minuteman III missile force of ICBMs comprising the land-based portion of U.S. nuclear weaponry.

The current issue of The Nation magazine includes an article that Dan Ellsberg and I wrote to emphasize the importance of shutting down all ICBMs. Here are some key points:

** “Four hundred ICBMs now dot the rural landscapes of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Loaded in silos, those missiles are uniquely — and dangerously — on hair-trigger alert. Unlike the nuclear weapons on submarines or bombers, the land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack and could present the commander in chief with a sudden use-them-or-lose-them choice.”

** Former Defense Secretary William Perry wrote five years ago: “First and foremost, the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy. Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn’t only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

** “Contrary to uninformed assumptions, discarding all ICBMs could be accomplished unilaterally by the United States with no downsides. Even if Russia chose not to follow suit, dismantling the potentially cataclysmic land-based missiles would make the world safer for everyone on the planet.”

** Frank von Hippel, a former chairman of the Federation of American Scientists who is co-founder of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, wrote this year: “Strategic Command could get rid of launch on warning and the ICBMs at the same time. Eliminating launch on warning would significantly reduce the probability of blundering into a civilization-ending nuclear war by mistake. To err is human. To start a nuclear war would be unforgivable.”

** “Better sooner than later, members of Congress will need to face up to the horrendous realities about intercontinental ballistic missiles. They won’t do that unless peace, arms-control and disarmament groups go far beyond the current limits of congressional discourse — and start emphasizing, on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the crucial truth about ICBMs and the imperative of eliminating them all.”

At the same time that the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases have continued to increase, so have the dangers of nuclear war. No imperatives are more crucial than challenging the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear weapons industry as the terrible threats to the climate and humanity that they are.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

When over 100 political leaders meet in Scotland next week for the UN Climate Change Conference, the very future of our planet seems to hinge on the outcome of the summit which is scheduled to take place October 31-November 12.

The 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) meets amid wildly-changing weather patterns worldwide– including the devastation caused by wild fires in 13 states in the US, plus Siberia, Turkey and Greece, heavy rains and severe flooding in central China and Germany, droughts in Iran, Madagascar and southern Angola– all of them warning of a dire future unless there are dramatic changes in our life styles.

The United Nations says rich industrialised G20 nations account for 80% of global emissions—and their leadership is needed more than ever. The decisions they take now will determine whether the promises and pledges made in Paris in 2015 are kept or broken.

And at least four countries– China, Australia, Russia and India – have yet to make new pledges to cut their emissions. Australia, however, came up with an eleventh-hour announcement this week.

The impending hazards also threaten animal and plant species, coral reefs, ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, and projects a sea-level rise that threatens the very existence of the world’s small island developing states (SIDS) which can be wiped off the face of the earth.

Will COP26 come up with concrete commitments? Or will the summit be another try in a lost cause?

Addressing a press conference October 26, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres predicted a “catastrophic global temperature”.

“Less than one week before COP26 in Glasgow, we are still on track for climate catastrophe even with the last announcements that were made. “

The 2021 Emissions Gap Report shows that with the present Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other firm commitments of countries around the world, “we are indeed on track for a catastrophic global temperature rise of around 2.7 degrees Celsius.

Now, even if the announcements of the last few days will materialize, “we would still be on track to clearly more than 2 degrees Celsius. These announcements are essentially about 2050 so it is not clear how they will materialize but even if these recent announcements would materialize, we would still be clearly above 2 degrees Celsius.”

Everyone has the right to a healthy environment, free of pollution and its harmful consequences. Credit: WHO/Diego Rodriguez

As the title of this year’s report puts it: “The heat is on.” And as the contents of the report show — the leadership we need is off. Far off, he said.

“We know that humanity’s future depends on keeping global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. And we also know that, so far, parties to the Paris Agreement are utterly failing to keep this target within reach.”

And the report also shows that countries are squandering a massive opportunity to invest COVID-19 fiscal and recovery resources in sustainable, cost-saving, planet-saving ways.

So far, the report estimates that only about 20 per cent of recovery investments will support the green economy.

As world leaders prepare for COP26, this report is another thundering wake-up call. How many more do we need? Guterres asked

Juan Pablo Osornio, Senior Portfolio Manager, Global Climate Politics, at Greenpeace International, told IPS: “The science is very clear, we need urgent, dramatic and constant emission reductions if we are to stay with the 1.5 oC limit.”

When governments come to Glasgow, he said, they will feel the pressure to act. Nations facing existential threats and a movement composed of Indigenous Peoples, front line communities and youth change the political cost equation and will make sure concrete commitments are made to reduce emissions.

“Glasgow is essentially about who the world belongs to and who we are as human beings”.

He pointed out that negotiations in Glasgow will be about drafting the rules to implement the Paris Agreement.

“The rules should protect the livelihoods of the communities that are most exposed to climate impacts, facing existential threats now and youth, not the bottom line of the industry that created the climate crisis in the first place”.

Rules agreed at Glasgow, he said, should send a clear message that the age of fossil fuels is over and set forward a path for governments to cooperate in the transformation needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

“Although worth mentioning that some governments like Gambia already have. We certainly expect political will to bend towards enhancing commitments that will get us closer to halving emissions by 2030 and set us on a path within the 1.5 oC limit.”

Glasgow will create momentum for governments to announce higher targets and follow-up at home with the necessary policies at home to implement them.

He said civil society will bear witness and call out any greenwashing from these announcements, messages that make those talking look responsible, while doing little to nothing to change their polluting ways.

Asked about the four countries – China, Australia, Russia and India – not making new pledges to cut emissions, he said: “Yes, it is very likely that we see these countries come up with new pledges, while China is likely to submit a new NDC, Australia will announce its anodyne net-zero target, followed by something similar from Russia and India”.

“Long-term pledges are not worth the paper they are written on, unless they are anchored on national policy, backed by enforcement, and motivated on action: on coal plants being shut down and wind farms being open; on no more internal combustion engine cars on the street, replaced with a safe, comfortable, fast and carbon free transportation system; and on abundant, lush and diverse ecosystems all over the world,” he declared.

Asked about the 1.5 degree pathway, Matthew Reading-Smith, Communications Coordinator at CIVICUS, based in Johannesburg, told IPS that it was highly unlikely.

Even in the most optimistic scenarios, the 1.5 degree target is increasingly out of reach. The current NDCs are a collective failure and do not meet the scale of the crisis we face.

At this stage, he said, the only country that has submitted a Nationally Determined Contribution consistent with the 1.5 degree goal is The Gambia.

“These negotiations need accountability, and there is an inherent power imbalance within the UN talks, between industrialised countries and countries in the global south. This has only been compounded by the health crisis, and the communities most affected by the climate crisis are also suffering an artificial shortage of vaccines,” said Reading-Smith.

These communities will largely be left out of the physical negotiations, which are critical in holding the high polluting member states to account.

A practical and critical area where industrialised nations need to be held to account is over their failed commitment to deliver US$100 billion a year to countries in the global south to help them adapt to climate change and mitigate further rises in temperature, he noted.

“Meeting this goal is an important litmus test in raising the trillions of dollars needed annually to halt global warming and bring net carbon emissions to zero”.

Like all COPs, there will be a flurry of far-in-the future pledges and declarations, including from countries that have yet to share updated carbon reduction targets.

Based on the 110+ national plans that have already been submitted, we can expect remaining pledges to be light on actionable detail and woefully insufficient in limiting global heating to 2C, he added.

As there has been a lack of public consultation in the design of these national roadmaps, any pending pledges from countries like China, Russia, Australia and India are more likely to reflect business interests rather than the advice and ambition from civil society groups, he declared.

Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said, on the eve of COP26: “It is time to put empty speeches, broken promises, and unfulfilled pledges behind us. We need laws to be passed, programmes to be implemented and investments to be swiftly and properly funded, without further delay.

Only urgent, priority action can mitigate or avert disasters that will have huge – and in some cases lethal – impacts on all of us, especially our children and grandchildren.

States attending the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow need to fulfil their existing climate finance commitments, and indeed increase them — not ignore them for a second year in a row. They need to immediately mobilize resources to mitigate and adapt to climate change, said Bachelet.

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A view of the main venue for COP26 in Glasgow. Expectations are high for the outcome of the conference, but the two-week discussions and meetings must negotiate an obstacle course to reach concrete results in keeping with the severity of the climate emergency. CREDIT: UNFCCC

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 29 2021 (IPS)

The climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, the most important since 2015, may go down in history as a milestone or as another exercise in frustration, depending on whether or not it resolves the thorny pending issues standing in the way of curbing global warming.

If successful, it could be placed on a par with the 2010 Cancun meeting, which rescued the negotiations after the previous year’s failure in Copenhagen, and Paris, where an agreement was reached in 2015 which defined voluntary emission reductions and a limit to global warming.

But if the summit fails, it will be compared to Copenhagen (COP15), the 2009 conference, and Madrid (COP25), the 2019 summit, whose progress was considered more than insufficient by environmental organisations and academics.

Former Mexican climate negotiator Roberto Dondisch said it is difficult to predict success or failure at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will take place in Glasgow in the northern UK Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.

“This time we are not seeking an agreement, but trying to work out unresolved issues. The same thing happened in Paris, but a space was created to solve it. The reports are not very promising in terms of where we are at and what we must do. The conditions are very complicated; the will is there, but not the results,” Dondisch, a distinguished fellow at the Washington, DC-based non-governmental Stimson Center, told IPS.

Climate governance has come a long way since the first COP.

Background

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro on the 20th anniversary of the first U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, brought together political leaders, scientists, representatives of international organisations and civil society to address the impact of human activities on the environment.

One of the results of the so-called Earth Summit was the creation of the UNFCCC, at a time when there was already evidence of global warming caused by human activity.

In fact, as early as 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1988 and composed of scientists from all over the world entrusted with the responsibility of assessing the existing scientific knowledge related to climate phenomena, released its first report.

Report after report, the IPCC has become a key part of the global climate framework for understanding and addressing the crisis of rising temperatures and their impacts.

Seven years later, in 1997, the member states of the UNFCCC negotiated the Kyoto Protocol (KP), signed in that Japanese city during COP3, which established mandatory emission reduction targets for 36 industrialised countries and the European Union as a bloc, listed in Annex II of the agreement.

In Kyoto, the nations of the developing South were exempted from this obligation in Annex I of the pact.

After the first compliance period (2008-2012), the parties agreed on another period for 2013-2020, which in practice never entered into force, until the protocol was replaced by the Paris Agreement.

The KP, which came into effect in 2005 – without the participation of key countries such as the United States and Russia – also has its own Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), which oversees its implementation and takes decisions to promote its effective implementation.

The Madrid climate summit in 2019, COP25, left important pending issues that the conference in Glasgow, which begins on Sunday Oct. 31, will have to resolve. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The relatively uneventful COP19 in Warsaw in 2013 served to testify to the birth of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (WIM), whose rules of operation and financing will be central to the Glasgow discussions.

Climate policies will be the focus of COP26, co-chaired by the United Kingdom and Italy, which had to be postponed for a year due to covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

COP26 will address rules for carbon markets, climate finance for at least 100 billion dollars annually, gaps between emission reduction targets and necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans, and the local communities and indigenous peoples platform.

But missing from the agenda of the two weeks of discussions will be the goal of hundreds of billions of greenbacks per year, which has been postponed to 2023 – a sign that funding for mitigation and adaptation to climate change is the hot potato for the parties.

Complex architecture

The UNFCCC entered into force in 1994 and has been ratified by 196 parties, with the participation of the EU as a bloc, the Cook Islands and Niue – South Pacific island nations – in addition to the 193 U.N. member states.

The parties to the binding treaty subscribe to a universal convention that recognises the existence of climate change caused by human activities and assigns developed countries the main responsibility for combating the phenomenon.

The COPs, in which all states parties participate, govern the Convention and meet annually in global conferences where they make decisions to achieve the objectives of the climate fight, adopted unanimously or by consensus, especially after the KP failed to reach the negotiated goals.

In Paris, at COP21, member countries agreed on voluntary pollution reduction targets to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius, considered the indispensable limit to contain disasters such as droughts and destructive storms, with high human and material costs.

These targets are embodied in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), in which countries set out their 2030 and 2050 goals. Only 13 nations have submitted a second version of their measures since they began submitting their actions to the UNFCCC Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, in 2016.

The Paris Agreement, in force since 2020 and so far ratified by 192 states parties, has its own Meeting of the Parties (MOP), which monitors compliance and takes decisions to promote compliance.

Each COP also draws thousands of business delegates, non-governmental organisations, international organisations, scientists and journalists.

In addition, a parallel alternative summit will bring together social movements from around the world, advocating an early phase-out of fossil fuels, rejecting so-called “false solutions” such as carbon markets, and calling for a just energy transition and reparations for damage and redistribution of funds to indigenous communities and countries of the global South.

Sandra Guzmán, director of the Climate Finance Programme at the non-governmental Climate Policy Initiative – with offices in five countries – foresees a complex summit, especially in terms of financing.

“No one knows for sure how loss and damage will be covered. Developed countries don’t want to talk about more funds. The scenario for political agreement is always difficult. The expectation is that the COP will move forward and establish a package of progress and build a good bridge to the next meeting,” she told IPS from London.

For 30 years, the parties to the UNFCCC have been doing the same thing, without achieving the desired reduction in emissions or control of global warming. If COP26 follows the same mechanics, the results are unlikely to change at the end of the two weeks of discussions and activities in which more than 25,000 people will participate.

Excerpt:

More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. A sea of soy is seen near the city of Porto Nacional, on the right bank of the Tocantins River, Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)

Can yet another dispendious world gathering find a way to halt the ongoing suicidal war on Nature, which is leading to the destruction of all sources of life?

The answer appears to be a bold “no” in view of the business-oriented practices, which deplete biodiversity, pollute the oceans, rise sea levels, cause record temperatures, provoke deadly droughts and floods, and push millions to flee their homes as climate refugees, in addition to more millions of conflict and poverty displaced humans.

Our war with nature includes a food system that generates one third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is also responsible for up to 80 percent of biodiversity loss,
 António Guterres, UN Secretary General

The gathering is scheduled to take place between 31 October and 12 November 2021, in Glasgow, in the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), hosted by the United Kingdom in partnership with Italy.

Although the premises would sound good as the Conference presidency has proposed a Delivery Plan led by Germany and Canada, to mobilise 100 billion US dollars per year for climate finance, past experiences show that one thing is to promise and a totally different thing is to meet the promise.

Anyway, and regardless of whatever will come out –and be implemented– the scenario appears gloomy.

Take the case of the loss of the variety of life system–biodiversity as just one example.

Food system, responsible for 80% of biodiversity loss

‘“Our war with nature”, says the UN Secretary General  António Guterres, includes a food system that generates one third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is also responsible for up to 80 percent of biodiversity loss.

On this, the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA) explains that thousands of species and their genetic variability make up the web of life and are indispensable to adapt to new conditions, including climate change.

It also explains that biodiversity for food and agriculture is the diversity of plants, animals and micro-organisms at genetic, species and ecosystem levels, present in and around crop, livestock, forest and aquatic production systems.

What is Biodiversity?

This year’s State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture assesses biodiversity for food and agriculture and its management worldwide.

It says that biodiversity includes the domesticated plants and animals that are part of crop, livestock, forest or aquaculture systems, harvested forest and aquatic species, the wild relatives of domesticated species, and other wild species harvested for food and other products.

Biological diversity also encompasses what is known as “associated biodiversity”, the vast range of organisms that live in and around food and agricultural production systems, sustaining them and contributing to their output.

And it supplies many vital ecosystem services, such as creating and maintaining healthy soils, pollinating plants, controlling pests and providing habitat for wildlife, including for fish and other species that are vital to food production and agricultural livelihoods.

Despite their vital importance for the survival of humankind, many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline, warns The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture.

State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture highlights a set of key facts:

— More than 6,000 plant species have been cultivated for food. Now, fewer than 200 make major contributions to food production globally, regionally or nationally. Out of these, only 9 account for 66 percent of total crop production.

— Overall, the diversity of crops present in farmers’ fields has declined and threats to crop diversity are growing.

— Nearly a third of fish stocks are overfished and a third of freshwater fish species assessed are considered threatened.

— The proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing.

— 7,745 local breeds of livestock are still in existence, but 26 percent of these are at risk of extinction.

While the sharp loss of biological diversity is caused in a high percentage by the dominating industrial mono-culture, agriculture and food system, there is a frequently under-reported link between this and the continuous looting of genetic resources.

Apart from State-owned genetic banks aimed at conserving genetic resources, this process is practiced by giant corporations which collect, mostly in poor countries, seeds and genes of plants, animals, forest and aquatic varieties to patent them as their own property and stock them in their so-called genetic resources banks.

What is the diversity of genetic resources?

The diversity of genetic resources for food and agriculture (i.e. plants/crops, animals, aquatic resources, forests, micro-organisms and invertebrates) plays a crucial role in meeting basic human food and nutritional needs, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Plant genetic resources for food and agriculture consist of a diversity of seeds and planting material of traditional varieties and modern cultivars, crop wild relatives and other wild plant species. These resources are used as food, feed for domestic animals, fibre, clothing, shelter and energy.

Forest genetic resources are the heritable materials maintained within and among tree and other woody plant species that are of actual or potential economic, environmental, scientific or societal value.

Trees are the foundation species of forest ecosystems and many of the world’s 60,000 tree species are also an important component in other ecosystems, such as savannas and agricultural landscapes.

Animal genetic resources for food and agriculture encompass the variability of genes, traits and breeds of the different animal species that play a role in food and agriculture.

Aquatic genetic resources for food and agriculture include DNA, genes, chromosomes, tissues, gametes, embryos and other early life history stages, individuals, strains, stocks, and communities of organisms of actual or potential value for food and agriculture.

This diversity allows organisms to reproduce and grow, adapt to natural and human-induced impacts such as climate change, resist diseases and parasites, and continue to evolve.

Mother Earth is self-organised

But perhaps a sound way to summarise the alarming loss of biodiversity, is what the well-known Prof. Vandana Shiva wrote in her recent Rewilding Food, Rewilding our Mind & Rewilding the Earth.

According to this physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers, Mother Earth is self-organised. Mother Earth has created and sustained Diversity.

“Colonialism transformed Mother Earth, Vasundhara, Pachmama, Terra Madre, into Terra Nullius, the empty earth. Our living, bountiful earth, rich in Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity was reduced to an empty earth.”

“The Biodiversity of the earth disappeared in the minds of men who reduced the earth to private property to be owned…”

Climate Change is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 13), but t’s becoming increasingly clear that climate change plays a role in many, if not all of the SDGs, and that achieving the 2030 Agenda will be impossible without making serious inroads into tackling the problem. Credit: United Nations

By Meena Raman
PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 28 2021 (IPS)

It is well-known that all the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) added together, even those that have been updated, will not help to place the world on a 1.5 degree C pathway.

The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the ‘Physical Science’ shows that for a 50% probability of limiting temperature rise to a 1.5 degree pathway, taking into account the historical and cumulative emissions, there is a remaining carbon budget of 500 gigatons of CO2 left and the world emits about 42 gigatons of CO2 per year.

Which means that within a decade, this budget would be exhausted, leading to difficulty in limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degree C.

Hence, it is important to recognise and acknowledge that the developed countries in particular, have not shown their leadership in taking on their fair share of the emission cuts needed.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and COP 16 in 2010 in Cancun, acknowledged that the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in developed countries and that, owing to this historical responsibility, developed country Parties must take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.

We do need to understand that under the UNFCC and the Paris Agreement, the principles of equity and ‘common-but-differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDRRC) are fundamental in understanding the differentiated obligations between developed and developing countries.

Moreover, developed countries have failed to reduce their emissions despite the decisions taken.

Failure by developed countries to deliver on promised emissions reductions

First commitment period (1CP) under the Kyoto Protocol from 2008 to 2012 only saw aggregate emissions of Annex 1 countries to be cut by 5% compared to 1990 levels. Despite this very low ambition, the United States (US) left the Protocol.

Promise in 2012 by developed countries in the 2nd commitment period to revisit their emission reduction targets by 2014 from 18 per cent by 2020 to at least 25-40 per cent was never realized.

The goal post shifted by developed countries calling all countries to plug the emissions gap –which turns the CBDR-RC principle on its head to ‘common and shared responsibilities’, with no reference to historical responsibility or equity between the North and South.

In fact, between 1990 and 2018, developed countries on aggregate achieved only 13% emissions reductions between 1990 and 2018.

Countries in Western Europe, United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have not managed to reduce their aggregate emissions between 1990 and 2020. Instead, their aggregate emissions slightly increased from 13,227.97 MTCO2eq in 1990 to 13,331.23 MTCO2eq in 2020.

So, instead of undertaking real deep emissions cuts to real zero by now, developed countries are announcing distant net-zero targets with 2050 as the target year, which again reflect reductions which are too little too late and that will exhaust the remaining carbon budget very soon.

Hence, we must demand real and rapid zero from developed countries, not distant targets. Moreover, net zero targets mean that there will be reliance on carbon-offsets, where developed countries will pay developing countries to do the emission removals, which will then go to the credit of developed countries.

This will mean that developing countries will have to do even more emissions cuts in their countries, as the offset credits sold to developed countries cannot be counted as part of their NDCs, as there cannot be double-counting and double-claiming of carbon credits.

There is no more room for offsetting, and what needs to happen urgently in the rich world is for very deep and rapid de-carbonisation.

Then, there is the much-needed finance and technology transfer that has to be delivered to developing countries to enable their transition to low-carbon pathways as soon as possible.

The USD 100 billion per year by 2020 which was promised by developed countries has fallen short and Glasgow has to see actual delivery and timelines for this goal to be realised.

Even this USD 100 billion per year target is a far cry from what is needed by developing countries, who have indicated the need for USD 5.8-5.9 trillion to implement their NDCs up to 2030.

As has been pointed out earlier, the G20 as a group is not recognised under the UNFCCC and the PA but what is recognised is developed and developing countries. It is not the leadership of the G20 that is needed but the leadership of the G7 — as per the Convention and the PA.

The developed and developing countries in the G20 cannot be viewed as having the same responsibility, leadership ability and capabilities. That will be contrary to the equity and CBDRRC principles of the UNFCCC and PA.

Actually, it is the decisions taken in Paris that have to be honoured and respected, and not a shifting of the goal posts by the developed world as pointed out above. It is true that developed countries in particular have to do their fair share of the emission cuts and also provide the finance and technology needed as payment of their climate debt.

Also, we have to remember that it is not only emissions reductions or mitigation that are important. Also critical is adaptation and addressing loss and damage (which goes beyond adaptation, as in for e.g. an extreme weather event that wipes out an economy of a country).

These are critical issues for developing countries, where real action on adaptation and loss and damage are enabled on the ground, including in scaling up finance in this regard.

China has announced a carbon-neutrality target of 2060. India is expected to announce an updated NDC. We cannot put China and India on the same footing as the developed world. China’s and India’s emissions are large due to their population. On a per capita basis, they are still much less than the developed countries.

We do not know about Australia and Russia. It is quite clear that these countries are not going to phase out from their dependence on fossil fuels anytime soon.

In fact, instead of the rich developed countries phasing out fossil fuels, what we see is the continued production and expansion of fossil fuels, as made clear by the UNEP Production Gap report.

This is indeed worrying, as the developed world has no excuse to delay action. It is their delayed action mainly that is responsible for the current global warming, as made clear by their historical overuse of the carbon budget, as shown by the AR 6 of the IPCC.

Meena Raman is Head of Programmes at Third World Network – headquartered in Penang, Malaysia.

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The WMO has warned that the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as sinks may become less effective in the future. Laudat, Dominica. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Oct 27 2021 (IPS)

A few days before the international community gathers for COP26, widely considered the most important climate conference since the 2015 gathering which resulted in the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)  is reporting that despite global hits in trade and travel by the COVID-19 pandemic, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new high in 2020.

The United Nations Agency issued its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin on October 25. It is the seventeenth bulletin and it concludes that from 1990 to 2020, heating of the earth by greenhouse gases spiked by 47 percent, with carbon dioxide responsible for almost 80 percent of this hike.

“Concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 and is 149% of the pre-industrial level,” the report stated, adding that “the economic slowdown from COVID-19 did not have any discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates, although there was a temporary decline in new emissions.”

“Roughly half of the CO2 emitted by human activities today remains in the atmosphere. The other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems,” it added, warning that “the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as “sinks” may become less effective in future, thus reducing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide and act as a buffer against larger temperature increase.”

The statistics are crucial ahead of next week’s climate talks. Countries are being urged to commit to increasingly ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is clear from the science that the concentration of greenhouse gases is driving climate change and if we are able to mitigate those emissions and phase out the negative trend in climate, that should be our aim,” said Petteri Taalas.

“Some features will continue for hundreds of years like the melting of glaciers and sea-level rise as we already have such a high concentration of carbon dioxide and this problem will not go away soon……..we have to start dealing with emissions in this decade. We cannot wait, otherwise, we will lose the Paris targets. The progress has been too slow,” Taalas added.

The WMO’s chief of atmospheric and environment research division Oksana Tarasova says climate commitments by nations must translate into action.

“There is no way around it. We need to reduce emissions as fast as possible. When countries are making commitments to be carbon neutral, the atmosphere gives us a very clear signal that our commitments should be converted into something that we can see in the atmosphere. If we do not see at least a decrease in the growth rate of the major greenhouse gases, we cannot declare success in the climate agenda,” she said.

The WMO greenhouse gas bulletin coincides with the release this week of the United Nations Climate Office’s updated findings on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are countries’ climate action plans, including goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

They concluded that the world is ‘nowhere near’ where it needs to be to tackle the climate crisis. Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Patricia Espinosa called for an ‘urgent redoubling of climate efforts’ to ensure that global temperatures do not soar past the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“Overshooting the temperature goals will lead to a destabilized world and endless suffering, especially among those who have contributed the least to the GHG emissions in the atmosphere,” she said.
“This updated report, unfortunately, confirms the trend already indicated in the full Synthesis Report, which is that we are nowhere near where science says we should be.”
For WMO officials, a timely, ‘stark scientific message’ is being sent to the world.

“At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” WMO Secretary-General Taalas said.

“We are way off track.”

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Credit: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace Africa

By Remy Zahiga, Jennifer Morgan and Martin Kaiser
GOMA/AMSTERDAM/HAMBURG, Oct 26 2021 (IPS)

On the brink of an unprecedented environmental emergency, EU ambassadors to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) gathered earlier this month for a luxury river cruise hosted by the country’s Environment Minister, Eve Bazaiba.

Many of them represent donor countries from the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), in the final stretch of negotiating an estimated $1 billion ten-year DRC forest protection program. The Minister is wining and dining them to push her top priority: the lifting of a 2002 ban on the awarding of new logging concessions.

The decision to lift the ban was approved this July by the Council of Ministers, presided by Président Félix Tshisekedi, but an implementation decree is yet to be signed. In April, at Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate, Congo’s president had pledged to stop deforestation and increase forest cover by 8%.

Minister Bazaiba has responded to a letter from local and international environmental and human rights groups by saying she has no lessons to learn from NGOs. She calls criticism of the lifting of the moratorium “beyond daring for the 21st century”; the Ministry labels critics “the beneficiaries of imperialists.”

The lifting of the moratorium could open some 70 million hectares to logging – an area roughly the size of France – and its impacts would be catastrophic. With or without a “sustainability” label, the logging of the Congo Basin is a nightmare for the rule of law and a constant threat to local people.

For millions of people who depend on the forest for their livelihoods, including Indigenous Peoples, selling it off to multinationals has meant land grabs, displacement and destitution. And bulldozing the rainforest will likely mean less rain.

The Congo Basin forest is estimated to contribute more than half of the annual precipitation in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area already facing a plethora of droughts and extreme heat waves.

One of the things the EU ambassadors the Minister is schmoozing ought to remind her is that no one appears to know exactly who these multinationals are.

Nearly six months after the launch of an EU-funded legal review of logging titles, the lead auditor reported this month that his team still hasn’t been able to pull together a list of titles… He hasn’t yet glimpsed a “so-called existing” list; what there is is “very incomplete.” Ève Bazaiba took her time to sign the team’s mission order, until two months after an intervention by the EU ambassador.

Over 40 Congolese and international NGOs are still waiting for a reply to their 23 September letter to donors, warning of the impending catastrophe.

In the letter they were told that lifting the moratorium in DRC, home to about 60 per cent of the Congo Basin forest, would remove the last shreds of credibility from COP15 on biodiversity in Kunming and from COP26 on climate in Glasgow.

The Congo Basin forest has more than 600 tree species and 10,000 animal species, including forest elephants, lowland gorillas, bonobos, and okapi. Its vegetation is estimated to contain between 25-30 billion tons of carbon, equivalent to about four years of global anthropogenic emissions of CO2. Increased logging might mean greater risk of yet another pandemic.

Just how out of it are the donors? Do they really have any clue what the current logging scene is in Congo?

Over the years, one Minister after another has violated the moratorium, gratifying senior military – including an army general under EU and US sanctions for human rights abuses – and other makeshift “logging” firms.

Bazaiba’s predecessor, Claude Nyamugabo, is facing a legal challenge from Congolese civil society organisations for transferring two million hectares of illegally allocated concessions to Chinese front companies.

But by far the most surreal example of what the lifting of the moratorium would mean is last year’s award of six so-called “conservation” concessions, covering an area half the size of Belgium, to a company called Tradelink.

The only shareholder of the firm that a Greenpeace Africa investigation has been able to identify is Aleksandar Voukovitch, a Belgian expat who’s made his career in mining, oil and timber. He would appear to have no experience in conservation, and even less in the area of forest-rights protection.

In September, the Minister missed the legal deadline to respond to an administrative complaint seeking the cancellation of his contracts.

The national Institute for Nature Conservation, ICCN, has confirmed they were awarded illegally, without its knowledge. The governor of Tshuapa province has also demanded their cancellation.

The same Ministry that’s accusing national and international NGOs of being imperialist stooges has remained silent about what’s probably the biggest handover of territory to Belgian interests since independence.

Finally, over a year after the award of the Tradelink contracts – and, by sheer coincidence, two weeks before COP26 — President Tshisekedi ordered their suspension, as well as that of all other “dubious” forest concessions.

Better late than never, but it would appear that the sudden interest in good “forest governance” may simply be meant to reassure donors that the moratorium can now be safely jettisoned. No sign yet of the opening of a legal investigation to determine the responsibility of the various parties.

Are donors in the process of green lighting the lifting of the moratorium even as we speak? Will the EU taxpayer be financing a free-for-all for EU and Chinese multinationals? Now’s the time for the weekend river cruisers to take a position – a public one.

But the one billion dollar question isn’t whether foreign governments will tacitly support all of the above or simply walk away. There’s a far better path for investment for CAFI and other donors too.

The most effective and just form of forest protection is supporting the land rights of Indigenous People and local communities. In areas designated as community forest concessions, the rate of deforestation is significantly lower than the national average and almost 50 per cent lower than in logging concessions.

Community forest concessions also provide a structure that is inclusive and democratic.

The health of our planet requires ending, rather than endlessly recycling, the colonial concession system so beautifully incarnated by Tradelink. The DRC government and CAFI must extend the moratorium on new logging and invest in the protection of forest rights. They must finally decide to leave the rainforest to its rightful indigenous owners.

Remy Zahiga is a Congolese climate activist. Jennifer Morgan is the Executive Director of Greenpeace International. Martin Kaiser is the Executive Director of Greenpeace Germany.

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The Southern African region is particularly vulnerable to climate change while only being responsible for a fraction of emissions. It is hoped that COP26 will deliver tangible benefits to the area which has already suffered severe impacts of climate change like the effects of Cyclone Idai, Mozambique, in March 2019. Credit: Denis Onyodi: IFRC/DRK/Climate Centre

By Kevin Humphrey
Johannesburg, Oct 26 2021 (IPS)

COP26 is almost upon us, and dire warnings abound that it’s boom or bust for a greener future. Meanwhile, everybody boasts about what they will do to cool down our planet, but there is a disjuncture between talk and action. Even Queen Elizabeth II of the host country, the United Kingdom, has grumbled publicly that not enough action is taking place on climate change.

In the Southern Africa region, the SADC’s member countries are clear that the developed countries must stump up the money to help them deliver their promises to reduce carbon emissions and carry out a raft of measures to combat global warming. All the SADC countries are signatories to the Paris Agreement.

The region has joined the cry of other African countries that the continent suffers most from climate change but hardly contributes to the causes of the phenomenon – emitting less than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gasses.
According to research undertaken on behalf of the UN, climate change adaptation needs for Africa were estimated to be $715 billion ($0.715 trillion) between 2020 and 2030.

In southern Africa, each country has its own Nationally Developed Contribution plan for dealing with climate change, including costs. Of course, funding will be needed to achieve these goals. Developing countries have pledged a $100bn annual target to help the developing world tackle climate change. All the Southern African countries will need a slice of this funding. The Green Climate Fund was established under the Cancun Agreements in 2010 as a dedicated financing vehicle for developing countries.

In the lead up to COP26, the fund is under scrutiny. Tanguy Gahouma, chair of the African Group of Negotiators at COP26, has said: “African countries want a new system to track funding from wealthy nations that are failing to meet the $100bn annual target.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates this funding stood at $79.6bn in 2019. OECD data reveals that from 2016-19 Africa only got 26 percent of the funding.

Gahouma said a more detailed shared system was needed that would keep tabs on each country’s contribution and where it went on the ground.

“They say they achieved maybe 70 percent of the target, but we cannot see that,” Gahouma said.
“We need to have a clear road map how they will put on the table the $100bn per year, how we can track (it),” he said. “We don’t have time to lose, and Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world.”

Amar Bhattacharya, from the Brookings Institution, says about the fund, “Some progress has been made – but a lot more needs to be done.”

Denmark’s development coordination minister Flemming Møller Mortensen has warned that only a quarter of international climate finance for developing countries goes to adaptation.

COP26 may turn into a squabble over money and perhaps an attack on developed countries as they are blamed for creating the problems of climate change in the first place by using fossil fuels for the last two centuries. G20 countries account for almost 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Again, it is all about the money. Many developed countries do not want to change; their economies (and their rich elites) are wedded to fossil fuels. There are also problems with paying for adaptation. Will the rich countries fund the developing countries to green themselves up?

Southern Africa will need to deal pragmatically with the outcomes of COP26 as it becomes crucial to deal with climate change impacts – like the vulnerability to intense storms like Cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique in March 2019. Credit: Denis Onyodi: IFRC/DRK/Climate Centre

Professor Bruce Hewitson, the SARCHI Research Chair in Climate Change Climate System Analysis Group, Dept Environmental & Geographical Sciences at the University of Cape Town, told IPS: “The well-cited meme that Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change impacts is true, as is the common response that Africa needs external aid to implement adaptation and development pathways compatible to climate mitigation. However, such messages hide a myriad of political realities about the difference between what is ideal and what is likely.”

Hewitson argues that what emerges from COP26 is an exercise in hope and belief.

“It’s a tightrope walk trying to balance competing demands and self-interests. At the end of the day, Africa will need to pragmatically deal with a compromised outcome and face the climate challenges as best possible under limited resources,” he says.

If Africa goes to COP26 with a begging bowl attitude, it could face the risk of dancing to the strings of the powerful and rich nations.

“Climate change impacts Africa in a multiplicity of ways, but at the root is when the local climate change exceeds the viability threshold of our infrastructural and ecological systems. Hence, arguably the largest challenge to responding to climate change is to expand and enable the regional capacity of the science and decision-makers to responsibly steer our actions in an informed and cohesive way; Africa needs to lead the design of Africa’s solutions,” says Hewitson.

While he argues that some of the best innovation is happening in Africa, it requires resources, and the COVID-19 pandemic has decreased international funding.

“Each community has unique needs and unique challenges, needing unique local solutions that are context-sensitive and context-relevant, and this will inevitably include the pain of some socio-economic and political compromise.”
The southern African region’s climate woes chime with the problems faced by a legion of developing countries. We have Mauritius’s threatened Indian Ocean islands, Seychelles, Madagascar, Comoros and those offshore of Tanzania and Mozambique, plus many thousands of miles of coastline. We have inland waterways. We have jungles, forests, vast plains and deserts. All prey to the viciousness of global warming.

The SADC’s climate change report quotes an academic paper by Rahab and Proudhomme that from 2002 “there has been a rise in temperatures at twice the global average.”

According to the SADC, a Climate Change Strategy is in place to guide the implementation of the Climate Change Programme over a Fifteen-year period (2015 – 2030). The plan is innovative in terms of food security, preserving and expanding carbon sinks (which play a major role in stabilising the global climate) and tackling problems in urban areas that cause global warming like high energy consumption, poor waste management systems and inefficient transport networks.

Out of the region’s fifteen member countries, South Africa is the biggest culprit when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently said, “We need to act with urgency and ambition to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and undertake a transition to a low-carbon economy.”

This is a big ask for the region’s economic powerhouse with entrenched mining interests, an abundance of coal and a huge fleet of coal-fired power stations.

Recently, Mining and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said South Africa must systematically manage its transition away from coal-fired power generation and not rush a switch to renewable energy sources.

“I am not saying coal forever… I am saying let’s manage our transition step by step rather than being emotional. We are not a developed economy, we don’t have all alternative sources.”

Angola has some of the most ambitious targets for transition to low-carbon development in Africa. The country committed to reducing up to 14% of its greenhouse gas emissions – commentators have met this with scepticism.
Mozambique, not – as yet – a significant carbon emitter, has potential, through its vast natural gas resources, to provide the wherewithal to heat the planet in a big way.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo – a least-developed country, has committed to a 17% reduction by 2030 in emissions. The DRC has the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest – a major carbon sink.

Other SADC countries that suffer from climate change but do very little to cause it are Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Madagascar, which is currently suffering from a climate-induced famine; Malawi, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia.

While talking up the need to cut emissions, Zambia’s neighbour Zimbabwe said it would increase electricity and coal supply to the iron and steel sectors, thus adding to emissions.

Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros are all vulnerable Island economies and have a lot in common with the many other island states throughout the world and are very low carbon emitters but extremely vulnerable to climate change especially rising sea levels.

Despite all the problems emerging in the lead up to COP 26, we need to take to heart the fact that scientists and commentators worldwide are warning that COP26 must deliver a way forward that works for our planet and our people. Southern Africa and the African continent as a whole can contribute with innovation and enthusiasm by tapping into the vast potential of our youthful population.

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A solar power plant in El Salvador, with 320,000 panels, is one of the largest such installations in Central America, whose countries are striving to convert the energy mix to renewable sources, but whose plans were slowed by the covid pandemic. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)

Latin America and the Caribbean are heading to a new climate summit with a menu of insufficient measures to address the effects of the crisis, in the midst of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic.

The world’s most unequal region, which is the hardest hit by the effects of climate change and highly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, has yet to engage in the fight against this emergency head-on, according to analysts and studies.

Tania Miranda, director of Policy and Stakeholder Engagement in the Environment and Climate Change Programme of the U.S.-based non-governmental Institute of the Americas, said Latin America’s high climate ambitions have not been supported by the measures necessary to reduce emissions.

“Goals are aspirational. If they are not backed up with policies and financing, they remain empty promises. There is a need for financing and the implementation of strategies and public policies that will lead them to fulfill their commitments. Billions of dollars are needed,” the researcher told IPS from San Diego, California, where the Institute is based.

Miranda is the author of the report “Nationally Determined Contributions Across the Americas. A Comparative Hemispheric Analysis,” which evaluates the climate targets of 16 countries, including the United States and Canada.

In her study, she analyses pollutant emission reduction targets, plans for adaptation to the climate crisis, dependence on external financing, long-term carbon neutrality commitments and the state of pollution abatement.

Climate policies will be the focus of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will take place Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 in Glasgow, Scotland in the north of the United Kingdom, after being postponed in that same month in 2020 due to the pandemic.

COP26 will address rules for carbon markets, at least 100 billion dollars annually in climate finance, the gaps between nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and the necessary reductions, strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050, adaptation plans, and the local communities and indigenous peoples platform.

A parallel alternative summit will also be held, bringing together social movements from around the world, advocating an early phase-out of fossil fuels, rejecting so-called “false solutions” such as carbon markets, and calling for a just energy transition and reparations for damage and redistribution of funds to indigenous communities and countries of the global South.

The Glasgow conference is considered the most important climate summit, due to the need to accelerate action in the face of alarming data on global warming since the adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP21, held in December 2015 in the French capital.

A zero-emission electric bus is parked on a downtown street in Montevideo. Public transport is beginning to electrify in Latin America’s cities as a way to contain CO2 emissions, but plans have been delayed and cut back due to the covid pandemic. CREDIT: Inés Acosta/IPS

Since then, 192 signatories to the binding treaty have submitted their first NDCs.

But just 13 countries worldwide sent their new climate contributions in 2020 to the UNFCCC Secretariat based in Bonn, despite calls from its secretary, Patricia Espinosa of Mexico, for all parties to the treaty to do so that year.

Of these, only four from this region – Argentina, Grenada, Mexico and Suriname – submitted the second updated version of their contributions.

Although they are voluntary commitments, the NDCs are a core part of the Paris Agreement, based on the goal of curbing the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, considered the minimum and indispensable target to avoid irreversible climate disasters and, consequently, human catastrophes.

In the NDCs, nations must set their goals for 2030 and 2050 to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for global warming, taking a specific year as a baseline, outline the way they will achieve these goals, establish the peak year of their emissions and when they would achieve net zero emissions, i.e. absorb as many gases as they release into the atmosphere.

In addition, to contain the spread of the coronavirus and its impacts, the region has taken emergency economic decisions, such as providing support for companies of all sizes, as well as for vulnerable workers.

But these post-pandemic recovery packages lack green components, such as commitments to sustainable and cleaner production.

A street in Mexico City shows reduced traffic due to covid restrictions. Automotive transport is one of the largest generators of polluting emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the transition to a cleaner vehicle fleet, with the increase in the number of electric vehicles and other alternatives, is moving very slowly. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Shared irresponsibilities

While some countries, such as Argentina and Chile, improved their pledges, others like Brazil and Mexico scaled down or kept their pledges unchanged.

The measures of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are in code red, as they are highly insufficient to contain global warming, according to the Climate Action Tracker.

In the case of the first three, the largest Latin American economies, the governments are prioritising the financing of increased fossil fuel exploitation, which would result in a rise in emissions in 2030, the Tracker highlights.

Chile’s and Peru’s measures are classified as insufficient and Costa Rica’s as almost sufficient.

That Central American nation, Colombia and Peru are on track to meet their commitments by 2030 and 2050, the Tracker notes.

In the case of Argentina, Chile and Ecuador, they would need additional measures to achieve their goals. At the other extreme are Brazil and Mexico, the biggest regional polluters, which have strayed from the medium- and long-term path.

Enrique Maurtúa, senior climate policy advisor for the non-governmental Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), said that Argentina is an example of the countries in the region that are caught between these contradictions.

“Argentina follows the line of what is happening in several countries in the region. In terms of commitments, it does its homework, what it is supposed to do, it is preparing a long-term strategy. But those commitments are not in line with what Argentina is doing behind closed doors,” the expert told IPS from Buenos Aires, where the Foundation is based.

As part of this approach, the Argentine Congress is debating a draft Hydrocarbon Investment Promotion Regime to provide fiscal stability to the sector for the next 20 years.

In addition, the government weakened the carbon tax, which averages a 10 dollar charge, through exemptions and the exclusion of gas, and is preparing a sustainable mobility strategy that dispenses with hydrogen.

Mexico is following a similar path, as the government favours support for the state-owned oil company Pemex and the government’s electric utility Comisión Federal de Electricidad, is building a refinery in the state of Tabasco, on the southeastern coast of the country, and has stalled actions aimed at an energy transition.

On Dec. 29, 2020, Mexico released its updated NDC, without increasing the emissions reduction target, to the disappointment of environmental organisations, and in contravention of the Paris Agreement and its own climate change law.

But on Oct. 1 it was reported that a federal court annulled the update, considering that there was an illegal reduction in the mitigation goals, so the 2016 measures remain in force until the government improves on them.

Isabel Bustamante, a member of the Fridays for Future Mexico movement who will attend COP26, questioned Mexico’s climate stance.

“It does not take a solid stance. We need declarations of climate emergency throughout the country and to make resources more readily available. We are concerned about the focus on more fossil fuel production,” she told IPS from the southeastern city of Mérida.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is facing pressure from the environmental sector, but does not seem adept at changing course. He is even sending mixed signals, such as his announcement on Oct. 18 that the country will raise climate targets in 2022.

At most service stations in Brazil, consumers can choose between gasoline and ethanol, the price of which is attractive when it does not exceed 70 percent of that of gasoline. But users only opt for biofuel when it is economically attractive, so it does not contribute to alleviating the emission of polluting gases. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The COP and the question marks it raises for the region

The UNFCCC stated in September that the NDCs presented are insufficient to curb warming to 1.5 degrees C.

Miranda believes COP26 could be beneficial for the region.

“Expectations are very high. We need the big polluters to be present. There will be pressure for tangible results. The region knows where its needs are, it has many opportunities to use ecosystems to reduce emissions,” she said.

Maurtúa, for his part, stresses that the main results will depend on the concrete financing and means of implementation of the Paris Agreement.

“Developed countries have to make financial contributions to the transition in developing countries. Industrialised nations are asking for more ambition, but they have to provide financing,” he argued.

In the expert’s opinion, “it is what the region needs. There are signs of willingness in Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile. But that is not happening in the case of Argentina or Mexico.”

For young people like Bustamante, the summit needs to offer more real action and fewer empty offers. “We expect an urgent climate action agenda to emerge. We need to stop investments in fossil fuel infrastructure, which compromises our near future. We will not stop until we do,” she said.

Under pressure due to the urgency of pending matters and within the constraints imposed by the pandemic, Glasgow could be a defining benchmark of a real global commitment to address the climate emergency, which is causing more and more destruction.

Excerpt:

Food insecurity increases by 5–20 percentage points with each flood or drought in sub-Saharan Africa.

Changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures and more extreme weather contributed to mounting food insecurity, poverty and displacement in Africa in 2020, compounding the socio-economic and health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new multi-agency report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Credit: WMO

By Claudia Sadoff and Joachim von Braun
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 25 2021 (IPS)

The global food system is facing more demands from society than ever before in modern times – and rightly so.

From responding to the climate crisis to dealing with rising malnutrition and ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources and protection of biodiversity, the responsibility of our food systems is no longer just to “feed the world.”

The recent action agenda released by the UN Secretary General at the Food Systems Summit not only highlighted this urgency but reminded us that our food systems are also one of our greatest hopes for making progress on these fronts.

While the US$10 billion pledged by the United States to end hunger and malnutrition is a welcome start, our food systems have been forced to cope with an increasingly complex, interconnected set of challenges for too long – often without a corresponding shift in focus from governments and other key players.

The changes required also need sufficient funding for food systems transformation, estimated to be in the range of $400 billion per year. This goal is within reach and is roughly comparable to three times New York City’s annual budget or less than 0.5 percent of world GDP in 2020.

Food systems transformation also requires impactful innovations, so particular importance in this funding should therefore be placed on investment in research and innovation.

Increased and sustained funding for research and innovation is crucial, as the world requires technological, policy and institutional innovation to address the increasingly complex set of challenges that are facing, and threatening, food, land and water systems in a climate crisis.

Investments in agricultural research and innovation generate significant returns. Benefit-cost ratios of CGIAR research, for example, have shown consistent returns on investments to the order of 10:1.

Despite this, international agricultural research remains underfunded, threatening food, economic, and environmental security around the world, whilst hunger and poverty continue to rise.

In addition to securing funding for research and innovation, research itself must evolve to address the growing challenges around the world. In particular, research efforts should favour more circular business models that are driven by value, rather than volume, and those that promote resilience to shocks and balance with nature over more environmentally damaging models.

We must also ensure that more research translates into concrete innovations that truly advance food systems transformation. While we desperately need technological innovations to increase productivity, reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition, as well as climate proofing our food systems and making them more equitable, such innovations can only be taken forward if they are bundled with appropriate national policies, institutional changes and global actions, and strategies to deal with shocks and conflict.

Sometimes the implementation of innovations inevitably involves trade-offs, not only synergies. Research and innovation efforts will be crucial to understanding and managing such trade-offs, as well as to help ensure that interconnected challenges are tackled in the most efficient and holistic way.

To both achieve and maximize the potential of research and innovation, governments of the world should consider allocating just one per cent of the portion of their national GDP that relates to food systems, towards research and innovation.

At present, many countries, including many of the world’s richest, only spend half of this. For the least developed countries, aid will be needed to reach such a level, potentially through a special trust fund backed by the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

Such a fund, when properly backed by developed countries, would help to support greater scientific capacity on the ground in low- and middle-income countries, which will be needed if we are to address the challenges facing the whole world, not just the developed world.

Today’s agri-food systems no longer simply feed people. They must also provide nutrition, promote livelihoods, protect the environment, and tackle climate change – often all at once. Financing and unlocking innovations are needed to address these challenges together.

If our food, land and water systems are ever able to achieve society’s mounting demands, we must ensure our priorities are in order and begin to properly finance them.

Ultimately, all of the ambition generated around the UN Food Systems Summit will fall short if we fail to finance the new research and innovation we know we need.

Claudia Sadoff is Executive Management Team Convener, and Managing Director, Research Delivery and Impact, CGIAR; Joachim von Braun is Chair of the Scientific Group, UN Food Systems Summit

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Sibonisiwe Hlanze is one of 600 women who are allowed to harvest reeds from the Lawuba Wetland in Lawuba, Eswatini. Hlanze’s income and security is dependent on reliable weather patterns. The Commonwealth has deployed top climate finance advisors to Eswatini, Belize, Seychelles and Zambia assist with the NDCs. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Samuel Ogallah
Eswatini, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)

There is no country today that has not experienced the effects of climate change, from changing weather patterns to extreme, devastating weather events.

The Kingdom of Eswatini is no exception.

Climate change is already affecting the country and key sectors of its economy. It is already having to adapt to pronounced climate change impacts, including significant variations in precipitation patterns, higher temperatures, and increasing frequency and intensity of severe weather events such as droughts, floods, and cyclones.

In 2015, at the United Nation’s annual global climate summit COP 21, the Paris Agreement was hammered. In 2016 Eswatini joined many other countries in signing up to the Paris Agreement, a landmark agreement committing nations to a global effort to tackle climate change.

Article 4 of that agreement commits national governments to provide a National Determined Contribution (NDC) every five years.

The Government of Eswatini submitted its first NDC to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015. But since then, technology, policies, partnerships, data, and stakeholder engagement for climate action have all advanced.

In preparing its second NDC, the government looked to take these advances into account. It went back and reviewed what it had done in 2015 and sought to this time provide an NDC with even greater ambition.

Over a period of 18 months, an inclusive process of assessment, analysis, and modelling of climate change, informed by data and science, was implemented to revise the NDC.

Climate change will affect everyone, and as such, the government put stakeholder participation at the heart of the revision process.

Adopting ‘a whole of government and society approach’ it held over twenty stakeholders’ consultations including virtual and physical workshops. A review of national gender policy to integrate climate change was also carried out.

The process was not always smooth though. There were significant hurdles, not least the Covid-19 pandemic which not only delayed the expected submission of NDCs at the end of 2020 but impacted Eswatini’s technical capacity to undertake such a nationwide participatory stakeholder’s consultative process.

However, these challenges were overcome, and the revised NDC, submitted to the UNFCCC just days ago ahead of COP26, represents an ambitious step-up from its 2015 predecessor.

It adopts an economy-wide GHG emissions reduction target of 5% by 2030 compared to the baseline scenario[1] to help achieve low carbon and climate-resilient economic development. It also includes a provision to raise this target to 14% with external financing, technology, and technical support. This translates to 1.04 million tonnes fewer GHG emissions by 2030 compared to a baseline scenario.

Meanwhile, the revised NDC sets out clear mitigation and adaptation targets along with a comprehensive roadmap, and incorporates new sectors for mitigation and adaptation action.

Alone, however, the ambition of this NDC will not be enough.

The opportunity created by the Paris Agreement comes with an important challenge – to transform the NDC into tangible actions that lead to long term zero-carbon and climate-resilient development.

The effective implementation of the revised NDC is contingent on several factors, key among these being the availability of external support in terms of the provision of means of implementation (finance, technology development, and transfer and capacity building) and domestic resources.

Climate finance must be mobilised at scale to address the adaptation and mitigation component of the NDC.

The revision process delivered a number of key lessons, one of which was that wide-ranging support and partnership – a long list of external groups including the Commonwealth Secretariat, United Nations’ bodies (UNEP, UNDP, FAO), and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) among others, provided help during the process – is crucial to achieving goals.

And it will only be with similarly broad co-operation with, and support from, international and domestic sources that Eswatini will be able to fully achieve the ambitious potential of its NDC.

The total estimated cost of NDC action for Eswatini is between $950 million and $1.5 billion by 2030.

The support of developed country governments, development partners, international organisations, the private sector, and civil society organisations will be critical to help deliver on Eswatini’s revised NDC targets.

Eswatini’s NDC process has shown that with partnership and help, ambitious plans can be laid.

The country calls on partners, fellow governments, and all those with a similar commitment to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient future, to help Eswatini turn its NDC plans into tangible achievements – for the good of the whole planet.

Support from the Commonwealth Secretariat: The Commonwealth Secretariat partnered with the NDC Partnership under its Climate Action Enhancement Package (CAEP) Programme to support four Commonwealth member countries – Belize, Eswatini, Jamaica and Zambia – through in-country technical expertise, capacity building and targeted support on climate finance for expediting the implementation of each country’s NDCs.

Technical and institutional support was provided through the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH).

The CCFAH and the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Advisers supported these countries through different and complementary interventions, by developing and deploying different climate finance tools and strategies tailored to the strategic priorities of the member countries.

These have included climate finance landscapes and mapping, the Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Review (CPEIR), developing strategies such as Climate Finance Strategy and Private Sector engagement strategy, mapping of climate finance for NDC implementation, measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate finance, developing climate-sensitive gender policy, as well as climate change project concepts and proposals.

These interventions provided a vital experience for future NDC processes.

• The baseline scenario was developed based on historic GHG emissions between 2010 and 2017 and an updated scenario showing the change in GHG emissions between 2018 and 2030
• The author is the Commonwealth National Climate Finance Adviser to Eswatini.

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Tuvalu’s farmers have watched their crops destroyed by extreme tropical weather. They are now using Funafala 'food cubes' to have greater control over their harvests.

By Catherine Wilson
CANBERRA, Australia , Oct 13 2021 (IPS)

Tuvalu, a small atoll island nation in the Central Pacific Ocean, is one of few countries in the world to have so far evaded the pandemic. But, while it has achieved a milestone with no recorded cases of COVID-19, its population of about 11,931 continues to battle food uncertainties and poor nutrition. These challenges, present long before the pandemic emerged, have been exacerbated by lockdown restrictions and economic hardships during the past year and a half.

In the low-lying island country, people have strived to grow food with “lack of access to land, lack of compost for growing food and, more so, with high tides and cyclones flooding the land with seawater,” Teuleala Manuella-Morris, Country Manager for the environmental and development organization, Live & Learn, in the capital, Funafuti, told IPS.

For years the islanders have watched their food gardens destroyed by extreme tropical weather and disasters, such as cyclones and tidal surges. These factors have contributed to their increasing consumption of imported foods.  But now, the future is looking more certain with the introduction of an innovative farming system on Funafala, an islet situated close to the main Funafuti Island.

The new farming method is based on a modular structure of specially designed boxes, known as ‘food cubes’, which give local food growers greater control over their harvests.

“Tuvalu, as an atoll nation, has a range of agricultural production challenges and also relies on imported food. The pandemic has also affected food supply chains. So, considering such challenges, there was a shift in policy in trying to strengthen food security programs. In the meantime, we were already piloting the food cube system in Tuvalu. It fits perfectly well with the shift in policy focus for food security for the country,” Gibson Susumu, Head of Sustainable Agriculture in the Land Resources Division of the regional development organization, Pacific Community, which is guiding the project’s implementation, told IPS.

Issues of declining agricultural production and persistent malnutrition have existed across the Pacific Islands for decades. Before the pandemic in 2019, 49.6 percent of Oceania’s population of an estimated 11.9 million endured moderate to severe food insecurity, reports the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  Although stunting afflicts 10 percent of children under five years in Tuvalu, which is well below the regional average, the country carries a heavy burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). Eighty percent of men and 83.8 percent of women were classified as overweight in Tuvalu in 2016, cites the Global Nutrition Report, while diabetes afflicts 23.1 percent of adults, according to the World Health Organization.

It is anticipated that the use of food cubes will assist with food security on the atoll island of Tuvalu.

On Funafala, a vast interlocking array of boxes, raised above the ground, creates a patchwork field of green abundance. The ‘field’ contains 80-100 cubes spread over an area of 1.2 acres in which fruit and vegetables are being grown for more than 16 local households. Each ‘food cube’, which is one-metre square and 30 centimetres deep, is manufactured from 80 percent recycled food-grade plastic and designed with features that expose the plants grown within to oxygen and controlled irrigation.

“The Funafala garden has showcased the growing of local foods, like pulaka (giant swamp taro), taro, local figs, cassava, dwarf bananas and dwarf pawpaw trees…It is not only providing more food for the community but has also proven that the food cubes are another way of growing food in areas being flooded with seawater while maintaining soil fertility for more planting. At the same time, it saves water,” Manuella-Morris told IPS.

The ‘food cube’ was designed and produced by Biofilta, an Australian company developing modular urban farming systems six years ago. In 2017, the business won a worldwide competition called LAUNCH Food, commissioned by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to reward new solutions to the global issue of poor nutrition.

“To put it into a food security context, I think those food cubes will be able to produce up to 150 kilograms of vegetables and greens for a year, and that is sufficient to meet the green vegetable requirements for the member households,” Susumu said.

Biofilta claims that the system is “raised, so there is no risk of saltwater inundation, and our wicking technology is extremely water-efficient, using only a fraction of the water needed in conventional agriculture.” These are important features, as Tuvalu possesses no renewable water resources and its point of highest elevation above sea level is only 5 metres. Further, the farm uses compost, specifically tailored to the country’s soil needs by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), which also draws on ingredients from the island’s green waste treatment facility.

Another key partner, Live & Learn, has expanded trials of the farming system on other islands in Tuvalu. The long-term goal is better health outcomes and longer productive lives for islanders. “Because of agricultural challenges, the diet diversity is very low…So, with the diversification of the production systems, it means that the households have more access to healthy diets, and if the surpluses can be marketed, it also supports the income side of the households,” Susumu explained.

The Pacific Community also plans to consult with the government, local communities, and farmers to determine appropriate prices for the commercial sale of surplus fresh produce from the farms so that healthy food remains affordable to everyone.

More widely, the initiative is responding to calls from organizations, such as the FAO, to rethink food systems around the world so that smarter production leads to increased supplies of quality food, reduced pressures on finite natural resources, such as land and water, and the lower impact of agricultural practices on global warming.

The success of the ‘food cubes’ in Tuvalu has sparked enthusiasm by other Pacific Island countries, such as the Cook Islands and Fiji, where it’s also being trialled.

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