By Roberto Savio
ROME, Oct 6 2014 (IPS)

If ever there was a need to prove that we are faced with a total lack of global governance, the U.N. Climate Summit, extraordinarily called by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sep. 23, makes a very good case.

The convocation of the climate summit – albeit just for one day – appeared to indicate that it had finally dawned on political leaders that there is a problem, in fact an urgent problem, about the impact that climate change is having on our planet.

And yet, the array of leaders gathered together in New York, although full of general platitudes, gave another impressive display of failure to come up with a concrete answer. While acknowledging the problem, many leaders found a way to duck their responsibility, indicating domestic constraints.

Roberto Savio. Credit: IPS

Thus U.S. President Barack Obama made it clear that the U.S. Congress would not be ready to ratify an international climate treaty. Of course, this line of reasoning applies to the U.S. approach in general – Congress does not accept binding the United States to any international treaty because of its exceptional destiny, which cannot be brought under scrutiny or control by those who are not U.S. citizens.

Furthermore, the United States has become a dysfunctional country, where the judicial, legislative and executive powers cannot cooperate, even on crucial issues.“The array of leaders gathered together in New York [for the Sep. 23 Climate Summit], although full of general platitudes, gave another impressive display of failure to come up with a concrete answer. While acknowledging the problem, many leaders found a way to duck their responsibility”

Anant Geete, India’s new Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, stated that growth in his country has priority over anything else, and therefore India will continue on its path towards industrialisation and energy fully based on coal, while other renewable energies will be brought in progressively, even if this will eventually make India the world’s biggest polluter.

The European Union could not make any commitment, because a new Commission was due to take over the following month (i.e. October) and the person earmarked for the post of Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy was Spanish Conservative Miguel Arias Canete,  who was a major shareholder in two Spanish oil companies – Petrolifera Ducal and Petrologis Canarias – until he sold his shares to garner support for his nomination

No problem, say his critics, Canete’s wife, son and brother-in-law did not follow suit and remain shareholders or even occupy positions on the boards of the companies.

In line with this same political sensibility, the new and more conservative European Commission has brought in a well-known City lobbyist, Lord Jonathan Hill, to the portfolio of Financial Services.

Such a system of political compromises is like bringing Count Dracula in to run a blood bank – hardly a system that is likely to appeal to blood donors!

What is sad is that there was no lack of background papers for the U.N. Climate Summit.

Beside one prepared by the Intergovernmental Council on Climate Change, bringing together 3.200 scientists from all over the world, there was, for example, a report prepared by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture (clearly not part of a leftist government), based on a detailed study of Spanish coastal areas which found that by 2050 the level of the Mediterranean Sea will increase by a minimum of 30 centimetres (if climate control measures are taken now) up to a maximum of 60 centimetres (if no action is taken).

That means that the coastline will recede by between 20 to 40 metres, with an obvious impact on tourism, ports and costal settlements. One hundred years ago, only 12 percent of the coast was used, rising to 20 percent in 1950, 35 percent in 1988 and 75 percent in 2006. In Spain, 15 million people now live in area which will be affected by the climate change.

Obviously, France, Greece , Italy, Tunisia and all other Mediterranean countries  will share that same destiny.

Another more global study conducted by Climate Central, a U.S. research group, based on more detailed sea-level data than has previously been available, reports that about 1 person in every 40 in the world lives in an area which will be susceptible to flooding in the next 100 years – about 177 million people.

Even if immediate measures were taken for climate control, 1.9 percent of the population of coastal countries would be affected. At worst, the figure would be 3.1 percent. To give a concrete example, four percent of the Chinese population, 50 million people, would be affected. Eight of the 10 large countries most at risk are in Asia.

The voice of Abdulla Yameen, President of the Maldives, who reminded leaders at the Climate Summit that small island countries – which would be the first to suffer from any rise in sea levels – have formed a federation to defend their right to exist, went largely unheeded.

An entire new generation has been born since the debate over climate change started but there are no signs that the situation is improving.

In the decade up to 2012, global emissions of CO₂ rose by an average of 2.7 percent. In 2013, emissions were the highest in the last 30 years. And yet, the energy sector is mounting a strong campaign to deny that there is any climate change.

If anything, say the deniers of climate change, what is happening is part of a normal historical cycle, not the result of human activity. All data demonstrating the contrary are being ignored, and the upshot of this campaign is that many people believe that debate on the issue is still open.

Perhaps what happened a few days ago between Google and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is symptomatic of this “normal historical cycle”?

On Sep. 22, Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced that the high-tech company was withdrawing from ALEC, saying: “Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people – they’re  just, they’re just literally lying.”

ALEC is a conservative organisation that has urged repeal of state renewable power standards and other pro-renewable policies. It drafts proposals for regulations that it submits to politicians, asking them to make just the effort of passing them into law.

Reacting to Google’s decision, Lisa B. Nelson, CEO of ALEC, said: “It is unfortunate to learn Google has ended its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council as a result of public pressure from left-leaning individuals and organizations who intentionally confuse free market policy perspectives for climate change denial.”

So, if you are worried about climate change, you are left-wing and against the market!.

The fact is that executives from many large corporations are well ahead of political leaders. They can take decisions unencumbered by political constraint , and they have found out that working in the direction of climate controls makes sense not only in terms of public relations but also economically.

For example, forty major companies, including l’Oreal and Nestlè, issued a declaration on Sep. 23 pledging to help cut tropical deforestation in half by 2020, and stop it entirely by 2030. Some of these companies work with palm oil, profitable production which is at the expense of tropical forests, especially in Indonesia.

In fact, it was only corporations that made any concrete pledges at the New York Summit.

Apple CEO Timothy Cook said that his company was committing itself to focusing on the emissions of its main suppliers, which account for around 70 percent of the greenhouse gases that come from production and use of the company’s products.

Cook rejected the idea that society must choose between economic growth and environment protection, giving as an example a huge solar farm that his company built in North Carolina to help power a data centre there. ”People told us this couldn’t happen, it could not be done, but we did it. It is great for the environment, and by the way it is also good for economics.”

Not to be outdone, Cargill, the huge U.S. commodity processor, pledged to go even further with an existing no-deforestation commitment on palm oil and extend it to cover all its agricultural products. And, together with other companies processing Indonesian palm oil, Cargill called on the Indonesian government to get tougher on deforestation.

In the meantime, it is not that voices worldwide have been silent on the issue. Safeguarding the environment has long been a rallying banner for a large part of civil society worldwide, and a major cause for concern among the younger generations.

The hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets throughout the world ahead of the New York Summit in solidarity with the need to do something about climate were no mere figment of the media’s imagination. So why were they clearly invisible to the planet’s decision-makers?

The next important date for the climate on their agenda is the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP21) to be held in Paris in 2015. Will our political leaders again waste the chance to do something concrete – will they continue to stand by and watch as time runs out for the planet, and for humankind?

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

Unless barriers are built, a rise in sea level would inundate much of Egypt's Nile Delta. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS.

By Cam McGrath
EL RASHID, Egypt , Jan 29 2014 (IPS)

It only takes a light covering of seawater to render land infertile, so Mohamed Saeed keeps a close watch on the sea as it advances year after year towards his two-hectare plot of land. The young farmer, whose clover field lies just 400 metres from Egypt’s northern coast, reckons he has less than a decade before his field – and livelihood – submerges beneath the sea.

But even before that, his crops will wither and die as seawater infiltrates the local aquifer. The process has already begun, he says, clutching a handful of white-caked soil.

“The land has become sick,” says Saeed. “The soil is saline, the irrigation water is saline, and we have to use a lot of fertilisers to grow anything on it.”“The soil is saline, the irrigation water is saline, and we have to use a lot of fertilisers to grow anything on it.”

Spread over 25,000 kilometres, the densely populated Nile Delta is the breadbasket of Egypt, accounting for two-thirds of the country’s agricultural production and home to 40 million people. Its northern flank, running 240 kilometres from Alexandria to Port Said, is one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the world, facing the triple threat of coastal erosion, saltwater infiltration, and rising sea levels.

According to Khaled Ouda, a geologist at Assiut University, a 30 centimetres rise in sea level would inundate 6,000 square kilometres of the Nile Delta. The flooding would create islands out of an additional 2,000 square kilometres of elevated land, isolating towns, roads, fields, and industrial facilities.

“The total (area of the Delta) expected to be impacted by a rising of the sea level by one metre during this century will be 8,033 square kilometres, which is nearly 33 percent of the total area of the Nile Delta,” Ouda told IPS.

In a report released last September, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a sea level rise of 28 to 98 centimetres by 2100, more than twice its 2007 projections. Even by the most conservative estimate, this would destroy 12.5 percent of Egypt’s cultivated areas and displace about eight million people, or nearly 10 percent of the population.

But it is not just rising sea levels that threaten Egypt’s northern coast, the delta itself is sinking.

Prior to the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, more than 120 million tonnes of silt washed down the Nile each year and accumulated in its delta. Without this annual silt flow to replenish it, the Nile Delta is shrinking – in some places the coastline is receding by as much as 175 metres a year.

The Egyptian government has attempted to slow the sea’s advance by building a series of breakwaters and earthen dykes along the northern coast and its waterways. Piles of concrete blocks help reduce coastal erosion, but without new sedimentation, the delta land has compacted and thousands of hectares now lie at sea level.

“You can build all the walls you want, but it won’t stop the seawater from advancing underground,” says Osman El-Rayis, a chemistry professor at Alexandria University. “The saltwater rots fields from below, killing plant roots and leaving behind salts (as it evaporates) that render the soil infertile.”

El-Rayis warns that as the delta substratum becomes more porous, seawater has begun to infiltrate the Nile Delta aquifer, a vital source of underground water spread over 2.5 million hectares.

Saltwater has always been a threat to coastal agricultural land, but salinity was traditionally kept in check by a steady flow of freshwater covering the soil and flushing out the salt. As Egypt’s population has expanded, upstream demand on water has increased, reducing the amount of Nile water that reaches the Delta. What does trickle in these days is choked with sewage and industrial toxins.

Faced with rising water levels and increased salinity, many farmers have abandoned their land or switched to fish farming. Others have resorted to adding sand or soil to their fields to keep them above the brackish water.

“Soil is very expensive, so many farmers buy a truckload of sand and spread it on their field then plant on top of it,” explains Saeed. “But it is difficult to grow anything on sand, so farmers have to use a lot of fertilisers.”

The sand is drawn from the dunes that line much of Egypt’s northern coast and act as natural barriers against the advancing sea. The plundering of these dunes for construction materials and fill has made the Nile Delta more vulnerable to a rise in sea level.

Scientists have proposed measures to protect the Delta lowlands from the sea’s incursion. They say the priority is to slow beach erosion by preserving natural coastal defences such as sand dunes, while building seawalls along the 240-kilometre coast that are strong enough to hold back the Mediterranean.

“These walls would be built facing the sea in places where low-lying gaps occur along the beach,” says Ouda.

He explains that in order to be effective, the barriers must include an impermeable substructure extending from three to 13 metres below sea level that prevents seawater from infiltrating freshwater aquifers.

The size is as formidable as the expected cost. One proposal submitted by Egyptian engineer Mamdouh Hamza put the price tag at three billion dollars. The plan envisions building concrete wall along the Delta’s entire coastline and skirting it with a plastic diaphragm to prevent saltwater seepage.

Ouda says the mega-project would be cost-effective in that it saves the Nile Delta lands, but it is unlikely to attract the necessary capital. He doubts Egypt’s cash-strapped government could cover the costs, while the international community appears unwilling to offer a lifeline.

“The project to establish the coastal walls is a service project…without economic gain and, thus, you will not find a financier for this project from companies or foreign governments,” Ouda says.

Yet some have argued that as Western nations are most responsible for climate change, their governments should foot the bill on behalf of the developing nations most impacted by its consequences.