Climate change, the window for 1.5, and the need for new funding to protect the rights of nature in low- and middle-income countries: a report on climate governance at COP28

There are still lots of pressures on countries at a meeting to do more to prevent pollution. A group of environmental groups want to see more updated national commitments come from COP28 since last year they agreed to strengthen their targets.

This is a raging debate, even within the conference. “As it is, The COPs are not really working,” youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was a media sensation at last year’s conference, said during an event in London this week after announcing that she will not attend COP27 this year. “The COPs are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” Thunberg said.

“It’s clear that the window for 1.5 is closing fast,” says Chukwumerije Okereke, who studies climate governance at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, in Nigeria. According to some, it might not be possible to keep to this goal “unless there is massive carbon dioxide removal on an unprecedented scale”, he adds.

One model that some countries prefer is a large pot of money to go to where there is climate damage. Loss-and-damage financing is a principle known as the polluter pays principle which is against the spirit of many LMICs. There is skepticism that another fund will occur and new money will be given if it does.

There’s also growing outrage this year about the lack of support for communities that have already suffered irreparable damage from climate disasters. Small island nations, for instance, have already had to evacuate entire populations from disappearing islands. They’ve had to shoulder those costs even though they’ve contributed very little to the pollution causing climate change.

However, there was one silver lining: delegates from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) came away with an agreement on a new ‘loss and damage’ fund to help them cover the costs of climate-change impacts.

There have been some bright spots. The cut to 43 percent was doubled in Australia by a newly progressive government. A handful of other countries, including Chile, which is working to enshrine the rights of nature into its constitution, have already promised more cuts or say they will soon. Australia is one of the few countries that are updating after previously submitting goals that were egregiously lacking in detail or ambition. A lot of low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

Other wins have simply put emitters on the path to making good on last year’s promises. Fransen points to the United States, where the recent Inflation Reduction Act represented a massive step toward meeting its pledge of a 50 percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels. The US isn’t on track to reach that commitment. Further upping the ante on its goals this year would “strain credibility,” she says, given the nation’s political gridlock.

Fransen is one of the people that keeps track of emissions plans and the countries that are sticking to them. Taking stock is difficult. For one thing, it means actually measuring how much carbon nations emit. It is important to show the effects that emissions will have on the climate over time.

Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to determine how much CO2 humanity is producing—or to prove that nations are holding to their pledges. That’s because the gas is all over the atmosphere, muddying the origin of each signal. Natural processes also release carbon, like decaying vegetation and thawing permafrost, further complicating matters. Think of it like trying to find a water leak in a swimming pool. Researchers have tried pointing satellites at the Earth to track CO2 emissions, but “if you see CO2 from space, it is not always guaranteed that it came from the nearest human emissions,” says Gavin McCormick, cofounder of Climate Trace, which tracks greenhouse gas emissions. That is why we need more advanced methods. Climate Trace can train computers to see the steam billowing from power plants as a proxy for emissions. Other scientists have been making some progress using weather stations to monitor local emissions.

Anopheles stephensi: If there is no silver bullet, what will we do next? How many lives will we save from COVID-19?

More than one million lives may have been saved by distributing COVID-19 vaccine more fairly, according to models. Plus, how to decarbonize the military and what to look out for at COP27.

The focus will most likely be on evaluation, assessment and accountability. Climate policy analyst David Waskow says that we cannot just move on to new commitments without knowing if the current ones are being carried out.

Progress towards eliminating malaria in Africa has been threatened by the emergence of insecticide- resistant mosquitoes from Asia. In a study in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia — the site of a malaria outbreak — Anopheles stephensi accounted for almost all adult mosquitos found near the homes of participants with the disease. The notorious species can breed in urban environments and persist through dry seasons. It could cause a lot of harm in Africa if control measures aren’t taken. But “there is no silver bullet” for this fast-spreading vector, says molecular biologist Fitsum Tadesse.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03572-0

Climate Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability, and Loss in the Middle East: The Case of the Egyptian Hosts of COP27

The US military has the largest amount of CO2 per capita in the world. But militaries are largely spared from emissions reporting. The researchers talked about how to hold militaries to account.

Rose M. Mutiso writes that they could make a data-driven plan for the world, but not for one billion people in Africa. “That’s the troubling truth behind net-zero emissions proposals.” She argues that we can’t we can’t engage meaningfully with the concept of net zero — at COP27 and in general — without Africa-specific data, appropriate models and African expertise.

Oliver Mller spent time at Google and now is an astronomer in college. It is important not to be a hero. If a task can’t be finished unless you put your health at risk, you are hiding flaws in the system.

The Egyptian hosts of the COP27 climate conference are warning the leaders of wealthy nations that there can be no “backsliding” on commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow, UK, last year.

Climate impact studies on six countries were reviewed by researchers at the University ofExeter, UK. They said that the Middle East and North Africa are heating up at twice the global average rate. It’s hard to track this trend due to lack of consistency across data sets in the region.

In 2015, Egypt estimated that it needs to set aside $73 billion for projects to help the country mitigate climate change and adapt its infrastructure. The environment minister says that this number has more than tripled. “Most climate actions we have implemented have been from the national budget, which adds more burden and competes with our basic needs that have to be fulfilled.”

However, the LMIC cause was boosted when the phrase “losses and damages” featured in the latest report on climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in February. Christopher Trisos, an Environmental Scientist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a lead Author of the report’s chapter on Climate Impacts in Africa, said: “There is stronger evidence than ever before that Africa has experienced loss and damage due to human-caused Climate Change

Ian Mitchell warned about the possible consequences of an agreement on loss and damage becoming a deal-breaker at the meeting. Loss and damage finance would be part of humanitarian aid spending, but it wouldn’t be new money.

Adil Najam, who studies international climate diplomacy at Boston University in Massachusetts, thinks it is unlikely that these issues will be resolved in Egypt, and says that the politics will probably get messy. Loss-and-damage finance can not be avoided by high-income countries, especially since climate impacts in vulnerable countries are becoming much more visible and severe.

The organizing of theCOP in Africa has made a difference. “We are expecting more attention towards issues that are crucial and meaningful to us Africans and relevant to most developing countries, such as food security, desertification, natural disasters and water scarcity. This COP is a chance for more African youth, non-governmental and civil-society organizations to be heard.”

What Happened to the World and Planet: The U.N. Secretary-General’s Climate Negotiations at the Caribbean Conference on Climate Risk and Resilience

International climate negotiations got underway today with dire warnings about climate-driven disasters, pleas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a plan for a new global weather early warning system.

The Secretary-General did not hold back in his opening remarks. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” he warned.

He also referenced the fact that the global population is expected to officially hit 8 billion people during this climate meeting. When a child is old enough to ask what happened to the world and planet, how will we answer?

According to the U.N., a majority of the world doesn’t have multi-hazard early warning systems, which gathers information about disaster risk, monitor and forecast hazardous weather and send out emergency warnings.

The new plan calls for $3.1 billion to set up early-warning systems over the next five years in places that don’t already have them, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable countries and regions. It will take more money to maintain the warning systems.

The Prime Minister of the Caribbean nation, Mia Amor Mottley, spoke to her fellow leaders in greater depth than ever before. She called out corporations that profit in our fossil-fuel intensive economy, including oil and gas companies themselves.

She argued that corporations should help pay for the costs of climate change, especially in places like her country where the economy is weak, and where there is not enough money to protect themselves from the impacts of climate change.

The government and AT&T are collaborating to give away free access to the data about the country’s future climate risks. The idea is to help community leaders better understand and prepare for local dangers from more extreme weather.

The Climate Risk and Resilience portal will provide information about various aspects of the climate. Additional risks such as wildfire and flooding will be added in the coming months.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134696214/heres-what-happened-today-at-the-u-n-s-cop27-climate-negotiations

The 26th Convention of Parties to the United Nations on Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (COP27): Rules for Liability and Compensation

More than two dozen countries say they’ll work together to stop and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030 in order to fight climate change.

Chaired by the United States and Ghana, the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership includes 26 countries and the European Union, which together account for more than one-third of the world’s forests.

More than 140 countries gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, last year for the 26th Convention of the Parties to the United Nations. According to the U.N., not enough money is spent to preserve forests that capture and store carbon.

The COP27 deal also says that “safeguarding food security and ending hunger” is a fundamental priority, and that communities can better protect themselves from climate effects if water systems are protected and conserved. The last Glasgow Climate Pact didn’t mention agriculture, food or water.

It will fall to conference hosts Egypt to help find a way forward. Pakistan (one-third of which was under water in September because of flooding) also has a pivotal, although tricky, role: it holds this year’s presidency of the G77, the largest group of LMICs, which also includes China. The group is still not aligned on a model.

The experience of negotiators on the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is something that might be useful to examine. Compared with those working on the climate convention, biodiversity delegates tend to be more open to discussing rules for liability and compensation. Take a biodiversity agreement called the Cartagena Protocol, which concerns the international transport of genetically modified (GM) organisms, signed in 2000 after a multi-year negotiation. A provision for liability and compensation was included in the African countries’ agreement if these organisms caused harm. According to some countries, there was no proof that GM organisms could be harmful. In the end, the provision was not included, because it risked endangering the whole treaty. However, all parties agreed to continue discussions, and the UN adopted liability and compensation rules in 2010.

What have we learned about COP27 and the lack of progress on fossil fuels after the 2016 Ukrainian Invasion? “It was just a spectacle,” says Naira Narain

But calls to phase out fossil fuels were blocked by oil-producing states, and some delegates struggled to find reasons to be cheerful about the glacial pace of decarbonization. Many blamed the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the lack of progress on fossil fuels.

Although there is value in bringing people together to share ideas and build momentum, she fears that the core purpose of the meeting — to push world leaders to commit to stronger action and hold them accountable — has been lost. I have never seen anything like this before. She says the whole thing has been reduced to a spectacle.

Researchers and activists at the talks for the first time said they were surprised at the amount of time government negotiators spent on a single word.

“I am just, quite simply shocked about the [negotiating] process I have seen,” says Blutus Mbambi, program coordinator at the Centre for Climate Change Action and Advocacy in Lusaka, Zambia. “But we will keep on advocating. We will keep on pushing.”

COP27 saw little by way of new dedicated funding for food systems from governments. The Bill and the Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, has pledged to spend over 1 billion dollars over the next four years to help farmers deal with the effects of climate change. “Every moment the world delays action, more people suffer, and the solutions become more complex and costly,” the foundation’s chief executive Mark Suzman said in a statement.

The United States was put under pressure to follow by the EU, which initially was skeptical. It will have to be reviewed at next year’s conference how much will go into the fund and who will contribute.

Although the negotiations received a boost from a separate deal announced at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in which wealthy countries agreed to provide $20 billion to help Indonesia wean itself off coal, much of the attention at COP27 was on the European rush for natural gas.

Germany has signed a deal with Egypt to advance green hydrogen as well as exports of liquified natural gas, and other governments and companies are courting projects in countries such as Senegal, Tanzania and Algeria.

European leaders insist that these measures are short-term fixes that won’t detract from their long-term commitments, but the optics are very bad, says Narain. Before the crisis, the rhetoric from the higher-income countries was that nobody was going to fund fossil-fuel projects in lower-income countries, she says. Everybody is requesting that we increase supply.

The Arab Academy of Science, Technology and maritime Transport in Cairo has a student who does not think that there will be much progress on fossil fuels at the upcoming 26th Congress of the United Nations. “The host is heavily linked to the fossil-fuel industries,” he says.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03807-0

Climate Change is Changing: Resilience of Land Use and Food Systems to Climate Change Change in Asia and the Rise of Global Biodiversity

The executive director of the global network of agricultural research centres says that the text of the food crisis is not supported by actions that need to be taken.

Absent from the text is any reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimate that food systems are responsible for between 21% and 37% of global emissions. “The opportunities for ‘carbon farming’ and land-use change to make a contribution to [climate] mitigation are ignored,” says von Braun.

Many factors suggest the time is ripe. The issue of biodiversity loss is more important now than in the past. As ecologist Sandra Díaz wrote in Nature last week, researchers have assembled the strongest evidence base yet ahead of COP15, the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (S. Díaz Nature 612, 9; 2022). Initiatives such as the Dasgupta Review, commissioned by the UK government, have made plain that the protection of biodiversity is an economic necessity.

There is more public knowledge about how pollution and habitat destruction endangers the health of ecosystems that we depend on for food, clean water and disease prevention, with a better understanding of nature’s crucial role in helping to combat climate change. Mangrove forests, for instance, are hugely effective in stopping influxes of seawater from tsunamis and sea-level rise.

But when it comes to getting stalled negotiations motoring again, the scale of support by world leaders that was a feature of climate’s road to Paris is currently lacking.

Change can’t happen too soon. Nature is on the verge. Of 20 decadal targets to preserve nature that were set in Aichi, Japan, in 2010, not a single one had been fully met by 2020. More species are now at risk of extinction because of the lack of funding for the rights of Indigenous peoples who steward most of the world’s remaining biodiversity. Biodiversity loss has serious impacts on human wealth and health. Yet over the past three years, four difficult rounds of negotiations aiming to agree on a framework to replace Aichi have not yielded results. Hundreds of issues remain unresolved.

The benefits of digital sequence information are collected from plants, animals and other organisms, but how to fairly and equitably share the benefits is a sticking point. The communities that collect genetic material in the high-biodiversity regions don’t have much control over what happens to the data. A fund that is Multipurpose for bio-diversity can provide an effective way to share the benefits of these data with other LMICs.

Brazil’s president-elect Lluis Incio da Silva is determined to protect the planet’s most biodiverse nation

Another reason to hope for a breakthrough is the forthcoming change in Brazil’s leadership. Conservation organizations such as the wildlife charity WWF have accused the world’s most biodiverse nation of deliberately obstructing previous negotiations, holding up agreement on targets such as protecting at least 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. Brazil’s president-elect, Lluis Incio da Silva, thinks the environment is one of his top priorities. Although he does not take over until January 2023, he is thought to be sending an interim team of negotiators to Montreal.