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Tag: Climate change

  • Alaska gambles on turning boreal forest into farmland

    Alaska gambles on turning boreal forest into farmland

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    Alaska’s boreal forest is one of the largest trappers of carbon dioxide in the world. But as the state warms twice as fast as the rest of the U.S., once frozen land is now thawed out and up for grabs. 

    “I see climate change in Alaska as an opportunity to bring in more crops, to develop more land,” said Erik Johnson, who oversees the Nenana-Totchaket Agricultural Project for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. 

    In October, the project began auctioning off 140,000 acres of the forest, divided into parcels, to the highest bidders from all over the world. 

    “This is the most suitable land for agriculture development,” Johnson said. “This is only 140,000 acres out of a 3-million-acre state.”

    But statewide, the rush for land is on. The number of farms have grown 44% between 2007 and 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, making Alaska the state with the most amount of new farms in the country. 

    Native tribes, who live off the land in the boreal forest, worry the project will be abused and cause pollution. 

    “This is our grocery store. This is how we grew up, learning how to live off this land,” said Eva Dawn Burke. 

    The state says bidders are required to submit development plans, but acknowledges they are not strict. 

    “We want real farmers. We want to provide opportunities. We can’t tell them exactly how to use that opportunity,” Johnson said. “I see the lower 48 as getting hotter and drier, and we’ve got a lot of water and a lot of clean land.”

    It’s a new gamble for Alaska and not a risk everyone is willing to take. 

    “Agriculture is probably something we need to get into, but what does it look like?” Burke said. “It doesn’t look like this.”

    Jonathan Vigliotti


    Jonathan Vigliotti

    Jonathan Vigliotti is a CBS News correspondent based in Los Angeles. He previously served as a foreign correspondent for the network’s London bureau.

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  • Don’t Be Fooled: Climate Disasters Are Highly Lucrative

    Don’t Be Fooled: Climate Disasters Are Highly Lucrative

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    A new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.” Credit: WA
    • by Baher Kamal (madrid)
    • Inter Press Service

    MADRID, Nov 17 (IPS) – As much as wars –or even more–, climate disaster represents a great business opportunity, so don’t bother those who pour their fortunes into fueling them with talks about stopping it.

    See what happens.

    Investing in wars

    A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

    Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.

    This exercise –and the huge ‘investments’ by the world’s top rich corporations- has proved to be highly efficient.

    In fact, in its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!

    Another prestigious investigation centre: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

    Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.

    Investing in climate catastrophes

    But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.

    “The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.

    “A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”

    Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”

    The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.

    “Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”

    Once destroyed, business set to make more money

    In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.

    Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis.

    Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.

    In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.

    On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”

    Why not: in addition to speculating with the energy markets, these companies have been largely funded by governments. In fact, politicians have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

    More business ‘opportunities’

    Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.

    But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations to digitalise more and more food production, among so many others.

    A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.

    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • COP27: Africas Agri-food Systems Losses Ignored in Global Climate Negotiations

    COP27: Africas Agri-food Systems Losses Ignored in Global Climate Negotiations

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    Activists say governments should be urgedto put agriculture onto the negotiating table at COP27 especially to diverse,resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers which will enablefarmers to adapt to climate chaos. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
    • by Aimable Twahirwa (sharm el sheikh)
    • Inter Press Service

    SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 17 (IPS) – At a time when sustainable farming approaches such as agroecology have been removed from the text at ongoing global climate negotiation (COP27) taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, activists are urging African governments to explore new steps to integrate agriculture into the UN climate agreement.

    According to the most recent assessment of climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), loss and damage can broadly be split into two categories: economic losses involving “income and physical assets”; and non-economic losses, which include – but are not limited to – “mortality, mobility and mental wellbeing losses”.

    Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa, says green revolution solutions have failed the continent. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
    Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa, says green revolution solutions have failed the continent. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

    In the agriculture sector, estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that despite overall gains in food production and food security on a global scale, many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have failed to make progress in recent decades.

    According to UN experts, the region produces less food per person today than it did three decades ago, and the number of chronically undernourished people has increased dramatically.

    “This must change because many of Africa’s agricultural and food security problems have been related to misguided policies, weak institutions in the context of climate crisis,” said Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty coordinator in Africa (AFSA).

    Belay pointed out that the industrial food system is a major culprit driving climate change but is still not being taken seriously by climate talks.

    “Real solutions like diverse, resilient agroecological farming are crucial for farmers to adapt to climate chaos, but they are being sidelined and starved of climate finance,” he told IPS on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

    While COP27 in Egypt is trying to address food systems, for the first time, new suggested solutions by multinational companies and global philanthropists by providing new technologies and systems that reward African farmers for mitigating emissions have become a new point of anxiety among climate activists.

    The industrial food systems such as monocultures, high-fertilizer and chemical use are described by experts as an enormous driver of climate change in Africa, while small-scale, agroecological farming and indigenous systems comparatively have significantly less GHG emissions and can even work to sequester carbon in healthy ecosystems.

    “Historically, these philanthropists and multinationals have been considering Africa as a continent facing an agriculture productivity crisis, yet the serious problem is instead related to resilience crisis,” Belay said.

    As global warming patterns continue to shift and natural resources dwindle, agroecology is considered by climate experts as the best path forward for feeding the continent. Most experts agree that under current growth rates, Africa’s population will double by 2050 and then double again by 2100, eventually climbing to over 4 billion by the end of the century.

    The latest estimates by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) show that feeding this growing population will require significant advancements in Africa’s food systems.

    Martin Fregene, the Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry at the African Development Bank, told delegates at COP27 that the power of agricultural technologies to raise productivity and combat malnutrition on the continent are desperately needed.

    Speaking during a session that focused on major solutions for a sustainable Agriculture sector in Africa, Fregene pointed out that the inadequate public investment in agricultural research, training and infrastructure and the limited mobilization of the private sector are some major contributing factors to food insecurity affecting Africa because of Climate Change.

    In May this year, the African Development Bank launched an African Emergency Food Production Facility to provide 20 million African smallholder farmers with seeds and access to fertilizers in a bid to enable them to rapidly produce 38m tons of food – a $12bn increase in production in two years.

    The programme aims especially at providing direct subsidies to farmers to buy fertilizer and other inputs, as well as financing large importers of fertilizer to source supply from other regions.

    While climate-induced shocks to the food system used to occur once every ten years on average in Africa, experts show that they are now happening every 2.5 years.

    Estimates show by 2050, warming of just 1.2 to 1.9?, well within the range of current IPCC projections, is likely to increase the number of malnourished in Africa by 25 to 95 percent–25 percent in central Africa, 50 percent in east Africa, 85 percent in southern Africa and 95 percent in west Africa.

    Both activists and climate experts agree that the public sector in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa can do more to engage the private sector to ensure that smallholder farmers are taking ownership of established adaptation strategies.

    Matthias Berninger, the senior Vice-President of Global Public and Government Affairs at Bayer, a global Life Science company with core competencies in the areas of health care and agriculture, told IPS that yet there are positive examples showing how the private sector is getting involved in agricultural adaptation to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, there is still a long way to go.

    “The continent has adaptation projects that are now demonstrating their potential, but there is still a pressing need to reshape Africa’s food system to be more resilient, productive and inclusive,” Berninger said.

    A new study by researchers from Biovision, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the United Kingdom-based Institute of Development Studies shows that such sustainable and regenerative farming techniques have either been neglected, ignored, or disregarded by major donors.

    One of the major findings is that most governments, especially in Sub-Saharan still favour “green revolution” approaches, believing that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food. “Green revolution solutions have failed,” said Belay.

    IPS UN Bureau Report


    Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • US VP Harris arrives in Thailand for Asia-Pacific summit

    US VP Harris arrives in Thailand for Asia-Pacific summit

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    BANGKOK — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris arrived Thursday in Thailand, where she plans to affirm America’s commitment to Southeast Asia and drive home the message that the region can count on the United States.

    Harris’ visit for a two-day Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit comes just after U.S. President Joe Biden attended a Southeast Asian summit in Cambodia and Group of 20 meetings in Indonesia.

    She and other APEC leaders are expected to discuss the Ukraine war, soaring inflation, food and energy shortages and a more assertive China. Chinese President Xi Jinping is also attending the summit, which is taking place in a heavily guarded venue in Bangkok.

    Harris is standing in for Biden, who returned to Washington to host his granddaughter’s wedding at the White House.

    A senior U.S. administration official said the trips to Southeast Asia by Biden and Harris show the deepening of America’s engagement with the region, and that it is a friend and partner that can be counted on. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely.

    Harris will also deliver a speech to a business conference on the summit sidelines. Officials said she will outline priorities for next year’s APEC summit, which the U.S. will host.

    Leaders of the 21 countries and territories in APEC, whose official mission is to promote regional economic integration, are meeting formally in closed-door sessions Friday and Saturday. Most of APEC’s work is technical and incremental, carried out by senior officials and Cabinet ministers, covering areas such as trade, tourism, forestry, health, food, security, small and medium-size enterprises and women’s empowerment.

    Over the weekend, Harris will hold talks with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha that are expected to focus on expanding cooperation on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development. They may also discuss the situation in Myanmar, where violence has escalated since the military seized power last year.

    She will host a roundtable discussion with activists and business leaders on climate change and the Mekong region before departing for the Philippines.

    Biden held highly anticipated talks with Chinese President Xi during the G-20 summit earlier this week in which they attempted to manage their differences, including over Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory. They expressed a “shared belief” that the use or even the threat of use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war was “totally unacceptable,” Biden said.

    The White House said they also agreed to resume cooperation on a range of shared global challenges including climate change, health and food stability. Beijing had cut off such contacts in protest after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.

    ———

    Associated Press journalist Christopher Megerian in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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  • Divided government is more productive than you think | CNN Politics

    Divided government is more productive than you think | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Now that CNN has projected Republicans will win the House of Representatives, it’s time to consider a Washington where both parties have some control.

    Despite underperforming on Election Day, the GOP gains will have a major impact on what’s accomplished in the coming two years.

    Additional climate change policy? Don’t count on it. National abortion legislation? Not a chance. Voting rights? Not likely.

    Plus, Republicans have indicated they will use any leverage they can find – including the debt ceiling – to force spending cuts.

    While you might immediately think this is all a recipe for a stalemate in Washington, I was surprised to read the argument, backed up by research, that the US government actually overperforms during periods of divided government.

    Those periods are coming more and more frequently, by the way. While there used to be relatively long periods of a decade or more during which one party controlled all of Washington, recent presidents have lost control of the House.

    Barack Obama, Donald Trump and George W. Bush each saw their party lose the House. President Joe Biden will join that club.

    The two Republicans in the ’80s and ‘90s – Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush – both had productive presidencies and never enjoyed a sympathetic congressional majority. The last president to enjoy unified government throughout his presidency was Democrat Jimmy Carter, and voters did not look very kindly on him in the final analysis.

    What’s below are excerpts from separate phone conversations conducted before the midterm election with Frances Lee and James Curry, authors of the 2020 book, “The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era.” Lee is a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, and Curry is a political science professor at the University of Utah. What led me to them was their 2020 argument that divided government overperforms and unified government underperforms expectations.

    What should Americans know about divided government?

    LEE: It’s the normal state of affairs in our politics in the modern era. Since 1980, something like two-thirds of the time we’ve had a divided government.

    And yet you think about all the things that government has undertaken in the years since the Second World War. The role and scope of the US government is so much greater now than it was then. And a lot of that happened in divided government. Most of that has been under divided government time. …

    Unified government usually results in disappointment for the party in power, which is just exactly what we’ve seen here in (this) Congress. Democrats were unable to deliver on their bold agenda, and that’s not different than what Republicans faced when they had unified government and couldn’t pass repeal and replace of Obamacare.

    Now hold on. Republicans passed a massive tax cut bill with unified government. Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included spending to address climate change. Those are the major accomplishments of recent years, no?

    CURRY: I think we’re making a mistake when we say that those are the three biggest things that have happened. For instance, earlier you talked about the American Rescue Plan (another Covid relief bill passed with only Democratic support) – it is not as significant as the CARES Act, which was the first major Covid relief legislation passed by Congress. It passed in March of 2020, and it passed on an overwhelming bipartisan basis.

    A lot of what was included in the American Rescue Plan were things that were initially set out under the CARES Act. Arguably the CARES Act was the single most important legislative accomplishment that we’ve had in this country in several decades.

    And there are other examples too … things like criminal justice reform that was passed with bipartisan support in 2018, and many others things that are just as significant from a public policy standpoint, including also the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year.

    They don’t have as much political significance, foremost because they were passed on a single-party basis. But I don’t think you can make the case that they’re necessarily more significant in terms of policy consequences for the country.

    (In a follow-up email, Curry said that Congress often flies its bipartisanship accomplishments under the radar as part of larger bills, which means they don’t get as much attention. He pointed to big-ticket items that passed quietly in 2019 as part of larger spending bills, including raising the age to buy tobacco to 21, pushing through the first major pay raise for federal employees in years and repealing unpopular Obamacare taxes. He has similar examples for each recent year. But if they are not contentious, they get less attention, he said.)

    Your argument is counter to the current narrative of American politics – that parties enact more on their own. Is that a media problem? A partisanship problem?

    LEE: I’m still blown away by how much was done on Covid. Basically the United States government spent 75% more in 2020 than it spent in 2019. All that was Covid.

    You’re talking about New Deal levels of spending and yet people just didn’t even seem to notice it because it was done on a bipartisan basis. We basically had a universal basic income in response to Covid and all the small business aid – it’s just extraordinary – and yet, it just seemed to pass people by as though nothing important occurred.

    I don’t think it’s just a media story. The media wrote stories about the Covid aid bills, but it just didn’t capture people’s attention.

    And I think that’s because it didn’t cut in favor of or against either party. When you don’t have a story that drives a partisan narrative, most people are just not that interested in it. Most people that pay attention to politics are not that interested in it. It lacks a rooting interest.

    What about the big things that need action? Immigration reform has eluded Congress for decades and climate change is an existential threat. How can divided government be preferable if Congress can’t come together to address these problems?

    CURRY: I’m not saying divided government is preferable, which I think is important. I’m just saying it doesn’t make that big a difference on a lot of these issues.

    So we’ve seen that list of issues you just mentioned – climate change, immigration, etc. These are issues that Congress has equally struggled to take big, bold action on under divided or unified government.

    On climate change, for instance, Democrats want to do big, bold things, but they aren’t able to go as far as they want to, because not only are there disagreements between the parties on how to address climate change, there are disagreements among Democrats about the best way to address climate and environmental legislation.

    On immigration, you have clear divisions across party lines, but also divisions within each party.

    LEE: Congress can pass legislation spending money or cutting taxes. The problem is it’s difficult to do things that create backlash. It’s hard to do serious climate legislation without being prepared to accept a backlash.

    Isn’t this just a structural problem then? If there was no requirement for a filibuster supermajority, couldn’t a simple majority of lawmakers be more effective?

    LEE: On the two examples that you just put forward – on immigration and climate – the filibuster has not been the obstacle to recent efforts.

    In immigration reform that Republicans attempted to do (under Trump), they couldn’t get majorities in either the House or Senate. Democrats were way short of a Senate majority when they tried to do climate legislation under Obama. They barely got out of the House.

    (Curry and Lee’s research shows the filibuster is not the primary culprit standing in the way of four out of five of the priorities that parties have failed to enact since 1985.)

    CURRY: We found a more common reason why the parties fail on the things that can be accomplished is because they are unable to unify internally about what to do. The filibuster matters, but it is far from the most significant thing.

    But certainly the legislation that passes under divided government is different than what would have passed under a unified government. The parties must compromise more. Whether the government is unified or divided matters, right?

    CURRY: It makes a difference certainly for precisely what is in these final policy bills. It certainly makes a difference for the politics of the moment. It really makes a difference for each side of the aisle in terms of being able to say, we got this much done or that much done that matches my hopes and dreams as a Democrat or a Republican.

    But it’s just sort of an overstated story that unified government means big, bold things happen and divided government means they don’t.

    Wouldn’t Washington work better if one party was more easily able to deliver on its goals when voters gave it power?

    CURRY: Whether it would be better if we had a situation like you have in more parliamentary-style governments where a party takes control, they pass what they will and stand to voters, I think it’s just in the eye of the beholder.

    On one hand, potentially, yes, because it’s very clear and clean from a party responsibility or electoral responsibility standpoint, where parties pass things and then voters can hold them accountable or not. On the other hand, then you would see more wild swings in policy from election to election.

    Does the growing number of swings in power in Congress mean American voters consciously prefer divided government?

    CURRY: I don’t think that Americans necessarily have a preference for divided government. That’s something that people sometimes say. It sounds nice.

    But the reality is that roughly since the 1980s and early 1990s, it’s been the case that electoral margins are really tight – you have relatively even numbers of Americans that prefer Democrats and Republicans. And so from election to election, based on turnout and swings back and forth, you get this constant back and forth of our electoral politics where one party is in control for two to four years and then the other party is in control.

    That’s really important because it has massive implications for our politics. If you have a political system and political dynamic like we have today, where each party thinks they can constantly win back control or lose control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, it ups the stakes for every single decision that’s going to be made.

    Everything is considered through a lens of how will this affect our partisan fortunes in the next election, and that makes things just naturally more contentious.

    Can we agree that ours is not a very effective way to govern?

    CURRY: It is certainly the case that Congress does not pass every single thing that every person wants it to. But I don’t think that is ever true of any government. Nor do I think that’s a reasonable bar to set a government against.

    The reality is Congress does a lot of stuff and does a lot more than people give it credit for, but it also fails to take action on a lot of policies. I think that’s just politics. That’s just government. It’s not just an American problem, and it’s not just a facet of our specific political system.

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  • EU threatens COP27 walkout over weak deal

    EU threatens COP27 walkout over weak deal

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — European Union ministers threatened to walk out of global climate talks here Saturday, with officials blaming China and Saudi Arabia for weakening the deal. 

    “All ministers, as they have told me — like myself — are prepared to walk away if we do not have a result that does justice to what the world is waiting for,” EU climate envoy Frans Timmermans told reporters, escalating tense talks that have already run into overtime.

    Flanked by the 13 EU ministers still present at the talks, Timmermans told a pack of reporters on Saturday that the EU is “worried about some of the things we have seen and heard” in recent hours, which he said jeopardizes the global goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

    “A good decision means that we remain on track to keep 1.5 alive,” he said. “We do not want 1.5 Celsius to die here.”

    Ireland Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said the stakes of the talks crystallized Saturday morning when ministers read an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that said an additional 420 million people would face extreme heat and 270 million would endure water scarcity if the world warmed 2 degrees Celsius instead of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

    “We’re on a very tight timeline. And we have to be faster now. But not fast towards a bad result,” Ryan said, as venue staff packed up the conference around the media scrum. “Not fast in terms of accepting something that we then spend years regretting — that every year afterwards we say ‘If only we had held the line in Sharm El-Sheikh.’ ”

    In the early hours of Saturday morning, EU negotiators were invited to review a draft of the final COP27 deal by the Egyptians leading the talks. 

    Timmermans said the deal, as proposed, “stepped back” from earlier agreements.

    Dutch Climate Minister Rob Jetten said that across the board their suggestions for bolstering efforts to cut dangerous greenhouse gas emissions had been rejected.

    One phrase, read out to reporters by an EU official, would, if accepted, block a program meant for driving emissions cuts from ever resulting in pressure for higher national climate targets, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). 

    “The most crucial thing is that all countries commit themselves to updating NDCs, making sure that you actually showcase that your NDC is also helping us to keep one and a half degrees alive,” Jetten told POLITICO. 

    Egyptian COP27 President Sameh Shoukry defended the text in a Saturday press conference, saying it has “minor” amendments and is an attempt to accommodate various parties. He said the text keeps the 1.5 degree Celsius goal within reach.

    EU climate envoy Frans Timmermans speaks to reporters in Sharm El-Sheikh | Karl Mathiesen/POLITICO

    One European official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, accused the Egyptian presidency of working on behalf of a coalition of developing countries that included China and Saudi Arabia. Two others confirmed China and Saudi Arabia were blocking.

    Timmermans said that the EU has done more compromising than any nation at the two-week-long negotiations. The EU offered a vision this week for steering money to vulnerable countries suffering from irreversible effects of a warming planet, breaking with past resistance to the idea.

    Now it’s time for others to move, Timmermans said.

    “Remember where we were only a couple of months ago — nobody even wanted this on the agenda,” Timmermans said. “Now we are talking about … establishing a fund. And that is a movement that came from us. And I think that should be reciprocated by the other side.”

    The fight over those payments, known as loss and damage, has taken center stage at the talks in Egypt. 

    The EU’s broadsides amounted to a veiled shot at China and a group of developing countries it negotiates with. Those nations have backed a separate concept that would send payments to all developing countries, while the EU proposal focuses on the most vulnerable. It also would expand who pays into the fund, meaning countries that have grown wealthier in recent decades may be expected to contribute.

    Rich economies like the EU have garnered little goodwill. An Egyptian official argued this week that the EU and other rich countries bore responsibility for the lack of will among poorer countries because they had failed to match their own financial pledges from last year.

    Ryan told reporters that the goal of the EU’s proposal was not to divide. “The definition of vulnerability is not just limited to any one category or group of countries,” he said. “There are medium- and high-income countries who will on occasion be in need of that fund.”

    The U.S., another longtime holdout on paying countries for climate damage, has warmed to the idea, according to a draft text of a proposal that has not yet been formally submitted to the U.N.’s Egyptian presidency.

    Timmermans said the U.S. has played a “constructive role,” adding, “I have to say, I have no complaints.”

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  • COP27: Climate Changes Dire Consequences in the Worlds Most Water-Scarce Region

    COP27: Climate Changes Dire Consequences in the Worlds Most Water-Scarce Region

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    Water scarcity in the Middle East is impacting on lives and causing diplomatic tensions in between countries. The Turkish dam project, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel impacting Syria and Iraq. Pictured here is Koctepe – a village covered by water in the Ilisu dam project. Credit: Mustafa Bilge Satkın/Climate Visuals Countdown
    • by Hisham Allam (sharm el sheikh)
    • Inter Press Service

    Sharm El Sheikh, Nov 17 (IPS) – The Middle East and North Africa are the world’s most water-scarce regions – with 11 of the 17 water-stressed countries on the globe.

    According to UNICEF, nine out of 10 children live in areas with high or very high-water stress, resulting in significant consequences for their health, cognitive development, and future livelihoods.

    Now climate change is resulting in less rain for agriculture and a decline in the quality of freshwater reserves due to saltwater transfer to fresh aquifers and increased pollution concentrations.

    Maha Rashid, Middle East managing committee member for Blue Peace, which works for water cooperation among borders, sectors, and generations to foster peace, stability, and sustainable development, says the situation in the region is dire.

    “More than 60% of this region’s population lives in areas of high or very high-water stress, compared to the global average of about 35%. While the Middle East and North Africa have continued to experience water scarcity for thousands of years, several interconnected challenges today threaten environmental sustainability and security for the region’s water supply.”

    Water scarcity is expected to impact on development in the Middle East. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
    Water scarcity is expected to impact development in the Middle East. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

    As COP27 negotiations continue at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, people in the Middle East are dealing with the impacts of climate change. Rashid explained that Iraq relies on water from Turkey and Iran, as well as rain and snow, to feed its rivers, especially in the spring. Water revenues to Iraq’s rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, dropped for the third season in succession. The current season has experienced a more severe and unprecedented fall not seen for several years, and water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers declined, and drought conditions are experienced in the rivers and lakes in Diyala Governorate.

    The Turkish dam system, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel. It will result in a 10 billion cubic metre annual reduction in water flow for downstream countries – like Syria and Iraq.

    Despite having large amounts of arable land, Iraq will not be able to achieve food and water security. Instead, over the long term, water will confine development, plans, and programs and not bring food or water security, says Rashid, who is also a professor at Tigris University, told IPS.

    Water insecurity in the region had also impacted international relations, with tensions arising over Ethiopia’s building of the Renaissance Dam for irrigation and electricity generation without considering the significant effects on Egypt and Sudan. Now the threat of water scarcity is growing for the two countries, followed by food security and potential future natural disasters.

    The Middle East is now experiencing rising temperatures, which is one of the effects of climate change. As a result, North Africa is now experiencing drought in some regions and torrential downpours in others.

    According to Rashid, since 2010, which set new temperature records in 19 countries, many of which were Arab nations, countries are experiencing summertime temperatures of up to 54 degrees Celsius, including in Iraq and Morocco, where two-thirds of the oases have vanished as a result of decreased precipitation and increased evaporation. Saudi Arabia and Sudan are also experiencing fierce sandstorms.

    These climatic changes are predicted to get worse unless the inhabitants and governments of the area deal with them properly and urgently over the course of the next fifty years.

    Rashid contended that doing this calls for more prudent resource management as well as adjustments to sectoral and economic models, mindsets, and behaviours. While she is optimistic about the outcome of the climate negotiations, most countries have not committed to implementing the recommendations and reducing carbon emissions since the COP 26 climate summit in Scotland.

    “I believe that COP27 will address climate change issues and, in the end, will insist on finding a method that works to save poor communities.”

    IPS UN Bureau Report


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  • The Latest | UN Climate Summit

    The Latest | UN Climate Summit

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Sherry Rehman, climate minister for Pakistan, said developing countries would continue to press hard for a deal on the issue of ‘loss and damage’ at this year’s U.N. climate talks in Egypt.

    Rehman told reporters Thursday that the group of countries she chairs, known as G77 and China, wants “at the very least a political announcement of intent” on rich polluters providing new financial aid to poor nations for the effects of global warming.

    She made clear that she didn’t not expect “a slew of finance” to result from the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh but added that “if this continues to be kicked down the road we will see it as a climate justice denied.”

    Rehman said she was aware that some countries “are anxious about liabilities and judicial proceedings.”

    “I think we can work around all those anxieties,” she said. “The idea here is not to make any one country or group of countries uncomfortable or put them in an adversarial position.”

    But she said the recent devastating floods in her own country, causing tens of billions of dollars in damage, showed how people who have done little to cause climate change are being hit hard.

    “That dystopia that came to our doorstep will come to everyone’s,” she said. “So before it comes to that point, let’s learn to work together and bring some focus and real ambition for climate justice and delivery on joint goals.”

    ———

    KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

    — Lines in the sand need redrawing to reach climate deal

    — Women lead climate talks’ toughest topic: reparations

    — Scientists try to bolster Great Barrier Reef in warmer world

    ———

    Senior western officials have met with the Egyptian diplomat chairing this year’s U.N. climate talks amid concerns that negotiators may not be able to reach an agreement.

    Alok Sharma, the British official who chaired last year’s talks in Glasgow, the EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans and Canada’s Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault told Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry that “there are still lot of gaps remaining” in the draft decisions.

    Sharma’s office said the three officials told Shoukry that the recent pledge made by the Group of 20 major developed and emerging economies in Bali “should be the baseline and not a ceiling” at the climate talks, known as COP27.

    “The last thing anyone wants is for this COP to end without consensus,” they said, according to Sharma’s office.

    ———

    A draft decision proposed by host Egypt for this year’s U.N. climate talks has surprised negotiators who say it includes ideas never previously discussed at the two-week talks.

    This includes a call for developed countries to achieve “net-negative carbon emissions by 2030” — a far tougher target than any major nation has so far committed to and which would be very hard to achieve.

    Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, say the 20-page draft released early Thursday is far more bloated than what would normally have been expected at this stage of negotiations.

    The talks are due to wrap up on Friday but it is not unusual for the annual meeting to go into overtime.

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Will the Global Energy Crisis Accelerate the Energy Transition? The Big Question at COP27

    Will the Global Energy Crisis Accelerate the Energy Transition? The Big Question at COP27

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    One of the many activities held on Energy Day (Nov. 15) at COP27, where discussions are taking place for two weeks on how to make further progress on global climate action. The consensus among observers is that the energy transition away from fossil fuels will accelerate in the wake of the war in Ukraine and its impact on oil and gas supply and prices. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
    • by Daniel Gutman (sharm el sheikh, egypt)
    • Inter Press Service

    SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 16 (IPS) – COP27 is unlikely to produce new commitments to reduce emissions of climate-changing gases, but the global energy crisis will eventually prompt more action by countries to move away from fossil fuels. That is the positive feeling that many observers are taking away from the annual climate summit being held in Egypt.

    “The rise in energy prices due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set back many countries in the transition to renewable energies in 2022,” Manuel Pulgar Vidal, global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF, told IPS. “But this is not going to last, because developed nations have proven that the best path to energy security is to accelerate the abandonment of fossil fuels.”

    The issue is seen from the same point of view in some countries of the developing South.

    Costa Rica’s Minister of Environment and Energy Franz Tattenbach Capra was emphatic in an interview with IPS: “Countries like ours, which don’t have oil or gas, are appalled by the price increases. This will lead us to try to become less dependent on imports.”

    The close relationship that has been established between climate action and economic development is easy to see at the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has drawn more than 33,000 people to this seaside resort town on the Sinai Peninsula.

    This link goes far beyond the negotiations between the 193 States Parties on climate change mitigation and adaptation, which this year focuses on climate action, as highlighted by the summit’s slogan: “Together for Implementation”.

    A demonstration is held at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center at COP27 to remind the world of the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at boosting global peace and prosperity, fighting climate change and making the transition to clean energy by 2030. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
    A demonstration is held at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center at COP27 to remind the world of the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at boosting global peace and prosperity, fighting climate change and making the transition to clean energy by 2030. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

    Global fair

    COP27 is very much like a trade fair and a multitudinous meeting place, with an overwhelming number of talks, activities and document sharing, where the task of choosing where to be is very difficult and everyone constantly feels they are missing out on something more interesting happening at the same time.

    While world leaders give speeches and technical officials discuss the next steps for climate action, countries, organizations and companies seek and offer financing, in public and private meetings, for all kinds of projects, ranging from energy, agriculture and infrastructure to the empowerment of indigenous communities.

    “This process has been very skillful in connecting climate change and economics. We all know that countries that do not act responsibly with regard to the climate are going to slide backwards in the coming years,” said Pulgar Vidal, who co-organized and chaired COP20, held in Lima in 2014, when he was Peru’s environment minister.

    The energy sector is definitely the master key to finding solutions to climate change, as it is responsible for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and is still primarily fossil-fuel based.

    According to a report presented here by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), only 29 percent of generation comes from alternative sources and carbon emissions continue to rise.

    And the past year “frankly, has been a year of climate procrastination,” said United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) executive director Inger Andersen on Nov. 15, the day dedicated to energy in the never-ending agenda of side events taking place at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Convention Center.

    In the official negotiations, however, the energy discussion appears to be in the background, behind the debate on the creation of a fund to compensate for loss and damage in the countries of the South that have suffered the most from droughts, floods, hurricanes, forest fires and other phenomena that have accelerated in recent years.

    COP26, held a year ago in Glasgow, Scotland, ended with a bitter taste with respect to energy when, following an intervention by India, a commitment was made to reduce, rather than eliminate, the use of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel.

    For now, there is no indication that this summit will end with a better agreement in this area.

    Manuel Pulgar Vidal, a former Peruvian environment minister and the chair of COP20 on climate change, held in Lima in 2014, poses for photos in one of the corridors of COP27 at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center in Egypt, where he is participating as global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF. CREDIT: WWF
    Manuel Pulgar Vidal, a former Peruvian environment minister and the chair of COP20 on climate change, held in Lima in 2014, poses for photos in one of the corridors of COP27 at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center in Egypt, where he is participating as global leader of Climate & Energy at WWF. CREDIT: WWF

    Effects of the war

    Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, chair of the largest multilateral fund for financing climate action in developing countries, is also convinced that the energy crisis generated by the war in Ukraine will, in the medium and long term, trigger a faster transition.

    “The conflict made many people understand how vulnerable the global energy system is and how harmful dependence on fossil fuels is,” the CEO of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) told IPS in one of the wide corridors of the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center, where the heavy traffic of people does not stop between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM.

    Rodríguez, the former Costa Rican environment minister, said that “With an energy mix based more on renewable sources, there would have been more resilience to the impact of the events in Ukraine. European countries have already understood this and I am confident that they are understanding it in other regions.”

    Reports circulating in Sharm El Sheikh support the theory that the impact of the crisis could be beneficial for the energy transition in the long run.

    In the four largest emitters – China, the United States, the European Union and India – public and private investment in transport electrification and renewable energy is growing due to market mechanisms and concerns about energy security, says a paper presented by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), an independent advisory organization based in the United Kingdom.

    “The pace at which the green transition is speeding up…is remarkable….no-one who genuinely understands the interconnected crises facing the world believes that more oil and gas represent anything more than a very short-term solution,” Gareth Redmond-King, international lead at the ECIU, said at the climate summit.

    Harjeet Singh, of the Climate Action Network International, which brings together more than 1,800 environmental organizations, takes part in a demonstration at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center. The demand is to ensure that the necessary efforts are made so that global temperature does not increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
    Harjeet Singh, of the Climate Action Network International, which brings together more than 1,800 environmental organizations, takes part in a demonstration at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center. The demand is to ensure that the necessary efforts are made so that global temperature does not increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

    Pressure from civil society

    A broad spectrum of organizations are taking part in COP27, aiming to influence the negotiation process and seek funding.

    Harjeet Singh of the Climate Action Network International (CAN-I), an umbrella group of more than 1,800 organizations in 130 countries, told IPS that “the war in Ukraine shifted the focus of many developed countries from climate action to energy security.”

    Singh has called for a commitment to halt the expansion of fossil fuels to be included in the outcome document of COP27, which is due to end on Nov. 18 if it is not extended by one day as is customary at these summits.

    At the same time, he lamented that, because of the impact of the war, “we see the fossil fuel industry taking advantage of this space to sell itself as sustainable, which is unacceptable.”

    Evidence of the need to appear as part of the oil sector’s climate action is everywhere in this gigantic Convention Center, where the organization Global Witness denounced that 636 lobbyists for oil interests and companies are registered as participants.

    One of the hundreds of organizations with booths at Sharm El Sheikh is the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) Fund for International Development.

    “We came here to make ourselves visible, as we want to contribute to making the energy transition in all countries inclusive,” Nadia Benamara, Head of Outreach & Multimedia for the Vienna-based Fund, told IPS.

    Benamara said the Fund pledged 24 billion dollars up to 2030 to finance climate action because “oil producing and exporting countries are also victims of climate change and want to contribute to the solution.”

    IPS produced this article with support from Climate Change Media Partnership 2022, the Earth Journalism Network, Internews, and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • One of Earth’s biggest marine sanctuaries in jeopardy

    One of Earth’s biggest marine sanctuaries in jeopardy

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    One of Earth’s biggest marine sanctuaries in jeopardy – CBS News


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    As small island developing states make their case for climate awareness at COP27 in Egypt, one member of the group is reconsidering a historic act of preservation it undertook two years ago. Lee Cowan reports.

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  • Launch of EBRD Climate Adaptation Action Plan at COP27

    Launch of EBRD Climate Adaptation Action Plan at COP27

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    Credit: EBRD
    • Opinion by Vanora Bennett (london)
    • Inter Press Service

    Climate adaptation – adapting to already existing climate change and anticipating future changes in long-term planning – has been an increasing focus of attention in recent years as the current level of global warming is already causing extreme weather events to multiply and intensify. It is one of the core themes of COP27.

    The EBRD is a leader on climate finance but its business model, with a focus on the private sector, means that it has done more mitigation than adaptation, which is often publicly financed.

    The EBRD Climate Adaptation Action Plan brings together a number of elements to strengthen the Bank’s adaptation work: integrating adaptation into project and policy design, building partnerships, developing business and mobilising private finance.

    “We don’t have one single answer on adaptation; our response is a combination of a number of different tools and approaches,” said Harry Boyd-Carpenter, EBRD Managing Director, Climate Strategy and Delivery. “We increasingly see adaptation not as a cost but rather as an investment that protect economic development and preserve the competitiveness of our clients.”

    At last year’s climate summit, COP26, the Glasgow Climate Pact included a commitment from developed countries to at least double – from the 2019 levels of US$ 20 billion – the collective adaptation finance to developing countries by 2025. Increased adaptation finance is particularly important to address the climate vulnerability of EBRD regions

    Several EBRD countries – especially those in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) and Central Asia – are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Between 2008 and 2018, insured losses to extreme weather events in EBRD economies totalled US$ 25 billion.

    Chronic water stress has already changed the landscape, and warming in the region is expected to exceed the global average. In the face of these risks, the EBRD is building new partnerships to identify and support opportunities for investing in greater resilience.

    During COP27, the EBRD signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to expand its partnership with the Global Centre on Adaptation. In line with the Bank’s conviction that Africa has strong potential as a global leader in climate adaptation, it also endorsed the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Programme (AAAP), which aims to mobilise US$ 25 billion over five years to scale climate adaptation action.

    President Odile Renaud-Basso spoke at multiple events on the need for more adaptation finance, including the COP27 World Leaders event, Accelerating Adaptation in Africa, and discussed adaptation with the African Development Bank’s President Akinwumi Adesina.

    Over the past decade, the EBRD has financed over 350 climate resilience investments with a business volume of more than €10 billion and adaptation finance exceeding €2.8 billion.

    Since issuing the world’s first dedicated climate resilience bond in 2019, the EBRD has also prepared the Guide for Issuers on Green Bonds for Climate Resilience, together with the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), to provide practical guidance to sovereigns, sub-sovereigns, financial institutions and corporates on raising capital in the green bond market to invest in climate adaptation and resilience.

    At the forefront of climate finance, the EBRD has committed to make more than half of its investment green by 2025 and to align all its operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement by 1 January 2023. In preparation, the Bank now screens every project for its climate resilience and systematically identify adaptation opportunities.

    Footnote: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was established to help build a new, post-Cold War era in Central and Eastern Europe. It has since played a historic role and gained unique expertise in fostering change in the region – and beyond – investing €170 billion in more than 6,400 projects.

    At COP27, the EBRD launched its Climate Adaptation Action Plan to boost adaptation finance. The plan involves integrating climate resilience into project design, building new and enhanced partnerships, and mobilising private finance. Adaptation finance is deemed crucial to address climate vulnerability of EBRD regions.

    Vanora Bennett is EBRD green spokeswoman / Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Georgia and Armenia

    IPS UN Bureau


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  • Report: 90% of US counties hit with disaster in last decade

    Report: 90% of US counties hit with disaster in last decade

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    Ninety percent of the counties in the United States suffered a weather disaster between 2011 and 2021, according to a report published Wednesday.

    Some endured as many as 12 federally-declared disasters over those 11 years. More than 300 million people — 93% of the country’s population — live in these counties.

    Rebuild by Design, which published the report, is a nonprofit that researches ways to prepare for and adapt to climate change. It was started by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the catastrophic storm that slammed into the eastern U.S. just over ten years ago, causing $62.5 billion in damage.

    Researchers had access to data from contractors who work closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, allowing them to analyze disasters and payouts down to the county level. The report includes some 250 maps. They also looked at who is most vulnerable, and compared how long people in different places are left without power after extreme weather.

    California, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Iowa and Tennessee had the most disasters, at least 20 each, including severe storms, wildfire, flooding, and landslides. But entirely different states — Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, North Dakota and Vermont — received the most disaster funding per person over the 11-year period.

    Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild by Design and co-author of the report, said she was surprised to see some states are getting more money to rebuild than others. Partly it’s that cost of living differs among states. So does the monetary value of what gets damaged or destroyed.

    “Disaster funding is oftentimes skewed toward communities that are more affluent and have the most resources,” said Robert Bullard, an environmental and climate justice professor at Texas Southern University, who was not part of the team that wrote the report. Bullard wrote a book, “The Wrong Complexion for Protection” in 2012 with another environmental and climate justice expert, Beverly Wright, about how federal responses to disasters often exclude black communities.

    The new report seems to support that. People who are most vulnerable to the effects of these extreme weather events are not receiving much of the money, the report said. Those areas of the country also endure the longest electric outages.

    “When disasters hit …. funding doesn’t get to the places of greatest need,” Bullard said.

    Another reason for the unevenness of funds could be that heat waves are excluded from federal disaster law and don’t trigger government aid. If they did, states in the southwest like Arizona and Nevada might rank higher on spending per person.

    REPORT OVERSTEPS

    The report was prepared by policy advocates, not scientists, and oversteps in attributing every weather disaster to climate change. That is inaccurate. Climate change has turbocharged the climate and made some hurricanes stronger and disaster more frequent, said Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University. But, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to call every every disaster we’ve experienced in the last 40 years a climate disaster.”

    Even though all the weather disasters compiled aren’t attributable to climate change, Jackson said the collection could still have value.

    “I do think there is a service to highlighting that weather disasters affect essentially all Americans now, no matter where we live.”

    The annual costs of disasters has skyrocketed, he said, to over $100 billion in 2020. The National Centers for Environmental Information tallied more than $150 billion for 2021.

    POLICY CHANGE

    The federal government provided counties a total $91 billion to recover after extreme events over the 11 years, the researchers found. That only includes spending from two programs run by FEMA and HUD, not individual assistance or insurance payouts from the agency. Nor does it include help from other agencies like the Small Business Administration or Army Corps of Engineers.

    Chester said that if all these federal disaster relief programs were included, the total would be far higher. The National Centers for Environmental Information estimate over $1 trillion was spent on weather and climate events between 2011 and 2021.

    The report recommends the federal government shift to preventing disasters rather than waiting for events to happen. It cites the National Institute of Building Sciences which says that every dollar invested in mitigating natural disaster by building levees or doing prescribed burns saves the country $6.

    “The key takeaway for us is that our government continues to invest in places that have already suffered instead of investing in the areas with the highest social and physical vulnerability,” Chester said.

    ———

    Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

    ———

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Ministers make push to get climate talks over the line

    Ministers make push to get climate talks over the line

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Government ministers are returning to Egypt to take over negotiations at this year’s U.N. climate talks, providing diplomats with the political backing they need to clinch credible agreements that would help prevent disastrous levels of warming in the coming decades.

    Talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh got off to a plodding start and are behind the pace of previous meetings with three days left before the scheduled close Friday. But a small thaw in relations between the United States and China at the Group of 20 meeting in Bali has boosted hopes that the world’s top two polluters can help get a deal over the line in Egypt.

    U.S. climate envoy John Kerry confirmed Wednesday that he and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua had resumed formal talks after they were frozen three months ago by China in retaliation for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

    Asked what his goal for the outcome of the meeting was, Kerry was cautious, however.

    “We’ll have to see, it’s a late start,” he said.

    Delegates have been haggling over whether to restate the 2015 Paris accord’s headline goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) and the rules countries set themselves for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

    Officials from developing nations, meanwhile, are pushing for rich countries to make good on pledges of further financial aid for those struggling to cope with global warming. One significant aspect of that could be payments for ‘loss and damage’ resulting from climate change, which developed countries have long resisted for fear of being held financially liable for the carbon dioxide they’ve pumped into the atmosphere for decades.

    But there has been a softening of positions among some rich nations that now acknowledge some form of payment will be needed, just not what.

    “Countries that are particularly affected, who themselves bear no blame for the CO2 emissions of industrial nations such as Germany, rightly expect protection against loss and damage from climate change,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said as she departed for Egypt.

    She acknowledged that negotiators have “a difficult path” ahead of them for a substantial agreement.

    Geopolitical tensions have been reflected at this year’s talks, with European Union delegates walking out of a speech Tuesday by Russia’s special climate representative, and a small group of Ukrainian and Polish activists briefly disrupting a Russian side event.

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • G20 Summit in Bali LIVE: PM Modi meets French Prez Emmanuel Macron; visits mangrove forest

    G20 Summit in Bali LIVE: PM Modi meets French Prez Emmanuel Macron; visits mangrove forest

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    On Day 2 of the G20 Global Leaders’ Summit in Bali, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met French President Emmanuel Macron. This comes a day after PM Modi met US President Joe Biden and Indonesian President Joko Widodo. PM Modi thanked the two leaders for their commitment to support India during its presidency. 

    Additionally, PM Modi also met UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the margins of the summit on Day 1. The leaders are scheduled to meet on the second day to hold talks. The UK also green-lighted an immigration scheme that will approve 3,000 visas for young Indian professionals to work in the country every year for two years. 

    PM Modi also met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 dinner. Sources told India Today that the two leaders briefly exchanged pleasantries. “The Indian Prime Minister and President Xi Jinping, who were both attending the G20 Dinner hosted by the Indonesian President, exchanged courtesies at the conclusion of the dinner,” say sources.

    Follow the updates on the G20 Summit in Bali here:

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  • The Latest | UN Climate Summit

    The Latest | UN Climate Summit

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — The Latest on COP27, the United Nations climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

    About a dozen demonstrators protested Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the start of an event hosted by the Russian delegation at the U.N. climate conference.

    The mostly young protesters in the audience Tuesday rose individually to shout their objections to the war in Ukraine, with some accusing the panelists of being “war criminals.”

    They were swiftly escorted out of the room by U.N. security at the talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

    ———

    KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

    — US, China climate envoys to ‘meet later’ at UN summit

    — Climate activist blasts leaders holding onto fossil projects

    — Earth at 8 billion: Consumption not crowd is key to climate

    ———

    Several European delegates walked out of the room as Russia’s representative took the floor at this year’s U.N. climate conference.

    Four officials, one of them wearing an outfit in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag, left the plenary hall Tuesday as Russian climate envoy Ruslan Edelgeriev took the podium. There was nobody at the U.S. delegation table during the incident.

    Russia has been largely shunned by other European countries in international forums after its invasion of Ukraine.

    Edelgeriev said Russia was committed to tackling climate change and criticized countries he said were taking unilateral measures in breach of existing agreements, without elaborating. Russia strongly objects to European Union plans to impose a carbon tax on imports that would hurt its exports.

    ———

    The climate change minister of Nauru has lambasted wealthy advanced countries for doing little to help his Pacific nation deal with climate change, underscoring the anger and cynicism among poor countries at the COP27 meeting in Egypt.

    “We have placed our full trust in Western experts who have pushed false solutions and urge us to compromise for the good of the process. We have allowed ourselves to become props in environmental campaigns,” Rennier Gadabu said, in one of the more powerful speeches to delegates Tuesday.

    “The decision makers, those with real powers, simply do not care,” Gadabu said. “They do not care about the communities that will be displaced and destroyed. They do not care about the food and water shortages that ravage poor countries. All they care about is power, pure and simple.”

    ———

    A Somali official called for G-20 leaders gathering in Bali in Indonesia and those negotiating in the U.N. climate conference in Egypt to prioritize climate financing for vulnerable countries.

    Mohamed Osman Mahmoud, an economic advisor to the Somali president, said Tuesday that world leaders should address the issue of loss and damage payments for countries vulnerable to climate change “as soon as possible.”

    He called for financing mechanisms to help heavily indebted poorer countries, like Somalia.

    “Loss and damage isn’t a taboo to be talked about. It has to be addressed,” he said on the sidelines of the U.N. climate conference.

    Mahmoud said Somalia, which is suffering from a prolonged drought, needs $55.5 billion in investment and assistance in the next 10 years to be able to recover from climate-related devastation.

    “Somalia is paying the price already,” he said. “We have received so far nothing and in total Africa has received less.”

    ———

    India’s environment minister highlighted the country’s efforts in areas like renewable energy and green hydrogen and its leading role in a global solar power group in an address to ministers at the U.N. climate summit on Tuesday.

    “This is the testimony of our ethos of collective action for global good,” said Bhupender Yadav. “India, home to 1.3 billion people, is undertaking our various efforts despite the reality that our contribution to the world’s cumulative emissions so far is less than 4% and our annual per capita emission are about one third of the global average.”

    India’s emissions are historically low but it is now one of the world’s largest polluters, althoughits per capita emissions remain low.

    ———

    The ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the U.N. told ministers Tuesday that the island nation won’t leave the summit without a fund for climate-related loss and damage caused in large part by industrialized nations to developing ones.

    “As we see the inaction of many developed countries the potential to stall talks and land a devastating blow for us as small island developing states is looming,” Conrod Hunte said in an address. “Antigua and Barbuda will not leave here without a loss and damage fund.”

    Hunte slammed developed nations for continuing to use and even ramp up fossil fuels.

    “The system is being gamed at our expense as small island developing states and the expense of future generations,” he said.

    ———

    The European Union announced Tuesday that it is raising its target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, albeit only slightly.

    The 27-nation bloc’s top climate official told delegates at a U.N. climate meeting in Egypt that the EU will increase its target for reducing emissions by 2030 to 57%, from 55% previously, compared with 1990 levels.

    Frans Timmermans said that the increase showed the EU was not backtracking on its commitments due to the energy crisis resulting from the war in Europe.

    “Europe is staying the course,” he said. “Actually, we’re even accelerating.”

    Environmental groups called the EU’s increased target “breadcrumbs,” saying the EU’s fair share should be cuts of at least 65% by 2030.

    “This small increase announced today at COP27 doesn’t do justice to the calls from the most vulnerable countries at the frontlines. If the EU, with a heavy history of emitting greenhouse gases, doesn’t lead on mitigating climate change, who will?” said Chiara Martinelli of Climate Action Network Europe.

    ———

    The prime minister of Samoa appealed Tuesday to countries gathered at the U.N. climate talks in Egypt to respond as strongly to the threat of global warming as they did to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said Samoa and other Pacific states are “at the mercy of climate change and our survival hangs in the rush of the climate hourglass.” She praised those major emitters who have made commitments to sharply cut their greenhouse gas emissions, but said those are still too few.

    “Why is it not possible to apply the same level of urgency of action witnessed for the COVID-19 pandemic to the meeting of the 1.5-degree Celsius promise?” she asked, referring to the warming temperature limit set in the Paris agreement to limit the effects of climate change.

    She also called for more financial support to vulnerable countries, including the creation of a dedicated fund for ‘loss and damage’ suffered as a result of climate change, noting that failure to keep past funding promises had caused distrust among nations.

    “We cannot afford the further erosion of trust between the developed and developing countries,” she said.

    ———

    Germany announced that it is providing more than half a billion euros (dollars) to two funds that will foster the expansion of hydrogen projects.

    Hydrogen gas, if produced through renewable energy, is seen as a low-carbon alternative substitute for natural gas in high-energy industries such as steel-making.

    Germany, which has scrambled to replace imports of Russian natural gas following the invasion of Ukraine, says it wants to shift to hydrogen use in the medium term.

    Germany’s Development Minister said Tuesday that “many developing countries have ideal conditions for green hydrogen production” and that they risked being excluded from future lucrative markets without support in setting up infrastructure.

    The 550 million euros provided by Germany will be administered in the form of grants by its development bank KfW.

    ———

    The world must move quickly to slash carbon dioxide emissions from coal in order to avoid severe impacts from climate change, a report by the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

    The report found that the overwhelming majority of current global coal consumption occurs in countries that have pledged to achieve net zero emissions sometime this century. However, far from declining, global coal demand has been stable at near record highs for the past decade.

    If nothing is done emissions from existing coal assets would by themselves tip the world across the 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) warming limit set in the Paris climate agreement.

    “A major unresolved problem is how to deal with the massive amount of existing coal assets worldwide,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director.

    Coal is both the single biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions from energy and the single biggest source of electricity generation worldwide. There are around 9,000 coal-fired power plants around the world today.

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Rishi Sunak to meet Xi Jinping as he strikes conciliatory tone on China

    Rishi Sunak to meet Xi Jinping as he strikes conciliatory tone on China

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    BALI, Indonesia — Rishi Sunak will invite Xi Jinping to collaborate more closely on global challenges in the first meeting between a British prime minister and Chinese president in nearly five years.

    Sunak and Xi will hold a bilateral meeting Wednesday on the margins of the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali.

    Ahead of the meeting — confirmed only 24 hours before it was due to take place — Downing Street insisted it was “clear-eyed in how we approach our relationship with China.”

    The prime minister’s spokesman said there was a need “for China and the U.K. to establish a frank and constructive relationship,” but stressed that “the challenges posed by China are systemic” and “long-term.”

    The two leaders are likely to discuss the war in Ukraine, energy security and climate change among other issues, No. 10 said.

    Theresa May was the last prime minister to meet Xi, during a visit to Beijing in January 2018, at a time when Downing Street was still referring to the “golden era” of relations supposedly ushered in by David Cameron and George Osborne.

    U.K.-China relations have worsened in the wake of China’s crackdown on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, the oppression of the Uyghur Muslim minority of Xinjiang province, and concerns about the security implications of allowing Chinese companies to build critical national infrastructure in the U.K.

    News of the meeting comes after Sunak softened his language on China and suggested he was abandoning plans to declare the country a “threat” as part of a major review of British foreign policy.

    In response to questioning from POLITICO during the trip, Sunak described China as “a systemic challenge” but stressed that dialogue with Beijing was essential to tackling global challenges such as climate change.

    Speaking to Sky News Tuesday, the PM said: “I think our approach to China is one that is very similar to our allies, whether that’s America, Australia and Canada — all countries that I’m talking about exactly this issue with while we’re here at the G20 summit.”

    Sunak’s spokesman said Tuesday that the prime minister would “obviously raise the human rights record with President Xi” at the meeting.

    But he added: “Equally, none of the issues that we are discussing at the G20 — be it the global economy, Ukraine, climate change, global health — none of them can be addressed without coordinated action by the world’s major economies, and of course that includes China.”

    Xi has already held bilateral talks with various leaders during the summit | Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

    Xi has already held bilateral talks with U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese among other leaders during the summit.

    In addition to the talks with Xi, Sunak will also hold meetings with Biden, Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

    Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader and co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, warned that the U.K. was “drifting into appeasement” with Xi.

    “I am worried that the present prime minister, when he meets Xi Jinping, will be perceived as weak because it now looks like we’re drifting into appeasement with China, which is a disaster as it was in the 1930s and so it will be now,” he said. “They’re a threat to our values, they’re a threat to economic stability.”

    Bob Seely, another Tory MP and member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, added: “We need to talk to nations, especially those that may challenge our values and stability, but it is dangerous to normalize relations when they are not normal.”

    But Alicia Kearns, chair of the Commons foreign affairs select committee and a member of the China Research Group, welcomed Sunak’s meeting with Xi. “It is important they meet to prevent miscalculations,” she said. “We cannot simply cut off China, we must work to create the space for dialogue, challenge and cooperation.”

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  • Climate activist blasts leaders holding onto fossil projects

    Climate activist blasts leaders holding onto fossil projects

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate slammed world leaders Tuesday who persist in backing new fossil fuel projects despite science warnings that this will push temperatures across the planet to dangerous highs.

    Countries agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century if possible. But scientists say that with about 1.2 Celsius (21. Fahrenheit) of warming already reached, that target is likely to be missed.

    “The focus for many leaders is about making deals for fossil fuel lobbyists, surviving the next election cycle and grabbing as much short-term profit as possible,” Nakate said at an event on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

    She warned that the annual meeting is being infiltrated by oil and gas representatives who are turning it into “a sales and marketing conference for more pollution and more destruction and more devastation.”

    Environmental groups have counted more than 600 delegates with links to the fossil fuel industry at the two-week meeting.

    Nakate cited research from the International Energy Agency stating that there can be no new investment in coal, oil or gas if the world is to stay below 1.5 C.

    This was being undermined by massive public spending on fossil fuel subsidies, partly as a result of the fallout from Russia’s attack on Ukraine which has triggered a scramble for alternative sources of oil and gas.

    “You are sowing the wind and frontline communities are reaping the whirlwind,” she said. “You are sowing seeds of coal, oil and gas while frontline communities are reaping havoc, devastation and destruction.”

    Many developing nations are disproportionately impacted by climate change as they are less able to adapt to extreme weather exacerbated by global warming.

    Nakate called out those countries that have issued new licenses for oil and gas exploitation in their territorial waters, or promised investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure in Africa.

    Jochen Flasbarth, a long-time German climate negotiator, said Nakate was right to highlight the urgency of tackling climate change but questioned her criticism of politicians concerned about elections.

    “You might be right that politicians sometimes have a short-term view, but (you should) still make the best out of these elections,” he said, adding that “it is young people who increasingly did not go to elections over the last ten years” in many democratic nations.

    Flasbarth told Nakate that young people “need to collaborate” with democratic processes to help “strengthen democracy around the world.”

    Nakate’s speech came as negotiators at the conference haggle over numerous thorny issues including increasing efforts to cut greenhouse gases and providing more financial help to poor nations.

    Ministers began arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday to provide a push for the meeting to clinch a substantial deal by its schedule close on Friday.

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • World Population hits 8 billion, creating many challenges

    World Population hits 8 billion, creating many challenges

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    LAGOS, Nigeria — The world’s population is projected to hit an estimated 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection, with much of the growth coming from developing nations in Africa.

    Among them is Nigeria, where resources are already stretched to the limit. More than 15 million people in Lagos compete for everything from electricity to light their homes to spots on crowded buses, often for two-hour commutes each way in this sprawling megacity. Some Nigerian children set off for school as early as 5 a.m.

    And over the next three decades, the West African nation’s population is expected to soar even more: from 216 million this year to 375 million, the U.N. says. That will make Nigeria the fourth-most populous country in the world after India, China and the United States.

    “We are already overstretching what we have — the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria.

    The U.N.’s Day of 8 Billion milestone Tuesday is more symbolic than precise, officials are careful to note in a wide-ranging report released over the summer that makes some staggering projections.

    The upward trend threatens to leave even more people in developing countries further behind, as governments struggle to provide enough classrooms and jobs for a rapidly growing number of youth, and food insecurity becomes an even more urgent problem.

    Nigeria is among eight countries the U.N says will account for more than half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 — along with fellow African nations Congo, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

    “The population in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double between 2022 and 2050, putting additional pressure on already strained resources and challenging policies aimed to reduce poverty and inequalities,” the U.N. report said.

    It projected the world’s population will reach around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.

    Other countries rounding out the list with the fastest growing populations are Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation next year.

    In Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where more than 12 million people live, many families struggle to find affordable housing and pay school fees. While elementary pupils attend for free, older children’s chances depend on their parents’ incomes.

    “My children took turns” going to school, said Luc Kyungu, a Kinshasa truck driver who has six children. “Two studied while others waited because of money. If I didn’t have so many children, they would have finished their studies on time.”

    Rapid population growth also means more people vying for scarce water resources and leaves more families facing hunger as climate change increasingly impacts crop production in many parts of the world.

    “There is also a greater pressure on the environment, increasing the challenges to food security that is also compounded by climate change,” said Dr. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “Reducing inequality while focusing on adapting and mitigating climate change should be where our policy makers’ focus should be.”

    Still, experts say the bigger threat to the environment is consumption, which is highest in developed countries not undergoing big population increases.

    “Global evidence shows that a small portion of the world’s people use most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “Over the past 25 years, the richest 10% of the global population has been responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions.”

    According to the U.N., the population in sub-Saharan Africa is growing at 2.5% per year — more than three times the global average. Some of that can be attributed to people living longer, but family size remains the driving factor. Women in sub-Saharan Africa on average have 4.6 births, twice the current global average of 2.3.

    Families become larger when women start having children early, and 4 out of 10 girls in Africa marry before they turn 18, according to U.N. figures. The rate of teen pregnancy on the continent is the highest in the world — about half of the children born last year to mothers under 20 worldwide were in sub-Saharan Africa.

    Still, any effort to reduce family size now would come too late to significantly slow the 2050 growth projections, the U.N. said. About two-thirds of it “will be driven by the momentum of past growth.”

    “Such growth would occur even if childbearing in today’s high-fertility countries were to fall immediately to around two births per woman,” the report found.

    There are also important cultural reasons for large families. In sub-Saharan Africa, children are seen as a blessing and as a source of support for their elders — the more sons and daughters, the greater comfort in retirement.

    Still, some large families “may not have what it takes to actually feed them,” says Eunice Azimi, an insurance broker in Lagos and mother of three.

    “In Nigeria, we believe that it is God that gives children,” she said. “They see it as the more children you have, the more benefits. And you are actually overtaking your peers who cannot have as many children. It looks like a competition in villages.”

    Politics also have played a role in Tanzania, where former President John Magufuli, who ruled the East African country from 2015 until his death in 2021, discouraged birth control, saying that a large population was good for the economy.

    He opposed family planning programs promoted by outside groups, and in a 2019 speech urged women not to “block ovaries.” He even described users of contraceptives as “lazy” in a country he said was awash with cheap food. Under Magufuli, pregnant schoolgirls were even banned from returning to classrooms.

    But his successor, Samia Suluhu Hassan, appeared to reverse government policy in comments last month when she said birth control was necessary in order not to overwhelm the country’s public infrastructure.

    Even as populations soar in some countries, the U.N. says rates are expected to drop by 1% or more in 61 nations.

    The U.S. population is now around 333 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The population growth rate in 2021 was just 0.1%, the lowest since the country was founded.

    “Going forward, we’re going to have slower growth — the question is, how slow?” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The real wild card for the U.S. and many other developed countries is immigration.”

    Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, says environmental concerns surrounding the 8 billion mark should focus on consumption, particularly in developed countries.

    “Population is not the problem, the way we consume is the problem — let’s change our consumption patterns,” he said.

    ———

    Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria. Associated Press writers Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal; Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India; Wanjohi Kabukuru in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt; Christina Larson in Washington; Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, and Jean-Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo, contributed.

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • G20 summit in Bali: PM Modi urges ceasefire in ongoing Russia-Ukraine war

    G20 summit in Bali: PM Modi urges ceasefire in ongoing Russia-Ukraine war

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    Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that there should be a ceasefire in Ukraine, and an end to the war. “I have repeatedly said that we have to find a way to return to the path of ceasefire and diplomacy in Ukraine,” PM Modi said while attending the Food and Energy Security Session at the 17th G20 Leaders Summit in Bali. 

    “Over the past century, the Second World War wreaked havoc in the world. After that, the leaders of that time made a serious effort to take the path of peace. Now it’s our turn. The onus of creating a new world order for the post-Covid period lies on our shoulders. The need of the hour is to show concrete and collective resolve to ensure peace, harmony, and security in the world,” he said. 

    “I am confident that next year when the G20 meets in the holy land of Buddha and Gandhi, we will all agree to convey a strong message of peace to the world,” he said. 

    PM Modi reached Bali on Monday and is scheduled to attend the G20 Summit of the world’s major economies and hold bilateral meetings on its sidelines with key leaders on pressing global issues. During his 45-hour visit, PM Modi is expected to discuss crucial topics, including world economy, energy, environment, agriculture, health, and digital transformation. PM Modi’s visit to the G20 summit is crucial as he will formally take over India’s G20 Chairmanship for 2023 starting December 1. 

    After arriving in Bali, PM Modi tweeted, “Grateful to the Indian community for the warm welcome in Bali!” 

    Besides PM Modi, the two-day summit will be attended by US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak among heads from 20 countries and the European Union who make up the group. 

    PM Modi’s schedule 

    PM Modi is scheduled to attend around 20 meetings, as per government sources. He will also hold bilateral meetings with around 10 world leaders. 

    But it is still not clear whether Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, who arrived in Bali earlier in the day, separately. Both last met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand in September, but there was no formal or informal meeting between the two leaders.  

    Besides, PM Modi will participate in the summit’s session on Health on Tuesday, and a session on discussing the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Western leaders are expected to press Russia to renew a deal allowing Ukrainian wheat export through the Black Sea. Russian President Vladimir Putin is not attending the summit, and the country is represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. 

    On Tuesday evening, Prime Minister will meet members of the Indian community in Indonesia and later watch a cultural performance. 

    G20 summit 

    The G20 comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the USA and the European Union (EU). 

    The list includes both advanced and emerging economies. Together, they account for over 80 per cent of the global Gross Domestic Product, 75 per cent of international trade, and two-thirds of the world population. 

    During Delhi’s presidency in the coming year, it would be the first time when the troika of G20’s current, previous, and next president would consist of three developing countries – India, Indonesia, and Brazil. 

    (With agency inputs) 

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  • Climate change worsens Somalia hunger crisis

    Climate change worsens Somalia hunger crisis

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    Climate change worsens Somalia hunger crisis – CBS News


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    As world leaders debate policy on climate change, millions of people in Somalia are suffering from severe drought and famine. Every minute, a severely malnourished child is hospitalized in Somalia. Debora Patta is meeting with climate change’s youngest victims.

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