MONTREAL, Canada, Nov 04 (IPS) – It is no secret that humankind’s past actions have accelerated the deterioration of ecosystems, negatively impacting our economies, societies, health, and cultures. It is estimated that humans have altered over 97% of ecosystems worldwide, to date. One million species are currently threatened with extinction (IPBES).
The writing on the wall is clear. Our planet is in crisis.
Elizabeth Mrema
The sobering reality is that if we continue on our current trajectory, biodiversity and the services it provides will continue to decline, jeopardizing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and our lives as we know them. The decline in biodiversity is expected to further accelerate unless effective action is taken to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss. These causes are often justified by societal values, norms and behaviors. Some examples include unsustainable production and consumption patterns, human population dynamics and trends, and technological innovation patterns.
With biodiversity declining faster than any other time in human history, our quality of life, our well-being, and our economies are under threat. Over 44 trillion US dollars of assets globally, or over half of the world’s GDP, is at risk from biodiversity loss (WEF). Our economies are embedded in natural systems and depend considerably on the flow of ecosystem goods and services, such as food, other raw materials, pollination, water filtration, and climate regulation. But we still have a chance. We still have a narrow window in which to transform our relationship with biodiversity and create a healthy, profitable, sustainable future. We can still bend the curve of biodiversity loss and leave future generations with prosperity and hope. We can still move to support ecosystem resilience, human well-being, and global prosperity.
This has deemed this the decisive decade. This is because after this decade, once we move past 2030, the damage done to our planet will be beyond repair. That doesn’t give us much time but it does still give us a chance. This December in Montreal, Canada we will get that chance. It is likely our only chance. I can’t emphasize that enough. This December, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will bring world leaders together to address the biodiversity crisis at the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15). Truth be told, the outcome of COP 15 will determine the trajectory of humankind on planet Earth.
The ultimate goal of COP 15 is to emerge with a plan, a roadmap to a sustainable future. We call it the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (GBF). The framework is currently being negotiated by Parties under the Convention on Biological Diversity and represents a historic opportunity to accelerate action on biodiversity at all levels. It aims to build on the outcomes of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets and achieve the 2050 vision of living in harmony with nature. The draft framework, if adopted and implemented, will put biodiversity on a path to recovery before the end of this decade.
Why is it critical that the GBF is adopted and implemented? Because 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs (WWF UK). Because we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute (WWF LPR). Because an estimated 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines for their health care and some 70 per cent of drugs used for cancer are natural or are synthetic products inspired by nature (IPBES). Because Ecosystem-based approaches (biodiversity) can provide up to 30% of the climate mitigation needed by 2030. Because monitored wildlife populations, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, have seen a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970 (WWF LPR). I could go on and on.
Some key targets within the draft framework include:
Ensuring that at least 30 per cent globally of land areas and of sea areas are protected.
Preventing or reducing the rate of introduction and establishment of invasive alien species by 50%.
Reducing nutrients lost to the environment by at least half, pesticides by at least two thirds, and eliminate discharge of plastic waste.
Using ecosystem-based approaches to contribute to mitigation and adaptation to climate change and ensuring that all climate efforts avoid negative impacts on biodiversity.
Redirecting, repurposing, reforming or eliminating incentives harmful for biodiversity in a just and equitable way, reducing them by at least $500 billion per year.
Increasing financial resources from all sources to at least US$ 200 billion per year, including new, additional and effective financial resources, increasing by at least US$ 10 billion per year international financial flows to developing countries.
The post-2020 global biodiversity framework is not just important, it is critical. It will take a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach and it will take hard work and commitment; but we can do it. We need to act now to bend the curve to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. COP 15 will be a the most crucial and decisive step towards a better and more sustainable future for generations to come. This is our chance. It’s time to decide on a future.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, a national of the United Republic of Tanzania, is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
A guard walks between photovoltaic panels at a solar farm in Pavagada, Karnataka, India, February 24, 2022.
Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty
New Delhi — When the COP27 United Nations climate conference kicks off this weekend in Egypt, India will likely approach the international gathering with a well-earned boast about its success in going green and an appeal for more help to continue down that path. But despite significant strides that one analyst says have made India the only nation with anything to brag about, it may find an international community with little appetite for generosity.
Ahead of the climate summit, and clearly aiming to impress, India has set itself tougher targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions and increasing its clean energy generation capacity by 2030, largely off the back of significant progress in its solar power industry.
Setting the bar higher
As all nations were asked to do ahead of COP27, India submitted its updated “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in August.
Under the terms of climate treaties signed by the COP nations, every country must submit its own goals for reducing emissions and explain how they’ll be met — and every year the nations are expected to show progress and make their goals more ambitious. With India’s new NDCs, it has pledged to reduce the intensity of the emissions from its national economic output by 45% by 2030, compared to its 2005 level. The target was previously set at 30%.
The country has also added a new target: It has pledged to create a “carbon sink,” to absorb the equivalent of 2.5 to 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, through mass-tree planting.
Besides these official commitments, the Indian government also released an ambitious draft National Electricity Plan (NEP) in September. The plan is a policy document released every five years that guides the power sector’s expansion.
This year’s plan seems to exceed commitments made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26 in Glasgow last year. The NEP aims to achieve 57% renewable capacity by 2027 and 68% by 2032. It also plans for a 24% increase in solar power production targets for 2027 compared to the previous plan.
A solar powerhouse?
India has set its ambitious targets based largely on significant progress made in its solar energy sector. The country has a current solar energy generation capacity of 59 gigawatts. That makes it the fifth-highest producer, behind the U.S. and China, but given the country’s solar capacity growth rate of 47% annually between 2016 and 2021, many hope to see it emerge quickly as a global hub for solar energy.
In September, online retail giant Amazon announced its first three solar farm projects in India, which it said would produce a total of 420 megawatts of clean energy. The company will also set up 23 new solar rooftop projects on its fulfilment centers across 14 Indian cities.
“This indicates the fact that corporates are now really embarked on their decarbonization journeys,” said Sumant Sinha, founder, chairman and CEO of ReNew Power, which is developing one of the solar farms for Amazon, a 210 MW plant in Rajasthan.
A file photo from June 2021 shows workers inside a solar photovoltaic panel manufacturing facility at Central Electronics Ltd. in Ghaziabad, India.
Sakib Ali/Hindustan Times/Getty
“Almost a quarter of our new capacity is being directly picked up by corporates. A couple of years ago, this was just two or three percent,” he told CBS News. “They are doing it for two reasons: One is that they want to decarbonize their own operations, and two, because it’s cheaper for them.”
Several other major global corporations are also investing in India’s solar industry. Netherlands-based SHV Energy, a big player in the oil and gas industry, has acquired a majority stake in Sunsource Energy, one of the top solar companies in India, and Malaysia-based Petronas has also acquired a leading solar rooftop company in India.
Solar panel arrays are seen on the rooftops of apartment buildings in Bengaluru, India, February 21, 2022.
Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg/Getty
Indian entrepreneurs are also investing in medium and micro-scaled solar power projects, and the government is backing a solar energy program for the country’s vast agricultural sector, paving the way for the installation of 3.75 million solar-powered irrigation pumps over the next three years.
“There is no way you can exclude India from the energy mix in the global scenario from now on,” Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, CEO of the National Solar Energy Federation of India, told CBS News. “I believe India will end up achieving the solar capacity target of 350 GW earlier than 2030.”
Touting success, and seeking help
India emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than every other individual nation apart from China and the U.S. With a growing economy and some 1.35 billion people, it has faced pressure from more developed countries to phase out coal and end subsidies for oil and gas.
While India’s energy transition is happening at an impressive rate, it argues that abandoning fossil fuels too quickly would risk its economic development, and in a nation where so many remain mired in poverty, it can’t afford that option. At least not without significant financial help from wealthier nations.
“India’s energy needs will grow, which means that in the short run, its emissions almost certainly will also grow, whether [for] five or 10 years, that is unclear,” Navroz Dubash, a professor with the India-based Centre for Policy Research, told CBS News. He said that for the next decade or two, India should stress that it is “committed to a low-carbon future, but one that allows us to develop and meet our energy needs.”
An Indian shopkeeper sits near solar panels placed outside his stall in a temporary settlement along the Yamuna river in New Delhi, on World Sustainable Energy Day, June 22, 2022.
Pankaj Nangia/Anadolu Agency/Getty
India has a relatively good report card to show off at the upcoming COP27 summit, and it will tout the success of its energy transition thus far to seek more global funding to decarbonize and mitigate the dangerous impacts of climate change, experts told CBS News.
“India has demonstrated that in the past, it has been able to add more clean energy alternatives and has set up huge ambitions,” Vibhuti Garg, an energy economist at the Institute for Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), told CBS News.
“India is the only country that has something to show as progress at COP27,” said Subrahmanyam Pulipaka, CEO of the National Solar Energy Federation of India. “Our renewable energy generation has not decreased but increased, even during the COVID pandemic and [Ukraine] war.”
At the last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought $1 trillion in climate finance for India over the coming nine years, to help it meet its 2030 targets.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech during the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 2, 2021.
Robert Perry/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty
India did see an increase in renewable energy investments last year compared to previous years, but Garg, the IEEFA economist, said the country would need “about two to three times more investment to meet the 2030 target.”
A recent report by the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute estimated that India would need $10.1 trillion in investments to achieve its pledge of complete carbon neutrality by 2070.
But with the Ukraine war creating huge disruptions in the global energy supply chain and fueling geopolitical uncertainty, it’s not clear if developing countries like India will be able to secure significant new financial commitments at COP27.
Already developed nations have broken a promise they made at COP15 to ringfence $100 billion annually to help developing countries decarbonize and deal with the impacts of climate change.
“And now that some of these developed countries are facing crises like rising prices of food and fuel in their own countries, things are becoming worse,” Garg told CBS News. “So, I don’t know how much finance they are going to make available to other countries to help them transition.”
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 04 (IPS) – The COP 27 climate summit is taking place amid a rash of political, economic and environmental upheavals, including missed funding and emission targets, increased pollution and climate devastation, rising global inflation, cuts in Western development assistance and the negative after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The summit—the 27th Conference of State Parties (COP27), scheduled for November 6 through 18– is billed as one of the largest annual gatherings on climate action, this time in the Egyptian coastal town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The Brussels-based Centre for UN Constitutional Research (CUNCR) predicts COP27 “will likely face the same empty promises and no actions by most big countries responsible for climate change.”
In a message during the launch of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Adaptation Gap report released on the eve of COP27, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns “the world is failing to protect people from the here-and-now impacts of the climate crisis”.
“Those on the front lines of the climate crisis are at the back of the line for support. The world is falling far short, both in stopping the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and starting desperately needed efforts, to plan, finance and implement adaptation in light of growing risks”.
He also pointed out that adaptation needs in the developing world are set to skyrocket to as much as $340 billion a year by 2030.
“Yet adaptation support today stands at less than one-tenth of that amount. The most vulnerable people and communities are paying the price. This is unacceptable,” Guterres said.
Gadir Lavadenz, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ), told IPS COP 27 cannot be another example of how power is usurped.
“It is outrageous to still see big corporations manipulating and dominating this process. Big polluters have a role to play, stop polluting and not use the climate COPs to greenwash their actions. COP 27 must deliver a strong message to the world that the multilateral system can still play a role in the climate crisis”.
Lavadenz also pointed out that the annual $100 billion target was not only evaded systematically by developed nations, but it has demonstrated to be insufficient to deal with the magnitude of our climate crisis and there is growing evidence of this.
“COP 27, unlike its predecessor, should move away from false solutions like geo-engineering, carbon offsets, nature-based solutions and others and instead focus on the matters that have the potential to impact the most vulnerable countries and groups”.
Finance is not about cold numbers, but about the lives at risk in this very moment and that have no means to deal with a problem caused by the consumerist culture of a small privileged portion of this world.
“COP 27 cannot be remembered as just another meeting, but as a moment to show progress and hope through real solutions”, declared Lavadenz, who is the Coordinator of a global network of over 200 grassroot, regional, and global networks and organizations advocating climate justice.
Flagging a new report from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters October 26 that countries are bending the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions downward, but the report underscores that these efforts remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
The report shows that current commitments will increase emissions by 10.6 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels.
This is considered an improvement over last year’s assessment, which found that countries were on a path to increase emissions by 13.7 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels, “but it is still not good news”.
Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to intensify their climate actions have followed through, pointing Earth toward a future marked by climate catastrophes, according to the U.N. report
Meena Raman, a Senior Researcher at the Third World Network, a member organization of Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ), told IPS the $100 billion target is supposed to be $100 billion per year.
“This target is not expected to be realised and is complicated by how climate finance is counted.”
She pointed out that the definition of what climate finance is in itself an issue being addressed at the COP.
“Given that many developing countries are in debt distress, the provision of more loans which need to be paid back presents a very major problem for those countries who need the finance”.
What is needed, she argued, is more grants for especially tackling adaptation needs and funds to address loss and damage.
Meeting the climate finance needs of developing countries through non-debt creating instruments is critical, including through the reform and re-channeling of Special Drawing Rights as outright grants for climate finance.
COP 27 must not be a lost cause. It is the time for implementing in real terms the commitments made by developed countries, Raman declared.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters last week: “When we were together at COP26, (in Scotland in October-November 2021), we brought forward a declaration, a statement, for the elimination or the reduction of methane gas by 30 percent by 2030.”
“We are now looking at most countries committing to this. If everyone did this, this would be the equivalent of removing all vehicles and all the ships and all the planes that are currently out in the world in terms of emissions. So, we can have a real impact. We can do what is needed to maintain the 1.5 degree Celsius rise of temperature”, he declared.
Schneider Electric was founded in 1836 in France, and in the 21st century it’s one of the world’s most sustainable companies, now helping Walmart decarbonize its scope 3 emissions.
Over the past 15 years, under CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Schneider acquired automation, energy-efficiency, and electricity brands including Invensys, TAC, and Andover. The company has been reinventing itself from selling electrical products to digitizing and automating the infrastructure of everything from humongous factories to a house on your block.
At a time when sustainability is top of mind, Schneider positioned itself around energy management. For example, the company acquired start-up climate-tech platform Zeigo in January. And to support its software solutions, in September, it announced a full takeover of the British software company Aveva PLC for $11 million. Schneider reported Q3 2022 revenues of €8.8 billion (about $8.57 billion), up 12% year over year, energy management was up 12.1%, and industrial automation up 12%.
Joshua Dickinson
Courtesy of Schneider Electric
Forty-one-year-old Joshua Dickinson is the new SVP and CFO for Schneider Electric North America (NAM). Dickinson, based in Dallas, began his career at the company in 2015 and was most recently VP and deputy CFO of NAM operations. He’s now responsible for all financial operations of the approximately 8.2 billion euro (FY ’21) ($7.9 billion) region. I sat down with Dickinson to talk about cost savings, upcoming projects, grappling with digital transformation in finance operations, and his leadership style.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune:What are some of the cost savings related to the digitization process?
One of the things I get asked as a CFO in this space is, how do you reconcile the cost to become more sustainable with managing your P&L? When you look at our sustainability business, a lot of the engagements that we take on in our performance contracting business are targeting about 30% energy savings every year for that company’s operation. Once we digitize the facility, we can show people how they’re losing money, and how their operation is inefficient. And when you present that to a CFO or anyone who understands profitability, it can be a very powerful tool to incentivize them to change.
Schneider Electric has plans to invest about $46 million in your Lexington, Ky., and Lincoln, Neb., manufacturing plants to digitize operations. Both plants are more than 50 years old. Why is the company choosing to undertake this effort?
It’s to ensure that we’re living out our own story to have an electrified and digitized operation both in North America and globally. But then also, we use facilities like that as a showcase to customers who don’t understand the value of electrification and digitization, especially to operations. During a recent trip to Mexico, I visited our Rojo Gomez plant which was built in 1967. I was surprised to see another great example of one of our older operations that has been on a journey of electrification and digitization, and the tangible value they were experiencing in their efficiency and overall quality of operations.
Now that you’re CFO, and Schneider will have increased large-scale projects in the U.S., what will your role be in the process?
I would say more of my role as a CFO at Schneider isn’t necessarily being a cheerleader but making sure that the decisions that I’m making on real estate and our facilities are enabling progress. Upstream supply is a huge part of this. As a large company, a lot of our carbon footprint is with our suppliers. My job as a CFO is to make sure that ESG remains at the forefront, leveraging it, and keeping it involved in the decision-making process.
Speaking of ESG, as public companies await the passage of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed mandatory climate-risk disclosure rule, CFOs will most likely be at the center of enhanced reporting. What’s your perspective?
Even if the SEC’s ESG reporting rules don’t go into effect, I think we’re seeing a cultural change in the interest level and the importance of this to people. I think it’s critical that both the CFO and the CEO are fully aligned on the commitments that they’re making. Greenwashing is having a negative effect within financial institutions, but also with shareholders. People are having more and more interest in what a company is really doing about their commitments.
As a large global company, how is your digital transformation in finance going?
There are times we struggle with the siloed effect.When you think about the digitization journey within finance, we’re really now in a process of taking the best practices from each zone. Internally, we have the tag phrase “One Finance.” When I was recently in Las Vegas at our Innovation Summit, a few mornings I had the privilege of getting on some 3 a.m. calls, being on Pacific time, and talking with some of my European counterparts. It was an opportunity to share best practices and make decisions on what we’re going to keep from the different pieces, but then we’re going to put it on a single digital platform, a single operating structure where we’re standardizing whatever we can.
If you think about it, if I explain my financial performance, say to Hilary Maxson [EVP and group CFO], using different tools and different KPIs [than my counterparts], when she’s hearing my explanation versus hearing from China or from France, that can be very confusing. And we might not be comparing apples to apples, right? I think for a while, we really held off and we were playing defense. But the leadership team right now assembled by Hilary is such a great group of people. We’re very like-minded.
What is your leadership style?
I’ve got a great team and I would say that’s one of my strengths because I’m not an expert in every element of the finance function. My ability to attract talent and manage a team effectively, I think is part of my success story. It’s only been three months since I was a peer of a lot of the people that I’m leading. When you think about going from a peer and a friend to a boss, at least for me, it was a little intimidating. But that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of the last three months, just seeing the closeness and the level of talent that’s on my team.
PwC’s latest pulse survey, “Cautious to Confident,” finds business leaders continue to show optimism amid economic pressures. Ninety percent of executives surveyed are concerned about macroeconomic conditions. They’re also very concerned about the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle, and the higher cost of capital (both at 86%). However, the findings also showed that executives are focused on the future. Seventy-seven percent of executives are confident that they can hit near-term growth goals, and 82% are confident that their company can execute overall business transformation initiatives. The survey was conducted from Oct. 12-18 and had a total of 657 executives from both public and private companies.
Eliane Okamura was named CFO at Ford Motor Credit Company. Okamura will succeed Brian Schaaf, CFO, treasurer and EVP of strategy, since 2018, who will retire, effective Dec. 1. Okamura has been director of automotive strategy, risk, and agile finance on Ford’s treasury team, since March 2021. She joined the company in 1995 in Brazil as an analyst and held positions including treasurer of Ford South America.
Todd Wilson was named CFO at Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. (Nasdaq: RRGB), a full-service restaurant chain, effective Nov. 7. Wilson succeeds Lynn Schweinfurth who will retire. Wilson most recently served as CFO at Hopdoddy Burger Bar and Hibar Hospitality. Before that, he was VP of finance for Jamba Juice. Wilson also served as Division CFO and VP of finance at Bloomin’ Brands Carrabba’s Italian Grill.
Jim Benson was named CFO at Dynatrace (NYSE: DT), a software intelligence company, effective Nov. 15. Benson will succeed Kevin Burns, who announced in May his intention to transition out of Dynatrace by the end of the year. Benson most recently served as EVP and CFO at Akamai Technologies, a global cloud services, and cybersecurity leader. Before joining Akamai, he spent 20 years at Hewlett Packard Company.
Cecilia Situ was named EVP and CFO at Santa Cruz County Bank (OTCQX: SCZC). Most recently, she was SVP and treasurer at Bank of Marin, and previously controller and principal accounting officer. She had a 14-year tenure with the company. Situ started her career in public accounting at Deloitte & Touche with a specialty in auditing community banks, real estate firms, not-for-profit organizations, and other financial service companies.
Jeff Stafeil was named EVP and CFO at Tenneco Inc. (NYSE: TEN). Stafeil will replace Matti Masanovich, upon Tenneco’s acquisition by Apollo Funds. Stafeil will join Tenneco from Adient PLC, where he served as EVP and CFO since 2016. Before that, he worked at global automotive electronics supplier Visteon, where he was EVP and CFO.
Andrew Lazarus was named CFO at Validity, a provider of data management and email marketing success solutions. Lazarus will leverage his experience in finance and investor relations to scale the company for its next stage of growth. Previously, he has served as CFO at several companies, including Electric, Pilot Freight Services, and BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.
Overheard
“I heard about the blue tick for a while, but I learned about the $8 thing at the same time you did. Anything that can reduce the bots on Twitter is fantastic.”
—Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who pumped $500 million into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter, commented during Web Summit this week about Twitter’s intent to start selling blue verification badges for user profiles as part of an $8-a-month subscription, Fortune reported.
Lubbock, Texas — Many tractors and other farm equipment are sitting idle across Texas as the cotton harvest season gets underway. Climate change is threatening the $7 billion industry.
“Never has it ever been this bad,” said Ricky Yantis, a fourth-generation farmer in west Texas.
The region produces more than a third of the nation’s cotton. Yantis has just 168 acres of healthy plants on his 6,000 acres — less than 3% of his land.
“Where our harvest nearly normally lasts a month, month and half, it will last a day,” he said.
Extreme drought and a sustained summer heatwave taking an unprecedented toll. Farmers like Yantis had to plow fields without irrigation because plants were burning up. Statewide, almost 70% of cotton crops were similarly abandoned.
Economists predict a $2 billion hit to Texas.
“Most of these towns — probably 75% to 80% — is derived from cotton,” said Texas Tech University agricultural economist Darren Hudson. “So when that goes away, it has a huge impact on rural communities.”
Hudson says crop insurance will help only farmers. Elsewhere, thousands of jobs will be affected — from truckers, who drive cotton, to small town restaurants and grocery stores, where workers spend paychecks, to cotton gins, which are now eerily quiet after normally running around the clock.
Gin operator Guyle Roberson says he’ll hire fewer workers.
“We are normally about 100,000 bales per year,” Roberson said. “I think we’ll be lucky to gin about 20,000 bales this year.”
With less cotton available, everyone will be paying more, experts say.
“We would anticipate impacts on prices for consumer goods,” Hudson said. “It ripples through the entire economy.”
Janet Shamlian is a CBS News correspondent based in Houston, Texas. Shamlian’s reporting is featured on all CBS News broadcasts and platforms including “CBS Mornings,” the “CBS Evening News” and the CBS News Streaming Network, CBS News’ premier 24/7 anchored streaming news service.
UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday that the planet is heading toward irreversible “climate chaos” and urged global leaders at the upcoming climate summit in Egypt to put the world back on track to cut emissions, keep promises on climate financing and help developing countries speed their transition to renewable energy.
The U.N. chief said the 27th annual Conference of the 198 Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — better known as COP27 — “must be the place to rebuild trust and re-establish the ambition needed to avoid driving our planet over the climate cliff.”
He said the most important outcome of COP27, which begins Nov. 6 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, is to have “a clear political will to reduce emissions faster.”
That requires a historical pact between richer developed countries and emerging economies, Guterres said. “And if that pact doesn’t take place, we will be doomed.”
In the pact, the secretary-general said, wealthier countries must provide financial and technical assistance – along with support from multilateral development banks and technology companies – to help emerging economies speed their renewable energy transition.
Guterres said that in the last few weeks, reports have painted “a clear and bleak picture” of global-warming greenhouse gas emissions still growing at record levels instead of going down 45% by 2030 as scientists say must happen.
The landmark Paris agreement adopted in 2015 to address climate change called for global temperatures to rise a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Guterres said greenhouse gas emissions are now on course to rise by 10%, and temperatures are on course to rise by as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius under present policies by the end of the century.
“And that means our planet is on course for reaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible and forever bake in catastrophic temperature rise,” the secretary-general warned.
He said the 1.5 degree goal “is in intensive care” and “in high danger,” but it’s still possible to meet it. “And my objective in Egypt is to make sure that we gather enough political will to make this possibility really moving forward,” the U.N. chief said.
“COP27 must be the place to close the ambition gap, the credibility gap and the solidarity gap,” Guterres said. “It must put us back on track to cutting emissions, boosting climate resilience and adaptation, keeping the promise on climate finance and addressing loss and damage from climate change.”
Rich countries, especially the United States, have emitted far more than their share of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, data shows. Poor nations like Pakistan, where recent floods left a third of the country under water, have been hurt far more than their share of global carbon emissions.
Loss and damage has been talked about for years, but richer nations have often balked at negotiating details about paying for past climate disasters, like Pakistan’s flooding this summer.
“Loss and damage have been the always-postponed issue,” Guterres said. “There is no more time to postpone it. We must recognize loss and damage and we must create an institutional framework to deal with it.”
The secretary-general said Thursday that “getting concrete results on loss and damage is the litmus test of the commitment of the governments to close all of these gaps.”
“COP27 must lay the foundations for much faster, bolder climate action now and in this crucial decade, when the global climate fight will be won or lost,” Guterres said.
The climate cycles that have driven mass extinctions, are shortening and becoming more severe. The species that can adapt to environmental changes survive, while others simply die off. CBS Reports travels to the Galapagos Islands, a living laboratory in the crosshairs of climate change, to see if nature can outrun and outsmart climate change?
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As the cotton harvest season gets underway across Texas, climate change is threatening the $7 billion industry. Janet Shamlian takes a look at how a bad harvest can ripple through the economy.
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With time running out, the meeting in Egypt will mark the moment when we start to see if the pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow, are being met. Credit: Shutterstock
Opinion by Felix Dodds, Chris Spence (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Nov 03 (IPS) – Her recent announcement that she will not attend COP27 is understandable, but we still hope she’ll reconsider. By Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence.So, Greta Thunberg won’t be coming to COP27. She’s condemned it as “greenwashing” and cast doubts on the host’s human rights record and lack of access for activists.
To be clear, we have nothing but admiration for what Greta Thunberg has accomplished as far as increasing the pressure on our political leaders to do more. We agree with her completely that a lot more is needed, and fast.
But when it comes to COP27, we hope she’ll change her mind. We have three reasons for this: the impact of diplomacy, the urgency of the situation, and COP27’s role convening people with power and influence.
Diplomacy works
While Greta Thunberg is right that many international events are mostly “blah, blah, blah,” the United Nations negotiations on climate change have achieved a lot more than many people realize. Prior to the Paris Climate agreement in 2015, for instance, we were on a trajectory of 4-6 degrees Celsius rise in temperature by the end of the century. Now, estimates suggest we’re on track for somewhere around 2.4-2.8 C, if current pledges are met. While this would be a terrible scenario to have to face, it would be less apocalyptic than those higher numbers.
As we have pointed out in a previous article, international negotiations on climate change have had a profound impact already, kickstarting the shift away from two centuries of fossil fuel dependence and giving us at least a chance of achieving sustainability in the longer term. Just days ago, the International Energy Agency forecast that global emissions will peak in 2025 before beginning to fall. Furthermore, they see all types of fossil fuels “peaking or hitting a plateau” then, too.
Do we wish this had happened sooner? Absolutely. But it shows progress is being made. Besides, there is no alternative to an international process when it comes to dealing with a global problem of this magnitude. No country, company, or coalition, can solve this problem alone. We all need to work together.
Urgency means everyone joining the fight
We agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Thunberg’s exhortation for everyone to “mobilize” and be involved in solving this challenge. Many folks may choose to be activists or advocates for change, pressuring their home governments to be more ambitious, taking action locally, or changing their habits as consumers or investors. Thunberg is also quite right that time is running out; the science tells us the window of opportunity to restrict warming to 1.5C or less is closing rapidly.
Yet this is exactly why COP27 is so important. With time running out, the meeting in Egypt will mark the moment where we start to see if the pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow, are being met. Is the global community sticking to its promises or falling short? COP27 will give us an opportunity to review, press for greater urgency, and draw global attention to those who are keeping their promises and those who are not.
The decision at COP26 to not wait for 5 years until governments submit improved National Determined Contributions, but to ask all countries to update their NDCs by COP27, is also important.
A total of 39 Parties have communicated new or updated NDCs since COP26, including critical countries such as Australia and India. This is clearly not enough, but it is a start. The same request should be made at COP27, pressuring countries to review their NDCs in time for COP28.
Influencing the powerful
Finally, UN climate summits present a once-a-year opportunity to engage with powerful politicians and urge decisions on the climate threat. With time so short, no one who can influence the process should stay away.
Greta Thunberg has already had an outsized influence inspiring people to action and persuading politicians to take the issue more seriously. Her presence at COP27 would undoubtedly make a difference.
One reason she has given for not attending is her concern that civil society representation may be less this time around, and she doesn’t want to take someone else’s place. This is thoughtful. However, Greta Thunberg has access to leaders’ others may not. Her presence could have a significant impact.
For these reasons, we hope Ms. Thunberg will reconsider and use her influence to its fullest at COP27. As we write this, it appears that another powerful figure who had earlier ruled out attending may be changing their mind.
New British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, had initially also said he wouldn’t attend, citing the country’s financial and energy challenges and urgent budget planning as the reason for staying home.
However, he has now had a change of heart. The public response to his initial decision, as well as concerns from industry and civil society, made the Prime Minister reconsiders his position. This is welcome news and, we believe, the right decision.
If Rishi Sunak wishes to build on the UK’s solid performance at COP26 and burnish his country’s reputation for taking climate change seriously, we hope he attends with not just positive rhetoric, but new commitments and financing. It would be a positive signal if King Charles also attended.
After all, the UK is still the President of the COP until the start of COP27. Missing the next COP would not have sent the right message to the UK’s partners and the global community in general.
With no other realistic way to solve climate change than the multilateral system, we urge Greta Thunberg to follow Rishi Sunak’s lead and join the gathering. In fact, all of those in positions of power or influence should come to Sharm ready to work for the best agreement possible. As John F. Kennedy said. “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate”.
Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence have participated in UN environmental negotiations since the 1990s. They co-edited Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge, 2022), which examines the roles of individuals in inspiring environmental change.
BERLIN — Berlin must change the way it deals with China as the country lurches back toward a more openly “Marxist-Leninist” political trajectory, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote in an op-ed on Thursday.
In his article for POLITICO and the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Scholz defended his trip to China on Thursday but stressed that German companies would need to take steps to reduce “risky dependencies” in industrial supply chains, particularly in terms of “cutting-edge technologies.” Scholz noted that President Xi Jinping was deliberately pursuing a political strategy of making international companies reliant on China.
“The outcome of the Communist Party Congress that has just ended is unambiguous: Avowals of Marxism-Leninism take up a much broader space than in the conclusions of previous congresses … As China changes, the way that we deal with China must change, too,” Scholz wrote.
Germany has faced withering criticism for pressuring Europe into a strategically disastrous dependence on Russian gas over recent years, and Berlin is now having to hit back against suggestions that it is making exactly the same mistakes by depending on China as a manufacturing base and commercial partner.
While Scholz signaled a note of caution over China, he was far from suggesting that Germany was close to a major U-turn in its largely cozy relations with China. Indeed, he clearly echoed his predecessor Angela Merkel in insisting that the (unnamed but obviously identified) United States should not drag Germany into a new Cold War against Beijing.
“Germany of all countries, which had such a painful experience of division during the Cold War, has no interest in seeing new blocs emerge in the world,” he wrote. “What this means with regard to China is that of course this country with its 1.4 billion inhabitants and its economic power will play a key role on the world stage in the future — as it has for long periods throughout history.”
In a thinly veiled criticism of Washington’s policies, Scholz said Beijing’s rise did not justify “the calls by some to isolate China.”
Crucially, he insisted that the goal was not to “decouple” — or break manufacturing ties — from China. He added, however, that he was taking “seriously” an assertion by President Xi that Beijing’s goal was to “tighten international production chains’ dependence on China.”
Scholz is planning to fly to Beijing late on Thursday for a one-day trip to the Chinese capital on Friday, where he will be the first Western leader to meet Xi since his reappointment, and the first leader from the G7 group of leading economies to visit China since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The chancellor also sought to counter criticism that his trip undermines a joint European approach to China. According to French officials, President Emmanuel Macron had proposed that he and Scholz should visit Xi together to demonstrate unity and show that Beijing cannot divide European countries by playing their economic interests off against each other — an initiative that the German leader rejected.
“German policy on China can only be successful when it is embedded in European policy on China,” Scholz wrote. “In the run-up to my visit, we have therefore liaised closely with our European partners, including President Macron, and also with our transatlantic friends.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed his predecessor Angela Merkel in insisting that the United States should not drag Germany into a new Cold War against Beijing | Clemens Bilan-Pool/Getty Images
Scholz said he wanted Germany and the EU to cooperate with a rising China — including on the important issue of climate change — rather than trying to box it out.
At the same time, he warned Beijing that it should not pursue policies striving for “hegemonic Chinese dominance or even a Sinocentric world order.”
Scholz also pushed China to stop its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and to take a more critical position toward Moscow: “As a permanent member of the [United Nations] Security Council, China bears a special responsibility,” he wrote. “Clear words addressed from Beijing to Moscow are important — to ensure that the Charter of the United Nations and its principles are upheld.”
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UNITED NATIONS — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven some 14 million Ukrainians from their homes in “the fastest, largest displacement witnessed in decades,” sparking an increase in the number of refugees and displaced people worldwide to more than 103 million, the U.N. refugee chief said Wednesday.
Filippo Grandi, who heads the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the U.N. Security Council that Ukrainians are about to face “one of the world’s harshest winters in extremely difficult circumstances,” including the continuing destruction of civilian infrastructure that is “quickly making the humanitarian response look like a drop in the ocean of needs.”
Humanitarian organizations have “dramatically scaled up their response,” he said, “but much more must be done, starting with an end to this senseless war.”
But given “the likely protracted nature of the military situation,” Grandi said his agency is preparing for further population movements both inside and outside Ukraine.
In his wide-ranging briefing, Grandi told members of the U.N.’s most powerful body that while Ukraine continues to grab headlines, his agency has responded to 37 emergencies around the world in the last 12 months arising from conflicts.
“Yet, the other crises are failing to capture the same international attention, outrage, resources, action,” he said.
Grandi pointed to the more than 850,000 Ethiopians displaced in the first half of the year, and said the recent surge in conflict in that nation’s northern Tigray region has had “an even more devastating impact on civilians.”
The U.N. refugee agency is also in Myanmar, where the country’s military rulers are facing armed resistance and an estimated 500,000 people were displaced in the first half of the year, Grandi said.
Humanitarian access remains “a huge challenge,” he said, adding that a return home remains distant for the almost 1 million Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh.
In Congo, brutal attacks including sexual violence against women have added more than 200,000 people to the 5.5 million already displaced in the country, Grandi said.
He lamented that “the horrors” he witnessed when he worked in Congo 25 years ago are repeating themselves, “with displacement being, once again, both a consequence of conflict and a complicating factor in the web of local and international tensions.”
Addressing a council responsible for ensuring international peace and security, Grandi said: “Surely we can do better in trying to bring peace to this beleaguered region.”
The refugee chief said these crises and others, including the longstanding issue of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria and the complex flow of migrants from the Americas, “are not only fading from media attention but are being failed by global inaction.”
Reasons for displacement are also becoming more complex, with new factors forcing people to flee including the climate emergency, Grandi said.
He urged greater attention and much greater financing for preventing and adapting to the warming planet, warning that otherwise tensions and competition will grow “and spark wider conflict with deadly consequences, including displacement.
“And what is a starker example of `loss and damage’ than being displaced and dispossessed from one’s home?” he asked.
Last week, Grandi said he met emaciated Somalis who had walked for days to get help and whose children had died on the way, and Somali refugees “pushed into already drought-affected areas of Kenya.”
He praised the Kenyan government, despite its own challenges, for “ making a landmark shift from encampment of refugees to inclusion — a transition that I hope all will robustly support.”
Grandi expressed hope that this month’s U.N. summit on climate change in Egypt and the summit in the United Arab Emirates next year will take into account both climate’s link to conflict and the displacement it causes.
But Grandi said this is not enough. He said the U.N. refugee agency needs $700 million by the end of the year to avoid severe cuts in its services.
He further called for strengthened peacebuilding to prevent the recurrence of conflict, including by reinforcing the police, judiciary and local government in fragile countries. He said that security also must be improved for humanitarian workers who are under increasing threat and that the Security Council needs to overcome its divisions on humanitarian issues.
“Because what I saw in Somalia last week was a condemnation of us all,” Grandi said.
He pointed to “a world of inequality where extraordinary levels of suffering are getting scandalously low levels of attention and resources,” adding that those who contribute the least to global challenges such as climate change “are suffering most from their consequences.”
There are over 8,500 coal power plants in the world, with over 2,100 GWs of capacity. These plants generate about 10 gigatons of CO2 emissions per year, nearly 30% of the global total. Credit: Bigstock
Opinion by Philippe Benoit, Chandra Shekhar Sinha (washington dc)
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 02 (IPS) – Report after report highlights that we can only achieve the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions required by the climate goals of the Paris Agreement if much of the existing coal power generation capacity is retired early. To this end, one concept that deserves greater consideration is conducting an auction for early retirement of coal power plants worldwide: a global coal retirement auction. This article sets out the broad outlines of how this global auction might operate.
Accordingly, climate/development organizations, like the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, the IEA and RMI, are exploring programs to effect the early retirement of these coal plants.
But closing these plants presents two important challenges. First, retiring these plants removes electricity production that many countries rely upon for their economic development … production that would need to be replaced with preferably low-carbon sources. Second, owners are generally unwilling to shutter revenue-generating plants and want financial compensation for the returns they would forego from the premature retirement of their asset. This article addresses this second constraint.
There are various regulatory mechanisms that can be used to push early retirement, such as mandating closure of plants or imposing a carbon tax or other cost that makes operating the plant uneconomic.
But what’s a fair price? Perhaps, however, that’s not the right question. Rather, at what price are the owners willing to shutter their plants? Given that there are more than 8,500 coal power plants operating with different technical and revenue characteristics, and over 2,000 plant owners in diverse financial situations following distinctive corporate strategies (including numerous state-owned enterprises), the answer will vary.
A technique that has been used in this type of context of multiple actors is an “auction”. While in the traditional context, a seller looks to get the highest price from multiple possible buyers through an auction, in this case, we have a buyer that is interested in paying the lowest price to different plant owners (i.e., the sellers) for the retirement of their coal plants.
The reverse auction mechanism could be used to solicit proposals from coal power plant owners as to the price at which they would be willing to close their plant. Conceptually, this could be done on the basis of MWs of installed power generation capacity. Under the auction, an interested coal plant owner would offer to sell — more specifically, to shutter — their MWs of plant capacity by a fixed time at a proposed price.
Importantly, the climate benefit sought by the auction is not from the decommissioning of MWs of capacity itself, but rather from the GHG emissions that would be avoided by retiring that capacity. Accordingly, for any coal retirement tender, it will be necessary to estimate the level of emissions that would be avoided.
This determination will be based on several factors, including the particular plant’s efficiency, remaining operational life and other technical characteristics, the type of coal used, and the amount of electricity production projected to be foregone through early retirement given the power system’s expected demand for electricity from that plant.
Tenders should include sufficient information to evaluate these items and, by extension, the level of avoided emissions and related climate benefit to be produced from the proposed retirement. This, in turn, will drive how much the auction buyer should be willing to pay for the tender.
Moreover, because it would be largely counter-productive from a climate perspective to pay to retire existing coal plants to see that money used directly (or indirectly) to build new fossil fuel generation, the tender by the plant owner would need to be accompanied by an undertaking not to reinvest in new fossil fuel generation.
As has been repeatedly explained, CO2 emissions have a global impact that is essentially unaffected by the geographic location of the emitting plant. Given this global nature of emissions, the auction would likewise be conducted at a worldwide level as a global auction. From India to Indonesia, from South Africa to South Korea, from Poland to Australia, any plant anywhere would be eligible to participate in the global auction.
Given this scope, an international organization like the United Nations or a multilateral development bank would be well positioned to provide the platform for this auction. One could imagine a system where the auction bidding process sets out eligibility criteria for projects, the methodology for estimating GHG emission reductions, and other key bid-submission parameters.
Significantly, while the bidding process would be managed on an integrated basis, the funding and selection of winners need not be. Rather, a system that allows for the matching of interested coal retirement buyers with individual plant owners could be used.
For example, buyers and their funding could be mobilized on a plant-by-plant basis based on information submitted by the plant owner through the auction process. Indeed, many potential funders have areas of focus that could lead them to be attracted to retiring coal assets only in certain countries (e.g., funders interested in a targeted set of developing countries). The proposed auction structure could accommodate these preferences. Moreover, the global auction could also operate in association with country-specific approaches.
One potential source of funding for coal retirements tendered under the auction is the potentially large amounts of capital to be mobilized through expanded carbon credit mechanisms under development. Tapping into these mechanisms might require establishing defined project eligibility criteria, frameworks for calculating GHG emissions reductions, and associated monitoring and verification systems to enable payments for emission reductions at the time of decommissioning based on a price for emission reduction (“carbon”) credits.
It is also important to recall the first constraint noted earlier, namely that countries, and particularly developing countries, will need more electricity to power further economic and social development. Accordingly, any global auction to retire coal plants needs to be coupled with a program to fund new renewables electricity generation.
Climate change is a global challenge affected by GHG emissions from anywhere. We need to reduce emissions from coal power generation and that requires some program to encourage and entice owners to shutter their plants. A global auction, conducted by the United Nations or a similar international organization, would help to identify opportunities where willing plant owners and interested funders can make a deal.
Philippe Benoit has over 20 years working on international energy, finance and development issues, including management positions at the World Bank and the International Energy Agency. He is currently research director at Global Infrastructure Analytics and Sustainability 2050.
Chandra Shekhar Sinha is an Adviser in the Climate Change Group at the World Bank and works on climate and carbon finance. He previously worked at JPMorgan, TERI-India, UNDP, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday said he will attend this month’s U.N. climate summit in Egypt, reversing a decision to skip it that had drawn criticism at home and abroad.
Sunak’s office previously said he had to skip the gathering, known as COP27, which start on Sunday. It cited “pressing domestic commitments,” including preparations for a major government budget statement scheduled for Nov. 17.
But Sunak tweeted Wednesday that he would attend the two-week gathering because “there is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.”
“There is no energy security without investing in renewables,” he wrote.
Sunak’s earlier decision to skip the talks were criticized by many, including British government climate adviser Alok Sharma, who will hand over presidency of the Conference of the Parties, or COP, at the summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The U.K. hosted last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
Sunak’s about-face came the day after former Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed he will be going to the climate talks at the invitation of the host country. Under Johnson, who left office in September, the U.K. committed to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to eliminate coal from its energy mix by 2024.
Environmentalists worry there could be backsliding on those commitments because of the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The opposition Labour Party’s climate spokesman, Ed Miliband, said Sunak had been “shamed into going to COP27.”
“His initial instinct tells us about all about him: he just doesn’t get it when it comes to the energy bills and climate crisis,” Miliband said.
Green Party lawmaker Caroline Lucas said Sunak’s initial decision and subsequent U-turn was “an embarrassing misstep on the world stage.”
“Let this be a lesson to him — climate leadership matters,” she tweeted.
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
Opinion by Stefan Lofven, Christoph Heusgen (stockholm / munich)
Inter Press Service
To prevent this from becoming the new normal, world leaders need to take radical, courageous action, together. The upcoming climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, COP27, is one of the places where this needs to happen.
Climate change threatens peace and security
Scratch beneath the surface of the disparate set of crises that confront us in 2022, and the links to climate change, and to climate action, are plain to see.
Europe’s continued reliance on fossil energy has complicated its response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and pushed the continent into an unprecedented energy crisis, threatening to spiral into an economic recession. It has also left Europe’s political leaders struggling to mitigate the impacts on their populations.
European countries’ race to secure new sources of fossil energy poses new geopolitical risks and can lock countries into new supply contracts and commitments that will make net zero targets even harder to achieve.
Climate change and conflict are the chief reasons why global hunger is rising. This year some 345 million people today face acute food insecurity, almost three times as many as in 2019—a shocking increase exacerbated by extreme weather events, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Put simply, the state of security and the state of the environment are today intimately linked. Harm one, harm the other; heal one, heal the other.
This is a truth world leaders should take with them to the COP27 climate summit.
Keep peace and security in focus at COP27
All of the possible paths back to peace and environmental sustainability depend on cooperation. Negotiations at Sharm El-Sheikh must therefore focus on seeking common ground, removing roadblocks and enabling progress in international climate cooperation; ramping up ambition rather than watering it down.
Peace and security should be in every discussion at COP27. This should motivate faster and deeper cuts in carbon emissions. States should recognize that phasing out fossil fuels can increase both energy security and human security overall.
At the same time, they must discuss how to avoid creating new security risks in the process: how to ease the transition for developing countries highly dependent on fossil fuel revenues.
How to make sure that the surging demand for renewable energy as well as for metals and minerals needed for green technologies does not lead to new conflicts, or increase inequality and corruption.
How to manage new critical dependencies emerging around minerals that are needed for the green energy transition.
At COP27, there will also be a focus on climate change adaptation: measures taken to adjust to new climatic conditions. Well-adapted communities and economies are more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
They are less likely to be destabilized by shortages, displacement and destitution. When communities are involved in adaptation planning and resource management, it can even help to resolve long-standing conflicts and increase trust in government authorities.
Boost climate finance
Climate finance—the funds richer countries provide to help vulnerable countries to respond to climate change—will also be a priority topic at COP27. This will be setting out how to ensure that rich countries’ governments deliver on their 2009 commitment of US$100 billion in climate finance per year, a goal which they should have already reached by 2020.
There will also be talks on a new climate finance target for post-2025. Seeing climate finance as an investment in peace and security should help persuade them to offer more, far beyond the original pledge, even during these hard economic times.
In particular, finance for adaptation projects needs to rise sharply. The amounts available fall far behind what the most vulnerable countries need, creating wholly avoidable risks to peace and security. But any increase should not come at the expense of mitigation or development assistance.
There is also the difficult question of loss and damage compensation—finance to help countries deal with the impacts of climate change that cannot be adapted to. States must try to resolve the strong differences that have blocked progress to date, so that funds can start flowing.
The damage countries and communities are suffering is real, and every delay increases the chance that it will erode peace, security and trust.
Finally, ways need to be found to get climate finance to countries that are fragile because of an active or recent armed conflict. These countries today receive only a fraction of what others do, even though these are precisely the countries where climate change has the greatest potential to undermine peace.
Exceed expectations
There are limits to how much of this can be achieved in Sharm El-Sheikh. States will need to carry on the work after the summit, individually and collaboratively, drawing in the private sector, civil society and communities.
Significant progress can be made at COP27, if governments show commitment. Besides the action it enables, a COP that exceeds expectations would send important signals to states, publics and markets that world leaders are serious about safeguarding the future.
Stefan Löfven was Prime Minister of Sweden from 2014 to 2019. Since June 2022 he has been Chair of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). He also co-leads the United Nations High-level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism.Ambassador Christoph Heusgen has been Chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) since 2022 and was Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations between 2017 and 2021. Prior to this appointment and since 2005, Heusgen was the Foreign Policy and Security Adviser to Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Footnote: The 27th Conference (COP27) of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) will take place from 6 to 18 November 2022. Heads of State, ministers and negotiators, along with climate activists, mayors, civil society representatives and CEOs will meet in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the largest annual gathering on climate action.
Dr Alice Karanja is a post-doctoral research fellow at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, where her research focuses on restoration of agricultural landscapes based on regenerative agriculture for biodiverse, inclusive, safe, and resilient food systems. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS
by Paul Virgo (rome)
Inter Press Service
ROME, Oct 31 (IPS) – Dr Alice Karanja knows from personal experience the tough choices the climate crisis is putting people before in the Global South. Choices such as whether to have a healthy diet or give your children an education. Choices such as whether to go hungry or allow your children to have any schooling at all.
Having grown up on a small farm in Kenya, Karanja’s family made those tough calls and the huge sacrifices necessary to enable her to go all the way in education, obtaining a PhD in Sustainability Science from the University of Tokyo, Japan.
“I grew up on the slopes of Mount Kenya to a smallholder farming family,” Karanja told IPS at the recent World Food Forum at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“Both my parents are small-scale farmers. My motivation for my work is inspired by what I saw when I was growing up.
“I observed my parents and how they were affected, and still are affected, by climate change in terms of extreme weather patterns, prolonged droughts, inconsistent rainfall patterns.
“The income that they got from their farms sometimes was mostly used to support us with education or health, while the expectation was that we could diversify our diets at home.
“In Africa one of the issues that is affecting us regards the limited set of crops that are grown, mostly maize, wheat and rice. So when people grow maize, they expect then to get some income to get some vegetables or fruit to include in their diets. But often, because of climate change, that money can only be channeled to other needs of the household.”
Karanja is now using her skills to help people just like her parents.
She is a post-doctoral research fellow at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, where her research focuses on restoration of agricultural landscapes based on regenerative agriculture for biodiverse, inclusive, safe, and resilient food systems.
She also plans to pilot food-tree portfolios in Zambia to help smallholder families obtain year-round access to nutritious foods, diversify their incomes, and boost their resilience to increased food prices and climate change.
“Most of my work is at the intersection of resilience to climate change in terms of livelihoods, food security and conservation and the use of agro-biodiversity for improved diets,” Karanja said.
“For the past two years in my work at ICRAF, I have been looking at the role of agricultural biodiversity and the interplay it has with dietary diversification, also looking at how this interplay affects nutritional status, especially for women and children”.
Many other experts selected to take part in the Young Scientists Cohort (YSG) at the World Food Forum had similar stories.
Ram Neupane decided to study agriculture after being born on a small family farm in Gorkha, Nepal, and seeing the economic and psychological implications of devastating plant diseases.
Ram Neupane. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS
“Climate change is a tentacular threat to all aspects (of life) and plant health is affected too,” Neupane, who is pursuing a dual-title doctorate in plant pathology at Penn State University in the United States thanks to a scholarship, told IPS.
“Novel pathogens and viruses are emerging right now because of climate change. I am from one of the more rural parts of Nepal. I was raised in a farming family, so I have first-hand experience of the impact on the farming community there. For example, in my village, the main crop is rice and most of the rice is rain fed.”
“When there is rainfall, farmers plant their rice. Due to climate change there has been irregularities in the timing and frequency of rainfall and this is affecting planting times.
“This, in turn, affects the whole cropping system.
“This has led to flows of people going from more rural areas to urban areas because farming is no longer profitable”.
Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, a lecturer at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana, employs his quantitative and qualitative research skills and experience to offer solution-oriented contributions to issues of climate change, food security, adaptation and environmental management, particularly in smallholder agriculture systems in developing economies.
“I chose this (career path) because of what I saw about climate change,” Asare-Nuamah told IPS.
“I work within the context of climate change and smallholder agriculture systems.
“I was born in a rural farming community where we engage in cocoa, cassava and other food crops, and you could see the impact of climate change.
“At the time the conversation about the impact of climate change was not so high, it had to do with high political level discussions, and I thought there was a need to engage individuals in the conversation on how to address climate change.
“People from my community are suffering. They plant (crops) and because of the absence of rainfall, the plants do not ripen. Even if they ripen, they give very low yields.
“There are pests and disease all over the world and in Ghana we are currently suffering with fall armyworm, which has arrived because of climate change and is having devastating consequences.
“Smallerholder farmers feed a lot of the population of the African continent but they have not been able to push themselves out of poverty and they continue to struggle.
Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, lecturer at the University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS
Education is an issue. Basic necessities are also an issue.
“So all this combines to put them in a position where they are highly vulnerable.
“Even though African economies contribute less than 3% to global carbon emissions, the impact is so high in this part of the continent.
“This calls for the need to address climate change, how developed economies, which have contributed so much to climate change, can come together and help smallholder farmers and developing economies to mitigate some of the challenges caused by the actions and inactions of some of the developed economies.
“So these are the issues that drove me personally to go into the climate change arena, so I can contribute to making sure that we have solutions for smallholder farmers, we have conversations, we have financing, and we are able to build the capacities of smallholder farmers”.
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 (IPS) – For decades, urban practitioners have failed to consider the needs of women in city decision-making and planning. Imagine being a young girl in a bustling metropolis.
Every day she hesitates to go to school, tries different routes on the public bus, walks miles in the hot sun, to avoid the sexual harassment that has become a daily occurrence in public spaces.
Or if you are a restaurant worker or coffee shop server you worry after a late-night shift about the dark alleys and the steps down to the subway station not knowing if you will face an attacker tonight.
Or delay repeatedly going to the free Covid-19 vaccine clinic because it is far away from home, because of long lines, but most importantly because there are no public toilets there. For women and girls across the world, that is often their reality.
Barriers and vulnerabilities have worsened due to the global drivers of change such as climate change, rapid urbanisation, and conflict.
Approximately 4.5 billion people, or 55% of the world population, live in urban areas, and 50% of the world’s population is made up of women and girls.
The design and layout of cities and infrastructure have a significant impact on women’s life experiences and opportunities they can access.
In a world filled with multiple challenges it is easy to push this issue aside and say this is a problem only of a handful of cities, it doesn’t impact me. But data says otherwise. For instance, in New York City, women spend an average $26 to $50 extra on transport per month for safety reasons.
In Jordan, 47% of women surveyed had turned down a job opportunity citing affordability and availability of public transport, and public sexual harassment as key reasons. And evidence shows that during the pandemic, urban spaces became even more hostile for women and girls.
However, this is not inevitable; cities can become a welcoming, safe and equal playing field for all. That is why the new report Cities Alive: Designing Cities that Work for Women’ released last week is such a timely intervention.
Co-authored by UNDP, along with our partners Arup and the University of Liverpool it outlines a strong blueprint on how to remove the gender bias built into cities and improve women’s safety, their health, education and employment.
Drawing on the voices and experiences of women globally, as well as prevalent data and research, the new report focuses on four critical themes:
Safety and security
Creating safer streets, providing safer mobility, and incorporating violence prevention laws and raising awareness.
Justice and equity
Ensuring gender-responsive planning in national laws, supporting the collection of gender disaggregated data, supporting women participating in urban governance at all levels.
Health and wellbeing
Creating inclusive public and green areas, enhancing access to water, hygiene and sanitation facilities, increasing access to physical and mental healthcare and nutrition facilities and providing adequate accommodation and housing models.
Enrichment and fulfilment
Providing accessible and inclusive workplaces and schools, providing safe and inclusive leisure and cultural spaces, designing for diverse and flexible use of public spaces and using the built environment to uplift women and recognize their history.
Focused on solutions, the report outlines to decision makers and urban practitioners the tools they need to move beyond dialogue to actively involving women at every stage of city design and planning – from inception to delivery.
Importantly, the report shows how increasing the participation of women in urban governance at all levels is a prerequisite for better functioning cities, with case studies of what is working from Bogota to Nairobi to San Francisco.
We know that achieving gender equity is pivotal to all the Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by world leaders in 2015. With a rapidly approaching deadline of 2030 for the Global Goals, ensuring our cities work for women and girls is a giant step forward in that direction.
Haoliang Xu is UN Assistant-Secretary-General and Director of UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programme Support
The supply and distribution of food and disaster relief items to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states will soon be facilitated by two separately-managed regional logistics hubs, both based in Barbados. In a region in which extreme weather, US import dependency and regional barriers to trade are ongoing threats to food security, the two facilities* will bring a promise of strengthened regional supply chains and logistics capacities as well as heightened intra-regional trade and efficient distribution of humanitarian assistance in the event of disaster.
Caribbean agriculture and fisheries are disproportionately exposed to climate impacts on weather patterns, air and sea surface temperatures, and freshwater availability— threats that are compounded by the region’s $5 billion food import bill, representing 80% of all food consumed.
According to the United Nations, countries in the Caribbean suffer annual losses from storm damages— measured in in property, crops, and livestock— equivalent to 17% of their GDP.
COVID-19 supply chain impacts and the effect of the war in Ukraine have contributed to a 46% increase in moderate to severe food insecurity in the region between February and August 2022— the highest rate since 2020— leaving 57% of the population struggling to put food on the table.
But there is hope for improved resilience amidst growing global uncertainty.
According to Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, Barbados is ideally placed from a geographic perspective, to serve as a trans-shipment point “from which you can reach multiple countries in both the Caribbean Island chain and in coastal Latin America.”
Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley with Executive Director of the World Food Programme, David … [+] Beasley at the ground breaking ceremony for the World Food Programme/ Caribbean Disaster Management Agency/ Government of Barbados Regional Logistics Hub and Center of Excellence
Bajanpro for World Food Programme
The hubs provide hope for a new intra-regional logistical network that is efficient, continuous, sustainable, and safe, leading to reduced import dependence and improved climate resilience.
Speaking in Trinidad & Tobago in August 2022 at the second regional Agri-Investment Forum, Chairman of the CARICOM Private Sector Organization, Gervase Warner described food security as “a critical issue for our own survival. It is very clear to us we are not going to get help from our colonizers of the past, we are not going to get help from big developing countries. This is our problem for us to address.”
The Barbados/ Guyana Food Terminal
In a statement made during the inaugural Agri-Food Investment Forum and Expo in Guyana in May 2022, Prime Minister Mottley indicated that the Caribbean needs “an efficient supply chain that is safe and secure, and not necessarily one that is driven by imports.”
The Barbados-Guyana food terminal and state-of-the-art abattoir, as provided for under the Saint Barnabas Accord between Barbados and Guyana, will house Guyanese produce for local consumption and serve as a trans-shipment point for exports. The facility could serve as a cushion in the event of shocks that impact food security, while also supporting the regional import substitution program, “25 by 2025” which aims to cut food imports by 25% by 2025.
Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali shares some of the riches of Guyana’s agriculture sector with … [+] Caribbean leaders. Seen here are Prime Minister Keith Rowley of Trinidad & Tobago, Easton Taylor-Farrell Premier of Montserrat, Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua & Barbuda, Saboto Caesar Minister of Agriculture St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Pearnel Charles Jr. Minister of Agriculture, Jamaica
Office of the President of Guyana
The launch of the facility could also spur investment in a previously declining segment of the economy.
Over the past few decades, the sizeable economic contribution of sectors such as tourism, have marginalized the agriculture sector, leaving the Caribbean highly dependent on extra-regional food imports. Transportation and import costs have resulted in high food prices, with the Caribbean ranked second highest globally for the cost of a healthy diet and third for an energy sufficient diet.
Consequently, with 80% of food consumed being imported from outside the region, the Caribbean has become highly vulnerable to food systems disruptions and external shocks, with scarce foreign reserves being expended on imported, highly processed foods that have been connected to the region’s high rates of non-communicable diseases. In many cases, large amounts of imported fruits and vegetables could be substituted with locally and regionally grown foods, but intra- regional barriers to trade and logistical and transport issues have prevented the movement of food within the region.
According to Barbados’ Agriculture Minister, Indar Weir, ground is to be broken in early 2023 for the development of the 7-acre facility, which will serve as a food logistics hub and trans-shipment point for produce originating in Guyana— a major agricultural producer in the Caribbean. The facility will also accommodate about 45 containers, land for crop production, a processing and packaging plant, cold storage facilities and a reservoir that will hold 20 million gallons of water.
“It [The Barbados/ Guyana Food Terminal] is aimed at developing an important trans-shipment hub for food here in Barbados to move on to different hotel chains in other Caribbean islands, and to move on to Miami,” said Guyanese President, Irfaan Ali in his feature address at the opening of Barbados’ Agro Fest agricultural festival in May 2022.
Improving logistics performance from the perspective of customs, transport through ports, internal connections, and the provision of advanced logistics services should be well received in the region, as there is massive room for improvement. As a point of reference, it is much easier from both a financial and a logistical standpoint to trade in agriculture products between the Caribbean and the United States than it is to trade identical products within the region.
“With all that you are producing, if we can’t get it to the island chain in a manner that is quick and affordable, then it is of no use,” said Prime Minister Mottley of the necessity for infrastructural improvements to facilitate the intra-regional movement of food.
World Food Programme (WFP)/ Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA)/ Government of Barbados Regional Logistics Hub and Center of Excellence
Elizabeth Riley, Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA) has said that “the existing multi-hazard environment in which the region operates has created the need to strengthen the emergency logistics response.”
As the second most hazard-prone region in the world, having suffered over $22 billion in disaster-related damages between 1970 and 2016, effective end-to-end supply chain management of relief assistance is critical for the disaster resilience of the region.
A Regional Logistics Hub and Centre of Excellence, which broke ground in August 2022 at Grantley Adams Airport in Barbados, will operate as a central location for emergency logistics coordination for the English-speaking Caribbean and tracking assets and relief items— including food—in the wake of disasters. Once operational, it will support air and sea operations, and will serve as a prepositioning and response center and trans-shipment point for relief items.
(l-r) Regis Chapman, Country Director at World Food Programme Caribbean Multi-Country Office, … [+] Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley and David Beasley, Executive Director at World Food Programme at the groundbreaking of the Regional Logistics Hub and Center of Excellence
Bajanpro for World Food Programme
The hub, which was developed as a partnership between the World Food Programme (WFP), the Government of Barbados and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), will also serve as a “center of excellence” with the role of strengthening the logistics and emergency response capacities of practitioners in emergency logistics, warehouse and fleet management and last-mile delivery, including targeting and distributing assistance.
There has never been greater urgency for a facility of this kind in the region— climate change has increased the likelihood that the Caribbean will experience a greater proportion of major hurricanes in the years to come.
When category 5 Hurricane Maria struck Dominica in 2019, it resulted in losses amounting to 226% of 2016 GDP. From the perspective of post-disaster economic flows, agriculture was the most significantly impacted sector. Government sources estimated that 80–100% of root crops, vegetables, bananas, and plantains and 90% of tree crops were damaged, with livestock losses estimated at 90% of chicken stocks and 45% of cattle. In addition to damage to farm buildings and equipment, the crop and livestock sectors suffered a total estimated loss of $179.6 million. The fisheries sector was also heavily affected, with 370 vessels being destroyed.
Likewise, in 2017, Antigua and Barbuda sustained half a million dollars in losses to its agriculture sector, while the fisheries sector sustained $0.46 million in losses in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
In August 2022, WFP Executive Director, David Beasley joined the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, CDEMA Executive Director Elizabeth Riley and WFP Country Director of the Caribbean Multi-Country Office, Regis Chapman for the groundbreaking ceremony of the hub.
“Thank you for this extraordinary partnership,” said Mr. Beasley to Prime Minister Mottley. “We know there will be more hurricanes… We don’t see Mother Nature easing down any time soon… This is not about Barbados alone. This is about the entire region.”
Highlighting the constant and growing threat of climate change to the region and the need to deliver assistance to affected people, Prime Minister Mottley said of the logistics hub and WFP-CDEMA-Barbados partnership: “This was just simply meant to be.”
“We have to recognize that no matter how we much money you have in any part of the world no matter how strong you are as a nation or a company you are not immune from certain realities that is why global cooperation and global moral strategic leadership is needed more ever at this point in time,” she continued.
According to the 2015 Notre Dame Global Adaptation Country Index, the Caribbean is one of the least climate resilient regions globally, from the perspective of food security.
In its ranking of 189 countries’ food systems’ resilience to climate change impacts, the index placed St. Kitts & Nevis and Antigua & Barbuda in positions #175 and #177 respectively. The two Caribbean nations were the only countries from the Americas to fall into the bracket of the twenty most climate vulnerable countries in the world, with respect to food.
Of the 14 Caribbean countries accounted for by the index, only two made it into the more climate resilient half of the ranking— these were Trinidad & Tobago, which was in 66th position and Suriname which was in 72nd position out of 189 countries. Jamaica was #99, Barbados was #107, Bahamas was #110, Belize was #115, Guyana was #128, Dominica was also #128, St. Vincent & the Grenadines was #132, Grenada was #133, Haiti was #135 and St. Lucia was #143 out of 189 countries, meaning that there are only 46 countries that have less climate-resilient food systems than St. Lucia.
The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Country Index supports other findings that Caribbean countries are among the most vulnerable in the world to climate impacts.
“The Caribbean islands are right on the front lines of climate change,” urged David Beasley in his address at the ground-breaking of the Regional Logistics Hub.
Over the past seven decades, 511 global disasters have impacted Small Island Developing States, 324 of which occurred in the Caribbean, with damages at a ratio to gross domestic product six times higher than larger countries.
“As hurricanes become more frequent and severe, we need to be fully prepared so that lives are saved, livelihoods are defended and hard-won development gains are protected,” said Mr. Beasley, as he looked over at the future location of the Regional Logistics Hub and Center of Excellence.
Artisanal miners are cutting down trees to process gold and climate change experts are concerned about the forests. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
by Jeffrey Moyo (mazowe, zimbabwe)
Inter Press Service
MAZOWE, Zimbabwe, Oct 29 (IPS) – With homemade tents scattered about, hordes of artisanal gold miners throng parts of Mazowe village in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland Central Province, where they have cut down thousands of trees to process gold ore.
Patrick Makwati (29), working alongside his 23-year-old cousin, Sybeth Mwendauya, are some of the miners who mine without a permit that have descended on Mazowe village, cutting down trees for processing gold.
The two cousins said they are using the trees to process the gold that they mine as they claim that they could not afford coal which could have been an alternative for them.
Illegal gold miners, like Makwati and Mwendauya, claim to only use wood when processing gold.
Yet, while the cousins camp in the bushes of rural Mazowe and cook their meals, they have also switched to woodfire.
“We depend on the trees we cut because we can’t afford coal while we also don’t have access to electricity,” Makwati told IPS.
In Zimbabwe, a tonne of coal costs 30 US dollars before transport costs are factored in, which illegal gold miners like Makwati and Mwendauya cannot afford.
The two cousins, like many other illegal gold miners, solely depend on woodfire to heat up the gold ore.
In areas like Mazowe, forests have already fallen, thanks to the gold miners, and now the areas look like a mini deserts.
Forestry officials from the Zimbabwean government lament the constant loss of forests every year.
According to the Forestry Commission here, this country loses 262,000 hectares of trees every year for different reasons.
Illegal gold miners have been factored in as one of these.
Thirty percent of the forest is lost to illegal mining, says environmental activist, Monalisa Mafambirei, based in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
“You speak of Mazowe as a case study, but, of course, this is not the only area losing trees to illegal gold miners. In fact, this problem facing our forests is widespread as gold miners are all over the country where gold is mined, and trees have continued to be the casualties as gold miners cut them down rather carelessly either for use when processing the gold ore or as they clear the land upon which they mine,” a government climate change officer here who said she was not authorized to give media interviews, told IPS.
Even environmental campaigners in this southern African country, like Gibson Mawere, heaped the blame on the artisanal gold miners for fanning deforestation in the country.
“Illegal gold miners are unregulated, and they cut down trees, clearing areas on which they mine for gold, and also they use firewood to then process the gold ore because you should remember that these miners have no access to electricity nor coal to use in place of firewood,” Mawere told IPS.
As the blame game plays out, it may be years before a solution is found to stem the deforestation fanned by illegal gold miners in Zimbabwe.
For the artisanal gold miners, the answer lies in formal employment.
Without that, they say, forests may have to continue to suffer.
Gold miners like Makwati and his cousin place the blame on the country’s struggling economy.
“If we don’t cut the trees, we will have no money at the end of the day. We use fire from the trees we cut to process the gold ore before we sell pure gold. With formal jobs, we wouldn’t be harming the environment nor destroying trees,” Makwati told IPS.
ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER — Adam Thomas starts harvesting soybeans on his Illinois farm when the dew burns off in the morning. This year, dry weather accelerated the work, allowing him to start early. His problem was getting the soybeans to market.
About 60% of the Midwest and northern Great Plain states are in a drought. Nearly the entire stretch of the Mississippi River — from Minnesota to the river’s mouth in Louisiana — has experienced below average rainfall over the past two months. As a result, water levels on the river have dropped to near-record lows, disrupting ship and barge traffic that is critical for moving recently harvested agricultural goods such as soybeans and corn downriver for export.
Although scientists say climate change is raising temperatures and making droughts more common and intense, a weather expert says this latest drought affecting the central United States is more likely a short-term weather phenomenon.
The lack of rain has seriously affected commerce. The river moves more than half of all U.S. grain exports but the drought has reduced the flow of goods by about 45%, according to industry estimates cited by the federal government. Prices for rail shipments, an alternative for sending goods by barge, are also up.
“It just means lower income, basically,” said Mike Doherty, a senior economist with the Illinois Farm Bureau.
Thomas farms at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and doesn’t own enough grain storage to wait out the high costs of shipping.
“I’ve had to take a price discount,” he said.
Climate change is generally driving wetter conditions in the Upper Mississippi River region but in recent months, lower water levels have revealed parts that are usually inaccessible. Thousands of visitors last weekend walked across typically submerged riverbed to Tower Rock, a protruding formation about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of St. Louis. It’s the first time since 2012 that tourists could make the trek and stay dry. On the border of Tennessee and Missouri where the river is a half-mile wide, four-wheeler tracks snake across vast stretches of exposed riverbed.
In a badly needed break from the dry weather earlier this week, the region finally received some rain.
“It is kind of taking the edge off the pain of the low water, but it is not going to completely alleviate it,” said Kai Roth of the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center, adding that the river needs several rounds of “good, soaking rain.”
Barges are at risk of hitting bottom and getting stuck in the mud. Earlier this month, the U.S. Coast Guard said there had been at least eight such “groundings.” Some barges touch the bottom but don’t get stuck. Others need salvage companies to help them out. Barges are cautioned to lighten their loads to prevent them from sinking too deep in the water, but that means they can carry fewer goods.
To ensure that vessels can travel safely, federal officials regularly meet, consider the depth of the river and talk to the shipping industry to determine local closures and traffic restrictions. When a stretch is temporarily closed, hundreds of barges may line up to wait.
“It’s very dynamic: Things are changing constantly,” said Eric Carrero, the Coast Guard’s director of western rivers and waterways. “Every day, when we are doing our surveys, we’re finding areas that are shallow and they need to dredge.”
After a closed-down section is dredged, officials mark a safe channel and barges can once again pass through.
In some places, storage at barge terminals is filling up, preventing more goods from coming in, according to Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition. He said the influx of grain into a compromised river transportation system is like “attaching a garden hose to a fire hydrant.” High costs for farmers have led some to wait to ship their goods, he added.
For tourists, much of the river is still accessible. Cruise ships are built to withstand the river’s extremes: Big engines fight fast currents in the spring and shallow drafts keep the boats moving in a drought, said Charles Robertson, president and CEO of American Cruise Lines, which operates five cruise ships that can carry 150 to 190 passengers each.
Nighttime operations are limited, however, to help ships avoid new obstacles that the drought has exposed. And some landing areas aren’t accessible because of low water — the river is dried out along the edges. In Vicksburg, Mississippi, a cruise ship couldn’t get to a ramp that typically loads passengers, so the city, with help from townspeople, laid gravel and plywood to create a makeshift walkway. For some, it adds to the adventure.
“They’re experiencing the headlines that most of the rest of the country is reading,” Robertson said.
Drought is a prolonged problem in California, which just recorded its driest three-year stretch on record, a situation that has stressed water supplies and increased wildfire risk. Climate change is raising temperatures and making droughts more common and worse.
“The drier areas are going to continue to get drier and the wetter areas are going to continue to get wetter,” said Jen Brady, a data analyst at Climate Central, a nonprofit group of scientists and researchers that reports on climate change.
Brad Pugh, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said however, that the current drought in the Midwest is likely “driven by short-term weather patterns” and he wouldn’t link it to climate change.
In the Midwest, climate change is increasing the intensity of some rainstorms. Flood severity on the upper Mississippi River is growing faster than any other area of the country, according to NOAA.
Some worry that fertilizer and manure have accumulated on farms and could quickly wash off in a hard rain, reducing oxygen levels in rivers and streams and threatening aquatic life.
In rare cases, communities are moving to alternate sources of drinking water away from the Mississippi. The drought also is threatening to dry out drinking-water wells in Iowa and Nebraska, NOAA says.
It’s unclear how much longer the drought will last. In the near term, there is a chance for rain, but NOAA notes that in November, below average rainfall is more likely in central states such as Missouri, which would extend shipping problems on the river. In some northern states including Michigan, the winter may bring more moisture, but less rain is expected in southern states.
“It does take a lot of rainfall to really get the river to rise,” Roth said.
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street for the House of Commons for his first Prime Minister’s Questions in London, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. Sunak was elected by the ruling Conservative party to replace Liz Truss who resigned. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
