Activists in Swiss resort demand stronger action to tackle the climate crisis at the World Economic Forum.
Scores of climate activists have gathered in Davos to protest against the role of big oil companies at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and demand stronger action to tackle the climate crisis.
The annual meeting of global business and political leaders in Switzerland starts on Monday.
It will be attended by some 1,500 business leaders, including major energy firms like BP, Chevron and Saudi Aramco.
“We are demanding concrete and real climate action,” said Nicolas Siegrist, the 26-year-old organiser of the protest, who also heads the Young Socialists party in Switzerland.
A climate activist displays a placard during a protest in advance of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 on January 15, 2023 [Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters]
“They will be in the same room with state leaders and they will push for their interests,” Siegrist said of the involvement of energy companies at the WEF meeting.
The oil and gas industry has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition because fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the world’s energy mix as countries shift to low-carbon economies.
More than 100 protesters gathered in a Davos square were chanting “change your diet for the climate, eat the rich”. Others booed oil firms cited during a speech.
Demonstrators pose beside Swiss police officers during a protest ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 [Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters]
“I know some of the companies are involved in alternatives, but I think governments with their subsidies have to skew the field in favour of alternative energy,” Heather Smith, a member of the 99% Organisation, a volunteer movement.
Smith was holding a sign saying “Stop Rosebank”, a North Sea oil and gas field she is campaigning to halt plans for.
The economic crisis and rising interest rates have made it harder for renewable energy developments to attract financing while energy companies have been profiting from the energy crisis.
“There is still too much money to be made from fossil fuel investments,” Smith added.
Climate activists protest ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 in Davos, Switzerland [Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters]
A cascade of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change has devastated communities around the globe this year, including through sweltering heat and drought, wilted crops, forest fires and big rivers shrinking to a trickle.
In Pakistan, record monsoon rains inundated more than a third of the country, killing more than 1,500 people. In India and China, prolonged heat waves and droughts dried up rivers, disrupted power grids and threatened food security for billions of people. Widespread flooding and mudslides brought on by torrential rains also killed hundreds of people in South Africa, Brazil and Nigeria.
In Europe, heat waves set record temperatures in Britain and other parts of the continent, leading to severe droughts, low river flows that slowed shipping, and wildfires in many parts of the continent. Much of East Africa is still in the grips of a multi-year drought – the worst in more than 40 years, according to the United Nations – leaving millions of people vulnerable to food shortages and starvation.
An analysis by an international team of climate scientists in October found that human-caused climate change made drought across the northern hemisphere at least 20 times more likely, and warned that such extreme dry periods would become increasingly common with global heating.
The planet currently remains off track from a goal set by the Paris climate accord in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
This year might provide a glimpse of our near future, as these extreme climate events become more frequent.
Negotiators at a United Nations biodiversity conference Saturday have still not resolved most of the key issues around protecting the world’s nature by 2030 and providing tens of billions of dollars to developing countries to fund those efforts.
The United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, is set to wrap up Monday in Montreal and delegates were racing to agree on language in a framework that calls for protecting 30% of global land and marine areas by 2030, a goal known as “30 by 30.” Currently, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas globally are protected.
They also have to settle on amounts of funding that would go to financing projects to create protected areas and restore marine and other ecosystems. Early draft frameworks called for closing a $700 billion gap in financing by 2030. Most of that would come from reforming subsidies in the agriculture, fisheries and energy sectors but there are also calls for tens of billions of dollars in new funding that would flow from rich to poor nations.
“From the beginning of the negotiations, we’ve been seeing systematically some countries weakening the ambition. The ambition needs to come back,” Marco Lambertini, the director general of WWF International said, adding that they needed a “clear conservation target” that “sets the world on a clear trajectory towards delivering a nature positive future.”
The head table gets set to open the high level segment at the COP15 biodiversity conference, in Montreal, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press via AP)
Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault expressed more optimism. Guilbeault told The Associated Press Saturday morning that he has heard “few people talk about red lines” and that means “people are willing to talk. People are willing to negotiate.”
“I’ve heard a lot of support for ambition from all corners of the world,” Guilbeault said. “Everyone wants to leave here with an ambitious agreement.”
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, told reporters Saturday afternoon that she was encouraged by the progress especially around committing resources but that a deal had not been reached yet.
“The negotiating teams have more work to do. They have to turn promises made into plans, ambitions and actions,” she said.
The ministers and government officials from about 190 countries mostly agree that protecting biodiversity has to be a priority, with many comparing those efforts to climate talks that wrapped up last month in Egypt.
Climate change coupled with habitat loss, pollution and development have hammered the world’s biodiversity, with one estimate in 2019 warning that a million plant and animal species face extinction within decades — a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected. Humans use about 50,000 wild species routinely, and 1 out of 5 people of the world’s 8 billion population depend on those species for food and income, the report said.
But they are struggling to agree on what that protection looks like and who will pay for it.
Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a video address at the opening of the high level segment at the COP15 biodiversity conference, in Montreal, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press via AP)
The financing has been among the most contentions issues, with delegates from 70 African, South American and Asian countries walking out of negotiations Wednesday. They returned several hours later.
Brazil, speaking for developing countries, said in a statement that a new funding mechanism dedicated to biodiversity be established and that developed countries provide $100 billion annually in financial grants to emerging economies until 2030.
“You need a robust and ambitious package on finance that matches the ambition of the Global Biodiversity framework,” Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde, the head of the Brazilian delegation, told the AP.
“This will cost a lot of money to implement. The targets are extremely ambitious and cost a lot of money,” he continued. “The developing countries will bear a higher burden in implementing it because most biodiversity resources are to be found in developing countries. They need international support.”
The donor countries — the European Union and 13 countries — responded Friday with a statement promising to increase biodiversity financing. They noted they doubled biodiversity spending from 2010 to 2015 and committed to several billion dollars more in biodiversity funding since then.
Zac Goldsmith, the U.K.’s minister for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment, acknowledged the focus cannot only be on popular protection measures like the 30 by 30 goal.
IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR AVAAZ – Actor and activist James Cromwell, third left, called on world leaders to “Stop the Human Asteroid” in the talks at COP15 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. Avaaz activists joined him wearing the faces of leaders who are pushing to remove Indigenous people’s language from the text of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. (Graham Hughes/AP Images for Avaaz)
“The 30-by-30 is a headline target, but you can’t deliver 30-by-30 without a whole range of other things being agreed as well,” he said. “We’re not gonna have 30-by-30 without finance. We’re not going to have it unless other countries do as Costa Rica has and break the link between agricultural productivity and land degradation and deforestation. And we’re not gonna be able to do any of these things if we don’t address … subsidies.”
Even protection targets are still being squabbled over. Many countries believe 30% is an admirable goal but some countries are pushing to water the language down to allow among other things sustainable activities in those areas that conservationists fear could result in destructive logging and mining. Others want language referencing ways to better manage the other 70% of the world that wouldn’t be protected.
Other disagreements revolve around how best to share the benefits from genetic resources and enshrining the rights of Indigenous groups in any agreement. Some Indigenous groups want direct access to funding and a voice in designating protected areas that impact Indigenous peoples.
“Any protected areas that affect Indigenous peoples need to have the free prior informed consent of Indigenous peoples, otherwise there will be the same old patters of Indigenous peoples being displaced by protected areas,” Atossa Soltani, the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, an alliance of 30 Indigenous nations in Ecuador and Peru working to working to permanently protect 86 million acres of rainforest, said in an email interview.
The other challenge is including language — similar to the Paris Agreement on climate change — that creates a stronger system to report and verify the progress countries make. Many point to the failures of the 2010 biodiversity framework, which saw only six of the 20 targets partially met by a 2020 deadline.
“It’s very important for parties to see what others are doing. It’s important for civil society, people like you to track our progress or sometimes unfortunately lack thereof,” Guilbeault said. “It’s an important tool to help keep our feet to the fire. If it’s effective on climate. We should have it on nature as well.”
Heavy rains triggered landslides early on Saturday on the southern Italian island of Ischia, collapsing buildings and sweeping cars into the sea. As many as 12 people were missing, and the mayor of Naples was quoted by the news agency ANSA as saying one body had been recovered.
The force of the mud barrelling down mountainsides was strong enough to send cars and buses into the sea at the port of Casamicciola Terme on the northern end of the island off Naples. Streets were impassable, and mayors on the island urged people to stay at home. At least 100 people were reportedly stranded.
There was confusion over the death toll. Italian Vice Premier Matteo Salvini initially said eight people had been confirmed dead. The interior minister later said no deaths had been confirmed but 10 to 12 people were missing.
“The situation is very complicated and very serious because probably some of those people are under the mud,” Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told RAI state TV from an emergency command centre in Rome.
ANSA reported that at least 10 buildings had collapsed. One family with a newborn had been reported missing but was then located and was receiving medical care, according to the Naples prefect.
Firefighters and the coastguard were working on rescue efforts. Reinforcements arrived by ferry, including teams of sniffer dogs to help in the search for survivors.
The densely populated mountainous island is popular with locals and tourists alike for its beaches and spas. A magnitude 4 earthquake on the island in 2017 killed two people and caused significant damage to Casamicciola Terme and neighboring Lacco Ameno.
A passenger minibus falls into a deep, water-filled ravine, killing 20 people, including nearly a dozen children.
At least 20 people have been killed in Pakistan’s flood-hit south after a minibus crashed into a deep and water-logged ditch.
The vehicle crashed late on Thursday in Sehwan region of the southern Sindh province, local police official Khadim Hussain told AFP news agency.
“The driver could not see the diversion sign on the road and so the van plunged into a 25-foot [8 metres] deep ditch” near the town of Sehwan Sharif, Hussain said on Friday.
Eleven children aged between two and eight years were killed in the crash, police said. A further 14 people were injured, two of them in critical condition.
Police officer Imran Qureshi told The Associated Press news agency the van was bringing passengers from Khairpur district to a famous Sufi shrine in Sehwan.
The road had been dredged in several places to drain out floodwater, but had not been repaired months later.
Pakistan was lashed by record monsoon rains this year that put a third of the country underwater, killed more than 1,700 people and battered its already crumbling infrastructure.
Southern Sindh province was the worst hit by flooding. The disaster affected 33 million people since mid-June and damaged or washed away two million homes.
Research has linked catastrophic flooding to climate change.
Pakistan is known to have poor road safety and a staggeringly high rate of road deaths, blamed on decrepit highways and reckless driving.
According to World Health Organization estimates, more than 27,000 people were killed on Pakistan’s roads in 2018.
Envoys from around the globe gathered this week in a renovated Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where green development projects mushroomed in the lead-up to this year’s climate change summit.
Recycling bins dot stretches of the city’s once-dishevelled roads as a fleet of solar-powered electric buses transports COP27 delegates at full throttle.
But as the country’s glittering Red Sea coast becomes a showpiece for what a sustainable future might look like, in the overcrowded streets of Cairo and other major Egyptian cities voices are being silenced to keep up a veneer of perfection.
“Egypt’s PR machine is operating on all cylinders to conceal the awful reality in the country’s jails. [But] no amount of PR can hide the country’s abysmal human rights record,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said in a statement.
The rights watchdog documented the arrest of 1,540 people for exercising free speech and association in the lead-up to COP27. Political prisoners in Egypt are estimated at 60,000 since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in 2013, a number denied by Cairo.
The case of prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah took centre stage as he escalated a hunger strike to include water as the summit kicked off on November 6.
His story, however, is far from isolated. “Alaa’s case is critical and urgent, but there are many other urgent cases that are not getting any proper care or attention,” Mona Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister, told Al Jazeera.
Seif said her 40-year-old brother, who has spent the best part of the past decade in prison after being sentenced over a Facebook post, has little hope for “individual salvation” but wishes that his death, if unavoidable, be a way to shed light on the violent crackdown on civil liberties.
“Alaa’s cellmates are mostly very young people, in their early 20s, and have become adults in prison,” Seif said. “He wants the voices of those who have been trying to get out of this massive war that el-Sisi is lashing out on people – and on the younger generation in particular – to be heard and acknowledged.”
No space for dissent at COP27
Amnesty documented the arrest of 184 people between October 25 and November 6 in Cairo alone, including some in connection to calls for protests at COP27 on November 11.
Hussein Baoumi, a researcher at Amnesty, told Al Jazeera the Egyptian government was going to great lengths to prevent dissent as it hosted the climate summit.
“The ministry of foreign affairs handpicked five Egyptian environmental groups that are not critical of the authorities [to take part in COP27],” Baoumi said, while others remained unaccredited and unable to cross the checkpoints erected on the roads to Sharm el-Sheikh.
According to the Egyptian COP27 Presidency website, protests are allowed between 10am and 5pm in a camera-monitored area away from the conference site. Anyone wishing to organise a demonstration must inform the authorities 36 hours in advance.
An app created by the government to act as a guide to the conference facilities requires users to provide their full name, email address, mobile number, nationality and passport number. “The app also asks to grant certain permissions that enable it to access the camera and microphone, which can be used for surveillance,” Baoumi said.
Authorities also mandated the installation of cameras in all taxis and introduced a registration process for the so-called Green Zone outside the COP venue, which at previous summits was open to the wider public.
Among the more than 25,000 participants, a few human rights activists – including Abd el-Fattah’s youngest sister Sanaa Seif and prominent human rights defender Hossam Bahgat – were able to shine a rare spotlight on the continuing violent crackdown on civil liberties.
But the heightened surveillance, including unconstitutional requests for passers-by to hand over their phones at checkpoints for scrutiny of their social media content, has magnified the risk of reprisals.
Egypt’s social media is witnessing some calls for protests on 11.11 as the country hosts #COP27. Gov’t reacted as usual by hysterical checkpoints in vital streets arbitrarily picking ppl to open their phones for unlawful checks into their contents. pic.twitter.com/h7C8ztFHs8
On November 1, outspoken journalist Manal Ajrama was arrested after she criticised government policies on her personal Facebook page. The deputy editor of the state-run Radio and Television Magazine has since appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution under terrorism charges, rights groups say.
A member of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate last week denounced the disappearance of al-Ahram journalist Mahmoud Saad Diab, who went missing after attempting to board a flight to China from Cairo’s airport.
On October 31, Egyptian authorities detained an Indian climate activist, Ajit Rajagopal, as he set off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh to call attention to the climate crisis. He was released the next day after an international outcry.
Human Rights Watch found counterterrorism and state-of-emergency laws have been extensively used against journalists, activists and critics in retaliation for their peaceful criticism. El-Sisi declared a nationwide state of emergency in April 2017, which has been renewed and in effect ever since.
Locked up
As hundreds are arrested, thousands more languish in Egypt’s prisons.
Former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh was sentenced to 15 years in prison in May for “spreading false news” and “incitement against state institutions”.
Mohamed el-Baqer, human rights lawyer and founder of the Adalah Centre for Rights and Freedoms, has spent more than 1,000 days in Egypt’s notorious maximum security Tora Prison 2.
Blogger and journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Radwan, known as Mohamed Oxygen, has been locked up mostly in solitary confinement in the same facility for more than three years.
According to the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, at least 35 people have died in detention in Egypt since the beginning of the year.
Political prisoner Alaa al-Salami died following a hunger strike to protest against the conditions of his detention, according to the organisation. The 47-year-old was sentenced to life imprisonment and held first in the maximum-security Scorpion Prison and then transferred to the newly built Badr 3 prison.
Human rights groups say prisoners in the Badr 3 complex, 70km northeast of Cairo, are held in punitive conditions including fluorescent lights and security cameras switched on round the clock and deprived of access to sufficient food, clothing and books.
No climate justice without open civic space
A group of independent Egyptian human rights organisations came together in the months leading up to the summit to form the Egyptian Human Rights Coalition on COP27 to leverage mobilisation under the strapline, “No climate justice without open civic space.”
“It’s an abysmal situation for human rights in Egypt. You cannot discuss the environmental crisis without addressing the overall human rights situation,” Yasmin Omar, human rights lawyer at the Committee for Justice and a member of the coalition, told Al Jazeera.
“The Egyptian human rights movement has sought every means of accountability to address this within the UN mechanism, but COP27 represents a unique moment to make this situation not only our responsibility but the responsibility of the world,” Omar, who left Egypt to continue her human rights activities, said.
On Friday, UN special rapporteurs joined a growing chorus of voices demanding nations and other stakeholders put pressure on the Egyptian government to release Abd el-Fattah and demonstrate that international human rights commitments matter.
“The hunger strike by Mr Abdel Fattah – a decision that may end in his death – appears to be the last resort of an individual deprived of all avenues to challenge a sentence by Egypt’s Terrorism Circuit Court, where basic procedural and substantive rights concerns, including lack of judicial independence, are allegedly systematic,” the experts said.
“The fact that we ‘hear and see’ Mr Abdel Fattah now, because the COP27 conference takes place in Egypt, underscores the importance of States and other stakeholders addressing his plight directly with the Egyptian government.”
‘Fear of reprisal’
Others have not yet had their voices heard. Among those notably absent from the climate conference are individuals and groups from the Sinai Peninsula, where the summit is taking place.
“The absence of the Sinai community from the COP27 is an expected result of the policies of the Egyptian government, which have stifled traditional forms of peaceful expression and assembly including popular councils,” Ahmed Salem, the director of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.
Beyond the gated premises of the COP venue, thousands of demolished homes are the remainder of military operations that have driven thousands from their homes, in what Human Rights Watch said amounts to forced eviction and population transfer – and potential war crimes.
Between late 2013 and July 2020, the army destroyed at least 12,350 buildings, mostly homes, and razed about 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of farmland as part of a protracted fight with the armed group Wilayat Sinai, a local ISIL (ISIS) affiliate, according to the watchdog.
In the process, activists who criticised the government’s heavy-handed response were silenced, including some who demanded action on pressing environmental concerns including groundwater depletion and beach erosion.
“Environmental protection groups are unable to address these issues due to fear of reprisal,” Salem, who also lives in exile, said.
“The protection of the environment cannot be effective without the protection of people’s rights.”
Dwarfed by its more prestigious sibling, the Amazon, Latin America’s second-largest forest is a little-known victim of 25 years of gradual invasion by agriculture.
The Gran Chaco indigenous forest, which spans one million square kilometres (386,000sq miles) across Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, is at the mercy of ravenous soybean and sunflower crops, as well as pasture land.
Comprising a mix of dry thorn shrubland, woodlands and palm savannas, the dense tropical dry forest contains massive scars – vast areas of deforestation gouged out with alarming regularity.
The harm to local fauna and flora is immeasurable.
Here, in Argentina’s northeast, some 1,100 kilometres (685 miles) from Buenos Aires, is the country’s agricultural frontier. It is where the agro-export industry, so crucial for a country short on foreign currency, advances at the expense of various species of fauna and flora, as well as people.
Deforestation in the region has averaged around 40,000 hectares (154sq miles) a year, peaking at 60,000 (322sq miles) on occasion, said Ines Aguirre, an agricultural engineer from Chaco Argentina Agroforestry.
Gran Chaco includes a 128,000-hectare (494sq-mile) national park called The Impenetrable that is designated a “red zone” and strictly protected by a forestry law. But there are also “yellow” zones where tourism and “soft” agriculture are allowed, and “green” zones that are a free-for-all.
What this means is that deforestation around The Impenetrable park affects the rich fauna living within it, such as anteaters, peccaries, coral snakes, tapir and the continent’s largest feline, the jaguar, which is endangered in the region and the subject of an ambitious reintroduction programme.
“In the dry Chaco, we are probably facing a very serious effect of losing fauna. We are seeing especially the extinction of large mammals,” said Micaela Camino, a biologist at CONICET, Argentina’s government scientific agency, citing the giant armadillo and white-lipped peccary as examples.
It is not just fauna and flora being pushed out but also local Indigenous communities, such as the Wichi and Criollo who live in the forest.
“What generally happens is that before the logging, the rights of these families are violated. They are swindled [out of their land] and forced to leave their homes,” Camino said.
Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, it has only become less likely that the world will meet that pact’s goals. Emissions must now be halved by the end of this decade to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis.
Making finance flows and services consistent with this pathway is essential not only for the planet, but for the financial sector itself. Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, adopted a new policy last month excluding oil insurance and reinsurance.
It is not a single actor: As of October, 41 insurers — including industry heavyweights such as Allianz, Munich Re and Swiss Re — representing 39 percent of the market for primary insurance and 62 percent for reinsurance had withdrawn or reduced cover for coal. For oil and gas, those figures now stand at 38 percent of reinsurance and 15 percent of primary insurance markets. Coal companies now face soaring premiums of up to 40 percent, reduced coverage and longer searches to access insurance.
Yet insurance and reinsurance companies need to move faster. Lloyd’s of London, for instance, announced in 2020 that it would stop insuring fossil fuel projects by 2030. But last year, it issued guidance suggesting this policy was optional for agents. According to the global campaign group Insure Our Future, many other insurers continue to insure new oil and gas projects in defiance of climate science and evidence.
As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, the fossil fuel industry sees an opportunity to set up new infrastructure around the world. Governments that are desperate for revenue are falling for the promise of quick returns and opening their doors to these companies.
But insurance companies must stay wary — backing investments in oil and gas will only become more perilous.
One of the riskiest investments on offer today is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In July, it auctioned the exploration rights for 30 oil and gas blocks in an area of about 277,000sq km (106,950sq miles) – larger than the size of the United Kingdom.
Some of the blocks overlap with protected areas, including Virunga National Park, a World Heritage Site that is threatened by armed conflicts and now by the prospects of drilling. It is home to the Batwa and other local communities facing violence and discrimination, as well as 3,000 species of animals, including the critically endangered eastern gorilla.
Other blocks are in the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale, which serve as a sink that stores about 30 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to three years of global emissions from fossil fuels.
Simon Lewis, a professor at Leeds University and head of a British-Congolese research group called CongoPeat, has called the DRC blocks “the worst place in the world to drill for oil”. Lewis has warned there may not be substantial oil deposits beneath the Congo forests, and if there are, getting them from extremely remote areas to global markets may not be economically viable. Yet even if exploration reveals no commercial-scale oilfields, it will seriously damage the rainforest’s biodiversity.
Beyond the DRC too, Russia’s war in Ukraine and rising energy prices have been one of the triggers of a new scramble for fossil fuels across Africa — from Senegal through Namibia to Uganda.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said the world needs a complete bar on all new fossil fuel investments to get to net-zero emissions by 2050, a minimum goal laid out by the IPCC, the United Nations panel of experts on climate change.
That prescription is particularly important for Africa, where oil production often has higher carbon intensity than elsewhere — the equivalent of about 40 percent more carbon dioxide per barrel.
Africa and the broader Global South are also often the worst sufferers of the effects of climate change. In October, Nigeria reported almost 800,000 displaced and 500 dead from floods, while Pakistan is still dealing with the aftermath of devastating floods that drowned a third of the country. In Somalia, one million people have been displaced due to a drought following a two-year historic dry spell. And the list goes on.
The new scramble for fossil fuels has devastating implications for human rights as well. Exploration and drilling rights are being granted in ways that sacrifice natural ecosystems that have been serving local and Indigenous communities for centuries. In the DRC, communities were not even informed before their land was auctioned.
Insurance companies have enormous power to force change. Without insurance, most new fossil fuel projects cannot proceed and existing ones must close. As the Insure Our Future coalition — which ranks the world’s top insurers on the basis of their fossil fuel exclusion policies — has demanded, it is vital to end insurance for new oil, gas and coal projects. It is also critical to phase out support for existing projects and for insurers to divest all assets from coal, oil and gas companies that are not aligned with a pathway that limits the planet’s temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Finally, insurers must maintain robust due diligence and verification mechanisms to ensure clients fully respect and observe all human rights.
That is essential for the world but also a sensible business strategy for insurers: Projects in the DRC and other such vulnerable ecosystems likely represent the worst deals in the world to insure. They are best avoided — for everyone.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Pakistan is suffering after devastating floods submerged one-third of the country. As the COP27 global climate change conference gets under way, Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi asks whether leaders are willing to commit to meaningful solutions.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s presidential election victory in Brazil has spurred renewed hope for the future of the world’s largest rainforest, as the left-wing leader pledged to combat the climate crisis and reverse some of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro’s policies.
Shortly after being declared the winner on Sunday evening, Da Silva, better known as Lula, said “Brazil is ready to resume its leading role in the fight against the climate crisis,” especially by protecting the Amazon rainforest.
“In our government, we were able to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 80 percent. Now, let’s fight for zero deforestation,” Lula, who previously served as president from 2003 to 2010, wrote on Twitter.
Brazil’s president-elect had campaigned on a promise to protect the Amazon, which is critical to the global fight against climate change and has seen years of increased destruction under Bolsonaro’s administration.
The far-right former army captain had pushed for more mining and other development projects in the Amazon, saying they would stimulate the economy.
But rights groups had accused Bolsonaro of gutting Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies, leading to an uptick in deforestation and violence across the sprawling Amazon region.
Greenpeace Brazil on Monday called on Lula to follow through on his campaign promises and rebuild the government agencies tasked with protecting the environment, among other measures it deemed “urgent”.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) also urged Lula to put human rights at the centre of his incoming government’s policies, including by strengthening “law enforcement to fight the destruction of the Amazon, and threats and attacks against forest defenders”.
Indigenous leaders had for years raised alarm over the threats their communities face in the South American nation, particularly in areas with little government oversight that farmers, miners, poachers and others are seeking to control and exploit.
Brazil is home to more than 800,000 Indigenous people from over 300 distinct groups, according to data from the last census in 2010 cited by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) rights group.
The Indigenous Missionary Council recorded 305 cases of “possessory invasions, illegal exploitation of resources and damage to property” on Indigenous territories last year, affecting 226 Indigenous lands in 22 Brazilian states. That was up from 109 such incidents in 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took office – a 180 percent increase.
Andrea Carvalho, a senior research assistant at HRW in Brazil, told Al Jazeera earlier this year that the escalation of attacks on Indigenous people and their lands “is driven by disastrous policies related to the protection of the environment and Indigenous rights”.
Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate website, said in a report last month that a Lula election victory could see deforestation drop by 89 percent in the Brazilian Amazon over the next decade – avoiding the destruction of approximately 75,960 square kilometres (29,328 square miles) of rainforest by 2030.
Lula could face tough political opposition in areas where Amazon deforestation is happening, however, while he also must deal with the difficulty of policing vast areas.
Bolsonaro had been backed by major business interests, including loggers, miners and other groups exploiting Brazil’s natural resources, throughout his administration as well as in this year’s elections.
“Agribusiness has been clearly adopting an anti-Lula stance,” Roberto Ramos, a social sciences professor at Roraima Federal University, told the Reuters news agency.
On Monday, truckers and other protesters blocked highways in several Brazilian states in an apparent protest over Bolsonaro’s election defeat.
Burning tyres, as well as vehicles such as trucks, cars and vans were blocking several points in the central-western agricultural state of Mato Grosso, which largely supports Bolsonaro, reported the company that manages the highway in the state.
Road blockages were also seen in at least five other states, including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, according to local media.
Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations, told Al Jazeera that Lula – who won by a razor-thin margin of 50.9 percent support to Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent on Sunday – will need to work hard on reconciliation given how polarised Brazil has become.
“Basically 50 percent of Brazilians are very afraid his return to power. This is a very polarised country, it’s a frustrated country,” said Stuenkel, from the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Sao Paulo. “I think it’s a volatile moment now, and Lula will have to choose his words very carefully.”
Just months after enduring floods that destroyed crops and submerged communities, thousands of families in the Brazilian Amazon are now dealing with drought that in some areas is the worst in decades.
The low level of the Amazon River, which is the heart of the world’s largest drainage system, has put dozens of municipalities on alert.
The quickly decreasing water levels are due to lower-than-expected rainfall during August and September, according to Luna Gripp, a geosciences researcher who monitors the western Amazon’s river levels for the Brazilian Geological Survey.
In the Sao Estevao community, fishermen have postponed catching pirarucu, the Amazon’s largest fish, because the boat to transport their catch to the city cannot dock.
The legal fishing season runs until the end of November. If the water level doesn’t rise soon, the seven-family community will lose a significant source of income, fisherman Pedro Canizio da Silva told The Associated Press.
About six months ago, the community suffered losses due to a heavier-than-expected flood season.
“I lost my crops of banana and yuca,” Canizio said. “Moreover, caymans and anacondas got closer to us due to the flood and ate some of my ducks and chickens. The water underneath my stilted house almost reached the floor.”
In the Porto Praia Indigenous community, the nearby branch of the Amazon River has become a vast swathe of sand that during the day becomes too hot to walk across. A motorboat trip to Tefe, normally 90 minutes long, now takes four hours, Anilton Braz, a local leader, told AP, because the water is so shallow in some stretches that it is necessary to paddle instead of using the motor.
The local source of water has become muddy and there is no other water to drink. “We fear our children will get sick with diarrhoea and other diseases,” Braz said.
The situation has led Tefe’s City Hall to declare a state of emergency to speed aid to families, but so far, there’s been little help. “The mayor sent a little bit of food,” Braz said.
The local civil defence authority said 53 out of 62 municipalities in Amazonas state have been affected by floods and drought this year. The drier season, known locally as the “Amazonian summer”, usually lasts from June to December in this part of the rainforest.
For Bhagwan Devi, 38, and Shivakumar, 40, and their four children, a flood follows unseasonal rain so often now that they have less and less time to pick up the pieces and start over again.
Devi and Shivakumar had to flee their hut on the banks of the Yamuna River, which passes through Delhi, earlier this month as water levels rose without warning.
“This is how deep the water was,” said Devi, pointing to her chin.
The family, like thousands of others, has taken refuge on the roadside kerb, 100 meters (328 feet) from their now-flooded hut.
Their story is similar to that of millions of others in South Asia who are on the front line of climate change. According to the World Bank, climate change could force 216 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050. In South Asia alone, 40.5 million people are expected to be displaced.
“The extreme rains in India’s Himalayan states are just the latest in a series of events in South Asia that are exacerbated by climate change,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network International.
“We saw unprecedented and devastating floods in Pakistan earlier this year. We are facing melting glaciers in Nepal and Pakistan, rising seas in India and Bangladesh, and cyclones and inhospitable temperatures across the region. Climate change is increasingly forcing millions of people to flee their homes in search of safety and new means to provide for their families,” he added.
For Devi and others who live in Yamuna Khadar, on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, being dislocated by floods has become a way of life. The latest displacement was a consequence of extreme rainfall in upstream states that resulted in the swelling of rivers and the opening of many dams that were unable to hold the excess water.
Devi and Shivakumar are originally from the Budayun region in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about five hours by road from Delhi. In Budayun, their homestead, which was 2km (1.24 miles) from the Ganges River, also repeatedly flooded. Unable to farm successfully because of unseasonal extreme weather, they decided to escape to Delhi to create a better life for themselves some 15 years ago.
In Delhi, they grow vegetables on a small patch of land in the Yamuna River’s floodplains to make ends meet. But as in Budayun, flooding and other extreme weather in Delhi are taking away the little they possess.
Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss forced to scrap plans to remove the 45 percent top income tax rate on high earners.
Just a few days ago, Britain’s new prime minister was confident she would be able to kick-start economic growth by cutting taxes. Yet the country is still on course for a recession.
Faced with market turmoil and criticism from within her Conservative Party, Liz Truss was forced to scrap plans to remove the 45 percent top income tax rate on high earners.
The U-turn is being seen as a humiliating about-face that leaves Truss’s economic policy and premiership in crisis.
Elsewhere, another wake-up call on the cost of climate change from Hurricane Ian. And we speak to Boeing’s vice president.
‘If we lose the Amazon, if you take the Amazon out of the equation … global temperature could rise by 0.25 degrees.’
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is on the rise.
New data shows the number of square kilometres cleared in the first half of 2022 reached a record six-year high. With studies indicating that more than 75 percent of the Amazon has been losing resilience since the early 2000s, is the world’s largest rainforest at a tipping point?
Alicia Guzmán, deputy director of the Amazon programme at Stand.earth and one of the lead researchers on the report, Amazonia Against the Clock, and Tasso Azevedo, technical coordinator for Observatório do Clima and former director general of the Brazilian Forest Service, join Marc Lamont Hill to discuss the global risk of continued deforestation in the Amazon.
At least 31 people are confirmed dead, including 27 people in Florida mostly from drowning.
Rescuers searched for survivors among the ruins of Florida’s flooded homes from Hurricane Ian while authorities in South Carolina began assessing damage from its strike.
Now weakened to a post-tropical cyclone, Ian was expected to move across central North Carolina on Saturday then move into Virginia and New York.
At least 31 people were confirmed dead, including 27 people in Florida, mostly from drowning but others from the storm’s tragic aftereffects. An elderly couple died after their oxygen machines shut off when they lost power, authorities said.
Meanwhile, distraught residents waded through knee-high water, salvaging what possessions they could from their flooded homes and loading them onto rafts and canoes.
“I want to sit in the corner and cry. I don’t know what else to do,” Stevie Scuderi said after shuffling through her mostly destroyed Fort Myers apartment, the mud in her kitchen clinging to her purple sandals.
The powerful storm, one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to ever hit the US, terrorised millions of people for most of the week, battering western Cuba before raking across Florida from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, where it mustered enough strength for a final assault on South Carolina.
In South Carolina, Ian’s centre came ashore near Georgetown, a small community along the Winyah Bay 95km (60miles) north of historic Charleston. The storm washed away parts of four piers along the coast, including two connected to the popular tourist town of Myrtle Beach.
The storm’s winds were much weaker than during Ian’s landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast earlier in the week. Authorities and volunteers there were still assessing the damage as shocked residents tried to make sense of what they just lived through.
Anthony Rivera, 25, said he had to climb through the window of his first-floor apartment during the storm to carry his grandmother and girlfriend to the second floor. As they hurried to escape the rising water, the storm surge washed a boat right up next to his apartment.
“That’s the scariest thing in the world because I can’t stop no boat,” he said. “I’m not Superman.”
The official death toll climbed with authorities warning it would likely rise much higher once crews made a more comprehensive sweep of the damage [Joe Raedle/Getty/AFP]
Pawleys Island, a beach community about 117km (73 miles) up South Carolina’s coast from Charleston, was among the places hardest hit by Ian.
Eddie Wilder, who has been coming to Pawleys Island for more than six decades, said the storm was “insane to watch”. He said waves as high as 7.6 metres (25 feet) washed away the pier, just two doors down from his home.
“We watched it hit the pier and saw the pier disappear,” said Wilder. “I’ve seen quite a few storms and this one was wild … We had a front-row seat.”
Even though Ian has long passed over Florida, new problems continued to arise. A 22-km (14-mile) stretch of Interstate 75 was closed in both directions in the Port Charlotte area because of the massive amount of water swelling the Myakka River.
Further southeast, the Peace River was also at a major flood stage early Saturday in Polk, Hardee and DeSoto counties.
The official death toll climbed with authorities warning it would likely rise much higher once crews made a more comprehensive sweep of the damage.
Hurricane Ian has likely caused “well over $100bn’’ in damage, including $63bn in privately insured losses, according to the disaster modelling firm Karen Clark & Co. If those numbers are borne out, that would make Ian at least the fourth-costliest hurricane in US history.
A resurgent Hurricane Ian is barrelling north before making a second expected landfall in the United States, a day after the storm carved a path of destruction across central Florida that left rescue crews racing to reach trapped residents along the state’s Gulf Coast.
Ian, which had weakened to a tropical storm during its march across Florida, was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane as it churned above the Atlantic Ocean towards South Carolina on Friday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The hurricane – forecast to hit near low-lying Charleston, South Carolina, around 2pm (18:00 GMT) – was bringing maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometres per hour (85 miles per hour), as well as potentially life-threatening flooding and storm surges.
Officials in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina have urged residents to prepare for dangerous conditions.
Kelsey Barlow, a spokeswoman for Charleston County, home to more than 400,000 residents, said that the county has two shelters open and a third on standby. “But it’s too late for people to come to the shelters,” she said.
“The storm is here. Everyone needs to shelter in place, stay off the roads.”
Barlow said a storm surge of more than seven feet (2.1 metres) was expected, on top of the noon high tide that could bring another six feet (1.8 metres) of water, causing significant flooding.
With the eye of the storm still hours away, torrential rain had already arrived in Charleston. Video clips on social media showed several inches of water in some streets in the historic port city, which is especially prone to flooding.
Ian came ashore on Wednesday on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane, one of the strongest storms ever to hit the US.
It flooded homes on both the state’s coasts, cut off the only road access to a barrier island, destroyed a historic waterfront pier and knocked out electricity to 2.6 million Florida homes and businesses — nearly a quarter of utility customers.
Authorities in the US state offered the first death toll estimate on Friday, as power outages and a lack of mobile phone service in many areas had made it impossible to reach residents cut off by floodwaters, downed electricity lines and debris, or assess the full scope of the storm’s damage.
Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, said the hurricane has caused at least 21 confirmed and unconfirmed deaths so far.
Among those killed were an 80-year-old woman and 94-year-old man who relied on oxygen machines that stopped working amid power outages, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said. In New Smyrna Beach, a 67-year-old man who was waiting to be rescued died after falling into rising water inside his home, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden had warned that Ian could prove to be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history, saying that preliminary reports suggested a “substantial” loss of life.
Biden has approved a disaster declaration, making federal resources available to areas impacted by the storm. Nearly 2,000 federal emergency response personnel were deployed to Florida within 24 hours of the storm first making landfall, the White House said.
Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell will be in Florida on Friday.
Meanwhile, rescue crews have piloted boats and waded through riverine streets to save thousands of Floridians trapped amid flooded homes and buildings shattered by the hurricane.
Governor Ron DeSantis said at least 700 rescues, mostly by air, were conducted on Thursday, in operations that involved the US Coast Guard, the National Guard and urban search-and-rescue teams.
“There’s really been a Herculean effort,” he said during a news conference on Friday in state capital Tallahassee, adding that rescue crews had gone door-to-door to more than 3,000 homes in the hardest-hit areas.
‘We’re feeling lost’
Some 10,000 people were unaccounted for across the state, said Guthrie at the Division of Emergency Management, but many of them were likely in shelters or without power, making it impossible to check in with loved ones or local officials.
He said he expected the number to “organically” shrink in the coming days.
Fort Myers, a city close to where the eye of the storm first came ashore, absorbed a major blow, with numerous houses destroyed. Businesses near the beach were completely razed, leaving twisted debris, while broken docks floated at odd angles beside damaged boats.
Hundreds of beleaguered Fort Myers residents lined up at a Home Depot that opened early on Friday on the east side of the city, hoping to buy petrol cans, generators, bottled water and other supplies.
People queue up outside a Home Depot as they wait to shop for power generators and other supplies, in Cape Coral, Florida, September 30, 2022 [Marco Bello/Reuters]
Many said they felt the city and state governments were doing everything possible to help people but said the lack of communication and uncertainty about how they would go on living in the area weighed heavily on them.
Sarah Sodre-Crot and Marco Martins, a married couple and both 22, immigrated from Brazil with their families five years ago, said they rode out the storm in their home in east Fort Myers.
“I know the government is doing everything they can, but we’re feeling lost, like we have no answers. Will energy return in a week? In a month? We just want to know so we can plan our lives a bit,” Sodre-Crot said.
About two million homes and businesses remained without power on Friday, according to tracking service poweroutage.com.
