Archived link

Here is the article as pdf.

Huge planetary problems were fixed in the past, yielding lessons for the current climate crisis — yet this time a solution is justice - [Book review]

Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again Susan Solomon Univ. Chicago Press (2024)

From lead pollution to the hole in the ozone layer and climate change, Earth is no stranger to human-made — often, man-made — global disasters.

In Solvable, atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon describes how high-income countries, and the United States in particular, have repeatedly inflicted incredible amounts of damage on people and ecosystems. She relates the long and difficult struggles that concerned individuals — often from marginalized groups — faced in trying to convince governments to stop industries from destroying lives and the planet in the pursuit of profit. Solvable is a harrowing read, but Solomon is an engaging writer and there is a lot to learn in this book about the environmental crises of the past century.

Solomon relates the story of US marine biologist Rachel Carson, who rang alarm bells about persistent pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in her eloquent book Silent Spring (1962). Now that we know just how harmful these pesticides are, it is jarring to read how difficult it was to stop their use.

Carson described how falcons and other birds of prey started to lay eggs with thinner shells, then almost no eggs at all; various other bird populations shrank markedly; DDT in mammals led to the development of tumours and caused sterility. Although the overwhelming evidence for the effect of DDT on animals that Carson presented was independently confirmed by the then US president John F. Kennedy’s own science advisory council, Carson was belittled and portrayed as a hysteric by politicians and the media.

This playbook of deliberate ignorance of the scientific method, disinformation and a hefty dose of misogyny is all too familiar to those advocating for climate justice today.

In the United States, it took a non-governmental organization, the Environmental Defense Fund, and a few highly publicized lawsuits to ban DDT in 1972 — seven years after Carson’s death. Others followed suit, slowly, including in the European Union with partial bans from 1978 and the United Kingdom in 1984.

Yet, the chemical industry continued to manufacture and export DDT to countries that lacked regulation, such as those in Africa and southeast Asia. A global limit was placed on DDT use in 2004 — when the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants came into force. It’s hard to assess adherence, however, because there’s little monitoring.

Geopolitical inequities

In another parallel with the climate crisis, exported DDT found its way back to nations that had banned it, through global supply chains, such as those involved in importing fashion goods from Asia, which often rely on farms that use DDT to grow cotton. Similarly, by consuming goods produced in Asian nations, European countries are exporting their production of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as exploiting cheap labour.

As inexpensive, practical and short-lived alternatives have been found, DDT use is slowly fizzling out. As a result of the bans, populations of peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) in the United States and Europe are recovering. Solomon takes hope from this, even though she points out that the alternatives, such as neonicotinoids, are not harmless either. Because of them, bees are now dying out.

Lead additives in petrol and paint are another example of policymakers and industry dragging their feet. Solomon highlights how, in the 1920s, Thomas Midgley Jr, a chemist at the US automotive company General Motors (GM), discovered that adding tetraethyl lead to petrol increased the efficiency and lifespan of internal combustion engines. The health hazards associated with lead were well known — even the ancient Romans had realized, centuries before, that drinking wine from lead-lined pottery caused poisoning. Yet, GM’s compound, marketed under the trade name Ethyl, became widely used.

Lead contaminated the environment and caused serious public-health issues, affecting the brains and nervous systems of many children, causing comas, convulsions and even deaths. From the early 1960s, citizen groups demanded change, citing strong scientific evidence. Yet, policymakers didn’t feel compelled to stop the use of lead in paint and petrol for more than a decade. The US Environmental Protection Agency limited the amount of lead allowed in petrol in 1973. Although the harm such fuels caused — exacerbated by the increasing number of vehicles on the road — was known, they were only fully banned in the 1990s.

Lead-based house paints were banned in 1978 in the United States. Yet, even today, some people are still exposed to lead in old, peeling paints. Similar to climate change, it is often Indigenous communities, people of colour and other marginalized groups who are disproportionately paying the price, with their health and lives, for the decades of profits that have enriched a few in the petroleum industry.

Within a decade, now at the Frigidaire division of GM, Midgley had turned his attention to refrigerants and was involved in the creation of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), particularly Freon. CFCs were initially celebrated for their non-toxic, non-flammable properties, which made them ideal, or so it seemed, for use as coolants in refrigerators and as propellants in aerosol sprays. In the mid-1970s, it became apparent that these compounds break down at cold temperatures and react with ozone.

Over the next 15 years or so, CFCs created a massive hole in the ozone layer that protects Earth and its inhabitants from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. Rates of skin cancer rose. In what Solomon, rightly in my view, sees as an outstanding success of international collaboration, leaders around the globe agreed in the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out CFCs. The ozone hole is now closing. But, once again, this phasing out was planned to be very slow, and only sped up when CFCs were replaced with safer alternatives, in the mid-1990s — more than a decade after their harms were known, and only after companies making and using them had found a profitable alternative.

For Solomon, all these examples show that change happens when impacts are personal, perceptible and practical solutions are available — “the three p’s”. For the climate crisis, in her view, the three p’s have been met: its devastating consequences are being felt around the world and renewable energy has become affordable. Thus, she concludes, we can “do it again”.

Broader solutions

I love Solomon’s optimism and agree that it is important to show that the climate crisis is solvable. Yet, as a climate scientist and philosopher, I don’t quite share her outlook. Each struggle she explores, from pesticides and smog to lead in paint and petrol, demonstrates just how keenly policymakers listen to industry — over other people and living things.

None of these cases were solved by overwhelming scientific evidence, or public concern and outcry. Each time, the industry responsible let go of a harmful product (such as DDT) only once it was sure to make a profit from selling its substitutes (other pesticides) — a strategy it could implement owing to its immense lobbying power in governments. But to solve the climate crisis, technological substitutions won’t be enough.

The harms of persistent pesticides were known long before governments banned them.

Substituting every internal combustion engine with an electric vehicle is not sufficient, neither is replacing coal with solar energy: energy demand needs to fall, too. The consequences of climate change are already very dire. Unlike the issues with the ozone hole or peregrine populations, they will not go away once we stop burning fossil fuels.

Ecological restoration is essential. It includes the sustainable management of forests and rivers, as well as changes in agricultural practices to focus less on livestock and more on diverse, drought-resistant crops. These are not just technical issues that can be implemented by one industry. They require an innovative approach to environmental management, through more decentralized industries and wider participation. The industries that profit from exacerbating the climate crisis will not be the same ones that will profit from change. Ultimately, the justice issues that have been set aside in the more-limited solutions of previous planetary problems — which had inserted technological substitutes into an untouched business model — cannot be ignored any longer.

Solvable is essential reading. I am convinced that Solomon is right: the climate crisis is solvable and this fight does have parallels with previous global challenges. But to address — or rather, redress — the climate crisis, any solution must have human rights at its heart, instead of the continued profits of industries.

Over the past three years ... we've seen an even faster growth rate of accumulation of N2O into the atmosphere, almost 30 per cent faster than the previous decade.

Brazil has registered a record-breaking 5.5 million cases of dengue fever this year, a mosquito-borne virus that causes high fevers, rashes, and in some cases, death.

The surge in dengue has been fuelled by high temperatures induced by both climate change and the El Niño weather pattern, scientists and medical experts say.

Brazil is a case in point. Regions once relatively free of mosquitoes, such as North America and Europe, are becoming potential hotspots for the disease. In Paris, authorities have deployed “dengue detectives” to surveil mosquitoes ahead of the Olympic Games, and health officials last year warned the UK could become home to invasive mosquitoes by 2050.

Archived version

While officials boast that Russia's vast forests can help the country achieve its climate goals, experts say this won't be possible without significant change.

As the climate crisis intensifies, Russia is pinning its hopes on its vast forests to make up for its carbon emissions — the world’s fourth-highest — and even help the country become a global leader in carbon absorption.

But the country’s substandard conservation and ineffective forestry practices, combined with the impacts of climate change itself, make it more likely that Russia’s forests will become a carbon source rather than a sink in the next decade, experts told The Moscow Times.

"If the trend of increasing wildfires continues ... then within the next one or two decades, Russian forests will become a carbon source," a Russian forestry expert said.

From 2006 to 2023, Russia lost on average 1.9 million hectares of forests to fires annually — roughly the size of Slovenia or Fiji.

And according to the expert’s estimates, about a quarter of all logging in Russia targets its largely untouched old-growth forests — a major carbon reservoir.

As the planet continues to warm at an unprecedented rate due to human activity, carbon capture by ecosystems — alongside human emissions reduction — is becoming a significant climate solution, making forest preservation crucial, scientists say.

During the 2021 UN climate conference in Glasgow, President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow takes “the most serious and rigorous” measures to preserve forests by ramping up reforestation and combatting illegal logging and wildfires.

Yet experts doubt whether current measures will be enough for the future of Russia’s forests.

All three experts interviewed by The Moscow Times for this article requested anonymity due to the risks of speaking to a media outlet labeled a “foreign agent” by Russia.

Absorption quandary

In a persistent narrative framing the country’s forests as a catch-all solution to the climate problem, Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s special envoy for the environment, went as far as to claim that Russia’s forests could absorb the majority of global emissions.

“The more forests that are there, the more emissions are captured. And in this regard, Russia is a world leader. This gives me grounds to publicly state that Russia is the planet's ecological donor," Ivanov said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in 2022.

At SPIEF 2024 this week, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov echoed this view, saying that Russia’s “colleagues” — an apparent reference to Western countries — emphasize emissions reduction while neglecting absorption.

"The underlying reason is clear: the country [Russia] exports mainly carbon-containing natural resources and does not want to do anything” to reduce its emissions, a Russian forest management expert and member of the Scientific Council on Forests of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.

“That's why everyone has latched onto the role of forests without truly understanding the real situation [with them],” they added.

Researchers from the Moscow-based Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology found that Russia's greenhouse gas emissions appear to be higher than what its ecosystems can absorb.

The report’s authors also warned that Russia's ecosystems could become a carbon source after 2050 due to increased methane release from the continental shelf and melting permafrost.

An international team of researchers came to a similar conclusion in a 2022 study (here is the pdf), saying that wildfires and droughts make the carbon-sink status of Siberia’s forests less certain.

Russian forests fail to offset even the country’s own emissions, let alone those of others — and their absorption capacity has declined by nearly 20% since 2009, an exiled Russian environmental economist said.

Multiple threats

Experts say that the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in Russia’s regions every year are perhaps the biggest threat to the country’s forests.

According to the forestry expert, the area of forests lost to fires each year exceeds the area lost to clear-cut logging by two to three times on average.

Other climate-induced problems include the spread of pests that now survive warmer winters and destructive windfalls in some regions, the environmental economist said.

The picture becomes even bleaker when forest management practices are factored in, the forestry expert noted, with crucial decisions sometimes based on a “bouquet of legends” rather than scientific knowledge.

Specifically, reforestation efforts often involve planting spruce, pine and oak, which grow slower and therefore absorb less carbon than fast-growing birch or aspen, which would naturally overgrow if left untouched.

"Moreover, pioneer species are initially cleared [before reforestation] and during the growing process. And everything that is cleared rots away and goes into the atmosphere," they said.

The expert also pointed to the Far East Sakhalin region, which as part of its plan to achieve climate neutrality is planting larch. Because the chosen site is a raised bog peat with very poor soil, the expert said, the plantation will not survive.

"Roslesinforg [the federal forestry body] has lost so many specialists during Putin's time that they might no longer understand basic things like this," they said.

The forest management expert said the widespread practice in Russia of planting coniferous monocultures — a technique that dates back to the 18th century — appears to be outdated in today’s changing climate, given that conifers burn more easily than mixed or small-leaved forests.

"It is believed that if something dies or burns, we need to take budget money and spend it on the most expensive seedlings … of spruce or pine,” they said. “But the climate has changed, and there are more wildfires.”

The country also lacks incentives for long-term sustainable forest management, the environmental economist said, as forest users often lease rather than own plots.

"After clear-cutting — which is the main approach to timber harvesting [in Russia] — the plots are turned into a devastated wasteland for many decades. Reforestation measures are generally not very effective, and they are not truly implemented," they said.

A study of reforestation in the Moscow region from 1999 to 2022 by the Earth Touches Me environmental project showed that some young plantations perished due to a lack of proper care.

Hemp fields

Russian researchers have sought out creative ways to enhance carbon absorption beyond the capacity of the country’s forests.

Outside Russia's fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg, scientists who planted industrial hemp discovered that it absorbs carbon dioxide up to five times more effectively than conifers.

The researchers envision long-term carbon storage products made from hemp ranging from clothing and ropes to tableware.

Their endeavor is part of a network of 18 sites across Russia known as “carbon polygons,” in which scientists explore the absorption capacities of various plants in hopes of helping Russia achieve carbon neutrality.

While experts doubt hemp’s reliability for carbon storage, they see the polygons’ benefit in enhancing Russian researchers’ knowledge, particularly in the regions.

"Clothing made from hemp becomes unusable within a few years, and the carbon contained in it will be released into the atmosphere,” the environmental economist said. “Today in the EU ... wooden houses can be certified as carbon removals if they last for 50 years or more."

“When individuals start to understand that deciduous species capture carbon more effectively and rapidly than conifers, there is hope that forestry management will eventually become more meaningful," the forest management expert said.

Despite Russia’s already strained carbon-capture capacities, the country aims to more than double carbon absorption by ecosystems by 2050.

Experts said this plan would be unrealistic unless significant additional actions are taken.

The forestry expert said that three key measures could bring Russia closer to fulfilling this task: banning logging in virgin forests, improving firefighting and developing forestry on abandoned agricultural lands.

Without more competent forestry management, Russia will not be able to preserve this natural treasure.

“As things stand now, there are absolutely no chances of saving the forests,” the expert said.

“And the situation will only worsen.”

Archived version

- Environmental charity Climate Force is collaborating with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and rangers to create a wildlife corridor that runs between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Australia: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.

- Wildlife habitats in this region have become fragmented due to industrial agriculture, and a forested corridor is expected to help protect biodiversity by allowing animals to forage for food and connect different populations for mating and migration.

- The project aims to plant 360,000 trees over an area of 213 hectares (526 acres); so far, it has planted 25,000 trees of 180 species on the land and in the nursery, which can also feed a range of native wildlife.

***- The project is ambitious and organizers say they’re hopeful about it, but challenges remain, including soil regeneration and ensuring the planted trees aren’t killed off by feral pigs or flooding.***🌲

The planet just marked a “shocking” new milestone, enduring 12 consecutive months of unprecedented heat, according to new data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service.

Every single month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the world’s hottest such month on record, Copernicus data showed.

The news comes as the western US is experiencing its first heat wave so far this summer with temperatures soaring into the triple digits. But unprecedented heat has already left a trail of death and destruction across the planet this spring.

Dozens have died in India over the past few weeks as temperatures pushed toward 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit); brutal temperatures in Southeast Asia have caused deaths, school closures and shriveled crops; and as heat surged in Mexico, howler monkeys dropped dead from trees.

Human Rights Watch criticizes Germany over prosecution of environmental defenders: "Indictment of 'Last Generation' sets dangerous precedent"

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/28/germany-prosecutes-environmental-defenders

German environmental activists are facing increasingly harsh rhetoric and legal action from authorities as they mobilize to confront the climate crisis.

Last week, on May 21, Germany’s efforts to curb environmental activism took a disturbing turn when authorities used an offence typically reserved for prosecutorial pursuit of serious organized crime to indict Letzte Generation (Last Generation), a climate activist group known for disruptive protests such as roadblocks and other acts of civil disobedience, as a criminal organization. A conviction under federal law would pave the way for prosecuting anyone who participates in or supports Letzte Generation, including administratively or financially.

"This heavy-handed approach reflects a troubling trend in Europe of stifling civil society and climate activism", Human Rights,Watch says.

"Such actions chill public participation in protests against state policies or state inaction on a range of urgent issues."

The investigation into Letzte Generation as a criminal organization has involved armed police conducting predawn raids, storming private apartments while the activists were still asleep, and granting warrants for police to surveil the group’s communications, including calls made with media.

Last year the group’s website was temporarily seized during a fundraising campaign, with a notice from the police falsely labeling Letzte Generation a criminal organization and stating any donation constitutes illegal support for crime. This move by the police, despite no judicial assessment of the charges having taken place, exposes a deeply worrying bias against the group and raises questions about whether authorities are respecting due process.

International law protects the right to public participation in environmental matters and recognizes peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience as a legitimate form of assembly. Disruptions like traffic blockades, while inconvenient, generally do not constitute violence under international standards, although damage to or destruction of private or public property may.

While civil disobedience often involves breaking national laws, authorities are required to respond proportionately, giving due weight to the right to protest and the importance to the public interest of the issues at stake.

The government’s extreme response to Letzte Generation’s activism appears disproportionate, threatens the very right to protest, and smears climate activists when their cause has never been more urgent. Instead of intimidating environmental defenders, Germany should live up to its commitment to ambitious climate action and investigate the concerns that groups like Letzte Generation raise.

Wealthy countries sent climate funding to the developing world in recent years with interest rates or strings attached that benefited the lending nations, a Reuters data analysis found.

[The linked article contains some interesting diagrams.]

Japan, France, Germany, the United States and other wealthy nations are reaping billions of dollars in economic rewards from a global program meant to help the developing world grapple with the effects of climate change, a Reuters review of U.N. and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development data shows.

The financial gains happen as part of developed nations’ pledge to send $100 billion a year to poorer countries to help them reduce emissions and cope with extreme weather. By channeling money from the program back into their own economies, wealthy countries contradict the widely embraced concept that they should compensate poorer ones for their long-term pollution that fueled climate change, more than a dozen climate finance analysts, activists, and former climate officials and negotiators told Reuters.

Wealthy nations have loaned at least $18 billion at market-rate interest, including $10.2 billion in loans made by Japan, $3.6 billion by France, $1.9 billion by Germany and $1.5 billion by the United States, according to the review by Reuters and Big Local News, a journalism program at Stanford University. That is not the norm for loans for climate-related and other aid projects, which usually carry low or no interest.

At least another $11 billion in loans – nearly all from Japan – required recipient nations to hire or purchase materials from companies in the lending countries.

And Reuters identified at least $10.6 billion in grants from 24 countries and the European Union that similarly required recipients to hire companies, nonprofits or public agencies from specific nations – usually the donor – to do the work or provide materials.

Analysts said grants that require recipients to hire wealthy countries’ suppliers are less harmful than loans with such conditions because they do not require repayment. Sometimes, they said, the arrangements are even necessary – when recipient countries lack the expertise to provide a service. But other times, they benefit donors’ economies at the expense of developing nations. That undermines the goal of helping vulnerable nations develop resilience and technology to cope with climate change, the climate and finance sources said.

“Climate finance provision should not be a business opportunity,” Schalatek said. It should “serve the needs and priorities of recipient developing countries.”

Many of the conditional loans and grants Reuters reviewed were counted toward developed nations’ pledge to send $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer countries disproportionately harmed by climate change. First made in 2009, the commitment was reaffirmed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Roughly $353 billion was paid from 2015 through 2020. That sum included $189 billion in direct country-to-country payments, which were the focus of the Reuters analysis.

More than half of that direct funding – about 54% – came in the form of loans rather than grants, a fact that rankles some representatives from indebted developing nations such as Ecuador. They say they should not have to take on more debt to solve problems largely caused by the developed world.

Countries of “the global south are experiencing a new wave of debt caused by climate finance,” said Andres Mogro, Ecuador’s former national director for adaptation to climate change.

At the same time, several analysts said, rich countries are overstating their contributions to the $100 billion pledge, because a portion of their climate finance flows back home through loan repayments, interest and work contracts.

“The benefits to donor countries disproportionately overshadow the primary objective of supporting climate action in developing countries,” said Ritu Bharadwaj, principal researcher on climate governance and finance at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK policy think tank.

Rich nations defend their climate funding

Representatives of the main agencies that manage climate funding for Japan, Germany, France and the United States – the four countries reporting the most such funding to the U.N. – said they consider the amount of debt a country is already carrying when deciding whether to offer loans or grants. They said they prioritize grants to the poorest countries.

About 83% of climate funding to the lowest-income countries was in the form of grants, the Reuters review found. But those countries also received, on average, less than half as much climate funding as higher-income nations that mostly received loans.

“A mix of loans and grants ensures that public donor funding can be directed to countries that need it most, while economically stronger countries can benefit from better-than-market rate loan conditions,” said Heike Henn, director for climate, energy and environment at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Germany has contributed $45 billion in climate funding, 52% of it loaned.

The French Development Agency (AFD) offers developing nations low interest rates that would normally be available only to the richest countries on the open market, said Atika Ben Maid, deputy head of the AFD’s Climate and Nature Division. About 90% of France’s $28 billion contribution came in the form of loans – the highest share of any nation.

”This is a classic example where a bad loan, which has been given to a country in the garb of climate finance, will create further … financial stress.”

Ritu Bharadwaj, principal researcher on climate governance and finance at the International Institute for Environment and Development

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said loans are “appropriate and cost-effective” for revenue-producing projects. Grants typically go to other types of projects in “low-income and climate-vulnerable communities.” The United States provided $9.5 billion in climate funding, 31% of it loaned.

“It should also be emphasized that the climate finance provisions of the Paris Agreement are not based on ‘making amends’ for harm caused by historic emissions,” the spokesperson said, when asked whether collecting market-rate interest and other financial rewards contradicts the spirit of the climate finance program.

The Paris Agreement does not state outright that developed nations should make amends for historic emissions. It does reference principles of “climate justice” and “equity” and notes countries’ “common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities” to grapple with climate change. It makes clear that developed countries are expected to provide climate finance.

Many interpret that language to mean that wealthy nations have a responsibility to help solve climate-related problems they had an outsized role in creating, said Rachel Kyte, an Oxford University climate policy professor who was World Bank special envoy for climate change in 2014 and 2015.

But the agreement was short on specifics. The pledge said nations should mobilize climate finance from “a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels.” It did not define whether grants should be prioritized over loans. Nor did it prohibit wealthy nations from imposing terms advantageous to themselves.

“It’s like setting a building on fire and then selling the fire extinguishers outside,” Ecuador’s Mogro, who was also former climate negotiator for the G77 bloc of developing countries and China, said of the practice.

Big needs, limited funding

Reuters and Big Local News reviewed 44,539 records of climate finance contributions reported to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the entity in charge of keeping track of the pledge. The contributions, from 34 countries and the European Union, spanned 2015 through 2020, the most recent year for which data are available.

The UNFCCC does not require countries to report key details of their financing. So reporters also reviewed 133,568 records collected by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to identify hiring conditions tied to climate-related finance over the same period.

The review confirmed that developed countries counted some conditional aid toward their $100 billion climate finance commitment. Because the UNFCCC records lack detail, Reuters could not determine if all such aid was counted.

To better understand the funding patterns revealed by the data, reporters consulted 38 climate and development finance analysts and scholars, climate activists, former and current climate officials and negotiators for developing nations, and representatives of development agencies for wealthy nations.

The Reuters findings come as countries try to negotiate a new, higher climate financing target by the year’s end. The U.N. has estimated that at least $2.4 trillion a year is needed to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement, which included keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Recent spending pales in comparison. Wealthy countries likely met the $100 billion annual goal for the first time in 2022 through direct contributions from country to country as well as multilateral funding from development banks and climate funds. The OECD estimates that wealthy nations funneled at least $164 billion toward the climate finance pledge via multilateral institutions – about 80% of it loaned – between 2015 and 2020, in addition to countries’ direct contributions.

Reuters was unable to determine the percentage of those loans that carried market interest rates or hiring conditions, due to uneven reporting by multilateral groups.

At least $3 billion of the direct spending went to projects that did little to help countries reduce emissions or guard against the harms of climate change, a June 2023 Reuters investigation found. Large sums went to a coal plant, a hotel, chocolate shops and other projects with little or no connection to climate initiatives.

A deepening hole

Heavily indebted countries face a vicious cycle: Debt payments limit their ability to invest in climate solutions, while extreme weather causes severe economic losses, often leading them to borrow more. A 2022 report by the United Nations Development Program found that more than half of the 54 most severely indebted developing nations also ranked among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

With the amount of financing for climate projects still far from what’s needed, however, some analysts argue that lending needs to be part of the climate finance equation.

Development aid representatives from the U.S., Japan, France, Germany and the European Commission say loans enable them to funnel far more money to significant projects than they could if they relied solely on grants.

In interviews with Reuters, eight representatives who have worked on climate issues in developing nations said they consider loans to be necessary to fund ambitious projects given the limited funding wealthy nations have allocated for climate finance. But they said future pledges should require that rich nations and multilateral institutions be more transparent about the lending terms and offer guardrails against loans that create suffocating debt.

“The way the international financial system works at the moment… is to dig even deeper a hole,” said Kyte, the former World Bank climate envoy who recently advised Britain in climate negotiations. “We have to say, ‘no, no more digging, we’re going to fill the hole and lift you up.’”

‘A bad loan’

Echoing years of pleas from developing nations, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell has publicly urged wealthy nations to offer so-called concessional loans, with very low interest rates and long repayment periods. This makes them less costly than those sold on the open market. UNFCCC and OECD had no comment for this report. UNFCCC instead referred Reuters to Stiell’s past remarks.

About 18% of climate loans from wealthy countries, or $18 billion, were not concessional, the U.N. reports from 2015 through 2020 show, including more than half of the loans that the United States and Spain each reported. These totals are likely underestimated, given that it is voluntary for wealthy nations to report to the U.N. whether their loans were concessional.

France gave a $118.6 million non-concessional loan to Ecuador’s port city Guayaquil in 2017 to build an aerial tramway. The loan, which France counted as part of its climate finance pledge, shows how the global program can create expensive debt in developing countries in exchange for few environmental gains, while lending nations benefit.

Dubbed the Aerovia, the cabled gondolas were billed as a climate-friendly alternative to the congested bridges connecting industrial Guayaquil to a neighboring city where workers live. Four years after its inauguration, the Aerovia transported roughly 8,300 passengers a day. That was one-fifth of the ridership projected in early planning documents – resulting in lower-than-expected revenue and environmental benefit.

Debt from the loan has added to Guayaquil’s $124 million budget deficit. Guayaquil expected to pay 5.88% interest, according to early planning documents. France was projected to earn $76 million in interest over the 20-year repayment period. That interest rate would be unusually high for a climate-related loan, finance analysts said. A 2023 OECD analysis of concessional loans from 12 developed nations and the European Union found they offered an average interest rate of 0.7% in 2020. Guayaquil and France declined to disclose the interest rate of the final loan agreement for the tramway.

“This is a classic example where a bad loan, which has been given to a country in the garb of climate finance, will create further … financial stress,” said Bharadwaj, the climate researcher from the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The loan agreement did not require Guayaquil to hire a French company. Nonetheless, French transportation company Poma won the contract to build the tramway, along with Panamanian company SOFRATESA, founded by a French citizen. The companies also operate the tramway, so the municipality collects no revenue from passenger fares to help repay the loan. Neither company responded to questions from Reuters.

Nearly all of the Aerovia’s components – including its cabins, electrical control panels and cables – were manufactured in France and Switzerland and then shipped to Guayaquil, according to a slide presentation prepared by the local government before the tramway’s launch.

To Euan Ritchie, senior policy adviser at Development Initiatives, an international policy organization, the project amounted to a “transfer of wealth from Ecuador to France.”

Contesting that claim, a spokesperson for the French development agency said that the tramway belongs to the city and that the agency assessed the risk of financial stress before approving the loan. The aerial tramway has already resulted in a “significant greenhouse gas reduction,” despite low ridership, said the spokesperson, who provided no estimates. The spokesperson said the agency does not participate in selecting contractors.

Still, France’s development agency trumpeted the successes of French companies in landing such contracts. The agency’s 2022 annual report said that more than 71% of its projects that year involved “at least one French economic actor,” garnering them 2 billion euros in “economic benefits.” The spokesperson declined to provide estimates of how French suppliers benefit from climate-related funding. French companies often win bids because they have “in-depth knowledge and local presence” in regions where AFD sends significant aid, the spokesperson said, adding that it “in no way favors any entities based on their nationality.”

Strings attached

Almost 32% of all Japanese climate loans required borrowers to use at least some of the money to hire Japanese companies, OECD records show. Those loans have funneled at least $10.8 billion back to the Japanese economy, the Reuters review found.

The loan requirements helped Sumitomo Corp and Japan Transport Engineering Co win three contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to supply 648 train cars for electrified railway and subway projects in the Philippines. A Sumitomo sister company, Sumitomo Mitsui Construction Co, won two contracts worth more than $1 billion to build rail expansion and station buildings.

A Sumitomo Corp spokesperson said that though the loans required the main contractor to be Japanese, they did not require the use of Japanese subcontractors. The spokesperson did not reply when asked if the company used local subcontractors for the Philippine rail project.

Japan Transport Engineering Co did not respond to questions.

Aid with hiring conditions robs local companies of business opportunities and eliminates chances for developing countries to build expertise in sustainable technologies, said Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. Eleven sources said the requirements contradict Paris Agreement clauses that urge parties to prioritize “technology transfer and capacity-building” for developing countries.

Asked by Reuters about Japan’s conditional loans, Kiyofumi Takashima, a spokesperson for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), said they carry very favorable terms for borrowers and usually involve local consultants, contractors and workers. Japanese consultants and contractors make “full efforts to transfer technology and skill” to local actors, he said.

JICA policy during the time period Reuters reviewed required that this type of loan carry an interest rate of 0.1% and a 40-year repayment period.

Conditional aid can carry additional costs because recipients can’t consider cheaper contractors. The OECD in 2001 recommended a halt to such requirements, citing its own 1991 study that found they can increase costs for recipient nations by up to 30%.

Saori Katada, a Japan foreign policy expert at the University of Southern California, cited academic research that has found that Japanese companies usually charge more than their counterparts from neighboring countries, like China, Korea or Taiwan.

“Maybe it’s a good quality, but it’s always very expensive,” Katada said.

Other countries frequently impose similar hiring requirements on grants. Reporters found that 18% of all climate-related grants reported to the OECD between 2015 and 2020 carried such requirements for all or part of the grant.

The European Union extended $4 billion in grants that required recipients to hire companies or agencies from specific countries. The United States reported $3 billion and Germany $2.7 billion in grants with similar strings attached.

A spokesperson from Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development said that their grants do not require hiring German companies and that there is no policy to favor national suppliers. However, they frequently require recipient countries to pay Germany’s international development agency, GIZ, for consulting and other technical services, the spokesperson said.

Nearly all of the European Union’s aid since 2021 has been free of such hiring requirements, an EU spokesperson said.

All aid, regardless of who gets the contracts to do the work, benefits recipient countries, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said. The spokesperson contested the notion that the U.S. had imposed grant conditions that funneled $3 billion back to its own economy. The aid might have required hiring of companies or agencies from other countries – not just the U.S. – said the spokesperson, who did not offer any specific examples.

OECD data lists U.S. companies, nonprofits or governmental agencies as the main entities receiving money from at least 80% of the U.S. conditional climate grants, totaling $2.4 billion.

This is “part of the same story of the financing going in the wrong direction,” Kyte said.

As vast parts of Florida sweltered in oppressive heat over the weekend, South Florida TV meteorologist Steve MacLaughlin criticized the state’s new legislation that deleted most references to climate change from state law, and urged his viewers to vote.

Meanhwhile there are signs like Monkeys ‘falling out of trees like apples’ in Mexico amid brutal heatwave. And there's Rare tornado hits Haiti, injuring more than 50 people and leaving hundreds homeless

Also this

Record-breaking heat in the Atlantic could fuel an unusually active hurricane season.

And this could affect the weather in other regions such as Europe, Africa, Central and South America.

From Ireland to Croatia, young people say well-paid jobs not enough in a system stacked against their generation

Ireland has recorded a steep rise in young adults living with their parents over the pandemic and amid its acute housing crisis. Between 2017 and 2022 – the most recent year data is available for – the proportion of working 25- to 34-year-olds living with their parents rose from 27% to 40%, according to analysis by the EU agency Eurofound.

Barcelona has long been in the spotlight for its backlash against over-tourism, with slogans such as ‘Tourists go home’ daubed on walls, and more recently, rents are reported to have risen in neighbourhoods popular with digital nomads with earning power exceeding local salaries.

In today's edition of no shit sherlock. So, solutions ? Stop flying... No? okay then, societal collapse it is then.

Devastating and ongoing flooding in southern Brazil is forcing some of the half million displaced residents to consider uprooting their lives from inundated towns to rebuild on higher ground.

Two weeks after the onset of torrential rains, the Guaiba River running by state capital Porto Alegre is rising again, having passed the all-time high. In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the streets of dozens of towns have turned into slow-moving rivers.

With hundreds of thousands of families fleeing the floods, the disaster - which has killed at least 147 people, with 127 still missing - could touch off one of Brazil's biggest cases of climate migration in recent history.

Onshoring the EV supply chain to Europe would cut the emissions of producing a battery by 37% compared to a China-controlled supply chain, according to new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). This carbon saving rises to over 60% when renewable electricity is used. Producing Europe’s demand for battery cells and components locally would save an estimated 133 Mt of CO2 between 2024 and 2030, equivalent to the total annual emissions of Czechia.

But over half of Europe's battery production plans are at risk without stronger government action, the researchers say.

Less than half (47%) of the lithium-ion battery production planned for Europe up to 2030 is secure, the report also finds. This is up from one-third a year ago following a raft of measures put in place to respond to the US Inflation Reduction Act. The remaining 53% of announced cell manufacturing capacity is still at medium or high risk of being delayed, scaled down or cancelled without stronger government action.

Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and emobility supply chains at T&E, said: “Batteries, and metals that go into them, are the new oil. European leaders will need laser sharp focus and joined-up thinking to reap their climate and industrial benefits. Strong sustainability requirements, such as the upcoming battery carbon footprint rules, can reward local clean manufacturing. Crucially, Europe needs better instruments under the European Investment Bank and EU Battery Fund to support gigafactory investments.”

France, Germany and Hungary have made the most progress in securing gigafactory capacity since T&E’s previous risk assessment last year. [1] In France, ACC started production in Pas-de-Calais last year while plants by Verkor in Dunkirk and Northvolt in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, are going ahead thanks to generous government subsidies.

Finland, the UK, Norway and Spain have the most production capacity at medium or high risk due to question marks over projects by the Finnish Minerals Group, West Midlands Gigafactory, Freyr and InoBat. T&E called on lawmakers to help lock in investments by doubling down on EU electric car policies, enforcing strong battery sustainability requirements that reward local manufacturing, and beefing up EU-level funding.

Securing other parts of the battery value chain will be even more challenging given China’s dominance and the EU’s nascent expertise. The report finds Europe has the potential to manufacture 56% of its demand for cathodes – the battery’s most valuable components – by 2030, but only two plants have started commercial operations so far. By the end of this decade, the region could also fulfil all of its processed lithium needs and secure between 8% and 27% of battery minerals from recycling in Europe. But T&E said processing and recycling plants need EU and state support to scale quickly.

Julia Poliscanova said: “The battery race between China, Europe and the US is intensifying. While some battery investments that were at risk of being lured away by US subsidies have been saved since last year, close to half of planned production is still up for grabs. The EU needs to end any uncertainty over its engine phase-out and set corporate EV targets to assure gigafactory investors that they will have a guaranteed market for their product.”

In the villages surrounding the eastern Serbian city of Smederevo, trouble has brewed over the last eight years. Once a symbol of economic promise, the steel mill acquired by Chinese company HBIS has become synonymous with environmental degradation and health hazards for the local community.

Dubbed the “red village” due to the perpetual crimson hue that coats everything in sight, Radinac is a poignant example of the detrimental effects of industrial Pollution on local life. Concerns about rising cancer cases and the presence of toxic substances like arsenic, chromium, and lead in the dust hang heavily over the community. Residents of nearby villages, such as Radinac, speak of their daily struggles with heavy air pollution and the omnipresent red dust that blankets their homes and streets.

Dragana Milic shares the heartbreaking reality of her grandchildren refusing to venture outdoors, highlighting the profound impact of Pollution on the younger generation’s quality of life. She said, “They won’t play outside.”

The acquisition of the steel mill by HBIS in 2016, amidst high-profile visits from Chinese President Xi Jinping, was initially celebrated as a testament to growing economic ties between China and Serbia. However, the subsequent surge in Pollution levels has cast a shadow over this narrative of progress.

Locals attribute the worsening pollution to the influx of Chinese investment, pointing to throat irritations, persistent soot accumulation, and unpleasant odors as daily reminders of their deteriorating environment.

Activists like Nikola Krstic from NGO Tvrdjava raise alarming concerns about the spike in Pollution since HBIS took over the mill. Despite efforts to address the issue, including a detailed analysis of the dust emissions and legal action against the company, the community’s plight remains largely unresolved.

The Serbian Environmental Protection Agency’s repeated classification of Smederevo as one of the country’s most polluted cities. Data from the Smederevo Health Centre revealing a four-fold increase in cancer cases between 2011 and 2019 further amplifies concerns about the long-term health consequences of unchecked Pollution.

While HBIS has outlined plans to mitigate the environmental impact, skepticism prevails among residents like Milic, who have witnessed promises fall short in the past. The company’s proposed measures, such as constructing a wall around raw material storage and implementing new processing technologies, offer hope but are met with cautious optimism.

[Edit typo.]

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

Archived version

Almost 10 years after it got things started on a dubious arrangement to build a canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific, Nicaragua has dropped a concession conceded to a Chinese businessman to finish the task.

Despite exemplary discoveries in 2014, no amount of considerable work has been done on the canal to connect Nicaragua’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The most work that has been done in the area is to break ground on access roads close to but digging the stream never started. Along with this, a large number of Nicaraguan framers have questioned the land seizures intended to create a route for the government-backed project.

In 2019, a Nicaraguan judge condemned three farmers’ chiefs who partook in the fights to jail for 216 years, 210 years, and 159 years. They were blamed for advancing a “failed coup” against the government. Nicaraguan regulation covers jail time served at 30 years. The proposed $50bn, 172-mile (278km) trench across this Central American nation was for quite some time seen as a joke that later turned dangerous and troublesome.

The canal and its expected impact on the climate turned into an image of the odd and inconsistent nature of President Daniel Ortega’s inexorably harsh system. Ortega’s administration guaranteed the channel would create a huge number of job opportunities and invigorate the economy. Critics contended that it presented serious ecological dangers, would uproot huge numbers of families in the countryside, and was monetarily impossible.

The 50-year canal concession was granted to the Hong Kong-based organization HK Nicaragua Channel Canal Development Investment Company, owned by the Chinese finance manager Wang Jing. Experts expressed regulation to empower the task was sped up without authentic counsel, ecological investigations, or political discussion.

Prior to winning the concession, Wang had no involvement with structural designing and had constructed a fortune in telecoms. Quite a bit of that fortune was cleared out in China‘s 2015 stock market crisis when he was accounted to have lost up to 85% of his riches.

More than a fifth of people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 24 years old – 21.7% – were considered NEETs in 2023, according to the International Labour Organization.

Finances are another common issue. The cost of education is prohibitive for some young people, and for others who do complete education or training, the high cost of living in the cities where job opportunities exist can keep them out of the labor market.

An analysis of hundreds of pre-modern states over 3,000 years (from 2000BC to AD1800) suggests that civilisations tend to have a 'shelf-life'

It's called geothermal energy, and it’s an exciting prospect for the country of Domenica. Geothermal has none of the intermittency issues of wind and solar – in other words, it provides stable energy day and night – and doesn’t take up any surface real estate, keeping the Roseau Valley in its pristine state.

Most small island developing States are dependent on imported fossil fuels for electricity generation and transport, putting a major strain on their resources and jeopardising their energy security by exposing them to the vagaries of the international fuel markets.

Dominica, however, has a powerful clean power source lying in wait below the Roseau Valley, a popular tourist destination a short drive from the capital, Roseau, that is clean, completely renewable and could provide so much energy that the government could even sell excess electricity to neighbouring islands.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13543558

Around the world, fashion’s mostly female labor force is grappling with working conditions made increasingly unbearable and unhealthy by climate change. Women picking cotton in India’s sun-baked fields are toiling in temperatures of roughly 113 degrees Fahrenheit, while workers in Ghana’s Kantamanto — one of the world’s largest second-hand markets where clothing discarded by Western consumers is resold — are losing vital wages when flooding prevents trade. Nour is just one of nearly 1 million garment workers in Cambodia, a country that has experienced roughly 1.4 degrees F degrees of warming per decade since the 1960s.

Fashion has had a devastating impact on the planet, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than aviation and shipping combined. So far, labor experts say, the more than $2.5 trillion industry has mostly focused its climate change efforts on mitigation, such as using more recycled fabrics, while largely ignoring how it impacts workers.

“[Labor] violations in factories are so gross, as in so widespread, and so awful… that that’s where the attention has been,” said Liz Parker, an associate member of Clean Clothes Campaign, an Amsterdam-based alliance of labor unions and nongovernmental organizations. “But workers are suffering from heat stress, from flooding, from water pollution…and we need to protect [them] from that as well.”

• A rising number of young Americans are disconnected from work, school, and a sense of purpose.
• Disconnection rates have been increasing since the 1990s, affecting young people's futures.
• Poor mental health and a lack of a financial safety net contribute to rising disconnection.