AFP UK

Cycling massively increased in popularity in gridlocked Bogota during the coronavirus pandemic

Each morning, hundreds of cyclists ride through the socially disadvantaged neighborhood of Kennedy in southern Bogota.

Gripping their handlebars, laborers, seamstresses and students are choosing pedal power over cars and buses.

A cheap alternative to public transportation and an effective way to beat Bogota’s horrendous traffic jams, the bicycle has taken off in one of the world’s most congested cities.

“It’s a practical way to get around for the people of Bogota, also because we are poor,” said Carlos Felipe Pardo, founder of Despacio, an NGO that supports alternative forms of mobility.

Ricardo Buitrago’s bicycle repair business has taken off in the six years since he started it.

Hands blackened with grease, he says up to 10,000 cyclists use the bicycle lane in front of his workshop every day.

One of them is Maria Ellis. She lives close to her office in Bogota, but it still takes her more than 1.5 hours to get to work.

“By bike it takes 25 minutes, so the bicycle is much better,” she smiled.

– Traffic nightmare –

Bogota’s eight million residents dread every car journey. At rush hour, crossing the city can take up to three hours.

In 2019, 880,000 daily journeys were made by bicycle in Bogota, according to the mayor’s office, amounting to close to seven percent of all such movement in the capital.

And that figure jumped to 13 percent during the pandemic, according to Pardo.

Bogota was one of the first cities to create temporary cycle lanes during the pandemic to aid mobility while respecting distancing protocols.

It was a move that was replicated throughout the world, including Paris.

Bogota has close to 600 kilometers (370 miles) of dedicated cycle lanes, the most comprehensive cycle network in Latin America, and the government is working on expanding it further, said mobility minister Avila Moreno.

Not all of these are in a good condition. Some are only separated from the intense traffic by plastic bollards while others have been deformed by tree roots.

But at least they exist.

– Cheap but dangerous –

Unlike in many European capitals, where riding the bicycle is sometimes seen as trendy, in Colombia, which has a minimum wage of only $220 a month, it is considered a reliable and affordable form of transportation. 

“Many view the bicycle as a cheap way to avoid public transport,” said Moreno.

Security guard Pedro Quimbaya, 53, says he saves 150,000 pesos ($35) a month in bus fare.

The flip side is that it can be dangerous.

“At rush hour the traffic is very heavy, there are too many bicycles, the lanes aren’t very good, you have to be very careful,” said Ellis.

Over the first half of 2022, 50 cyclists were killed in traffic incidents in Bogota.

Then there is the risk of theft. Quimbaya says he has been attacked several times and his bicycle worth $270, more than a month’s salary, was stolen by a gang.

Nearly 11,000 bicycles were stolen in 2020, according to the mayor’s office and theft continues to rise.

Pardo says the capital needs more infrastructure, better security and better trained drivers.

“Bogota has progressed on all these fronts but still needs to improve,” he added.

– Next Copenhagen? –

Moreno, the recently appointed mobility minister, says the city has “huge potential.”

“It’s a work in progress that other big cities like Copenhagen have already been through,” she said. “Bogota is following the same path.”

The municipality will roll out 3,300 public free-to-use bicycles in October.

Colombia has long been in love with the bicycle, not least thanks to its great cycling champions such as Egan Bernal, who won the Tour de France in 2019, and Nairo Quintana, a two-time Grand Tour winner.

The last three Bogota mayors, including incumbent Claudia Lopez and current President Gustavo Petro, have promoted bicycle use.

Ever since 1974, the city’s main avenues have been closed off to vehicles for several hours on Sundays to be replaced by thousands of bicycles.

Bogota “could become the world bicycle capital. It’s possible, even though we’re still far from that,” said Pardo, the NGO head.

“We can get people out of their cars and onto bicycles,” said Moreno.

Buitrago, the bicycle repairman, agrees: “The bicycle is the future.”

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina speaks during an interview in New York on September 22, 2022

A country of fertile, densely populated deltas, low-lying Bangladesh is among the most vulnerable nations in the world to climate change. 

But the urgency of the situation is not being matched by actions of countries responsible for emissions, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said.

“They don’t act. They can talk but they don’t act,” she told AFP on a visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

“The rich countries, the developed countries, this is their responsibility. They should come forward. But we are not getting that much response from them. That is the tragedy,” she said.

“I know the rich countries, they want to become more rich and rich. They don’t bother for others.”

Bangladesh has produced a miniscule amount of the greenhouse gas emissions that have already contributed to the warming of the planet by an average of nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The Paris accord called for $100 billion a year by 2020 from wealthy nations to help developing nations cope with climate change. That year, $83.3 billion was committed, including through private sources, according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development figures.

One key issue facing the next UN climate summit, to take place in Egypt in November, is whether wealthy nations also need to pay for losses and damages from climate change — not just to pay for adaptation and mitigation.

“We want that fund to be raised. Unfortunately we didn’t get a good response from the developed countries,” Hasina said.

“Because they are the responsible ones for these damages, they should come forward,” the 74-year-old added.

Wealthy nations have agreed only to discuss the loss and damage issue through 2024.

This year’s General Assembly featured repeated calls for climate justice. The leader of tiny Vanuatu urged an international treaty against fossil fuels while the prime minister of Pakistan warned that floods that have swamped one-third of his country could happen elsewhere.

– Questions on Rohingya –

Climate is not the only issue on which Bangladesh sees inaction from the West.

Some 750,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a scorched-earth campaign against the minority group by troops in neighboring Myanmar, a campaign that the United States has described as genocide.

While the world has saluted Bangladesh for taking in the refugees — along with 100,000 who fled earlier violence — attention has shifted since the Covid-19 pandemic and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As long as they are in our country, we feel that it is our duty,” she said. But for Bangladeshi hosts, patience is running thin, she said.

Michelle Bachelet, then the UN human rights chief, said on a visit in August that there was growing anti-Rohingya sentiment in Bangladesh.

“Local people also suffer a lot,” Hasina said. “I can’t say that they’re angry, but they feel uncomfortable.”

“All the burden is coming upon us. This is a problem.”

The Rohingya refugees, who are mostly Muslim, live largely in ramshackle camps with tarpaulins, sheet metal and bamboo.

Bachelet on her visit said there was no prospect of sending them back to Buddhist-majority, military-run Myanmar, where the Rohingya are not considered citizens.

But in her interview, Hasina signaled that there were few options other than for the Rohingya to reside in camps.

“It is not possible for us to give them an open space because they have their own country. They want to go back there. So that is the main priority for everybody,” Hasina said.

“If anybody wants to take them, they can take them,” she added. “Why should I object?”

A new liftoff of NASA'S Artemis 1 Moon mission is threatened by a storm

NASA’s historic uncrewed mission to the Moon is facing fresh difficulties.

After technical problems derailed two launch attempts several weeks ago, a new liftoff of the Artemis 1 mission scheduled for Tuesday is now threatened by a storm gathering in the Caribbean.

The storm, which has not yet been assigned a name, is currently located south of the Dominican Republic.

But it is expected to grow into a hurricane in the coming days and could move north to Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center, from which the rocket is set to launch.

“Our plan A is to stay to course and to get the launch off on September 27,” Mike Bolger, NASA’s exploration ground systems manager, told reporters on Friday. “But we realized we also need to be really paying attention and thinking about a plan B.”

That would entail wheeling the giant Space Launch System rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, known as VAB.

“If we were to go down to Plan B we need a couple days to pivot from our current tanking test or launch configuration to execute rollback and get back into the protection of the VAB,” Bolger said, adding that a decision should be made by early afternoon on Saturday.

On the launch pad the orange and white SLS rocket can withstand wind gusts of up to 137 kilometers per hour. But if it has to be sheltered, the current launch window, which runs until October 4, will be missed.

The next launch window will run from October 17 to 31, with one possibility of take-off per day, except from October 24-26 and 28.

A successful Artemis 1 mission will come as a huge relief to the US space agency, after years of delays and cost overruns. But another setback would be a blow to NASA, after two previous launch attempts were scrapped when the rocket experienced technical glitches including a fuel leak.

The launch dates depend on NASA receiving a special waiver to avoid having to retest batteries on an emergency flight system that is used to destroy the rocket if it strays from its designated range to a populated area.

On Tuesday the launch window will open at 11:37 local time and will last 70 minutes.

If the rocket takes off that day, the mission will last 39 days before it lands in the Pacific Ocean on November 5.

The Artemis 1 space mission hopes to test the SLS as well as the unmanned Orion capsule that sits atop, in preparation for future Moon-bound journeys with humans aboard.

Mannequins equipped with sensors are standing in for astronauts on the mission and will record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts into orbit around the Moon without landing on its surface.

The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest.

A satellite image shows Hurricane Fiona on September 23, 2022, at 1400 GMT

Hurricane Fiona barreled towards Canada on Friday with Nova Scotia province on high alert after the storm swept past Bermuda, where it left much of the population without power but caused little damage.

The US National Hurricane Center said Fiona was packing sustained winds of near 125 miles (205 kilometers) an hour and was “expected to be a powerful hurricane-force cyclone” when it makes landfall overnight into Saturday.

“It is certainly going to be a historic, extreme event for Eastern Canada,” Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist for the Canadian Hurricane Centre, told reporters.

“It’s a major hurricane… All that momentum is trapped within the storm, so it’s very difficult for something like that to actually wind down.”

Authorities in Nova Scotia issued an emergency alert on phones, saying power outages were likely and people should stay inside with enough supplies for at least 72 hours.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the storm “a bad one,” adding it “could have significant impacts right across the region.”

In Halifax, capital of Nova Scotia, stores sold out of propane gas cylinders for camping stoves as residents stocked up.

“Hopefully it will slow up when it hits the cooler water, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to,” Dave Buis of the Northern Yacht Club in North Sydney, Novia Scotia, told Canadian television.

– Puerto Rico hard hit –

Bermuda had earlier called on residents to remain inside as strong winds raked over the British territory, but no fatalities or major damage were reported as Fiona passed roughly 100 miles to the west of the island.

The Belco power company said 15,000 out of 36,000 households were without power on Friday evening, with electricity being rapidly returned to many areas.

The Royal Bermuda Regiment said it was waiting for winds to die down before clearing roads. Residents posted images of downed power lines and some flooding on social media.

“We had some minor damage to the premises but nothing serious,” Jason Rainer, owner of a souvenir shop in the capital Hamilton told AFP, saying some doors and windows had been blown out.

Store owners had covered windows with metal and wood sheets.

The island of about 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles (54 square kilometers), and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

World Bank president David Malpass is battling charges of climate denial for dodging questions on the role of man-made emissions in global warming — which he since said he acknowledges

The White House on Friday rebuked the head of the World Bank David Malpass, who is battling charges of climate denial for dodging questions on the role of man-made emissions in global warming.

Under mounting fire, Malpass has rejected suggestions he might quit over the uproar — and has moved to clarify his position several times in recent days.

“Look, it’s clear that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are adding to, are causing climate change,” he told Politico Friday, affirming that none of the bank’s member countries had asked him to leave and that he was “not resigning.”

“The task for us, for the world, is to pull together the projects and the funding that actually has an impact,” he said.

Malpass is a veteran of Republican US administrations and was tapped to lead the bank in 2019 by then-president Donald Trump, who famously and repeatedly denied the science behind climate change.

Climate activists have previously called for Malpass to be removed for what they say is an inadequate approach to the climate crisis — but the chorus grew suddenly louder after his appearance at a New York Times-organized conference this week.

Asked on stage to respond to a claim by former US vice president Al Gore that he was a climate denier, Malpass declined multiple times to say whether he believed man-made emissions were warming the planet — responding, “I’m not a scientist.”

“We condemn the words of the president,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a White House briefing in response to the incident.

“We expect the World Bank to be a global leader” on the climate crisis response, she said, adding that the US Treasury Department “has and will continue to make that expectation clear to the World Bank leadership.”

Malpass has been seeking to course-correct since the row erupted earlier this week, and in an interview with CNN on Thursday he clearly acknowledged that climate-warming emissions were “coming from manmade sources, including fossil fuels, methane, agricultural uses and industrial uses.”

“I’m not a denier,” he told the network, saying his message had been “tangled” and he was “not always good at conveying” what he means.

But the uproar shows little sign of dying down, with the Union of Concerned Scientists the latest group to call for him to be “replaced immediately.”

Pressed on whether President Joe Biden still has confidence in Malpass and media reports that some US officials are seeking his removal, Jean-Pierre said: “Removing him requires a majority of shareholders, so that’s something to keep in mind.”

“The US believes the World Bank must be a full partner in delivering on the aggressive climate agenda, poverty reduction and sustainability development. Again, Treasury will hold Malpass accountable to this position and support the many staff working to fight climate change.”

– ‘I am worried’ –

Malpass’s initial nomination faced intense criticism but since taking the role he has been a staunch supporter of aid and debt relief for the poorest nations, in addition to consistently noting the dangers from climate change.

In a speech in June where he warned about the overlapping crises facing the global community amid soaring inflation and debt distress, he emphasized the need to “effectively address climate change.”

“It requires massive investments in cleaner energy, energy efficiency, and electricity grids and transmission. Gas flaring, methane leakage, and the operation of antiquated coal-fired power plants, with severe health and environmental impacts, continue with little abatement,” he said.

Even so, critics of the lending institution have grown increasingly loud.

“I am worried right now about the World Bank,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told AFP earlier this week.

“Unfortunately the World Bank has not taken the kind of global leadership that the world needs right now” on climate and other critical issues, said Stiglitz, himself a former chief economist of the institution.

The head of the World Bank is traditionally an American, while the leader of the other big international lender in Washington, the IMF, tends to be European. 

Malpass is not the first leader of one of those institutions to come under fire for personal or professional behavior.

His predecessor Jim Yong Kim faced controversy over reforms and management of the Bank and then left early to join the private sector, while current IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva fell into hot water over changes made to data in a now discontinued World Bank report that painted China in a more positive light.

'What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,' Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in reference to recent downpours and climate change, in his first address to the UN General Assembly

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned Friday that his country’s worst-ever floods were a sign of climate catastrophes to come around the world, as he urged justice for developing nations that bear little responsibility for warming.

Unprecedented monsoon downpours flooded a third of the country — an area the size of the United Kingdom — killing nearly 1,600 people and displacing more than seven million.

“What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” he said in a passionate address to the United Nations General Assembly, adding that lost homes, decimated livelihoods and deluged cropland had meant that for many, life had “changed forever.”

Sharif said injustice was inherent in the crisis, with his country of 220 million people at “ground zero” of climate change but responsible for less than one percent of carbon emissions. 

“Why are my people paying the price of such high global warming through no fault of their own? Nature has unleashed her fury on Pakistan without looking at our carbon footprint, which is next to nothing,” he said.

“It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect some approximation of justice for this loss and damage,” he continued, adding his voice to growing calls among developing countries for financial compensation from rich polluters.

– Climate compensation –

The issue of “loss and damage” payments is deeply contentious. 

Supporters argue that historic polluters have a moral imperative to pay for the loss and damage already caused by multiplying extreme weather events, which have not been prevented by measures to mitigate or adapt to global warming.

The idea has so far been shot down by rich nations, but UN chief Antonio Guterres endorsed the proposal a few days ago and it is due to be discussed at the next UN climate summit in Egypt.

Pakistan has estimated total financial losses at $30 billion, and on Friday its finance minister Miftah Ismail tweeted the county was seeking debt relief from bilateral creditors. 

Turning his attention to neighboring Afghanistan, Sharif urged the international community to heed a $4.2 billion UN appeal for humanitarian and economic assistance and release the country’s financial reserves, frozen since the Taliban seized power last year.

“Pakistan is working to encourage respect for the rights of Afghan girls and women to education and work. Yet, at this point, isolating the Afghan Interim Government could aggravate the suffering of the Afghan people, who are already destitute,” he said.

The United States recently set up an outside fund to manage Afghanistan’s frozen assets, saying it did not trust the Taliban.

On Kashmir, the Himalayan territory disputed between Pakistan and India since the two countries’ independence from Britain, Sharif accused New Delhi of embarking on “illegal demographic changes” by opening the Muslim-majority region to mass migration by Hindu Indians.

He called on India to “walk the path of peace and dialogue by reversing its illegal steps of 15 August 2019,” when New Delhi revoked Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy. 

"What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan," he said in his first address to the General Assembly, adding that life had "changed forever"

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned the United Nations on Friday that climate disasters will not remain confined to his country, in the wake of floods that have devastated the South Asian giant.

“What happened in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” he said in his first address to the General Assembly, adding that life had “changed forever.”

Sharif drew attention to the injustice inherent in the crisis, with his country at “ground zero” of climate change but responsible for less than one percent of carbon emissions.  

“Why are my people paying the price of such high global warming through no fault of their own? Nature has unleashed her fury on Pakistan without looking at our carbon footprint, which is next to nothing,” he said.

“It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect some approximation of justice for this loss and damage, not to mention building back better with resilience,” he said, adding his voice to growing calls among developing countries for financial compensation from rich polluters.

Pakistan has been lashed by unprecedented monsoon downpours flooding a third of the country — an area the size of the United Kingdom — and killing nearly 1,600 people, according to the latest government figures.

More than seven million people have been displaced, many living in makeshift tents without protection from mosquitoes, and often with little access to clean drinking water or washing facilities.

World Bank president David Malpass is battling charges of climate denial for dodging questions on the role of man-made emissions in global warming — which he since said he acknowledges

World Bank President David Malpass said Friday he had no plans to stand down, as he battles charges of climate denial for dodging questions on the role of man-made emissions in global warming.

Climate activists had previously called for Malpass to be removed for what they say is an inadequate approach to the climate crisis — and the chorus grew louder after his appearance at a New York Times-organized conference this week.

Pressed on stage to respond to a claim by former US vice president Al Gore that he was a climate denier, Malpass declined multiple times to say whether he believed man-made emissions were warming the planet — responding, “I’m not a scientist.”

Under mounting fire, Malpass has moved to clarify his position and did so again on Friday, as he rebuffed suggestions he might quit over the uproar.

“Not resigning,” Malpass said in an interview with Politico, when asked if he had envisaged quitting over the firestorm. “Nor have I” considered it, he said, affirming that none of the bank’s member countries had asked him to leave.

“Look, it’s clear that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are adding to, are causing climate change,” he told Politico. “And so the task for us, for the world, is to pull together the projects and the funding that actually has an impact.”

In an interview with CNN a day earlier, Malpass had likewise acknowledged that climate-warming emissions were “coming from manmade sources, including fossil fuels, methane, agricultural uses and industrial uses.”

“I’m not a denier,” he told the network, adding that his message had been “tangled” and he was “not always good at conveying” what he means.

Despite his efforts at damage control, the uproar showed little sign of dying down, with the Union of Concerned Scientists the latest group to call for him to be replaced.

“People living in the Global South deserve to have the World Bank led by a fierce climate advocate, not someone who hasn’t spent enough time with the bank’s deep bench of scientists and experts to understand the most basic facts about the causes of climate change,” the group’s president, Johanna Chao Kreilick, said in a statement.

“Mr. Malpass should be replaced immediately,” she added.

– ‘I am worried’ –

While Malpass sought to emphasize the bank’s action on climate, its critics have grown increasingly loud.

“I am worried right now about the World Bank,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz told AFP earlier this week.

On critical issues including climate change, he said, “unfortunately the World Bank has not taken the kind of global leadership that the world needs right now.”

The head of the World Bank is traditionally an American, while the leader of the other big international lender in Washington, the IMF, tends to be European. 

Malpass is a veteran of Republican administrations in the United States and was appointed in 2019 while Donald Trump, who famously and repeatedly denied the science behind climate change, was president.

His term ends in 2024 and he can only be removed by a vote of the World Bank’s board.

Satellite image shows Hurricane Fiona on September 23, 2022, at 14h00 GMT

Bermuda assessed damage Friday after Hurricane Fiona brushed past the island overnight, causing flooding and leaving most of the population without power as it set course for Canada.

Hurricane conditions were expected to hit Nova Scotia province by evening, with the US National Hurricane Center saying Fiona had again strengthened to a Category 4 storm as “it races toward Atlantic Canada.”

Emergency officials in Bermuda called on residents to remain inside as strong winds raked over the British territory, which was buffeted by gusts of more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour and pounding seas.

But no fatalities or major damage were reported as Fiona passed roughly 100 miles to the west of the island.

The Belco power company said 29,000 out of 36,000 households were without power.

“We are not in the clear. Stay off the roads,” Premier David Burt tweeted, adding no major incidents were reported.

The Royal Bermuda Regiment and Belco said they were waiting for winds to die down before clearing roads and restoring power.

Residents posted images of downed power lines and some flooding on social media.

“This morning (it is) very windy outside. We had some minor damage to the premises but nothing serious,” Jason Rainer, owner of a souvenir shop in the capital Hamilton told AFP, saying some doors and windows had been blown out.

Store owners had covered windows with metal and wood sheets.

The island of about 64,000 people is no stranger to hurricanes — but it is also tiny, just 21 square miles (54 square kilometers), and one of the most remote places in the world, 640 miles from its closest neighbor, the United States.

– A well-prepared island –

“You have to live with it because you live here, you can’t run anywhere because it’s just a little island,” said JoeAnn Scott, a shopworker in Hamilton.

Bermudians try to “enjoy it as it comes,” she said. “And pray and pray. That’s what we do, pray and party,” she added with a laugh.

At Bermuda’s famed Horseshoe Bay Beach, onlookers watched pounding waves on Thursday before the storm hit, while two kitesurfers risked extreme conditions out at sea.

Because of the island’s isolation, preparations are taken seriously.

Many boats were taken out of the water earlier in the week, public schools were closed, buses and ferries stopped and an emergency shelter opened.

In addition to laying in supplies of candles and food, some Bermudians drew buckets of water and filled bathtubs from the tanks at the side of their homes ahead of the expected power outages.

There is no fresh water source on the island, so all buildings have white, lime-washed roofs that are used to catch rainwater in tanks that is then pumped into homes. 

Bermuda, whose economy is fueled by international finance and tourism, is wealthy compared to most Caribbean countries, and structures must be built to strict planning codes to withstand storms. Some have done so for centuries.

“The construction is really built to last, and we don’t see the devastation ever that the Caribbean has experienced over the years,” resident Elaine Murray said.

Fiona killed four people in Puerto Rico earlier this week, according to US media, while one death was reported in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and another in the Dominican Republic. 

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico, a US territory that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria five years ago.

In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader declared three eastern provinces to be disaster zones.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Nikenike Vurobaravu evoked the existential crisis caused by rapid global heating, from hurricanes and coral bleaching to wildfires, prolonged droughts and flooding

Vanuatu on Friday became the first nation to launch a diplomatic push for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, a proposed legal path to phase out coal, oil and gas globally by likening their threat to nuclear weapons. 

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Nikenike Vurobaravu evoked the existential crisis caused by rapid global heating, from hurricanes and coral bleaching to wildfires, prolonged droughts and flooding.

“Fundamental human rights are being violated, and we are measuring climate change not in degrees of Celsius or tons of carbon, but in human lives,” he said.

“We call for the development of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase down coal, oil and gas production in line with 1.5C, and enable a global just transition for every worker, community and nation with fossil fuel dependence.”

The Paris climate accord called on nations to aspire to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a goal that is far off track.

In a statement, the climate campaign group 350 compared the proposed treaty to accords that were pivotal in managing the threats of nuclear weapons and landmines.

Vanuatu, an archipelago home to 300,000 people that lies some 1,100 miles (1,750 kilometers) to the east of Australia, adds its voice to a call that has been endorsed by more than 65 cities and regional governments around the globe. 

These include London, Lima, Los Angeles, Kolkata, Paris and Hawaii. The proposal has also been backed by the Vatican and the World Health Organization.

“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week.

– Leading voice on climate –

Tiny Vanuatu is already carbon negative, but it is among the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change. Its approximately 80 islands are threatened by rising sea levels, droughts and more intense storms. 

In August, it submitted among the most comprehensive climate targets under the UN, including adding cost estimates for how much it required from major polluters in “loss and damage” payments for their historic and ongoing carbon emissions.

The issue is a major sticking point between rich and poor nations, and is set to be discussed at the next UN climate summit, COP27.

Vanuatu has also been leading a campaign to have the International Court of Justice issue an opinion on climate justice and human rights.

Campaigner Kalo Afeaki of Tonga said: “Fossil fuels did this, and if we continue to burn them, we will see more islands in the Pacific, islands like my home of Tonga, disappear. We need countries to be bold, because we have run out of time.”

Without drastic course correction, the world is on track to 2.7C heating by the year 2100, according to the Climate Action Tracker.

This level of warming would dramatically reshape the world’s climate systems, bringing extreme heat to vast swathes of the planet, depleting biodiversity and water availability, and devastating agriculture, among other impacts.