AFP UK

Three years on, the pandemic still has power to disrupt lives and societies

Negotiators are meeting in Geneva this week to thrash out a pandemic treaty aimed at ensuring the flaws that turned Covid-19 into a global crisis could never happen again.

As the third anniversary of the virus emerging rolls around, negotiators are raking over an early concept draft of what might eventually make it into an international agreement on how to handle future pandemics.

“The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the negotiating panel at the start of three days of talks, which conclude on Wednesday.

An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way towards a global agreement that would regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats.

They are huddled in Geneva for their third meeting, refining and going over their ideas so far.

A progress report will be put before WHO member states next year, with the final outcome presented for their consideration in May 2024.

The dense, 32-page early draft “is a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” said Tedros.

The so-called conceptual zero draft contains various notions, some of which will have to be developed and others thrown out as negotiators hone down the text ahead of the next meeting in February.

The trick will ultimately be finding the balance between something bold and with teeth, and something all countries can agree to.

– ‘Don’t blow this opportunity’ –

“There’s a lot of material currently that probably doesn’t belong in there,” said Pamela Hamamoto, the lead US negotiator.

“There’s a lot that needs to change before we’re going to sign onto it. That is the same for a lot of member states — probably most,” she told reporters.

Hamamoto said Washington wanted to see transparency fixed into the accord, along with better surveillance and rapid response, plus swift and comprehensive data sharing.

The United States also wants to see more equitable access to medical countermeasures, possibly through regional manufacturing.

“A pretty broadly-held view is that we need to make sure that the process is set up right so… we basically don’t blow this opportunity to put together an accord that is going to be meaningful and implementable,” Hamamoto said.

The Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, an independent coalition of statespeople and health leaders, said the conceptual draft did not go far enough, despite its bright spots.

The panel said more should be done to establish accountability and clear timelines for alert and response to avoid damaging consequences when an outbreak emerges.

– Negotiations at ‘crossroads’ –

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said the negotiations must not overlook the role of clinical trials in any pandemic response.

Mohga Kamal-Yanni, of the NGO coalition People’s Vaccine Alliance, said the draft showed negotiations were “at a crossroads”.

“A treaty could break with the greed and inequality that has plagued the global response to Covid-19, HIV/AIDS and other pandemics. Or, it could tie future generations to the same disastrous outcomes,” she said.

“Governments must resist any attempts to turn a pandemic treaty into another obscene profit opportunity for pharmaceutical companies.”

Three years in, the pandemic still has power to disrupt lives and societies — as seen in the recent unrest in China over lockdowns.

Countries have reported 6.6 million deaths to the WHO, while around 640 million confirmed cases have been registered. 

But the UN health agency says this will be a massive undercount.

Global Fund executive director Peter Sands told reporters last month that “having a nice treaty… will have only a partial impact on how effectively we respond”.

He said the world was undoubtedly already better prepared for the next pandemic, but warned: “That doesn’t mean we are well prepared. It just means we’re not as badly prepared as we were before.”

Mauna Loa, the world's biggest volcano, erupted on November 27 and continues to spew rivers of molten rock

Hawaii has activated its National Guard to support the response to the first eruption of the world’s biggest volcano in almost 40 years, with lava threatening a key highway.

Twenty National Guard members were deployed “to assist Hawaii County with traffic control and other roles in the Mauna Loa eruption,” the Pacific island state’s emergency management agency announced in a tweet Monday.

Mauna Loa, on the US archipelago’s largest island, erupted on November 27 and continues to spew rivers of molten rock on its northern slope. 

While the flow has slowed significantly in recent days as it hit flatter ground — now at an average rate of about 20 feet per hour (6 meters per hour), according to the US Geological Survey — the volcano continues to pump out a steady supply of lava. 

The eruption so far has not threatened any homes but flows have been creeping toward the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, known as Saddle Road.

Lava was 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) from the thoroughfare — the closure of which would force residents to make long detours — as of Monday afternoon, a USGS bulletin said.

Conditions have made it “difficult to estimate when or if the flow will impact Daniel K. Inouye Highway,” the bulletin published Monday added.

The USGS added that sulfur dioxide emissions are down but are still high enough to have “moderate to severe impacts on regional air quality, depending on plume rise rate and wind direction.”

The largest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” accounts for half of the entire island of Hawaii, known as the Big Island, and is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

One of six active volcanoes on the archipelago, Mauna Loa has not erupted since 1984.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.

Total renewables capacity worldwide is set to almost double in the next five years, the IEA forecasts, as nations seek greater energy security

The energy crisis is fuelling an acceleration of the rollout of renewable power, raising hopes for efforts to meet ambitious targets against global warming, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

Total renewables capacity growth worldwide is set to almost double in the next five years and overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by 2025, the IEA said in a report.

The 2,400-gigawatt growth between 2022-2027 is almost a third higher than last year’s IEA forecast, according to the Paris-based agency, which advises developed nations.

This would help “keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 (degrees Celsius)”, the IEA said, referring to the preferrable target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent a climate catastrophe.

The invasion of Ukraine by major oil and gas exporter Russia has triggered an energy crunch and prompted countries in Europe, which were highly dependent on Russian deliveries, to diversify their supplies.

“Renewables were already expanding quickly, but the global energy crisis has kicked them into an extraordinary new phase of even faster growth as countries seek to capitalise on their energy security benefits,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

“The world is set to add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the previous 20 years,” Birol said in a statement.

“This is a clear example of how the current energy crisis can be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure future world energy system.”

The amount of renewable power capacity added in Europe between 2022-2027 is forecast to be twice as high as in the previous five-year period, the IEA said.

EU nations could deploy wind and solar power even faster if they were to quickly streamline the process for receiving permits, the report said.

The IEA’s revised forecast is also driven by new policies and market reforms being implemented more quickly than previously planned.

China is expected to account for almost half of new global renewable power capacity additions in the next five years, the report said.

The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that an aggregate area of land bigger than the European Union has been deforested around the world over the past three decades

The European Union reached an agreement Tuesday to ban the import of products including coffee, cocoa and soy in cases where they are deemed to contribute to deforestation.

The draft law, which aims to ensure “deforestation-free supply chains” for the 27-nation EU, was hailed by environmental groups as “groundbreaking”.

It requires companies importing into the EU to guarantee products are not produced on land that suffered deforestation after December 31, 2020, and that they comply with all laws of the source country.

The scope encompasses palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber as well as derived products such as beef, furniture and chocolate.

Illegal production has spurred massive deforestation in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia,  Malaysia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mexico and Guatemala.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that an aggregate area of land bigger than the European Union, or some 420 million hectares (more than one billion acres), has been deforested around the world over the past three decades.

The European Union is the second-biggest market for consumption of the targeted products after China. 

Pascal Canfin, chairman of the European Parliament’s environment committee, hailed the agreement, and how its impact would feed through to everyday items Europeans consume.

“It’s the coffee we have for breakfast, the chocolate we eat, the coal in our barbecues, the paper in our books. This is radical,” he said.

– ‘Historic’ –

The environmental lobby group Greenpeace called the draft law, agreed between the European Parliament and EU member states, “a major breakthrough”.  

Another, WWF, called it “groundbreaking” and “historic”.

“This regulation is the first in the world to tackle global deforestation and will significantly reduce the EU’s footprint on nature,” the WWF said in a statement.

Both groups called on the EU to go further, by expanding the scope of the law to include savannahs, such as Brazil’s Cerrado, which are also under threat by encroaching ranchers and farmers.

Greenpeace noted that financial institutions extending services to importing companies would not initially come under the new law, but that they would come under review two years later.

Both the European Council — representing the EU countries — and the European Parliament now have to officially adopt the agreed law. Big companies would have 18 months to comply, while smaller ones would get a longer grace period.

“The new law will ensure that a set of key goods placed on the (European Union) market will no longer contribute to deforestation and forest degradation in the EU and elsewhere in the world,” the European Commission said in a statement. 

“The battle for climate and biodiversity is accelerating,” French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

– Big fines –

The parliament said in a statement that the law opened the way for technology such as satellite monitoring and DNA analysis to verify the provenance of targeted imports.

High-risk exporting countries would have nine percent of products sent to the EU checked, while lower-risk ones would have lower proportions scrutinised.

Companies found violating the law could be fined up to four percent of annual turnover in the EU.

The legislation would be reviewed one year after coming into force, to see whether it should be extended to other wooded land.

Another review at the two-year mark would have the commission considering whether to expand it to cover other ecosystems and commodities, as well as financial institutions.

Total renewables capacity worldwide is set to almost double in the next five years, the IEA forecasts, as nations seek greater energy security

The energy crisis is fuelling an acceleration of the rollout of renewable power, raising hopes for efforts to meet ambitious targets against global warming, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

Total renewables capacity worldwide is set to almost double in the next five years and overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by 2025, the IEA said in a report.

The 2,400-gigawatt growth between 2022-2027 is almost a third higher than last year’s IEA forecast, according to the Paris-based agency, which advises developed nations.

This would help “keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 (degrees Celsius)”, the IEA said, referring to the preferrable target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent a climate catastrophe.

The invasion of Ukraine by major oil and gas exporter Russia has triggered an energy crunch and prompted countries in Europe, which were highly dependent on Russian deliveries, to diversify their supplies.

“Renewables were already expanding quickly, but the global energy crisis has kicked them into an extraordinary new phase of even faster growth as countries seek to capitalise on their energy security benefits,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

“The world is set to add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the previous 20 years,” Birol said in a statement.

“This is a clear example of how the current energy crisis can be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure future world energy system.”

The amount of renewable power capacity added in Europe between 2022-2027 is forecast to be twice as high as in the previous five-year period, the IEA said.

EU nations could deploy wind and solar power even faster if they were to quickly streamline the process for receiving permits, the report said.

The IEA’s revised forecast is also driven by new policies and market reforms being implemented more quickly than previously planned.

China is expected to account for almost half of new global renewable power capacity additions in the next five years, the report said.

Earth is visible as a crescent in the minutes after Orion finished its engine burn around the Moon

NASA’s Orion spaceship made a close pass of the Moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back towards Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission.

At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body.

Communication with the capsule was interrupted for 30 minutes when it was behind the far side of the Moon — an area more cratered than the near side and first seen by humans during the Apollo era, although they didn’t land there.

The European Service Module, which powers the capsule, fired its main engine for over three minutes to put the gumdrop-shaped Orion on course for home.

“We couldn’t be more pleased about how the spacecraft is performing,” Debbie Korth, Orion Program deputy manager, said later.

As spectacular footage flashed on their screens once communication was restored, she told a news conference, “everybody in the room, we just kind of had to stop and pause, and just really look — Wow, we’re saying goodbye to the moon.”

Monday’s was the last major maneuver of the mission, which began when NASA’s mega Moon rocket SLS blasted off from Florida on November 16. From start to finish, the journey should last 25 and a half days.

Orion will now make only slight course corrections until it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on Sunday, December 11 at 9:40 am local time (1740 GMT). It will then be recovered and hoisted aboard a US Navy ship.

Earlier in the mission, Orion spent about six days in “distant retrograde orbit” around the Moon, meaning at high altitude and traveling opposite the direction the Moon revolves around Earth.

A week ago, Orion broke the distance record for a habitable capsule, venturing 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) from our planet.

Once it returns to Earth, Orion will have traveled more than 1.4 million miles, said Mike Sarafin, the Artemis mission manager.

Re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere will present a harsh test for the spacecraft’s heat shield, which will need to withstand temperatures of around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800degrees Celsius) -– or about half the surface of the Sun.

Under the Artemis program — named for the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — the United States is seeking to build a lasting presence on the Moon in preparation for an onward voyage to Mars.

Artemis 2 will involve a crewed journey to the Moon, once again without landing. 

The first woman and next man are to land on the lunar south pole during Artemis 3, which is set for no sooner than 2025, though likely significantly later given timeline delays.

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo (L) speaks with European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager (R) as they participate in a US-EU dialogue on December 5, 2022

US and European Union officials met for trade and technology talks Monday, but hanging in the balance were heightened tensions over American subsidies for its green industry that Europe considers anti-competitive.

Officials touched on issues such as fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and questions over economic coercion, but all eyes were on Washington’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) during a meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, held just outside Washington.

The act, designed to accelerate the US transition to a low-carbon economy, contains around $370 billion in subsidies for green energy, as well as tax breaks for US-made electric cars and batteries.

EU countries have poured criticism on the IRA, seeing it as a threat to European jobs, especially in the energy and auto sectors.

Monday’s talks, the third of their kind, are part of a push “to grow the bilateral trade and investment relationship,” according to a National Security Council statement.

Both sides took stock of a dedicated task force’s work on the IRA, noting “preliminary progress made,” said a joint US-EU statement released Monday.

“We acknowledge the EU’s concerns and underline our commitment to address them constructively,” the statement added.

– ‘More solid response’ –

“Clearly they are trying to set out our concerns in a non-confrontational manner,” a European official involved in the talks told reporters Monday.

“It was flagged as a dispute, obviously, to which I think we’re still waiting for a more solid response,” he added.

Asked about “tweaks” mentioned last week by US President Joe Biden — so that European companies would not be unfairly treated — the official said the “assessment is that this will be extremely difficult.”

But officials struck a conciliatory note at a press briefing after their meeting, with the EU’s trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis saying, “Today we are leaving this meeting a slightly more optimistic than we were entering (it).”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a co-chair of the council, added: “The bottom line is this: We are committed to moving forward together not at the expense of each other, but to the benefit of each other.”

Both sides found agreement on a host of other issues, including an information-sharing system on public support for the semiconductor sector to increase transparency.

They also entered a deal to implement an early warning mechanism to mitigate semiconductor supply chain disruptions “in a cooperative way.”

Both parties launched a “transatlantic initiative on sustainable trade” as well, with an aim to decarbonize energy-intensive industries and help with the transition to more circular economies, the statement said.

– Insufficient space –

But EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton had decided not to take part in the meetings, his office earlier said, finding that they no longer give enough space to issues of concern to many European industry ministers and businesses.

Last month, Breton threatened to appeal to the World Trade Organization and consider retaliatory measures if the United States did not reverse its subsidies.

The plan was also a subject of discussions between President Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at a state visit last week.

Biden said both sides have agreed to discuss practical steps to coordinate and align their approaches, though he added that he would not apologize for the act, which he maintains was never intended to disadvantage US allies.

The Trade and Technology Council is co-chaired by Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative Katherine Tai, as well as European Commission Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and trade commissioner Dombrovskis.

On islands like Floreana in the Galapagos, conservationists say the impacts of restoration on land can be 'profound'

Restoring islands devastated by invasive species and helping coastal “connectors” like seabirds boosts nature on land and at sea — and may be a new way to increase resilience to climate change, researchers said Monday. 

A group of experts and scientists from across the world reviewed thousands of studies to build a picture of island health to map out new strategies for protecting their often unique and threatened species. 

They found that removing invasive species and restoring island ecosystems on land can also have significant benefits to underwater environments.

That is largely thanks to the role played by “connector species” such as seabirds, seals and land crabs, which transfer nutrients from oceans to islands and vice versa, said the paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The report comes as delegates for nearly 200 countries prepare to tease out a new blueprint to save nature from destruction wrought by humans, including key proposals for preserving 30 percent of land and sea, and bringing indigenous rights to the centre of conservation. 

Paper co-author Penny Becker of Island Conservation said that while indigenous island communities have known for generations the intricate links between healthy ecosystems on land and in the sea, Western conservation was “just catching up”.  

“Carefully chosen conservation actions on islands can lead to really stunning changes in the neighbouring ocean ecosystem, because everything is connected,” she said. 

For example, seabirds catch their prey in the seas and then deposit nutrients back on the islands in the form of guano. 

Evidence shows islands with high seabird populations usually have larger populations of fish, as well as faster-growing and more climate-resilient coral reefs, the researchers said.  

But seabird populations across the world have plummeted, with the introduction on islands of non-native mammals — like rats that plunder nests to eat eggs and hatchlings — by human activity driving some bird species to local or global extinction. 

Loss of these connector species populations “often results in ecosystem collapse–both on land and in the sea”, the authors said. 

– ‘Profound’ impacts –

On Floreana island in the Galapagos, invasive species have devastated not just bird and plant species, but also livelihoods, with farmers losing up to 100 percent of their crops due to invasive rats that started to spread on the island, according to Karl Campbell from Re:Wild, which was also involved in the paper. 

Some 13 species have gone locally extinct on the main island, he said, while 54 species are critically endangered, endangered or threatened.

The island, which is almost entirely a national park, eradicated invasive pigs in the 1980s in a bid to save the critically endangered seabird the Galapagos petrel, and then in 2019 non-native goats were removed, leading to a regrowth in local vegetation. 

The 10-year battle to rid the island of rats continues, Campbell said in a briefing. 

Once they are gone, at least a dozen species that went locally extinct largely because of invasive species will be returned to the island, including giant tortoises and mockingbirds. 

The island is part of a new environmental campaign called the Island-Ocean Connection Challenge, which aims to restore and rewild at least 40 globally significant island ecosystems to benefit islands, oceans and communities by 2030. 

“With the current triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and human wellbeing, we need to be using all the tools in the toolbox,” Campbell said. 

This approach could also boost climate change resilience in the Galapagos, where increasingly intense El Nino events cause warm waters to replace cold nutrient-rich waters — starving species like penguins, marine iguanas and seabirds and causing corals to bleach. 

Restoration and rewilding could have “extremely profound” impacts, Campbell said, with healthy populations of connector species able to transfer some of the lost nutrients to the water and encouraging plankton growth, potentially easing the effects of the El Ninos.  

“What we may have here is an overlooked tool for maximising ocean health and resilience,” he added. 

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo (L) speaks with European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager (R) as they participate in a US-EU dialogue on December 5, 2022

US and European Union officials met for trade and technology talks Monday, but hanging in the balance are heightened tensions over American subsidies for its green industry that Europe considers anti-competitive.

Officials touched on issues such as fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and questions over economic coercion, but all eyes were on Washington’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) during a meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, held just outside Washington.

The act, designed to accelerate the US transition to a low-carbon economy, contains around $370 billion in subsidies for green energy, as well as tax cuts for US-made electric cars and batteries.

EU countries have poured criticism on the IRA, seeing it as a threat to European jobs, especially in the energy and auto sectors.

Monday’s talks, the third of their kind, are part of a push “to grow the bilateral trade and investment relationship,” according to a National Security Council statement.

Both sides took stock of a dedicated task force’s work on the IRA, noting “preliminary progress made,” said a joint US-EU statement released Monday.

“We acknowledge the EU’s concerns and underline our commitment to address them constructively,” the statement added.

– ‘More solid response’ –

“Clearly they are trying to set out our concerns in a non-confrontational manner,” a European official involved in the talks told reporters Monday.

“It was flagged as a dispute, obviously, to which I think we’re still waiting for a more solid response,” he added.

Asked about “tweaks” recently mentioned by US President Joe Biden — so that European companies would not be unfairly treated — the official said the “assessment is that this will be extremely difficult.”

But both sides reached an agreement on a host of other issues, including an information-sharing system on public support for the semiconductor sector to increase transparency.

Both parties also launched a “transatlantic initiative on sustainable trade” with an aim to decarbonize energy-intensive industries and help with the transition to more circular economies, the statement added.

– Insufficient space –

EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has decided not to take part in the meetings, his office said, finding that they no longer give enough space to issues of concern to many European industry ministers and businesses.

Last month, Breton threatened to appeal to the World Trade Organization and consider “retaliatory measures” if the United States did not reverse its subsidies.

The plan was also a subject of discussions between President Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at a state visit last week.

Biden said both sides have agreed to discuss practical steps to coordinate and align their approaches, though he added that he would not apologize for the act, which was never intended to disadvantage US allies.

The Trade and Technology Council is co-chaired by the United States’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative Katherine Tai, as well as European Commission Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis.

Earth is visible as a crescent in the minutes after Orion finished its engine burn around the Moon

NASA’s Orion spaceship made a close pass of the Moon and used a gravity assist to whip itself back towards Earth on Monday, marking the start of the return journey for the Artemis-1 mission.

At its nearest point, the uncrewed capsule flew less than 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the surface, testing maneuvers that will be used during later Artemis missions that return humans to the rocky celestial body.

Communication with the capsule was interrupted for 30 minutes when it was behind the far side of the Moon — an area more cratered than the near side and first seen by humans during the Apollo era, although they didn’t land there.

The European Service Module, which powers the capsule, fired its main engine for over three minutes to put the gumdrop-shaped Orion on course for home.

It was the last major maneuver of the mission, which began when NASA’s mega Moon rocket SLS blasted off from Florida on November 16. From start to finish, the journey should last 25 and a half days.

Orion will now make only slight course corrections until it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on Sunday, December 11 at 9:40 am local time (1740 GMT). It will then be recovered and hoisted aboard a US Navy ship.

Earlier in the mission, Orion spent about six days in “distant retrograde orbit” around the Moon, meaning at high altitude and traveling opposite the direction the Moon revolves around Earth.

A week ago, Orion broke the distance record for a habitable capsule, venturing 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) from our planet.

Re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere will present a harsh test for the spacecraft’s heatshield, which will need to withstand temperatures of around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800degrees Celsius) -– or about half the surface of the Sun.

Under the Artemis program — named for the sister of Apollo in Greek mythology — the United States is seeking to build a lasting presence on the Moon in preparation for an onward voyage to Mars.

Artemis 2 will involve a crewed journey to the Moon, once again without landing. 

The first woman and next man are to land on the lunar south pole during Artemis 3, which is set for no sooner than 2025, though likely significantly later given timeline delays.