AFP UK

As much of Europe bakes in a third heatwave since June, fears are growing that extreme drought driven by climate change in the continent’s breadbasket nations will dent stable crop yields and deepen the cost-of-living crisis. 

The European Commission on Wednesday urged EU member states to re-use treated urban wastewater as irrigation on the continent’s parched farms, after France and parts of England saw their driest July on record.

In France, where an intense drought has hammered farmers and prompted widespread limits on freshwater use, there was just 9.7 millimetres (0.38 inches) of rain last month, Meteo-France said.

That was 84 percent down on the average levels seen for July between 1991 and 2022, making it the driest month since March 1961, the agency added.

The southwestern region of Gironde, already devastated by last month’s wildfires, saw a maximum temperature of 39.6 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, with Meteo-France predicting a peak on Thursday.

Farmers nationwide are reporting difficulties in feeding livestock because of parched grasslands, while irrigation has been banned in large areas of the northwest and southeast due to freshwater shortages.

Environment Minister Christophe Bechu said July’s rainfall represented “just 12 percent of what’s needed”. 

France is the fourth-largest exporter of wheat and among the top five exporters of maize globally. Poor harvests due to drought may heap further pressure on grain supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused global shockwaves. 

“Our food system has been under stress for a while, and with the supply issues from Ukraine, that has only gotten worse,” said Shouro Dasgupta, environmental economist at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.

“These heatwaves are on top of droughts and will see crops wither faster.”

Dasgupta said that extreme heat driven by climate change is also contributing to food price inflation for consumers and harsher conditions for producers. 

“Droughts and heatwaves impact people’s livelihoods. People will be less able to afford food,” he told AFP. 

“And during heatwaves outdoor workers are only able to work fewer hours, which brings cascading impacts for supply.”

– ‘Food systems not working’ –

Britain’s Met Office this week said much of southern and eastern England had their driest July on record. 

Some water providers have already announced restrictions affecting millions of people, and fruit and vegetable producers have announced several crop losses such as beans and berries.

Britain’s inflation surged to a 40-year high in June on rising fuel and food prices.

Elizabeth Robinson, director of the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said spiralling food costs — worsened by heat-induced losses in Europe and Britain — were a sign that “food systems aren’t working for people.”

“There are some long-term, difficult conversations that need to be had, particularly about food waste and the diversion of grains away from food for people to feed animals,” she told AFP.

In Spain, already parched under a prolonged hot spell, temperatures will breach 40C in several areas this week. 

The heat is worsening water shortages that have dogged Spanish agriculture since last winter, with local restrictions on water usage in the most affected regions. 

The government said this week that Spain’s reservoirs are at just 40.4 percent capacity.

Juan Carlos Hervas, from the COAG farmers’ union, told AFP that Spain’s olive harvest from unirrigated land will come in at less than 20 percent of the average of the last five years. 

Spain supplies nearly half the world’s olive oil.  

– ‘Worst drought this century’ –

Portugal, where temperatures yet again breached the 40C mark this week, is experiencing “the worst drought this century”, Environment Minister Jose Duarte Cordeiro warned last month.

Portugal along with Poland has asked its citizens to cut down on water use to ease the pressure.

“Water authorities across Europe are unprepared for what scientists have been saying for three decades,” said Dasgupta.

The European Commission in an updated assessment last month found that nearly half — 44 percent — of the EU and Britain was currently experiencing “warning” levels of drought. 

It warned that exceptionally low soil moisture levels meant several countries, including France, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Italy will experience reduced crop yield in 2022. 

“The unfavourable forecasts for the coming months may compromise the water supply and will likely keep the competition for this resource high,” it said. 

A separate EU bulletin, also last month, said that EU yields of soybean, sunflowers and maize were already 9 percent below average. 

On Wednesday Virginijus Sinkevicius, EU commissioner for the environment, fisheries and the oceans, urged EU nations to re-use more of its wastewater.

“We need to stop wasting water and use this resource more efficiently to adapt to the changing climate and ensure the security and sustainability of our agricultural supply,” he said.

A volcano erupted in Iceland near the capital Reykjavik on Wednesday, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said as live images on local media showed lava spewing out of a fissure in the ground.

The eruption was some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Reykjavik, near the site of the Mount Fagradalsfjall volcano in southwestern Iceland that erupted for six months in March-September 2021, mesmerising tourists and spectators who flocked to the scene.

This time, a strip of glowing red lava could be seen gushing from the ground, spreading into a blanket of smouldering black rock as it cooled and as blue smoke rose up from the hilly landscape on the Reykjanes peninsula. 

Curious onlookers quickly made their way to the scene, bewitched by the sight of the bubbling lava and the intense roar that could be heard rising up from the ground as the lava erupted, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

The IMO, which monitors seismic activity, estimated the size of the fissure at about 300 meters (yards). It said the eruption started in the Meradalir valley, less than one kilometre from the scene of last year’s eruption.

Wednesday’s eruption came after a period of intense seismic activity, with about 10,000 earthquakes detected since Saturday, including two with a magnitude of at least 5.0.

While there was no ash plume, the IMO said it was “possible that pollution can be detected due to the gas release”.

Gases from a volcanic eruption — especially sulphur dioxide — can be elevated in the immediate vicinity, and may pose a danger to health and even be fatal.

Gas pollution can also be carried by the wind.

“Risk to populated areas and critical infrastructure is considered very low and there have been no disruptions to flights”, the Icelandic foreign ministry said on Twitter.

More than an hour after the start of the eruption, a commercial passenger jet could be seen flying over the eruption site at low altitude heading for Reykjavik’s main airport Keflavik.

– Tourist magnet –

Last year’s eruption saw more than 140 million cubic metres of magma spilled into the area over a period of six months before it was officially declared over after nine months, in December 2021.

Relatively easy to access, the site became a major tourist attraction, drawing more than 350,000 visitors, according to the Icelandic Tourist Board.

On Wednesday, rescue teams and police rushed to the scene of the latest eruption to assess the danger and possible gas contamination, and discouraged people from visiting.

Iceland President Gudni Johannesson, who happened to be driving near the scene of Wednesday’s eruption when it occurred, echoed that appeal.

“I just want people to be careful and know more before they go there into the unknown. If this eruption will be anything like the last one, there will be enough time, so there is no need to rush,” he told the English-language media Iceland Monitor.

– Awakening –

Mount Fagradalsfjall belongs to the Krysuvik volcanic system on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland.

Iceland has 32 volcanic systems currently considered active, the highest number in Europe. The country has had an eruption every five years on average.

Wednesday’s eruption was the country’s seventh in 21 years.

However, until last year, the Reykjanes peninsula had not experienced an eruption since the 13th century, when a volcano erupted for 30 years from 1210 to 1240.

After last year’s eruption, geophysicists had said it could signal the beginning of a new period of eruptions lasting centuries.

A vast island near the Arctic Circle, Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack on the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

The shifting of these plates is in part responsible for Iceland’s intense volcanic activity.

Scientists announced Wednesday they have restored blood flow and cell function throughout the bodies of pigs that were dead for an hour, in a breakthrough experts say could mean we need to update the definition of death itself.

The discovery raised hopes for a range of future medical uses in humans, the most immediate being that it could help organs last longer, potentially saving the lives of thousands of people worldwide in need of transplants.

However it could also spur debate about the ethics of such procedures — particularly after some of the ostensibly dead pigs startled the scientists by making sudden head movements during the experiment.

The US-based team stunned the scientific community in 2019 by managing to restore cell function in the brains of pigs hours after they had been decapitated.

For the latest research, published in the journal Nature, the team sought to expand this technique to the entire body.

They induced a heart attack in the anaesthetised pigs, which stopped blood flowing through the bodies.

This deprives the body’s cells of oxygen — and without oxygen, cells in mammals die.

The pigs then sat dead for an hour.

– ‘Demise of cells can be halted’ –

The scientists then pumped the bodies with a liquid containing the pigs’ own blood, as well as a synthetic form of haemoglobin — the protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells — and drugs that protect cells and prevent blood clots.

Blood started circulating again and many cells began functioning including in vital organs such as the heart, liver and kidney, for the next six hours of the experiment.

“These cells were functioning hours after they should not have been — what this tells us is that the demise of cells can be halted,” Nenad Sestan, the study’s senior author and a researcher at Yale University, told journalists.

Co-lead author David Andrijevic, also from Yale, told AFP the team hopes the technique, called OrganEx, “can be used to salvage organs”.

OrganEx could also make new forms of surgery possible as it creates “more medical wiggle room in cases with no circulation to fix things,” said Anders Sandberg of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute.

The technique could potentially also be used to resuscitate people. However this could increase the risk of bringing back patients to a point where they are unable to live without life support — trapped on what is called the “bridge to nowhere,” Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in a linked comment in Nature.

– Could death be treatable? – 

Sam Parnia of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine said it was “a truly remarkable and incredibly significant study”.

It showed that death was not black and white but rather a “biological process that remains treatable and reversible for hours after it has occurred”, he said.

Benjamin Curtis, a philosopher focused on ethics at the UK’s Nottingham Trent University, said the definition of death may need updating because it hinges on the concept of irreversibility.

“This research shows that many processes that we thought were irreversible are not in fact irreversible, and so on the current medical definition of death a person may not be truly dead until hours after their bodily functions have stopped,” he told AFP.

“Indeed, there may be bodies lying in morgues right now that haven’t yet ‘died’, if we take the current definition as valid.”

During the experiment, pretty much all of the OrganEx pigs made powerful movements with their head and neck, said Stephen Latham, a Yale ethicist and study co-author.

“It was quite startling for the people in the room,” he told journalists.

He emphasised that while it was not known what caused the movement, at no point was any electrical activity recorded in the pigs’ brains, showing that they never regained consciousness after death.

While there was a “little burst” on the EEG machine measuring brain activity at the time of the movement, Latham said that was probably caused by the shifting of the head affecting the recording.

However Curtis said the movement was a “major concern” because recent neuroscience research has suggested that “conscious experience can continue even when electrical activity in the brain cannot be measured”.

“So it is possible that this technique did in fact cause the subject pigs to suffer, and would cause human beings to suffer were it to be used on them,” he added, calling for more research.

The Netherlands declared an official water shortage on Wednesday as the low-lying “land of water” was hit by Europe’s sweltering summer.

The Dutch government said it was eyeing further measures to conserve water amid a drought, and authorities have already imposed limits on farming and shipping.

The country is protected from the sea by a famed system of dams, dykes and canals but remains particularly vulnerable to climate change.

“The Netherlands is a land of water, but here too our water is precious,” Infrastructure and Water Management Minister Mark Harbers said in a statement.

Parts of the Netherlands have already banned farmers from spraying their crops with surface water, in a blow for the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States.

Some canal locks for shipping have also been suspended, with salt water from the sea creeping back into some rivers as their water levels are so low, Harbers added.

Priority would now be given to ensuring that vital dykes remain safe, and then to drinking water and energy supplies, he said.

The drought was “becoming increasingly visible in nature” and it was “conceivable that the drought will affect more social interests”, Harbers added.

“That is why I ask all Dutch people to think carefully about whether they should wash their car or fill their inflatable swimming pool completely.”

With around a third of its surface area lying below sea level, the Netherlands has historically battled against the weather. 

Climate change has now accentuated its struggle.

In July the Netherlands recorded its third-highest temperature since records began — 39.4C. A month earlier it suffered its first fatal tornado for 30 years.

As much of Europe bakes in a third heatwave since June, fears are growing that extreme drought driven by climate change in the continent’s breadbasket nations will dent stable crop yields and deepen the cost-of-living crisis. 

The European Commission on Wednesday urged EU member states to re-use treated urban waste water as irrigation on the continent’s parched farms, after France and parts of England saw their driest July on record.

In France, where an intense drought has hammered farmers and prompted widespread limits on freshwater use, there was just 9.7 millimetres (0.38 inches) of rain last month, Meteo France said.

That was 84 percent down on the average levels seen for July between 1991 and 2022, making it the driest month since March 1961, the agency added.

Farmers nationwide are reporting difficulties in feeding livestock because of parched grasslands, while irrigation has been banned in large areas of the northwest and southeast due to freshwater shortages.

Environment Minister Christophe Bechu said July’s rainfall represented “just 12 percent of what’s needed”. 

France is the forth-largest exporter of wheat and among the top five exporters of maize globally. Poor harvests due to drought may heap further pressure on grain supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused global shockwaves. 

“Our food system has been under stress for a while, and with the supply issues from Ukraine, that has only gotten worse,” said Shouro Dasgupta, environmental economist at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.

“These heatwaves are on top of droughts and will see crops wither faster.”

Dasgupta said that extreme heat driven by climate change is also contributing to food price inflation for consumers and harsher conditions for producers. 

“Droughts and heatwaves impact people’s livelihoods. People will be less able to afford food,” he told AFP. 

“And during heatwaves outdoor workers are only able to work fewer hours, which brings cascading impacts for supply.”

– ‘Food systems not working’ –

Britain’s Met Office this week said much of southern and eastern England had their driest July on record. 

Some water providers have already announced restrictions affecting millions of people, and fruit and vegetable producers have announced several crop losses such as beans and berries.

Britain’s inflation surged to a 40-year high in June on rising fuel and food prices.

Elizabeth Robinson, director of the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said that spiralling food costs — worsened by heat-induced losses in Europe and Britain — were a sign that “food systems aren’t working for people.”

“There are some long-term, difficult conversations that need to be had, particularly about food waste and the diversion of grains away from food for people to feed animals,” she told AFP.

In Spain, already parched under a prolonged hot spell, temperatures will breach 40C in several areas this week. 

The heat is worsening water shortages that have dogged Spanish agriculture since last winter, with local restrictions on water usage in the most affected regions. 

The government said this week that Spain’s reservoirs are at just 40.4 percent capacity.

Juan Carlos Hervas, from the COAG farmers’ union, told AFP that Spains olive harvest from unirrigated land will come in at less than 20 percent of the average of the last five years. 

Spain supplies nearly half the world’s olive oil.  

– ‘Worst drought this century’ –

Portugal, where temperatures yet again breached the 40C mark this week, is experiencing “the worst drought this century”, environment minister Jose Duarte Cordeiro warned last month.

Portugal along with Poland has asked its citizens to cut down on water use to ease the pressure.

“Water authorities across Europe are unprepared for what scientists have been saying for three decades,” said Dasgupta. “A high incidence of heatwaves will hit water supply “.

The European Commission in an updated assessment last month found that nearly half — 44 percent — of the EU and Britain was currently experiencing “warning” levels of drought. 

It warned that exceptional low soil moisture levels meant several countries, including France, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Italy will experience reduced crop yield in 2022. 

“The unfavourable  forecasts  for the coming months may compromise the water supply and will likely keep the competition for this resource high,” it said. 

A separate EU bulletin, also last month, said that EU yields of soybean, sunflowers and maize were already 9 percent below average. 

On Wednesday Virginijus Sinkevicius, EU commissioner for the environment, fisheries and the oceans. urged EU nations to re-use more of its waste water.

“We need to stop wasting water and use this resource more efficiently to adapt to the changing climate and ensure the security and sustainability of our agricultural supply.” he said.

A rare white elephant has been born in western Myanmar, state media said on Wednesday, unveiling what many in the Buddhist-majority country believe to be an auspicious creature.

Born last month in western Rakhine state, the baby weighs about 80 kilograms (180 pounds) and stands roughly 70 cm (two-and-a-half feet) tall, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Footage released by state TV showed the tusker tot following his mother to a river and being washed by its keepers, and later feeding from her. 

The mother — a 33-year-old called Zar Nan Hla — is kept by the Myanma Timber Enterprise in Rakhine state, the Global New Light said, adding the baby possessed seven of the eight characteristics associated with rare white elephants.

“Pearl-coloured eyes, plantain branch-shaped back, white hair, a distinctive tail, auspicious plot signs on the skin, five claws on the front legs and four on the back legs and big ears,” the newspaper reported.

Social media users first posted about the birth of the elephant — which has not been named yet — late last month. 

Historically, white elephants were considered extremely auspicious in Southeast Asian culture, and the region’s ancient rulers acquired as many as they could to boost their fortunes.

But the ruinous cost of keeping the beasts in appropriately lavish style gave rise to the modern expression in which a “white elephant” is a useless, if beautiful, possession.

There are currently six white elephants in captivity in the military-built capital Naypyidaw, according to state media — mostly from Rakhine state and the southern Ayeyarwady region.

With Myanmar reeling from a military coup last year and its bloody crackdown on dissent, the reaction of many on social media was muted or sceptical.

“Am I colourblind if it just looks brown to me?” posted one user. 

“Elephants were important only in the old eras,” said another.

“Now the poor elephant will have to go to jail.”

A rare white elephant has been born in western Myanmar, state media said on Wednesday, unveiling what many in the Buddhist-majority country believe to be an auspicious creature.

Born last month in western Rakhine state, the baby weighs about 80 kilograms (180 pounds) and stands roughly 70 cm (two-and-a-half feet) tall, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Footage released by state TV showed the tusker tot following his mother to a river and being washed by its keepers, and later feeding from her. 

The mother — a 33-year-old called Zar Nan Hla — is kept by the Myanma Timber Enterprise in Rakhine state, the Global New Light said, adding the baby possessed seven of the eight characteristics associated with rare white elephants.

“Pearl-coloured eyes, plantain branch-shaped back, white hair, a distinctive tail, auspicious plot signs on the skin, five claws on the front legs and four on the back legs and big ears,” the newspaper reported.

Social media users first posted about the birth of the elephant — which has not been named yet — late last month. 

Historically, white elephants were considered extremely auspicious in Southeast Asian culture, and the region’s ancient rulers acquired as many as they could to boost their fortunes.

But the ruinous cost of keeping the beasts in appropriately lavish style gave rise to the modern expression in which a “white elephant” is a useless, if beautiful, possession.

There are currently six white elephants in captivity in the military-built capital Naypyidaw, according to state media — mostly from Rakhine state and the southern Ayeyarwady region.

With Myanmar reeling from a military coup last year and its bloody crackdown on dissent, the reaction of many on social media was muted or sceptical.

“Am I colourblind if it just looks brown to me?” posted one user. 

“Elephants were important only in the old eras,” said another.

“Now the poor elephant will have to go to jail.”

Dutch farmers’ rowdy protests against government climate plans have caused a stir at home and abroad, with populists worldwide jumping on the bandwagon and even former US president Donald Trump backing them.

“We take all the support that we can get,” says Jaap Kok, a 62-year-old cattle farmer standing in a meadow full of cows near Barneveld in the central Netherlands’ farming belt.

The farmers have wreaked havoc for weeks, dumping manure and garbage on highways, blockading supermarket warehouses with tractors and rallying noisily outside politicians’ houses.

They oppose plans to cut emissions of nitrogen in the Netherlands — the world’s second-biggest agricultural exporter after the United States — by reducing livestock and closing some farms.

While a small group has been blamed for much of the unrest, there have also been large protests involving thousands of tractors.

With the protests garnering global headlines, right-wing figures have been quick to voice support. As well as Trump, they include French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, and Dutch far-right politicians Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet.

“I would have preferred that the support came from the left but from the right is fine too,” said Kok, whose own farm risks closure. 

“Farmers are always the scapegoat.”

– ‘Very angry’ –

The tiny Netherlands produces huge amounts of food thanks to industrialised farming — but at the cost of being one of Europe’s largest greenhouse gas emitters.

That is especially true of nitrogen, with much of this blamed on ammonia-based fertiliser and cattle-produced manure. Agriculture is responsible for 16 percent of all Dutch emissions.

Nitrogenous gases play an important role in global climate change. Nitrous oxide is a particularly potent greenhouse gas as it is over 300 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

The Netherlands’ flat landscape sitting just above sea level makes it vulnerable to extreme weather. 

In July the Netherlands recorded its third-highest temperature since records began — 39.4C in the southern city of Maastricht.

Nitrogen-containing substances are also blamed for damage to plant and animal habitats.

Following a 2019 court ruling that the Netherlands was not doing enough to protect its natural areas from nitrogen pollution, the Dutch government said in June that the only way to meet climate goals by 2030 was “radical” cuts to farming. 

This would involve a reduction in particular of around 30 percent to the Netherlands’ herd of some four million cows.

The government has offered some 25 billion euros to help farmers adapt — but has also warned that some closures are possible.

“The farmers are very angry,” said Jos Ubels, vice president of the Farmers Defence Force (FDF), one of the groups coordinating the demonstrations.

“In history, every time there is a problem with a minority they have to shout really hard to be heard, so this is what we are doing.” 

Ubels said his group was not responsible for the roadblocks, saying that it was “just organised by local farmers — they are very angry because they are played with.”

Prime Minister Mark Rutte recently called the protests “life-threatening”, yet there is a groundswell of support.

– ‘Climate tyranny’ –

Upside-down Dutch flags — a symbol of the farmers’ movement — can be see hanging from many houses, lamposts and road bridges.

The Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), a centre-right party founded in 2019, would increase its current one seat in parliament to 19 according to latest opinion polls.

But their campaign is also going global.

The FDF’s Ubels was in Warsaw last week for talks with Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk, of Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party-led populist government.

“I will support the position of Dutch farmers in maintaining production… and I hope that their government will change its mind,” Kowalczyk said in a statement.

Trump’s backing has also been a boost.

“Farmers in the Netherlands of all places are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government,” Trump told a rally in Florida in July.

In the Netherlands, a recent farmers’ demo in Amsterdam brought also drew many conspiracy theorists and Covid-sceptics.

British comedian-turned-YouTuber Russell Brand recently told his 5.8 million followers that the Dutch farm plan was part of the “Great Reset” — a conspiracy theory alleging that world leaders orchestrated the pandemic.

The support “says a lot” and shows the government’s “absurd” plans “don’t hold water”, says Wim Brouwer, a farmer in Barneveld and local president of the main Dutch agricultural union LTO.

Brouwer admitted that farmers must do more to cut emissions, but said their sacrifices already far exceeded those made by the industrial and transport sectors.

“The biggest problem is that we have been innovating in agriculture for years, but it’s never enough,” he sighed.

Colombian President Ivan Duque’s environmental policies “failed” according to experts who dispute the outgoing right-wing government’s claims to have reduced deforestation.

With conservative Duque due to hand over to his left-wing successor Gustavo Petro on Sunday, the new government will have to find solutions to the problem.

The South American country is one of the most biodiverse in the world, according to the United Nations, but between 2018 and 2021 it lost an area of forest larger than the size of the Gaza Strip (7,000 square kilometers, 2,700 square miles), according to official data.

The Duque government “focused on military and judicial operations” to tackle deforestation, particularly in the Amazon rainforest, but these “failed,” according to former environment minister Manuel Rodriguez (1991-96).

And even though the deforestation figure is worse than the previous four years, from 2014-2017 (6,500 square kilometers), the government has defended its record.

“This phenomena reduced by 34 percent compared to the trend model,” said environment minister Carlos Correa when presenting the 2021 deforestation figure of 1,741 square kilometers.

But instead of comparing that figure to the 1,717 square kilometers from 2020, the government contrasted it against a projection model based on the trend between 2008 and 2017, when deforestation was out of control.

“So, faced with a hypothetical catastrophic scenario, is losing 1,700 square kilometers of forest good? I don’t think so,” said Rodrigo Botero, director of the Conservation and Development Foundation.

Botero says the authorities’ own figures show that rainforest loss increased between 2019 and 2021.

“We are still at a very high point on the deforestation curve,” Botero told AFP.

“The fact that we have had three consecutive years of increase means that there is no control over the structural variables, it’s an alarming sign.”

Colombia is not the only South American country struggling to rein in the loss of forests.

Neighboring Brazil, which is home to the majority of the Amazon rainforest, saw a record amount lost in the first half of 2022.

The figure of 3,750 square kilometers topped the previous record for the first half of the year, set in 2021.

– ‘Modest’ government success –

President-elect Petro, who will be Colombia’s first ever left-wing leader, has said he will prioritize the fight against climate change and environmental protection.

Petro says he will suspend oil exploration to progressively move to clean energy and will restrict the expansion of farming in the Amazon.

He also aims to create environmental reserves where indigenous and peasant communities can develop sustainable projects.

But before then, the new president will need to decide what to do about his predecessor’s strategy.

In April 2019, eight months after coming to power, Duque launched the Artemisa military operation to fight deforestation using 23,000 soldiers.

Since then, around 100 people have been arrested and a similar number of pieces of machinery confiscated.

“Artemisa had 20 interventions, over four years that’s a pretty modest number,” said Rodriguez.

“You have to create a state presence in terms of education and the generation of employment.”

Peasants have complained that the military operation attacked the weakest links in the chain rather than the large-scale architects of deforestation.

Farming, land grabbing and the growing of drug crops are the main sources of deforestation.

As part of the Paris climate accords, Colombia committed to eliminate deforestation by 2030.

To do so, the environment ministry projects a reduction to 1,550 kilometers squared of lost forest in 2022 and just 1,000 square kilometers a year by 2025.

The government of Norway, which like Germany and the United Kingdom sends millions of dollars in aid to Colombia to preserve its forests, has expressed its alarm at the likelihood that Colombia will miss its first target.

And it could cost the country.

“We are not seeing a constant reduction in the rate of deforestation … the country could lose up to $260 million up to 2025 for not slowing it,” Ole Bergum, Norway’s climate and forests advisor in Colombia, told the El Tiempo newspaper. 

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