AFP UK

Six years ago, nearly every country in the world set targets for reducing their carbon emissions — but the sum total of their pledges fell far short of what was needed to keep the planet from dangerously overheating.  

That first raft of “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) — many conditioned on financing and technical support — under the 2015 Paris Agreement would have seen Earth heat up three to four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The treaty called for a cap of “well below” 2C.

And following a landmark 2018 UN climate science report that warned of dire impacts even at 2C, Paris’ aspirational 1.5C limit has become the de facto target.

Under the deal’s “ratchet” mechanism, signatories review and renew their emission-cutting plans every five years. 

Most countries have done so since late 2020, but a new tally still puts the world on course toward “catastrophic” warming of 2.7C by 2100, according to the UN.

– China –

In 2016, China — by far the largest emitter, responsible for more than a quarter of all carbon pollution — promised to reduce the intensity of its emissions by at least 65 percent by 2030.

Under that scenario, it planned to reach peak emissions no later than 2030. 

In September last year, President Xi Jinping made a surprise announcement at the UN General Assembly: China plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, meaning any remaining carbon pollution will be captured and stored, or offset.

But the country’s new five-year plan does not spell out the steps to reaching this goal, nor has Beijing officially submitted its renewed NDC. 

In the meantime, China continues to build new coal-fired power plants, the single largest source of carbon pollution.

– United States –

The second-largest carbon emitter, the US was one of the driving forces behind the Paris deal, with an initial commitment to cut emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels.

Once in office, President Joe Biden wasted no time in rejoining the accord after his predecessor Donald Trump’s decision to backtrack on US commitments.

The country’s new NDC calls for lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030. This is compatible to a 2C world, but still falls well short of the effort needed to stay below 1.5C, according to Climate Action Tracker.

– European Union –

The EU committed in 2015 to reducing its CO2 emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

Member states updated this goal in December, aiming to reduce emissions by “at least 55 percent” by the end of this decade — a goal also in line with 2C of global warming.

Britain, which has now left the EU, has a 2050 net-zero target built into law. 

It announced in December it would seek to reduce emissions by 68 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, in sync with the 1.5C target.

– India –

India is the world’s third-largest polluter, but has a per-capita carbon footprint far lower than the world’s other top emitters.

Like China, the country has unveiled plans to reduce its carbon intensity — by up to 35 percent this decade compared to 2005 levels. 

It has yet to submit a renewed NDC.

– Russia –

Russia, which did not formally join the Paris deal until in 2019, submitted its first carbon-cutting plan under the Paris deal in 2020.

Using 1990 levels as a benchmark, Moscow said it plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2030, a target deemed “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker.

Most recently, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would aim for carbon neutrality by 2060, but did not provide a roadmap for how the country would get there. 

– Japan –

In 2016, Japan committed to a 26-percent reduction in emissions by 2030. Its renewed NDC, issued in March 2020, had the same figure, sparking sharp criticism from carbon monitoring research groups.

But a more ambitious carbon cutting plan unveiled earlier this month sets a goal of reducing emissions by 46 percent by 2030, compared to 2013 levels. 

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the country would be carbon neutral by 2050.

– Other major emitters –

Among other big emitters, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, South Korea and Indonesia have all resubmitted NDCs that are no more ambitious — and in the case of Mexico and Brazil even less ambitious — than before, according to experts.

Canada, South Africa and Argentina, by contrast, have all boosted their carbon-cutting commitments over the next five years.

Last week, Saudi Arabia pledged to be “net zero”, or carbon neutral, by 2060, but announced no plans to curtail oil and gas exports.

Turkey recently announced its ratification of the Paris treaty, and its first NDC may soon follow.

G20 nations — holding a summit in Rome over the weekend — represent more than 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

– Carbon neutrality –

More and more governments are committing to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century.

So far, 49 countries accounting for 57 percent of global emissions — including all EU member states, Britain and the United States — have make formal or legal commitments, according to the UN Environment Programme.

Any credible pathway toward global net-zero in 2050 will require slashing carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030, according to the UN.

But 2019 was a record year for emissions, which are rapidly climbing back to pre-pandemic levels, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). 

The inhabitants of El Estor, a town of mostly indigenous Mayans in eastern Guatemala, are living under a “state of siege”, watched over by armed soldiers after their years-long fight against a nickel mine took an ominous turn.

El Estor’s subsistence fishermen, mainly of the Mayan Q’eqchi’ indigenous group, say the Fenix mine is polluting Lake Izabal, diminishing stocks of fish that were abundant just a generation ago.

The mine’s owners deny the allegation, saying adequate environmental protections are in place.

Frustrated, residents mounted a protest against the mine on Sunday that was put down by security forces using tear gas.

The confrontation left four police officers wounded, and resulted in the government declaring a state of siege, complete with a month-long protest ban and a night curfew enforced by 1,000 police officers and soldiers deployed among the community of 100,000 people.

For three weeks before Sunday’s clashes, residents of El Estor had blocked truck access to the mine operated by the Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN), a subsidiary of the Swiss-based Solway Investment Group.

“This company is bringing us death,” said Cristobal Pop, 44, a fisherman and protest leader who told AFP he will not be deterred by what he sees as the government’s “intimidation” measures.

“I have four children and they will bear the brunt” of the nickel mining operation, he said.

“My children’s future depends on me.”

– Fewer fish, more jobs –

Pop said that when he was a child, Lake Izabal — Guatemala’s largest — was replete with fish.

He says numbers have dwindled since the Fenix mine resumed nickel extraction and processing in 2014.

In 2017, a red slick spread over the lake, which the community blamed on mining pollution.

In resulting protests, Pop was imprisoned and his comrade Carlos Maaz shot dead.

This month, the community resumed demonstrations, accusing CGN of continuing to mine at Fenix despite a 2019 Constitutional Court order for it to suspend operations.

The court ruled in favor of local communities, who said they had not been consulted about the opening of the mine or its effects on them.

The government was ordered to open fresh consultations, but the people of El Estor say they are being excluded. 

For its part, Solway said in a statement Sunday it was adhering to the court order. Extraction at Fenix has stopped, it said, but its processing plant was not affected by the ruling and continues to operate.

The company insisted it was doing all it can to minimize the environmental impact of its activities, investing in social infrastructure, and that its El Estor operations provided jobs for more than 1,900 people “and hundreds of local contractors.”

– A community divided –

Guatemala, Central America’s largest economy, exported 56 million kilograms (123 million pounds) of ferroalloys and ferronickel, mainly to China, in 2019, according to World Bank data.

Guatemala’s earnings from the metal grew from $10 million in 2018 to $54 million last year, and this year had already reached $62 million by August, according to Central Bank figures.

El Estor resident Abelino Chub told AFP the Fenix mine was dividing the community.

“Unfortunately, the pro-mining group only sees the money… but not the level of damage that this company is generating,” he said.

At the CGN headquarters, company president Dmitry Kudryakov told AFP the contamination allegations amounted to mere “speculation.”

He insisted the company adhered to international environmental standards, and said the 2017 red stain was a result of bacteria caused by sewage and fertilizer pollution of the Polochic River that flows into the lake.

From Death Valley to the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent to sub-Saharan Africa, global warming has already made daily life unbearable for millions of people.

And if nothing is done to slow climate change, the record temperatures and deadly heatwaves it brings will only get worse, experts warn.

“Climate (change) is sort of steroids for the weather. It’s loading the dice to make these sort of extreme events be more common,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate expert at the Breakthrough Institute in California.

The hottest place in the world is officially Death Valley, California. There too, temperatures are rising. 

“If you look at the average temperature in Death Valley for a summer month (…) it has gotten much warmer in the last 20 years than it was before,” said Abby Wines, spokesperson for the Death Valley National Park.

This summer, for the second year in a row, the area registered an astonishing 54.4 degrees Celsius. If confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, it would be the hottest temperature ever recorded with modern instruments.

– Hottest month ever –

According to the US climate agency NOAA, July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth.

“We are affected a lot by this unbearable heat, and we poor are hit the hardest,” said Kuldeep Kaur, a resident of Sri Ganganagar in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, bordering Pakistan. 

Half a world away in western Canada, where a so-called “heat dome” pushed temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius this summer, north Vancouver resident Rosa lamented: “It’s just unbearable. It’s impossible to be out.”

Rising temperatures are a driving force behind more frequent and intense droughts, wildfires, storms, and even floods. And the rising number of heatwaves is devastating for farming and agriculture and potentially fatal for humans.

“A flood is a few deaths, maybe a few dozen. We’re talking about thousands of deaths every time we have a very large extreme heatwave. And we know that these heatwaves are multiplying,” said climatologist Robert Vautard, head of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute.

If the world warms by two degrees Celsius, a quarter of the world’s population could face severe heatwaves at least once every five years, according to a draft UN report obtained by AFP ahead of the COP26 climate summit opening October 31 in Glasgow, Scotland.

– Agriculture threatened –

For the Bedouins of Saudi Arabia, heat is only too familiar.

“I think it’s at least 43 degrees Celsius now, and it’s only 8:30-9:00 am,” said Saudi Bedouin Nayef al-Shammari, adding that it can reach 50 degrees during the day.

“But we’ve got used to it, it’s normal for us, we’re not (…) worried about it.”

The family of the 51-year-old and his father Saad, 75, have lived and worked in the Al Nufud Al-Kabir desert raising camels for generations.

But as temperatures rise to life-threatening levels their livelihood and culture could soon be under threat. 

“Even heat-tolerant animals in the region, for example some camels or goats, will be also affected, agriculture will be also affected, so this extreme heat will affect food production,’ said George Zittis of the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia.

– ‘Catastrophic’ consequences –

Legend has it that the marshes that straddle the famous Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq were home to the biblical Garden of Eden.

They too could soon be at risk.

“The temperatures above 50 degrees affect the fish, they affect animals, people and tourism,” said local boat owner Razak Jabbar, who is considering leaving the marshland where he grew up.

With deadly heatwaves increasingly a fact of life across the globe, many are pinning hopes on Glasgow.

“COP26 this November must mark the turning point. By then we need all countries to commit to achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century, and to present clear, credible, long-term strategies to get there,” said UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Rising sea levels and violent flooding are already putting tens of millions of lives at risk in Bangladesh, but they bring another problem that threatens the entire nation: Water-logged land and high salinity in streams and soil are killing crops.

Bangladesh ranks seventh for countries most affected by extreme weather in the past two decades, according to the Global Climate Risk Index. 

Farmers are desperately trying to adjust to these ever more destructive and unpredictable conditions caused by global warming — from using floating seed beds to developing salt-resistant rice. 

“Even 25 years ago, we could grow crops throughout the year… but then water started to stay here seven months. We were clueless how to survive,” Altaf Mahmud told AFP.

“Most of the farmers here are poor and the land is scarce. But if we can’t grow anything during the seven months, we would starve,” neighbour Mohammad Mostofa added. 

So they and other local farmers in Mugarjhor, a region 200 kilometres (120 miles) south of Dhaka, revived a century-old technique of using seed beds that sit atop the water.

They stack layers of water hyacinth and bamboo tied together by their roots to create a raft, between two and four foot high, on which to plant seeds — often using wood chippings and coconut coir as a fertiliser.

This forms a light, floating vegetable garden — bitter gourds, spinach and okra can all be grown this way — able to rise and fall with the water levels.

The floating farms have become community initiatives, in some villages, women spend months preparing the beds before boatmen take them across water-logged fields, old beds are composted. 

– ‘Cannot do it alone’ –

Ever-more frequent cyclones, rising sea levels, floods, erosion, drought and unreliable rains have already displaced millions, either into city slums or abroad.

Those that stay have no choice but to find new ways of working. 

Some farmers have stopped growing crops opting instead to grow shrimp in the brackish water, or crab-fattening — capturing wild crabs and feeding them up to then sell — as well as rearing ducks, which fetch a high price in Dhaka eateries.

Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) have created new salt-resistant varieties of the staple crop.  

“Normal rice does not grow in saline water.  Salinity saps the energy of rice stalks,” explained scientist Alamgir Hossain.

BRRI has now created a strain that can grow in water with triple the saline levels that normal rice can cope with, he said. 

This has offered “new hope” to farmers in coastal regions, where seawater is increasingly encroaching the land, he added.

But Saiful Islam, a climate expert at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said such efforts are a drop in the ocean.

“We need to spend billions to raise and strengthen embankments along our big coastline. We need to create mangrove forests along the coastal belt to work as natural barriers to cyclones, subsidence and sea level rise.”

“We need to build new roads, preserve rain water and create alternate livelihoods for millions of people. Just inventing crops won’t do. Bangladesh alone can’t do it,” Islam told AFP.

He added that Western nations were “responsible for emitting most of the greenhouse gases” and so needed to help.

Islam said Bangladesh received “barely any” of proposed $100 billion dollars set aside by developed nations for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

– ‘Farming methods from YouTube’ –

In some regions, it is ordinary people leading the charge for change. 

“Lungi” Jakir has become a local legend for his hands-on battle against climate change. 

A former construction worker, he and friends built an embankment to stop seawater breaching a 6.5-kilometre (four-mile)freshwater canal — effectively saving the 43,000 people it serves in Pakhimara, in southern Bangladesh. 

It requires continual repair, but has ensured there’s enough fresh water year-round to irrigate traditional crops and even try new ones. 

“Salinity is all around us,” he told AFP, “We got very little assistance from the government… so we have to find our own ways to survive.”

“I could migrate to the cities. But I know how hard it is to live in a city slum.”

Jakir said he “learnt new farming techniques from YouTube”, detailing how they now also use plastic sheeting and raised beds to protect the top soil. 

The initiative has been such a success that the area has gone from growing only pumpkins and lentils to supplying fruit and vegetables to other districts and even workers at the nearby coal-fired power station.

Authorities admit farmers have shown them new possibilities for climate challenges. 

“We thought hyacinth is a weed and should be thrown out of the ponds but it has opened up a vast opportunity of farming,” Mohammad Shahidullah, a former government agriculture chief for Mugarjhor, said of the floating vegetable gardens. 

“The state-run research institutes didn’t know anything about it. We learnt from the farmers here,” he added.

Officials are keen to “popularise” the technique in other water-logged regions, explained Shahidullah.

Farmer Mahmud said some of his family were now being recruited by the government to train others in this form of soil-free agriculture. 

Vegetable grower Mostofa was hopeful they can weather the changing climate. 

He told AFP: “Now thanks to the floating farm, we can grow our food and also sell the surplus.”  

Draped in a colourful saree and shirt, Lakshmi Murgesan dives into the azure waters off India’s southern coast to collect seaweed, which is being hailed by scientists as a miracle crop that absorbs more carbon dioxide than trees.

India is the world’s third largest carbon polluter, behind China and the US, and has yet to set a target date for its emissions to reach net zero.

But authorities are looking into how seaweed farming could help reduce the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, reverse ocean acidification and improve the marine environment, as well as providing a sustainable livelihood for marginalised coastal communities. 

“I am doing this for my children… It requires a lot of hard work, but I am able to earn good profits from about four months of work,” said Murgesan, who makes 20,000 rupees ($265) each month farming the fibrous macroalgae. 

“I would not have been able to educate my children but after doing this, I could send my children to college,” she added, smiling as she emerged from the waters in Rameswaram, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

M. Ganesan, a government marine scientist, said seaweed provides a possible way forward as coastal habitats and wetlands absorb five times more carbon than terrestrial forests.

“It is a miracle crop in many ways, it is eco-friendly, it doesn’t use land or fresh water. It absorbs carbon dioxide dissolved in water during photosyntheses and oxygenates the entire marine ecosystem,” Ganesan told AFP.

India, which has an 8,000-kilometre (5,000-mile) coastline, is now aiming to boost production from the current 30,000 tons to more than one million tons each year by 2025.

Globally, seaweed production was worth around $12 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to $26 billion by 2025, with China and Indonesia having 80 per cent of the market share.

– Food, fuel, fertiliser –

Murgesan is part of a team of women who work together to cultivate fronds of seaweed on bamboo rafts, before harvesting and drying them. 

The tropical waters of Tamil Nadu form an ideal environment — with one raft yielding up to 200 kilos (440 pounds) in around 45 days.

The product is then sent for sale in markets nationwide as well as the US and Australia through AquAgri, a private company that promotes algal cultivation in India. 

Popular in East and South East Asian cuisine, seaweed is also used in medicine, cosmetics, bio-fertiliser and bio-fuel. 

“Seaweed has major use as a crop bio-stimulant for increasing productivity and making the crop more resilient to climate induced stresses. It’s also used as a major ingredient in meat and food processing,”  Abhiram Seth, managing director of AquAgri, told AFP.  

And while it has not been traditionally popular in India, in July the government announced some $85 million in subsidies for seaweed farming initiatives over the next five years. 

Seaweed cultivation is already common in Japan, China, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Interest is growing in Australia, which has outlined a plan to develop a $100 million industry by 2025.

Seth said there was potential to benefit both the environment and farmers like Murgesan.

“Seaweeds clean up the water. At the same time seaweed cultivators get a sustainable income without having to relocate to urban areas to find work,” he explained.

– Grow what we need –

Seaweed does not require fertiliser, freshwater, or pesticides. Kelp, one of the most commonly farmed types, grows at a rate of 61cm (two feet) a day.  

They absorb an estimated 173 million metric tons of carbon each year — the same annual emissions as New York State, according to a 2016 paper in Nature Geosciences.

And a recent study by the University of California found that mixing red seaweed in animal feed could help reduce methane emissions. 

“We now have sound evidence that seaweed in cattle diet is effective at reducing greenhouse gases and that the efficacy does not diminish over time,” Ermias Kebreab, director of the World Food Center, said in the research. 

As well as absorbing carbon dioxide when it is alive, when it dies and drops to the seafloor, seaweed also keeps carbon in the sediment, Ganesan added.  

However scientists say there can be downsides to farming it.

“Overharvesting seaweed has its drawbacks because it forms the food for many reef dwelling creatures like sea urchins and reef fish,” said marine biologist Naveen Namboothri, from Dakshin Foundation, adding that extraction could disturb the reef.

Conscious of these risks, Murgesan and the other farmers work for only 12 days a month and don’t harvest during the main fish breeding season, between April and June.

Seaweed farmer Vijaya Muthuraman, who never went to school, relies on traditional knowledge.

“We only grow as much as we need and in a way that doesn’t harm or kill the fish,” she said, sitting on the shore after the day’s toil, the gentle surf rising and ebbing behind her. 

The dangers of getting hurt by the rocky sea bed or stung by jellyfish always lurk for the women, but they appeared undaunted, laughing and chatting away their worries.

“We face a lot of hazards but this work has given me and my family some dignity,” she said, adding: “Our living standards have improved and now others in my village also want to become seaweed farmers.”  

It’s spring in South Africa, and Danie Bester’s tillers are rusting in a corner of his farm.

Freshly-turned earth stretches for miles on other farms as his neighbours prepare their fields.

“I’m still playing golf,” said 37-year-old Bester.

He might sound like Aesop’s grasshopper, wasting away the spring days while the ants next door work.

But he’s actually made a radical decision to overhaul the way he farms, using techniques that are both better for his soil and for adapting to climate change.

“My seed beds are already growing, and my weed control is already going,” he said. “So I don’t have to do that amount, big amount of preparation, like the other guys are doing.”

His farming style has a fancy name — regenerative agriculture. But it’s a simple idea.

Instead of dousing the fields with pesticides, installing irrigation systems and churning the earth with heavy tillers, Bester grows cover crops during the off season.

Cattle graze on the plants, dropping dung as added fertilizer on his 1,100-hectare (2,700 acres) spread, 90 kilometres (55 miles) southeast of Johannesburg.

The result: worms do the work of oxygenation that machines do elsewhere, while the untilled, shaded soil retains moisture and nutrients — and weeds are kept under control.

His technique remains rare in South Africa, which has the most industrialised farms on the continent. Most use large-scale monoculture farming reliant on chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

But in addition to being climate-smart, Bester’s corn and soy yields are among the highest in the country, earning him national awards that he hopes will inspire others to make the change.

“It’s like a small seed you have to plant. The other guys start seeing the success (and) they will catch on,” said Bester.

South Africa’s climate is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to experts, meaning changes to farming are crucial.

“As globally we overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), we’ll be at three degrees… that’s going to bring major stresses to the commercialised and globalised food system,” said activist Vishwas Satgar with the Climate Justice Charter Movement.

South Africa is already a dry country, and widespread irrigation is not a viable option.

Bester’s fields are rich without artificial watering. He pulls out a stalk, revealing a bit of fungal growth and a wriggling earthworm — creatures not found on farms doused with pesticides, he said.

“There are going to be challenges in the future that are not going to be solved by chemical agriculture,” said Peter Johnston, a climate scientist at the University of Cape Town.

Across Africa, small farmers use traditional practices less damaging to the environment.

– ‘Look into the future’ –

With a real pressure to improve harvests to feed growing populations, farmers are encouraged by agro-chemical companies to use particular seeds that require chemical pesticides and fertilizers, Johnston said.

Those methods can resist the changing climate, but at cost.

“Industrial agriculture traditionally always gets to the point where it doesn’t really regard the soil as a resource anymore, the soil is just a holder for plants,” Johnston said. 

“That is not a holistic look at the way agriculture should be.”

Over time, those techniques mean the soil keeps less moisture and produces less nutritious crops, Johnston said.

“We’ve got to get the soils back to what they were a hundred years ago. We’ve destroyed everything,” Bester said. “The longer the soil will be healthy, the longer we will be able to produce food.”

Change doesn’t happen overnight. 

Bester spent years testing his soil quality, managing his fields in blocks of five square metres (54 square-metres), and learning by trial and error.

The payoff isn’t just high yields, Bester said, but ensuring the land will remain fertile for his two young children.

“You have to look really far into the future to make sure you’re (making) the right decisions,” he said.

Bester’s neighbours are starting to catch on.

Tilling is becoming less common, he said.

“It’s only going to get worse if we don’t change,” he said. “We need to conserve now.”

Billed as a chance for humanity to save itself from climate catastrophe, the United Nations COP26 summit starting Sunday will task world leaders with turning ambitions to restrain global heating into the actions needed to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

With just over one degree Celsius warming so far after 150 years of burning fossil fuels, the world is experiencing a rapid-fire onslaught of weather disasters supercharged by climate change.  

Since the last UN conference in 2019, record-shattering wildfires have scorched across Australia, Western Europe and the United States; North America has sizzled in a once-in-a-thousand-year heatwave; and extreme rainfall has caused massive flooding in Asia, Africa, the US and Europe.  

Experts warn that only transformative action will help stave off far more devastating climate impacts, not just for humanity but most life on Earth. 

“We don’t have much time,” said David King, a former British climate envoy who now heads the Climate Crisis Advisory Group.

“What we do over the next five to ten years will determine the future of humanity for the next millennia,” he told AFP.

But the road to climate salvation is strewn with obstacles. Nations under pressure to revitalise Covid-ravaged economies continue to subsidise fossil fuels, even as they tout renewables.

Anger among developing nations has also reignited over funding shortfalls and unequal access to Covid-19 vaccines that has prevented some delegates from attending. 

Currently, the world is holding a “one-way ticket for disaster”, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week. 

  

– ‘Insanity’-

The Glasgow gathering, which runs from October 31 to November 12, is the latest and most urgent summit in a protracted diplomatic process entering its fourth decade.

In 2015, the Paris deal called for capping global warming at “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, and 1.5C if possible.

But in August a bombshell “code red” report from the world’s top climate science body warned that Earth’s average temperature will hit the 1.5C threshold around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago.

And this week a UN report said even the latest, most ambitious carbon cutting commitments would still lead to “catastrophic” warming of 2.7C.

“Insanity is keeping doing the same thing in the hope of getting a different outcome,” said Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at Oxford University, adding that at this rate the 2030 targets will be met in the 2080s. 

Guterres said much rests on commitment from G20 leaders — meeting in Rome just ahead of the COP — whose economies account for about 80 percent of carbon pollution.

“If they do not stand up… we are headed for terrible human sufferings,” he said.

– Climate justice –

Observers say there are glimmers of hope, with the US announcing a doubling of overseas climate aid and China saying it will cease new coal production abroad.

President Xi Jinping announced last year his country’s aim for carbon neutrality by 2060 and for domestic emissions to peak “around 2030”.

But China, the world’s largest emitter, has still not submitted its renewed emissions cuts pledges.

And Xi, who has not left China during the pandemic, is unlikely to travel to Glasgow, although COP26 President Alok Sharma said Tuesday he still hopes the Chinese leader will attend. 

Vladimir Putin of Russia, another major polluter, will also be a no-show. 

Meanwhile, Britain’s 95-year-old Queen Elizabeth II this week cancelled her attendance on health grounds. 

But more than 120 heads of state and government will make the trip to kick off the 13-day meeting, including US President Joe Biden, India’s Narendra Modi, French leader Emmanuel Macron and Australia’s Scott Morrison. 

Climate activists including Extinction Rebellion will gather in Glasgow to keep up the pressure, while Greta Thunberg confirmed she would join a November 5 march for “climate justice” in the city.

With poorer nations least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions hit hardest by its impacts, inequality overshadows the negotiations. 

The failure of rich countries to cough up $100 billion a year starting in 2020 to help developing nations lower emissions and adapt — a pledge first made in 2009 — will complicate the already fraught talks.  

Assurance by ministers this week that the goal should be reached by 2023 seems only to have poured oil on the fire.

“We absolutely do not have the luxury of accommodating more and more delays,” said Walton Webson, who heads up the Alliance of Small Island States, adding that the Paris goals were “a matter of survival”. 

– ‘What’s your excuse?’ –

Organisers have already warned the negotiations may fail to reach their objectives. 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously summed up his hopes for Glasgow as “coal, cars, cash and trees” — meaning deals for global phaseouts of coal power and internal combustion engines, funding for climate-vulnerable nations and tree planting. 

Other tasks are less clear cut, including governing the carbon markets and finalising a “rulebook” for the Paris Agreement that specifies how goals are to be reached and progress measured.

But experts warn that the stakes could not be higher. 

That point was underscored with dark humour this week in a video released by the UN Development Programme, which shows a dinosaur striding into a UN meeting and declaring: “I know a thing or two about extinction”. 

“At least we had an asteroid,” it continues. “What’s your excuse?”

The leaders of the world’s major economies gather in Rome this weekend for the first in-person G20 summit since the pandemic began, with Covid-19, economic recovery and climate change topping a packed agenda.

US President Joe Biden is flying in to reiterate his message that “America is back” after four years of Donald Trump’s bruising diplomacy, although Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping will attend only by video link.

Their absence has lowered expectations for the summit, normally a forum for deals between allies and rivals of differing size and power, from the US and China, to Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia and the European Union.

But all eyes will be on their language on climate change, on the eve of crunch COP26 talks starting in Glasgow on Monday.

Leaders are also expected to rubberstamp a deal to impose a 15 percent minimum tax on global corporations and discuss the post-pandemic recovery and associated risks, including the uneven rollout of Covid-19 vaccines.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the summit “marks the return of multilateralism, after the dark years of isolationism and of isolation linked to the health crisis”.

However, Antonio Villafranca, from the ISPI foreign policy think tank, warned the absence of Xi and Putin was “not a positive sign”.

The G20 “is not a transatlantic format but a multilateral format in which it is fundamental that everyone contributes,” he told AFP.

– Step up –

The timing of the G20 summit, ahead of marathon UN climate talks in Glasgow, has put the effort to slow global warming centre stage.

G20 members are responsible for 80 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions, but are at different stages of development and disagree on how fast they can act.

Italy hopes the G20 will collectively endorse the UN goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, one of the aspirations of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accords. 

But G20 members remain at odds over the other major goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. China has set a 2060 target, but India — pointing to its status as a developing country — has not made a similar commitment.

The risks to the post-pandemic recovery will also feature in the Rome talks, from inflation and rising energy prices to supply chain issues and the slowdown in China’s economic growth.

No new pledges are expected on Covid-19 vaccines, but Italy wants more help for lower income countries to help distribute existing jabs and build more resilient health systems.

“Global solidarity in facing this pandemic has been pretty wanting,” noted Emma Ross, senior research fellow at the Chatham House think tank.

“The G7 didn’t rise to the occasion, so everyone is looking to the G20 now to see if this wider representation of global leaders can step up.”

– Vatican diplomacy –

The summit takes place on Saturday and Sunday but many leaders will fly in on Friday and a flurry of bilaterals are expected, in the first physical gathering many world leaders have attended since Covid-19 struck in early 2020.

Biden will meet Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, seeking to smooth ties with the latter after Australia scrapped a French submarine deal in favour of a US-UK agreement.

The president, a practicing Catholic, will also meet Pope Francis. The pontiff will also receive Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in over the weekend.

Security will be tight at the summit, particularly after violent clashes earlier this month in central Rome between police and protesters against the extension of Italy’s coronavirus pass to all workplaces.

Border controls have been temporarily reintroduced, derogating from Europe’s passport-free Schengen area, while a no-fly zone is in place over most of the capital.

Meanwhile 500 soldiers have been mobilised to help out with the summit, which is being held away from the city centre in the Mussolini-era suburb of EUR.

As world leaders prepare for the COP26 climate summit from October 31, AFP Fact Check examines some common claims that question the existence of global heating caused by humans.

– ‘It’s a hoax / conspiracy’ –

Some brand the crisis a hoax by scientists to justify their research grants — or even a conspiracy by governments to control people. If so, it would have to be one of extraordinary complexity, coordinated by successive governments in scores of countries with vast numbers of scientists.

Tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies in the public domain have led to an overwhelming scientific consensus that human-made climate change is real. The most comprehensive such source is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Far from being a covert operation, its evidence and methods are published at www.ipcc.ch.

Its latest report, 3,500 pages long released this year, was approved by delegates from 195 states. It lists 234 authors from 66 countries as contributors.

The panel was founded under a UN resolution, which provides fuel for conspiracy theorists but offers proof of its bona fides for other people.

– ‘Climate has always changed’ –

Scientists know the Earth has long alternated between ice ages and periods of warming — about one ice age every 100,000 years over the past million years. Is the current heating just another stage in this cycle?

No — the speed, relative abruptness and global extent of the heating over the past 50 years make it different this time.

“Global surface temperature has increased faster since 1970 than in any other 50-year period over at least the last 2,000 years,” the IPCC says, with graphs to demonstrate.

This is based on several forms of data: palaeological analysis of sediment, ice and tree rings for the period before the Industrial Revolution, and recorded temperatures since 1850.

– ‘No proof of human cause’ –

As evidence of unusual warming has become incontrovertible, some sceptics concede it is happening but deny it is caused by the carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels.

The IPCC developed a climate model that measures the impact of different factors. It calculates the extent of heating with and without the effect of human activity.

“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” this year’s IPCC report concluded.

A summary of this finding, with graphs, is on page eight of this document: http://u.afp.com/wZ6N

– ‘A little warming is good’ –

“Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record-setting cold…. Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”

Donald Trump’s tweet on January 20 blended a common climate myth — that cold weather is evidence against climate heating — with the assumption that even if warming is happening, it isn’t all bad.

Climate is a measure of average weather variations over time. One day or one week of snow is therefore not enough to prove that average temperatures are not rising over decades.

Could “a little global warming” be nice? Parts of Siberia could become arable, expanding food resources — but the melting of permafrost in the same region threatens to create more problems.

A two-degree rise may sound pleasant enough – but the IPCC calculates that it is enough to drive up the level of the seas by half a metre or more, enough to drown coastal cities.

– ‘Scientists question climate change’ –

Specialists often voice scepticism, signing joint statements and editorials. But an examination of their credentials in numerous cases has revealed that these are rarely climate scientists.

Among scientists’ criteria for measuring the legitimacy of claims, one of the most important is consensus -– and the consensus on climate change is now overwhelming.

A recent survey by Cornell University of thousands of peer-reviewed studies on climate change found that in more than 99 percent of them the authors agreed that climate change was caused by humans (http://u.afp.com/wZ6p).

From his perch 400 kilometres above Earth, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has had a unique perspective on the climate-fuelled natural disasters that have swept the planet over the past six months. 

Pesquet recently finished up his second mission at the International Space Station, an experience that made him appreciate Earth’s fragility like never before. 

He spoke to AFP ahead of the UN climate summit kicking off on October 31, sharing his hopes and fears for the planet. 

– What images strike you the most? –

The massive storms, and the forest fires. I have never seen anything like it, incredibly huge fires with plumes of smoke visible from space for days and days. 

It was striking to think about the energy it gave off and the damage it caused for people unfortunate enough to be in its path.

We had never seen so many extremely impressive tropical storms — you could practically see into the eye of the cyclone. They’re walls of clouds with phenomenal power, coming more and more often and causing more and more destruction.

– Does the Earth seem fragile? –

Yes, absolutely. Seeing the planet from the window of your space craft makes you think. You only have to see it once: you can spend two days in space and just getting that distance, seeing the fragility of the atmosphere, that thin bubble that makes life possible in the vacuum of space, that incredible oasis — it changes your life.

When you see changes over the long term — sometimes you need more than five years to see it — you can’t help but feel concerned.

That’s why I became an ambassador for the (UN’s) Food and Agriculture Organization, and an advocate for many environmental causes.

– What worries you the most? –

The idea that we might not succeed in reaching an agreement at an international level, and that economic concerns dominate over environmental ones.

It’s a completely short-sighted approach. Over the long-term, profits are directly threatened by climate change. When you see the Great Barrier Reef not included on the list of endangered sites because of Australian government pressure, you think the priorities are wrong and we’re in trouble.

The first thing to do is listen to the experts who have dedicated their lives to providing solutions on a local, regional, national and global level. We have to try to put solutions in place.

The most urgent task at hand is to decarbonise. You have to prioritise renewables and carbon-free energy. And that takes restrictive measures and international commitments for which countries can be held accountable. That’s what COP26 is all about.