AFP UK

People fight the wind in a parking lot before Hurricane Nicole makes landfall in Jensen Beach, Florida

Tropical Storm Nicole slowed after making landfall in the US state of Florida, meteorologists said Thursday, with high winds raising concerns that a long-delayed NASA rocket launch could be disrupted.

The storm, a rare occurrence this late in the year, sparked mandatory evacuation orders just weeks after Florida was battered by Hurricane Ian.

But just an hour after Nicole made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane it was downgraded to a Tropical Storm, the US-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement Thursday at 0900 GMT.

The NHC said Nicole was packing sustained maximum winds of up to 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour.

The storm had passed over the Bahamas on Wednesday, with the level of destruction not immediately clear.

A tropical storm warning was issued for Florida’s eastern coast from the city of Boca Raton to the boundary between Flagler and Volusia counties, the NHC said.

“Strong winds, dangerous storm surge and waves, and heavy rains continue over a large area,” it said.

Forty-five of the state’s 67 counties were under a state of emergency, Governor Ron DeSantis said, while four counties were under mandatory evacuation orders, according to the state’s Division of Emergency Management.

At least 60,000 customers in the affected areas were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, with Brevard county being the worst hit

In preparation for the storm’s impact, DeSantis said 16,000 people had been recruited to respond to power outages and 600 national guardsmen had been activated.

The death toll from Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States, stands at more than 100 in Florida alone.

– NASA launch delay –

Nicole has raised concerns that a long-delayed NASA rocket launch could be disrupted again.

The storm is heading towards NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, located near Florida’s eastern city of Orlando, having already disrupted plans to launch the agency’s most powerful rocket next week.

The Artemis 1 mission had been due to launch on November 14, but NASA said on Tuesday it would be delayed to November 16.

A backup launch date has been set for November 19.

NASA said it would leave the giant 322-foot (98-meter) SLS rocket on the launch pad, where it had been placed several days before.

Some experts have voiced concern that the rocket, which is estimated to cost several billion dollars, could be damaged by debris from the hurricane if it remains exposed.

After two launch attempts were scrubbed this summer because of technical problems, the rocket had to be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building to protect it from Hurricane Ian.

The uncrewed mission aims to bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on its surface.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt

US climate envoy John Kerry urged Pacific island states on Thursday to join global efforts to cut methane emissions in hopes it would sway major emitters China and India to follow suit.

Speaking at the UN’s COP27 summit in Egypt, Kerry said 20 countries have yet to count methane as part of their pledges to cut emissions in global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

“In those 20 states are China and India, and that’s a massive amount of methane,” he said at the event on protecting the oceans.

While he acknowledged that island nations account for a tiny proportion of methane emissions, he said they could make a “huge difference” by joining the effort.

“If the rest of the world joins in and makes it clear this is what we have to do, that will, I hope, encourage those other states … to join in the counting of methane” in their emissions plans, Kerry said.

“So I hope Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, PNG (Papua New Guinea) and Solomon Islands could really help set the expectations. You could be the final push for getting every country in the world to stand up and count it.”

Methane is the second biggest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide.

It is generated by the production, transport and use of fossil fuels, but also from the decay of organic matter in wetlands and elsewhere, and as a byproduct of ruminant digestion in agriculture.

Beijing and Washington jointly declared last year at the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland that they would work together to control methane emissions.

While the United States has already laid out plans to cut its methane emissions to 30 percent below 2020 levels by the end of the decade, China has not yet announced its own roadmap.

Beijing froze climate cooperation with the United States following US House leader Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.

People fight the wind in a parking lot before Hurricane Nicole makes landfall in Jensen Beach, Florida

Hurricane Nicole made landfall on the Atlantic coast of the US state of Florida, meteorologists said Thursday, sparking mandatory evacuation orders.

The Category 1 hurricane, a rare occurrence this late in the year, comes just weeks after Florida was battered by Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms to hit the United States.

Nicole was packing sustained maximum winds of up to 75 miles (120 kilometers) per hour and made landfall “along the east coast of Florida just south of Vero Beach,” the US-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a statement Thursday at 0800 GMT.

The storm had passed over the Bahamas on Wednesday, with the level of destruction not immediately clear.

A hurricane warning was in effect for Florida’s eastern coast from the city of Boca Raton to the boundary between Flagler and Volusia counties, the NHC said.

Forty-five of the state’s 67 counties were under a state of emergency, Governor Ron DeSantis said, while four counties were under mandatory evacuation orders, according to the state’s Division of Emergency Management.

DeSantis said 16,000 people had been recruited to respond to power outages following the storm and 600 national guardsmen had been activated.

The death toll from Ian stands at more than 100 in Florida alone.

– NASA launch delay –

Nicole has raised concerns that a long-delayed NASA rocket launch could be disrupted again.

The storm is heading towards NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, located near Florida’s eastern city of Orlando, having already disrupted plans to launch the agency’s most powerful rocket next week.

The Artemis 1 mission had been due to launch on November 14, but NASA said on Tuesday it would be delayed to November 16.

A backup launch date has been set for November 19.

NASA said it would leave the giant 322-foot (98-meter) SLS rocket on the launch pad, where it had been placed several days before.

Some experts have voiced concern that the rocket, which is estimated to cost several billion dollars, could be damaged by debris from the hurricane if it remains exposed.

After two launch attempts were scrubbed this summer because of technical problems, the rocket had to be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building to protect it from Hurricane Ian.

The uncrewed mission aims to bring the United States a step closer to returning astronauts to the Moon five decades after humans last walked on its surface.

Mongolia is ramping up efforts to export coal to energy-hungry China, despite global efforts to end the use of the polluting fossil fuel

Mongolia is ramping up efforts to export coal to energy-hungry China, a government official told AFP, despite global efforts to end the use of the polluting fossil fuel.

World leaders are gathering at the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh to hash out the future of the planet, and China’s role in global carbon emissions has been front and centre.

Mongolia already sends 86 percent of its exports to China, with coal accounting for more than half the total, and is upgrading its infrastructure in the hopes of selling even more to its southern neighbour.

“We need to use this window of opportunity, use the next 10 years to be able to export as much coal as we can,” deputy mining minister Batnairamdal Otgonshar told AFP.

China is the world’s largest polluter and has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. To that end, it is building out its renewable power grid to prepare for a move away from coal.

But its need for power far exceeds what renewable sources can supply. Chinese authorities ordered producers in spring to add 300 million tonnes of mining capacity this year — the equivalent of an extra month of coal production.

And Mongolia is keen to chip in, shipping 19 million metric tons of coal to China so far this year, according to the National Statistical Office, already exceeding 2021’s 16 million total.

Government officials want Mongolia to surpass the record 37 million tons sent in 2019 and to keep supplying China with a steady stream of coal well into the next decade, Batnairamdal said.

“Coking demand won’t decline in the next 10 years, but the technology may change,” he said. “The next 10 years remain an opportunity.”

Batnairamdal is pushing for Mongolia to invest heavily in coal, and new railways to connect to China’s ports and processing plants.

– ‘Window of opportunity’ –

Time is running out for Mongolia to sell off its thermal coal — used by power plants to make electricity — Batnairamdal said, as coal-fired plants are being phased out.

Soaring prices also mean there is little incentive for Ulaanbaatar to slow down. The value of Mongolia’s coal exports jumped to $4.5 billion in the first nine months of 2022, almost triple what they were over the same period last year.

An unofficial ban on Australian coal sparked by political disputes in 2020 has also opened the door wider to Mongolian exporters, analysts say.

“Without Australia, China’s appetite for low sulphur coking coal creates substantial demand for Mongolian miners,” said Simon Wu, a senior consultant at Wood Mackenzie, a research and consultancy group.

Mongolia missed their chance to export more coal to China after Australian imports fell off, Wu said, blaming a lack of railway connections.

Politicians in Ulaanbaatar are now working to fix that.

Ulaanbaatar finished a 233-kilometre (145 mile) rail line from the Tavan Tolgoi mine to the Gashuun Sukhait border in September, a project that took 14 years to complete.

Analysts also say relative political stability in Mongolia could help the government finish other long-delayed projects. 

– ‘Trade will open up’ –

Tumentsogt Tsevegmid, chairman of the Business Council of Mongolia, told AFP the infrastructure now in place, combined with projects already in progress, could allow Mongolia to push coal exports to 70 million tons annually, possibly by 2025.

“If China is willing to import more coal, and there is more work done to improve borders and railways lines, then trade will open up,” Tumentsogt said.

With a population of just 3.3 million, Mongolia has little heavy industry and does not by itself consume much coal compared to its southern neighbour. 

It accounts for just 0.11 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations, but is already being severely affected by climate change.

Strong winter storms, along with drought and wildfires, have displaced communities, forcing nomadic families into the capital after losing their livestock. 

The United Nations says climate change is making these natural disasters more common in Mongolia, with overcrowding in unplanned areas of Ulaanbaatar leading to soil and air pollution — especially in winter, when raw coal is burned in residential stoves to fend off freezing temperatures.

“The contradiction will remain,” said Tumentsogt, when asked about Mongolia both producing coal for export while also investing in renewables.

“Mongolia has a dilemma, it needs short-term cash revenue to meet its fiscal needs and at the same time is trying to invest in costly renewables to reduce its carbon footprint, reduce air pollution and contribute to global sustainability efforts.”

Tumentsogt said Mongolia’s cash crunch has only one fix for now — sell more coal. 

“Coal deliveries and exports will remain as one of the major sources of revenue for the government and there are no other sources that can replace this fiscal need.”

A seabird covered in oil when the tanker Erika sank off western France

Twenty years ago Spain suffered its worst environmental disaster, when the Prestige oil tanker broke in two, spilling over 60,000 tonnes of fuel that blackened thousands of kilometres (miles) of Atlantic coastline.

The accident caused major damage to wildlife and the environment as far away as France and Portugal, as well as to the important fishing industry of the Galicia region, where thousands of volunteers took part in the clean-up.

Here are some other major spills in Europe’s seas:

– 1999: Erika disaster in France –

In December 1999, the Italian-owned Erika, chartered by French oil giant TotalFina, broke in two off France’s northwestern coast, dumping 20,000 tonnes of heavy diesel oil into the ocean. Some 400 kilometres (nearly 250 miles) of coastline was polluted. Between 150,000 and 300,000 birds died.

In September 2012, a French court convicted TotalFina of negligence over the shipwreck and the communities affected were awarded compensation.

– 1996: Sea Empress sinks off Wales –

In February 1996, the Liberian tanker Sea Empress sank near the port of Milford Haven in Wales.

The leakage of more than 70,000 tonnes of crude oil caused a major ecological disaster, killing some 20,000 birds.

– 1992: Spanish coast slathered in black –

In December 1992, the Greek tanker Aegean Sea crashed into the rocks in a storm near the Spanish port of La Coruna, breaking in two and leaking 79,000 tonnes of fuel oil. 

It then caught fire and burned for several days. Oil washed up along 200 kilometres of Galician coastline. 

– 1991: Worst Mediterranean spill –

In April 1991, Cypriot oil tanker Haven broke up while anchored off the coast of Genoa in Italy after an onboard explosion that killed six crew members and caused the loss of its cargo of 144,000 tonnes of crude oil.

The oil slick polluted Italy’s Liguria coast as well as part of Provence in France. The clean-up operation lasted years.

– 1978: Crew wiped out in Galicia –

In December 1978, the Greek tanker Andros Patria, which was carrying 200,000 tonnes of crude oil between Iran and the Netherlands got caught in a storm off northwestern Spain. 

Its hull cracked near La Coruna and the ship caught fire. Thirty-four of the 37 sailors aboard drowned and nearly 50,000 tonnes of oil were released into the Bay of Biscay.

– 1978: US supertanker hits the rocks –

In March 1978, the US-owned supertanker Amoco Cadiz sank off the western tip of Brittany, France, dumping 230,000 tonnes of crude oil and polluting 360 kilometres of coastline.

The biggest marine oil spill in Europe’s history had a devastating impact on marine fauna and flora.

In 1992, after 14 years of proceedings, the Amoco oil company was ordered to pay a 160 million euros ($160 million) to the French state and 35 million euros to local victims.

– 1967: Europe’s first major ‘black tide’ –

In March 1967, the Liberian-registered Torrey Canyon supertanker leaked every drop of its nearly 120,000 tonnes of crude oil when it ran aground near the Scilly Islands off Britain’s southwestern coast. 

Beaches in Britain and Brittany suffered the fallout of Europe’s first major “black tide”, as such slicks became known in France.

Spain's former king Juan Carlos talks to volunteers helping clean up the 'Prestige' oil spill at Muxia in 2002

It was one of Europe’s worst-ever environmental disasters.

But 20 years after the oil tanker “Prestige” broke apart off northwestern Spain, covering thousands of kilometres (miles) of Atlantic coast with crude oil and killing 200,000 seabirds, some fear it could happen again.

The tragedy unfolded just off one of Spain’s most scenic coastlines, turning the beaches of Galicia “black”, devastating the region’s fishing industry and leaving a trail of death and damage as far as France and Portugal.

The shock is still raw two decades on, said Alberto Blanco, former mayor of the seaside town of Muxia, close to where the single-hulled Bahama-flagged Liberian tanker first got into trouble during a storm on November 13, 2002.

The crew issued a distress call after a gaping hole several metres wide appeared in the ageing vessel’s hull. 

As soon as he heard the news, Blanco recalled rushing to the seafront and seeing the vessel was “very close to the coast and that the situation was very serious. 

“The ship was listing in very rough seas, with a swell that was six to eight metres (20-26 feet) high,” he said. 

The following day its 77,000 tonnes of heavy-grade fuel oil began leaking into the sea. 

With the storm still raging, the Spanish authorities tried to tow the tanker further out to sea, in a controversial decision that went against an emergency plan drawn up by experts calling for it to be brought to port to contain the leak. 

– 200,000 birds killed –

After six days adrift, the vessel broke in two and sank some 270 kilometres off the Galician coast, coming to rest at a depth of 3,500 metres and causing the worst-ever oil slick on the Iberian peninsula.

“The scope of the catastrophe was enormous,” with consequences “not only in Spain, but also in Portugal and France,” said Sara del Rio, a researcher with Greenpeace Spain. 

In all, the tanker spilled an estimated 63,000 tonnes of fuel oil into the Atlantic, coating nearly 3,000 kilometres of the coastline with foul black sludge and killing nearly 200,000 seabirds, despite the efforts of tens of thousands of volunteers. 

“The rocks were full of black tar, and so were the beaches,” Blanco recalled. “Cleaning them was incredibly difficult, because it was slimy and sticky, and it just came back again with the tide, which gave you a sense of impotence and rage. 

“It was a never-ending battle.”

After a cleanup that lasted months, and a complex trial that took years, Spain’s Supreme Court in 2016 found the tanker’s skipper, its British insurer The London P&I Club, and Liberian owner Mare Shipping Inc liable for the disaster. 

It sentenced the Greek captain, Apostolos Mangouras — who was 67 when the “Prestige” went down — to two years in jail, and ordered that the owner and the insurer pay 1.5 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in compensation, mostly to the Spanish state. 

Neighbouring France was awarded 61 million euros.

– ‘Misguided decisions’ –

NGOs hailed the ruling, but expressed regret that no politicians were called to account despite the “disastrous” decisions taken by the Spanish government of right-wing premier Jose Maria Aznar and the Galician regional authorities. 

“There were misguided decisions, such as moving the ship away from the coast instead of bringing it closer to a port to contain the impact,” said Greenpeace’s Del Rio. 

“It caused the spill to spread in such a way that it was impossible to control it,” she added, saying the court did not “draw all the necessary conclusions”. 

Since the “Prestige” spill, the EU has tightened maritime safety laws, banning single-hull oil tankers, ordering ship inspections in port and setting up the European Maritime Safety Agency.

But such measures have not entirely eliminated the risk of a new oil spill. 

“At any moment a catastrophe like the ‘Prestige’ could happen again,” said Del Rios. 

“Firstly, because there are still ships transporting oil that are in poor condition. And secondly, because more and more fossil fuels are being transported.”

Hindu faithful dream of trekking at least once in their lives to Gaumukh, where the waters of India's holiest river, the Ganges, emerge from a Himalayan glacier

From prime ministers and millionaires to labourers and ascetics, Hindu faithful dream of trekking at least once in their lives to Gaumukh, where the waters of India’s holiest river, the Ganges, emerge from a Himalayan glacier.

But the ice at the end of the arduous journey is receding rapidly and portends an increasingly dry future for a country of 1.4 billion people facing existential challenges from climate change.

“It is quite astonishing, so quick and it is happening every day and every second,” said Sheethal Vepur Ramamurthy, a researcher with Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany.

“We can even see the glacier dripping,” she told AFP at the site. “So, it is a harsh reality.”

“Climate change definitely plays a role. Although people may deny it is happening in front of our eyes, we just have to witness it.”

The Ganges flows for around 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) across India and is central to both Hindu identity — believers revere it as “mother Ganga” — and the survival of 500 million people who depend on its water for their daily farming, domestic and industrial needs.

Seventy-five years after independence, India has overtaken former coloniser Britain to become the world’s fifth-largest economy.

It is also the world’s third-biggest carbon emitter and second-biggest coal user.

Now, it is experiencing increasingly frequent droughts, floods and water shortages.

– ‘Our identity’ –

“The Ganges is our culture, heritage, identity, and if it disappears, so will our life and existence,” said Sanjeev Semwal, 53, a Hindu priest in Gangotri, the town below the glacier.

Anything that impacts the river “should be a cause of worry for everyone”, he told AFP.

His family have served for generations at the town’s temple to Ganga, the goddess who personifies the river, on the banks of the meltwater stream.

With increasing prosperity and investment in infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of devotees now visit annually — a far cry from the few hundred in his father’s time.

“The human presence and the region’s weather patterns have both changed in my lifetime,” he said.

The area is a microcosm of India’s wider changes: Gangotri town has been transformed by construction in recent years, and is now packed with shops, tourist facilities, and traffic.

At the same time, the glacier of the same name has shrunk by 1.7 kilometres in 90 years, according to the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.

Deadly natural disasters are becoming more frequent: at least 26 people died in an avalanche on the route to Gangotri in October.

A glacial burst in the region killed at least 72 people last year, and around 5,000 others died in 2013 when heavy rains led to flooding near another Hindu pilgrimage site.

– Water scarcity –

India is one of the world’s most water-stressed countries.

It has 17 percent of the world’s population but only four percent of its water resources, and the government’s NITI Aayog public policy centre says about 600 million people already face “high to extreme water stress”.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in February that food security and agriculture-dependent economies such as India were the “most vulnerable” to the impacts of global warming.

The country’s rice production could fall by 10 to 30 percent, it projected, with maize dropping 25 to 70 percent in the face of rising temperatures, increasing groundwater scarcity and extreme weather patterns.

India saw its warmest March on record this year when a heatwave made life unbearable for hundreds of millions of people, with some poor districts of even the capital New Delhi only receiving tanker deliveries twice a week.

Poverty remains widespread in India and nearly 45 percent of households do not have piped water connections.

The country’s outdated agricultural sector remains its biggest employer and water consumer, depleting groundwater resources through wells and pumps, and the environmental challenges have already forced farmers in some areas off their land.

The climate crisis “is not something we are going to face sometime in the future”, said Manshi Asher of campaign group Himdhara.

“It is something that is already happening. The reason it is not evident is because people who bear the cost of the crisis are the most vulnerable and don’t get heard in the media or by the planners.”

If action was not taken, she added, “those who can -– privileged people -– will continue to live in their safe spaces while most others bear the brunt of water shortages and other impacts of climate crisis”.

-‘Small is beautiful’-

Coal-dependent India consumed about a billion tonnes of the dirty fuel in 2021. Three-quarters of it went to electricity generation in a new all-time high for the country, according to an International Energy Agency report in July.

New Delhi also plans to increase production by more than 50 percent in the next two years and relaxed environmental compliance rules for mines in May.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India will cut its emissions to net-zero only by 2070 — missing a key goal of last year’s COP26 summit for countries to commit to doing so by 2050.

India and China were blamed for blocking a commitment to “phase out” coal at that gathering.

Modi is not attending the COP27 summit under way in Egypt, where India is demanding rich countries offer more financing to help developing nations deal with the impact of climate change and to adapt their economies.

Indian policymakers say fossil fuels power its economy that helps lift millions out of abject poverty, and that the country’s per capita emissions are far lower than those of rich countries, as are its historical carbon contributions.

But environmentalists like Manoj Misra accuse policymakers of “not looking beyond the next election”.

“They are not looking at the future and this shortsightedness is the problem,” he said.

“Everyone wants to consume like the United States but where are the resources?” he asked. “We need to return to the Gandhian heart of small is beautiful and less is more.”

Tikuna indigenous filmmakers film documentary short films with the support of Matis indigenous filmmakers in San Martin de Amacayacu, Colombia, on October 14, 2022

In Colombia’s Amazon jungle, indigenous people of different nations, ethnicities and languages have come together to find a single voice in cinema to tell their own stories, rather than let outsiders do it.

One recent week, in the community of San Martin de Amacayacu in southern Colombia the local Tikuna tribe was joined for the first time by the Matis people of Brazil for a crash course on film.

“We didn’t know how to operate a camera so what they are doing is showing their experience, offering knowledge and perseverance,” Lizeth Reina, a 24-year-old Tikuna, told AFP.

The Matis, a tribe only contacted in 1976, acquired two video cameras in 2015 and were taught how to film by the Brazilian Center for Indigenist Labor (CTI) and the National Indian Foundation.

Last month, they made a seven-day journey along fast-moving rivers and almost impenetrable jungle paths to share their knowledge with this Colombian community of some 700 people.

As the boot camp got under way, a Matis with a distinctive facial tattoo, gave instructions on how to focus a video camera.

Around 10 Matis, known as “cat men” for the feline tattoos on their faces, had arrived from their home region in the Yavari valley — an area larger than Austria and rife with drug trafficking and illegal mineral extraction, logging and fishing.

British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenist Bruno Pereira were murdered there in June.

The Yavari valley has the largest number of voluntarily isolated communities in the world.

“It’s not easy getting here, we suffered a bit, but it’s very emotional,” filmmaker Pixi Kata Matis, 29, said of the journey to San Martin.

– ‘Future memories’ –

Tikunas laughed as their guests grimaced while sipping masato, a fermented yucca-based drink passed around in a cup made from the hard rind calabash tree fruit.

Films were projected inside the maloca, a cultural, political, social and spiritual center.

Hundreds of dazzled spectators watched as images of hunts with blowguns, bows and arrows flashed before their eyes, as well as the tattoo festival that marks the coming of age of young Matis.

“We have to show other people and the whites that we have our own identity,” said Kata Matis.

The films “can help keep memories for the future … so we don’t forget our traditions,” added Yina Moran, 17.

Placed in mixed groups, the Tikunas proposed three short films on seeds, medicinal plants and masato, with the help of Matis, the CTI and the French association ForestEver.

“The cameras blended into the landscape and families were more willing to share and communicate,” said ForestEver coordinator Claire Davigo.

– ‘Exotic reports’ –

San Martin de Amacayacu, surrounded by a lush natural park, is made up of wooden houses, some with colorful painted walls, that are home to several generations of the same family.

Apprentices and their mentors spent the day conducting interviews and filming daily life.

“The communication was wonderful because although we hardly speak Portuguese, we understood each other through our cultures,” said Moran. 

In the afternoon, locals made their way down to the river to wash clothes or bathe.

At night, generators were fired up to provide four hours of electricity.

After that, the noise stopped to make way for jungle sounds.

A decade after they were first contacted, the Matis were already the “stars of exotic reports” by US, Japanese, French and British journalists, according to the CTI.

Foreigners were captivated by their body art and accessories: ears pierced with huge ornaments, fine rods passing through noses and lips, face tattoos and bodies draped in jewelry.

But Kata Matis complained that “many people wanted to go to the village … filming without our authorization, without our understanding, and then they took the material” without sharing it.

To prevent a repeat, the Matis began writing their own history in 2017.

– Living ‘with two worlds’ – 

Since arriving in San Martin, Dame Betxun Matis, 27, has not put down his camera.

He took part in producing the “Matis tattoo festival” documentary that won the jury prize at the Kurumin indigenous cinema festival in 2021.

The film demonstrates the tradition of marking the face, a practice abandoned by young people who faced discrimination in cities.

Kata Matis convinced the community to resume the tradition and filmed as some 90 young people underwent the ritual.

On the Matis’ last night in San Martin, hundreds of locals crammed the maloca to watch the Tikunas’ short films.

After much laughter, applause and shared masato, Kata Matis reflected on the place of indigenous people in modern nation states.

“We don’t live between two worlds, we live with two worlds,” he said.

Tikuna indigenous filmmakers film documentary short films with the support of Matis indigenous filmmakers in San Martin de Amacayacu, Colombia, on October 14, 2022

In Colombia’s Amazon jungle, indigenous people of different nations, ethnicities and languages have come together to find a single voice in cinema to tell their own stories, rather than let outsiders do it.

One recent week, in the community of San Martin de Amacayacu in southern Colombia the local Tikuna tribe was joined for the first time by the Matis people of Brazil for a crash course on film.

“We didn’t know how to operate a camera so what they are doing is showing their experience, offering knowledge and perseverance,” Lizeth Reina, a 24-year-old Tikuna, told AFP.

The Matis, a tribe only contacted in 1976, acquired two video cameras in 2015 and were taught how to film by the Brazilian Center for Indigenist Labor (CTI) and the National Indian Foundation.

Last month, they made a seven-day journey along fast-moving rivers and almost impenetrable jungle paths to share their knowledge with this Colombian community of some 700 people.

As the boot camp got under way, a Matis with a distinctive facial tattoo, gave instructions on how to focus a video camera.

Around 10 Matis, known as “cat men” for the feline tattoos on their faces, had arrived from their home region in the Yavari valley — an area larger than Austria and rife with drug trafficking and illegal mineral extraction, logging and fishing.

British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenist Bruno Pereira were murdered there in June.

The Yavari valley has the largest number of voluntarily isolated communities in the world.

“It’s not easy getting here, we suffered a bit, but it’s very emotional,” filmmaker Pixi Kata Matis, 29, said of the journey to San Martin.

– ‘Future memories’ –

Tikunas laughed as their guests grimaced while sipping masato, a fermented yucca-based drink passed around in a cup made from the hard rind calabash tree fruit.

Films were projected inside the maloca, a cultural, political, social and spiritual center.

Hundreds of dazzled spectators watched as images of hunts with blowguns, bows and arrows flashed before their eyes, as well as the tattoo festival that marks the coming of age of young Matis.

“We have to show other people and the whites that we have our own identity,” said Kata Matis.

The films “can help keep memories for the future … so we don’t forget our traditions,” added Yina Moran, 17.

Placed in mixed groups, the Tikunas proposed three short films on seeds, medicinal plants and masato, with the help of Matis, the CTI and the French association ForestEver.

“The cameras blended into the landscape and families were more willing to share and communicate,” said ForestEver coordinator Claire Davigo.

– ‘Exotic reports’ –

San Martin de Amacayacu, surrounded by a lush natural park, is made up of wooden houses, some with colorful painted walls, that are home to several generations of the same family.

Apprentices and their mentors spent the day conducting interviews and filming daily life.

“The communication was wonderful because although we hardly speak Portuguese, we understood each other through our cultures,” said Moran. 

In the afternoon, locals made their way down to the river to wash clothes or bathe.

At night, generators were fired up to provide four hours of electricity.

After that, the noise stopped to make way for jungle sounds.

A decade after they were first contacted, the Matis were already the “stars of exotic reports” by US, Japanese, French and British journalists, according to the CTI.

Foreigners were captivated by their body art and accessories: ears pierced with huge ornaments, fine rods passing through noses and lips, face tattoos and bodies draped in jewelry.

But Kata Matis complained that “many people wanted to go to the village … filming without our authorization, without our understanding, and then they took the material” without sharing it.

To prevent a repeat, the Matis began writing their own history in 2017.

– Living ‘with two worlds’ – 

Since arriving in San Martin, Dame Betxun Matis, 27, has not put down his camera.

He took part in producing the “Matis tattoo festival” documentary that won the jury prize at the Kurumin indigenous cinema festival in 2021.

The film demonstrates the tradition of marking the face, a practice abandoned by young people who faced discrimination in cities.

Kata Matis convinced the community to resume the tradition and filmed as some 90 young people underwent the ritual.

On the Matis’ last night in San Martin, hundreds of locals crammed the maloca to watch the Tikunas’ short films.

After much laughter, applause and shared masato, Kata Matis reflected on the place of indigenous people in modern nation states.

“We don’t live between two worlds, we live with two worlds,” he said.

Climate disasters have multiplied over the last decade

High-level talks on scaling up finance for developing countries to green their economies and prepare for global warming impacts began Wednesday at the COP27 climate conference with negotiators differing on the funding’s size and providers.

In 2009, the chaotic UN climate summit in Copenhagen saw rich nations promise $100 billion a year by 2020 to the Global South, but two years past that deadline the amount delivered is still $17 billion short, according to the OECD.

Even this figure overestimates rich nation largesse if loans and funds not already allocated for other purposes are excluded from the tally, say Oxfam and other NGOs that track the issue.

Developed nations attending the November 6 to 18 talks at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh now say the $100-billion goal will be reached by the end of 2023.

Discussions on how much to give after the current round of commitments expire in 2025 — and whether to expand the pool of donors to include other nations, notably China — have already gotten underway.

But more than a dozen years after the original pledge was made, estimates of future financial flows required have increased several fold, promising to make upcoming negotiations difficult.

The climate finance talks kicked off with three questions in need of “political guidance”: Should there be quantitative goals? Should the donor base be expanded? Should financing also cover “loss and damage” that has already occurred?

“We must not replicate the shortcomings in the delivery of the $100 billion,” said Rosalinda Soipan Tuya, a Kenyan MP speaking on behalf of the negotiating bloc of African nations.

The amount needed over the second half of this decade should, she added, “be based on need”, which she estimated at more than $1.3 trillion per year globally by 2030. 

Other developing nation representatives focused not just on the amount, but on the conditions under which financing would be made available.

“We must ensure our debt levels are not enhanced,” said an official from The Maldives, representing the AOSIS group of small island nations, some of whom face the prospect of being wiped off the map by rising seas.

“The financing must be grant-based and simple to access.” 

– ‘Paltry sum’ –

A number of nations lamented the paucity of outright grants compared to loans.

The representative from Pakistan insisted that the contested category of loss and damage — essentially compensation for unavoidable climate impacts — should also be covered as well. 

“I come from ground zero of the climate crisis,” she said, referring to massive flooding in August that covered a third of her country and caused more than $30 billion in economic losses, according to the World Bank.

Standing in for wealthy nations that were until recently reluctant to allow loss and damage onto the formal negotiating agenda of the UN talks was US special envoy for the climate John Kerry.

“No government in the world has the money to do what we have to do to win this battle,” he said, noting that total needs could reach $4 trillion.

“We have to think completely differently about how we can mobilise finance,” he added, lamenting the failure of developed countries to deliver the “paltry sum” of $100 billion dollars. 

Diplomats from developing nations criticised the persistent imbalance in climate financing which, within the UN framework, should be evenly split between reducing emissions (mitigation) and boosting resilience to future impacts (adaptation).

As climate disasters have multiplied over the last decade, nations in the Global South have called for a separate financial facility for loss and damage.   

“We need a common definition of what exactly constitutes climate finance,” said IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva. “It is paramount to measure what needs there are and their net worth.”