AFP UK

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch.

“The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world,” the Nobel jury said.

The pair’s research is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of diseases and conditions, including chronic pain.

Julius, who in 2019 won the $3-million Breakthrough Prize in life sciences, said he was stunned to receive the call from the Nobel committee early Monday.

“One never really expects that to happen …I thought it was a prank,” he told Swedish Radio.

The Nobel Foundation meanwhile posted a picture of Patapoutian next to his son Luca after hearing the happy news.

Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival, the Nobel Committee explained, and underpins our interaction with the world around us.

“In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.”

Prior to their discoveries, “our understanding of how the nervous system senses and interprets our environment still contained a fundamental unsolved question: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system.”

– Grocery store research –

Julius, 65, was recognised for his research using capsaicin — a compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation –- to identify which nerve sensors in the skin respond to heat.

He told Scientific American in 2019 that he got the idea to study chili peppers after a visit to the grocery store.

“I was looking at these shelves and shelves of basically chili peppers and extracts (hot sauce) and thinking, ‘This is such an important and such a fun problem to look at. I’ve really got to get serious about this’,” he said.

Patapoutian’s pioneering discovery was identifying the class of nerve sensors that respond to touch.

Julius, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and the 12-year-younger Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros).

The pair were not among the frontrunners mentioned in the speculation ahead of the announcement.

Pioneers of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which paved the way for mRNA Covid vaccines, and immune system researchers had been widely tipped as favourites.  

While the 2020 award was handed out in the midst of the pandemic, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19.

Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

– Media, Belarus opposition for Peace Prize? –

The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11.

For the Peace Prize on Friday, media watchdogs such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been mentioned as possible winners, as has the Belarusian opposition spearheaded by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Also mentioned are climate campaigners such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement.

Meanwhile, for the Literature Prize on Thursday, Stockholm’s literary circles have been buzzing with the names of dozens of usual suspects.

The Swedish Academy has only chosen laureates from Europe and North America since 2012 when China’s Mo Yan won, raising speculation that it could choose to rectify that imbalance this year. A total of 95 of 117 literature laureates have come from Europe and North America.

While the names of the Nobel laureates are kept secret until the last minute, the Nobel Foundation has already announced that the glittering prize ceremony and banquet held in Stockholm in December for the science and literature laureates will not happen this year due to the pandemic.

Like last year, laureates will receive their awards in their home countries.

A decision has yet to be made about the lavish Peace Prize ceremony held in Oslo on the same day.

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, the jury said.

“The groundbreaking discoveries… by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force can initiate the nerve impulses that allow us to perceive and adapt to the world,” the Nobel jury said.

Their research is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of diseases and  conditions, including chronic pain.

Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival, the Nobel Committee explained, and underpins our interaction with the world around us.

“In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates,” the jury said.

Prior to their discoveries, “our understanding of how the nervous system senses and interprets our environment still contained a fundamental unsolved question: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system”.

Julius, 65, was recognised for his research using capsaicin — a compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation –- to identify which nerve sensors in the skin respond to heat.

Patapoutian’s pioneering discovery was identifying the class of nerve sensors that respond to touch.

“These breakthrough discoveries launched intense research activities leading to a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold, and mechanical stimuli,” it said. 

Julius, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and the 12-year-younger Patapoutian, a professor at Scripps Research in California, will share the Nobel Prize cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros).

The pair were not among the frontrunners mentioned in the speculation ahead of the announcement.

Pioneers of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which paved the way for mRNA Covid vaccines, and immune system researchers had been widely tipped as favourites.  

While the 2020 award was handed out in the midst of the pandemic, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19.

Last year, the award went to three virologists for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

– Media, Belarus opposition for Peace Prize? –

The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday before the economics prize winds things up on Monday, October 11.

For the Peace Prize on Friday, media watchdogs such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been mentioned as possible winners, as has the Belarusian opposition spearheaded by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Also mentioned are climate campaigners such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and her Fridays for Future movement.

Meanwhile, for the Literature Prize on Thursday, Stockholm’s literary circles have been buzzing with the names of dozens of usual suspects.

The Swedish Academy has only chosen laureates from Europe and North America since 2012 when China’s Mo Yan won, raising speculation that it could choose to rectify that imbalance this year. A total of 95 of 117 literature laureates have come from Europe and North America.

While the names of the Nobel laureates are kept secret until the last minute, the Nobel Foundation has already announced that the glittering prize ceremony and banquet held in Stockholm in December for the science and literature laureates will not happen this year due to the pandemic.

Like last year, laureates will receive their awards in their home countries.

A decision has yet to be made about the lavish Peace Prize ceremony held in Oslo on the same day.

When Sarah Sallon first thought of cultivating 2,000-year-old date palm seeds from a Roman-era fortress towering above the Dead Sea, she received a less than encouraging response.

“The botanical archaeologists said ‘you’re completely mad. It will never work’,” the 72-year-old British-Israeli expert on natural medicine told AFP.

But Sallon’s bet that the Dead Sea’s unique, bone-dry environment could enable the seeds from the Masada fortress to flourish has been proven right.

With lots of patience and care, she and project partner Elaine Solowey managed to grow date palms from seeds dating back to the Kingdom of Judah which emerged in the 11th century BC.

The kingdom was “renowned for the quality and quantity of its dates”, praised at the time for their “large size, sweet taste… and medicinal properties,” the two wrote in an article for Science magazine.

Bringing back the ancient variety with Solowey, a specialist in sustainable agriculture, was not just a novelty project, Sallon said, but offered “a beacon of hope” for a planet battling the climate crisis and mass species extinction.

“Perhaps these amazing species that are everywhere around us will not disappear,” she said, suggesting that “nature has tricks up its sleeves. 

“It can let its seeds stay dormant for thousands of years, and we think it’s gone extinct, and — boom! — it takes a pair of golden hands, like Elaine’s, to bring it back to life.”

– ‘A lot of hassling’ –

Before embarking on her date palm revival, Sallon had read about 500-year-old lotus flower seeds that had germinated. 

In 2004, she asked Israel’s Bar Ilan University for access to a few of its preserved date palm seeds found in 1960 under debris at Masada, the Herodian-era mountain-top Jewish encampment famous for having been besieged by Roman forces in the first century.

Undeterred after being called “mad” by botanical archaeologists at Bar Ilan, Sallon showed them evidence of ancient seeds being germinated elsewhere.

With that and “a lot of hassling”, she obtained five seeds and then approached Solowey, based on Kibbutz Ketura, near Israel’s border with Jordan.

Solowey recounted how Sallon sent her the ancient seeds from the fortress with the instruction to “try to sprout them”.

“So I said: ‘What? How old are they?’ She said: ‘2,000 years old.’ I said: ‘I can’t sprout them!’ She said: ‘try.'”

Solowey said she spent several months considering the best approach, before deciding to use an enzyme-based fertiliser while ruling out the use of any man-made chemicals.

In her greenhouse, where she grows many dozens of plants, she tried to sprout three of the seeds, but for weeks saw no signs of life.

– ‘Fickle process’ –

Then, one day in March 2005, small cracks opened in the earth of one of the date palm pots, a sign that roots were beginning to take hold.

“I began to think, wow, if this is what I think it is, I’d better start being a lot nicer to it,” Solowey quipped.

“I didn’t realise the significance that (the plant) had.”

Out of the three seeds planted, just one thrived, acquiring the nickname “Methuselah” after the biblical figure known for his longevity.

But “Methuselah” was a male plant and therefore bore no fruit. 

Having proven that cultivation can work, Sallon went in search of more seeds in hopes of sprouting a female plant. 

Then last year, after a long wait, a date palm named “Hannah” produced about 100 dates. 

An even more bountiful harvest followed this August: 800 light brown dates, slightly dry but with a delicate honey flavour. 

Samples will be available for sale soon, the team promises. 

There is also hope that Hannah’s sister “Judith”, planted this month, will produce more dates. 

Sallon explained that sustaining a consistent date harvest requires meticulous work and treating the plants “like children”. 

It’s a fickle process. When it works, she said, “you get these… magnificent dates”. But when there is “a gap in this continuity, the whole thing falls apart”.

One month out from the COP26 climate summit, world leaders are under unprecedented pressure to decarbonise their economies and chart humanity’s path away from catastrophic global warming.

But in the midst of a pandemic still raging in parts of the globe, and with countries already battered by climate-driven calamities pleading for help — and money — the negotiations in Glasgow are likely to be fraught.

The summit, already delayed a year by Covid-19, comes as the gap between what science says is needed to avert disaster and what governments are doing is larger than ever.

Addressing around 50 ministers on Thursday at the start of a pre-COP gathering in Milan, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres laid out the choice facing delegates in Glasgow: “We can either save our world or condemn humanity to a hellish future.”

COP26 host Britain says the summit’s main aim is to keep in play the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature goal enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

In August, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dropped a bombshell report warning that the 1.5C threshold — by far the most ambitious target of the Paris deal — would be reached as soon as 2030.

By 2050, Earth will be 1.5C hotter than pre-industrial times, no matter what is done about planet-warming carbon emissions in the meantime, it said.

With a little over 1C of warming so far, the two years since the last UN climate summit have seen record-shattering wildfires in Australia and the US, tarmac-melting heatwaves in North America and Siberia, and massive flooding in Southeast Asia, Africa and Northern Europe.

– ‘Trust deficit’ –

The Paris deal requires nations to renew their plans to cut domestic emissions — known as national determined contributions, or NDCs — every five years.

Far from limiting warming to 1.5C, the UN says countries’ latest submissions over the last year put Earth on course to heat a “catastrophic” 2.7C this century.  

Britain’s Boris Johnson 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 mass tree planting. 

But the actual to-do list for delegates at COP26 is not quite so concise. 

For starters, six years after the Paris agreement was struck, countries still have not finalised the deal’s “rulebook” that specifies how its goals are reached and progress measured.

Long-festering disputes include those over how carbon markets are governed, and a common timeframe for an interim “stock take” to see how each country’s action stacks up.

Poorer nations, meanwhile, are demanding that richer ones finally make good during COP26 on a decade-old promise to provide $100 billion each year to help them decarbonise their grids and adapt to climate change.

Tasneem Essop, head of the Climate Action Network representing some 1,500 environmental groups, said that Glasgow was taking place after a harrowing few years for vulnerable populations.

“This COP is happening, unlike other COPs, at a time where all this burdens and suffering is sharply felt by the developing countries and in this context we have experienced rich nations who were unwilling to stand in solidarity with poor nations to supply the vaccine,” she told AFP.

Essop said there was a huge “trust deficit” between nations already battling climate change and the historic emitters that helped to cause it.

The spectre of vaccine inequity is likely to loom large in Glasgow, with many representatives of poorer nations unable to afford a trip that would include expensive hotel quarantines.

Sonam Wangi, chair of the Least Developed Countries negotiating bloc, said as much this week, tweeting that he was “still concerned about the possibility of getting our delegates to #COP26”. 

– China, G20 key –

COP26 President Alok Sharma this week sought to allay such fears by saying there had been a “very healthy registration” in participants and that more than 100 world leaders had already confirmed they would attend.

Observers say there are some positive signs, with the US announcing a doubling of overseas climate aid and China saying it will cease new coal production abroad, both in recent weeks.

But for Alden Meyer, a veteran of UN climate talks and a senior analyst at the EG3 think tank, in terms of emissions cuts, “everyone is waiting to see what China will do”.

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

The nation responsible for more than a quarter of manmade emissions has yet to submit a renewed NDC, although one is expected before Glasgow.

A G20 summit in Rome days before COP26, during which Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he would push for members to commit to 1.5C, could also prove influential.

“The hopeful scenario would be that the G20 adds some momentum going into Glasgow,” said Meyer. 

“The less hopeful scenario would be gridlock and stalemate in Rome and then go from there to the world leaders’ summit in Glasgow without real unity.”

From a summer of fire and record floods, to freak frosts and locusts invasions, experts say man-made climate change is wreaking havoc on the world’s weather.

Here are some of the most devastating climate-fuelled disasters from the past two years:

– Mediterranean on fire – 

Greece’s worst heatwave in decades fuelled deadly wildfires that burned nearly 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) this year in what the prime minister called the country’s “greatest ecological disaster in decades”. 

The summer blazes killed about 80 people in Algeria and Turkey, with Italy and Spain also ravaged by uncontrolled fire. 

Scientists say the Mediterranean rim is a climate change “hot spot” with worse to come.

– Canada ‘heat dome’ –

In late June, a hot air “heat dome” caused sustained, scorching temperatures across much of western Canada and the northwestern US.

Residents in the British Columbia city of Lytton saw the thermometer rise on June 30 to 49.6 degrees Celsius (121 degrees Fahrenheit), a national record. Days later, the town was largely destroyed by a wildfire.

The extreme heat was “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) science consortium said. 

– European towns washed away –

Germany’s worst flooding in living memory killed 165 people in July after heavy rainfall battered the country along with Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium, where another 31 people died.

The WWA said a warming climate increased the likelihood of the extreme two-day rainfall behind the floods by about 20 percent. 

For every degree that Earth warms, the atmosphere can hold about seven percent more moisture, scientist say.

– Drowning on the subway in China –

July floods in China killed more than 300 people when the central city of Zhengzhou was deluged by a year’s worth of rain in just three days, trapping people in road tunnels and subway systems as waters rose, with some drowning.

– Fleeing flooding in Australia –

In March 2021 torrential downpours lashed Australia’s east forcing thousands to flee the worst flooding in decades — only one year after the region suffered extreme drought and bushfires.

Days of relentless rainfall caused rivers in Australia’s most populous state to their highest levels in three decades.

Scientists have warned Australia can expect more frequent and more extreme weather events as a result of climate change.

– Devastating frosts in France –

This Spring saw a late frost ravage French vineyards when plummeting temperatures wiped out nearly a third of the country’s grape harvests, causing up to two billion euros ($2.3 billion) in damages. 

The WWA’s analysis said climate change made the historic cold snap — which devastated most of France’s wine regions — about 70 percent more likely.

– Hurricane Ida’s path of destruction –

In late August, Hurricane Ida cut a swathe of death and destruction from Louisiana all the way across the northeastern US, leaving more than 100 dead and causing around $100 billion in damage.

Four of the six costliest hurricanes to his the US, including Ida, have all occurred within the last five years, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

– East Africa locust invasion… –

Experts blame climate-addled extreme weather — including extreme rainfall — for hatching billions of locusts that swarmed East Africa in January of 2020, threatening the region with a food crisis. 

Already prey to successive drought and deadly floods, dense clouds of the insects spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya.

– … preceded by deadly floods –

Violent downpours in October 2019 displaced tens of thousands in Somalia, submerged whole towns in South Sudan, and killed dozens in flash floods and landslides in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. 

A powerful climate phenomenon in the Indian Ocean stronger than any seen in years unleashed destructive rains and flooding across East Africa.

– 500-year drought deepens – 

The American west continue to plunge deeper into the most severe “mega-drought” to hit the region in at least 500 years. 

Made worse by global warming, the dry spell could continue for decades, according to a study in the journal Science. 

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The Nobel season opens on Monday with the pioneers of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and immune system research tipped for the medicine prize, which kicks off a week of awards against the backdrop of the pandemic.

Breakthroughs in breast cancer, new approaches to rheumatology treatments, as well as research into epigenetics, cell adhesion and antibiotic resistance are also believed to have good chances of winning, experts polled by AFP said.

Two names stand out in particular this year, given the ongoing pandemic: Hungary’s Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman of the United States, pioneers of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines and professors at the University of Pennsylvania.

Their discoveries, published in 2005, paved the way for the development of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which have already been injected into more than a billion people worldwide. 

The technology has also shown promising results for use against other diseases.

The creator of the prizes, Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, laid out in his will that the awards should go to those who have conferred the “greatest benefit to humankind” — making the pair an obvious choice to some.

“It would be a mistake for the Nobel committee not to give the prize to the mRNA vaccine this year, even if it is a bit risky,” said Ulrika Bjorksten, head of Swedish public radio’s science section.

She noted the pair’s work could also be worthy of the Nobel Chemistry Prize, to be announced on Wednesday.

– Committee’s conservatism –

However, many believe the duo — who hold senior positions at German laboratory BioNTech — may have to wait for the accolade.

The various committees tasked with selecting winners for the science prizes are known for allowing years or even decades to pass so that a discovery’s true impact can be evaluated before the Nobel is bestowed.

In theory, Nobel’s will also specified the prizes should go to work done in the past year, but this has rarely been heeded.

“I don’t think it will happen. I just think of the conservatism of the committee’s choice. Certainly they would be considered in future years but I’m doubtful for this year,” David Pendlebury of Clarivate Analytics, which publishes a list of likely laureates.

Pendlebury said he instead believed the prize would likely go to American Max Cooper, 88, and French-Australian Jacques Miller, 90, for their discovery that white blood cells essential to the human immune system were divided into two categories, B and T lymphocytes.

T-cells have also played a role in understanding immunity to Covid-19.

In 2019, the two received the prestigious Lasker Prize — often seen as a precursor to the Nobel. 

But the fact that they have yet to receive a Nobel is widely seen as an anomaly.

“For these two, there must be something we don’t know,” Pendlebury said.

Other researchers believed to be worthy of a Nobel include pioneers in the field of cell adhesion, such as Japan’s Masatoshi Takeichi, US-Finnish scientist Erkki Ruoslahti and British biologist Richard Hynes.

The study of how behaviour and environment can cause changes that affect how genes work — a field known as epigenetics — is also seen as a possibility, with American David Allis and American-Romanian Michael Grunstein mentioned.

– In the midst of Covid-19 –

In the fight against breast cancer, Americans Dennis Slamon and Mary-Claire King could win for identifying risk genes, which has paved the way for treatments. 

Another gene specialist, Lebanese-American Huda Zoghbi who discovered the gene responsible for Rett syndrome, is also among potential recipients.

Australian-British Marc Feldmann and Briton Ravinder Maini have also been mentioned for years for having identified the role of a cytokine in rheumatoid arthritis. 

The UK’s Julian Davies could see also his research into antibiotic resistance, a serious public health issue, given the nod.

While the 2020 award was handed out in the midst of the pandemic, this is the first time the entire selection process has taken place under the shadow of Covid-19.

Nominations closed at the end of January, and at that time last year the novel coronavirus was still largely confined to China. 

The 2020 prize did end up going to virus research, albeit the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

The Nobel season continues on Tuesday with the award for physics and Wednesday with chemistry, followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday.

The economics prize winds up the season on Monday, October 11.

This year’s Nobels come with a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million, one million euros). 

Vanessa Nakate, a 24-year-old Ugandan activist who campaigns for climate justice for vulnerable communities is helping to spread the demands of developing nations with her simple but effective slogan: “We cannot eat coal”.

The maxim is designed to call out the seemingly insatiable investment from governments and corporations in the very fossil fuels science says must become obsolete in order to stave off climate disaster.

“There are so many things I would love to do, but I think it would be stopping investments in fossil fuels projects, because we cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil, we cannot breathe gas,” she told AFP on the sidelines of a youth climate summit in Milan this week.

“If someone really cared about the lives of the communities, the people who are facing the worst of the climate crisis, then true leadership would be stopping investment in fossil fuels projects.”

For Nakate, climate change is at its heart an issue of inequality and injustice. 

The vast majority of planet-warming carbon emissions have been pumped out by just a handful of rich emitters. 

Conversely, it is vulnerable communities in the developing world — particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia — which are already grappling with the extreme flooding, drought and storms supercharged by global heating. 

“The people and communities the least responsible for the rise in global emissions are facing the worst of the climate crisis right now,” she said.

– ‘Hope drives me’ –

Nakate, a business management graduate, has taken matters into her own hands, using her Rise Up Movement to launch the “Vash Green Schools” project to install solar panels and green ovens in rural schools to replace traditional — but planet-unfriendly — wood-fired stoves. 

But she admits the project is but a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed, and Nakate believes nations that got rich off of oil, gas and coal, should pay countries that are blameless for climate change to green their grids.

In addition, she is calling for a dedicated funding mechanism for climate “loss and damage”, which is likely to be a key debate at the forthcoming COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow.

“Loss and damage is here with us right now and leaders and everyone else must acknowledge that and start thinking about providing finance for loss and damage, providing finance to the communities that are experiencing this right now,” said Nakate. 

“There are certain things we cannot adapt to. “We cannot adapt to starvation, or extinction, or lost tradition, or lost history.”

She admits to being “overwhelmed” by the attention she receives at climate gatherings (at the Milan event she was the second attraction after only Greta Thunberg).

But back home in Uganda she is able to go back to being “more or less unrecognisable”, which she says she prefers.

Despite the dire warnings from scientists and the lack of action from world leaders to address global warming, Nakate says she is optimistic about the future.

“It’s hope that really drives me to keep demanding for climate justice,” she said. 

“If there were no hope, then I don’t think I would be doing it.”

In the northern Senegalese city of Saint-Louis, excavators are ripping up the beach to lay giant blocks of basalt, in an eleventh-hour effort to keep the sea at bay.

When work is finished, a black sea wall will stretch for kilometres along the coastline of the West African country’s former capital, famed for its colonial-era architecture.

Dire warnings about the risk of rising sea levels due to climate change are already a grim reality in Saint-Louis, where seafront residents are abandoning their homes to the encroaching Atlantic Ocean.

But the sea wall is a stopgap. And some are sceptical that the historic city of 237,000 people can be saved at all.

Saint-Louis has “already been wiped off the map,” said Boubou Aldiouma Sy, a geography professor at the city’s Gaston Berger University.

Its unique position — near the mouth of the Senegal River, with both the swollen waterway and the ocean on its shorelines —  means that its long term existence has always been in doubt, he said. 

“The role of man is to accelerate the process,” Sy added.

Founded by the French on an island in the mid-17th century, Saint-Louis became a hub for European traders, playing an important economic and cultural role in the region.

It served as the capital of the French colony of Senegal until the capital moved to Dakar shortly before Senegal’s independence in 1960.

From the original island, the city spread on both sides, onto a long, thin sandy strip of land known as the Langue de Barbarie to the west and eastwards onto the mainland.

Its colourful, historic balconied houses and double-storied villas have helped make the island a UNESCO world heritage site and the city hosts a renowned annual jazz festival.

But Saint-Louis stands only a few metres above sea level. 

Long a problem, floods have become more severe in neighbourhoods such as Guet Ndar, a packed fishing district where brightly painted wooden canoes line the shore. 

Coastal erosion is also eating away at the shoreline.

Many locals have had little choice but to move to a displacement camp inland as their homes have been swallowed up by the raging sea, the erosion and the crumbling ground beneath them.

The sea barrier is Senegal’s attempt to manage the compounding problems. 

But experts point out that while it can protect against freak surges, it cannot stop the rising sea.

– Night terrors – 

Mareme Gueye, a Guet Ndar resident, told AFP that all the suffering she’d experienced since childhood “has been caused by the sea”. 

Six of the seven rooms in her house are gone, washed away by the ocean.

In her one remaining room, she removed the door to ensure that no one gets trapped inside during floods. 

Destructive flooding has increased since 2010, according to the 43-year-old, who said that she can no longer sleep at night for fear of the intemperate waters.

In one harrowing instance, floodwaters swept her parents from her house and dragged them out to sea.

They miraculously survived. 

Free-for-all construction in Saint-Louis — known as Ndar in the local Wolof language — has worsened coastal erosion.

The city is a particularly acute example of problems common across several coastal metropolises in West Africa, Sy said, pointing to Ivory Coast’s main city and economic hub Abidjan, or Guinea’s capital Conakry. 

Erosion is causing the coastline to recede by some 1.8 metres (yards) a year across the region, according to a 2019 World Meteorological Organization report.

Likewise, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said this year that sea levels on the West African coast are rising by between 3.5 and four millimetres (0.14 and 0.16 inches) annually.

With its unique layout surrounded by water, Saint-Louis is on the front line.

Nearly two decades ago, an ill-fated attempt at flood control after heavy rainfall saw authorities widen a water channel on the Langue de Barbarie between the river and sea.

But from its initial four metres, the canal unexpectedly grew to several kilometres wide as the salt water of the Atlantic gushed into the river, causing further disruption to the natural order of things and transforming the landscape.

– Displacement camps –

The encroaching sea has already caused severe damage.

Flooding in 2017 and 2018 left more than 3,200 people homeless — about 1,500 of them now live in a displacement camp in Djougop, further inland.

The disaster prompted Senegal to begin building the sea wall in 2019, partly financed by France. 

The project is worth some 100 million euros ($117 million) and also includes a rehousing programme.

Building is due to finish by the end of this year, when the colossal barrier will run 3.6 kilometres (2.2 miles) along the coast.

However, the project also requires home demolitions in a 20-metre-wide strip behind the barrier.

Between 10,000-15,000 people in total are set to be uprooted, said Mandaw Gueye, an official working on the project.

Some will end up in Djougop and nearby neighbourhoods where the World Bank is co-funding the construction of 600 homes, he said. 

Other project officials stressed that the displaced would be compensated.

But residents appear decidedly unenthusiastic about the prospect of Djougop — a bland expanse of blue-roofed bungalows built in the desert, far from the sea.  

Their seaside fishing district is poor, and one of the most densely populated urban areas in Africa, but tales of the fate of those already displaced have circulated.

Fishermen in Djougop, whose livelihoods already are physically demanding, must rise even earlier in the morning to reach the distant sea.

Those fishermen who stayed on Guet Ndar often leave without them. 

“They are very tired,” says 65-year-old local resident Thiane Fall. 

– ‘Human ingenuity’ –

The sea barrier is a short-term emergency measure and not even designed to be impermeable. 

The government says it is studying more durable solutions.

Sy, the geographer, suggested structures called groins, built perpendicular to the shoreline, which force sediment to settle in such a way as to reverse coastal erosion.

Ensuring coastal areas are lush with plant life can also slow the trend. 

Alioune Badara Diop, one of Saint-Louis’ deputy mayors, said these options remain viable. 

But the government did not pursue them initially because of their “relatively high cost,” he said.

He isn’t convinced that his city has met its end, however, highlighting Senegal’s nascent oil and gas sector and all its potential.

“We will have the means, and human ingenuity will make it possible to build structures that will protect the coast,” Diop said.

The science is painfully clear: to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius — given that we’re already at 1.1C — means slashing carbon pollution in half by 2030, and to zero by mid-century. 

But how to do that? What does this critical Paris Agreement target mean for our economies and our daily lives?

What, in other words, do we have to change?

“Everything,” said Henri Waisman, an expert on low-emissions development at French think tank IDDRI, and a lead author of the 2018 UN climate report that first spelled out pathways to a 1.5C world.

“And it has to be a root-&-stock change,” he told AFP. “We have to transform the way we produce and consume energy, the way we make key industrial products, the way we move from one place to another, heat and feed ourselves.”

– Where to start? –

Faced with this overwhelming task, the temptation may be to attack the problem one sector at a time. 

But we haven’t left enough time for that, according to experts.

“If we want to get to levels consistent with the 1.5C pathway, we have to do everything at the same time, and right away,” said Anne Olhoff, a researcher at the Technical University of Denmark and an author of the annual UN “emissions gap” report tracking our progress — or lack thereof — in reaching that goal.

Energy, agriculture, construction, transport, industry and forestry — these are the six sectors to target if humanity is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from nearly 60 to 25 billion tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, experts agree. 

– Energy is key –

Energy production, which accounts for more than 70 percent of emissions, is widely seen at the best place to make rapid gains, especially electricity, which accounts for half of those emissions.

“If you have to chose one sector it’s energy, not only because the emission reduction potential is the largest but also because there are quite a few easy wins,” Olhoff told AFP.

“We have the technologies needed to make this happen, it’s mainly a matter of political will.”

The fossil fuel with the biggest target on its back is the dirtiest and most carbon intensive: coal. 

“Coal-fired power plants, which account for about 40 percent of the total electricity today, need to be eliminated in two decades,” said Matthew Gidden, team lead for mitigation pathways at research NGO Climate Analytics.

Rich countries need to take the lead, and should have all their carbon-belching coal plants shuttered by 2030, he said.

In the European Union, that would mean three closures every two weeks over the next ten years. In the US, it would be mean one power plant closing every 14 days.

But China burns half the coal consumed worldwide, so unless Beijing follows suit the 1.5C goal quickly slips out of reach.

“If you were to shut off China’s 1,082 coal-fired power plants at the rate needed to be in line with the Paris Agreement, one plant would need to close every week,” with the last one closing around 2040, said Gidden.

That’s the deadline the International Energy Agency (IEA) has set for the global electricity sector — 40 percent of which is currently powered by coal — to become carbon neutral, a goal that would also require boosting solar and wind capacity four-fold by 2030. 

– Transport, agriculture, industry… –

But making electricity carbon neutral is not enough — every sector must purge its emissions.

In transport, the IEA has called for the last internal combustion engine to be sold no later than 2035.

In agriculture, the focus is on production methods that cast of nitrous oxide (N20), the third most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and methane.

Halting emissions will also require producing and consuming a lot less beef, by far the most carbon intensive of all meats. 

There’s the need to renovate residential and commercial buildings, which generate as much emissions as transport, and to develop new manufacturing methods for carbon-heavy industries such as cement and steel.

Finally, we cannot afford the continuing destruction of the planet’s tropical forests, which absorb and store vast quantities of CO2.        

– Choices, and a clear ‘vision’ –

“It’s a question of choices, there is no pathway where we don’t make a choice,” said Joeri Rogelj, director of research at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.

Choices made by individuals, but also on the role of nuclear power, bioenergies, or technologies not yet invented for sucking CO2 out of the air.

More than anything, we need “leadership with a vision,” Rogelj said. “Governments are essential.”

Half a degree Celsius may not seem like much, but climate experts say a world that has warmed 1.5 degrees Celsius above 19th-century levels compared to 2C could be the difference between life and death.

A 2C Earth would see the number of people facing extreme heat waves more than double. A quarter of a billion more people would face water shortages. 

The Arctic Ocean will be ice-free not once in a century but once every 10 years.

Countries that signed the Paris Agreement vowed to cap the rise in global temperatures — already 1.1C above the pre-industrial benchmark — at well below 2C, and preferably at 1.5C. 

Humanity is still far off the mark: even if fulfilled, current pledges to reduce emissions would still set the planet on course to warm by a “catastrophic” 2.7C, according to the UN.

Here’s what the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we can expect in a world that warms by 1.5C, 2C and beyond.

– Heat waves –

Maximum temperatures in some areas will increase by three degrees if the climate warms 1.5C, four if global heating reaches the 2C mark.

Heat waves that occur once-a-decade today will become four times more likely at 1.5C, and nearly six times more likely at 2C.

The odds of extreme hot spells currently seen once every 50 year increase by nearly nine fold at 1.5C, and 40 fold in a 4C world.

More people will be affected as well: the percentage of humanity exposed to extreme heatwaves at least once every five years jumps from 14 percent at 1.5C to 37 percent with an extra half-a-degree.

– Storms –

Global warming will cause more rain at higher latitudes, north and south of the equator, as well as in the tropics and some monsoon zones. 

Precipitation in sub-tropical zones will likely become rarer, raising the spectre of drought.

Extreme precipitation events today are 1.3 times more likely and seven percent more intense than before global warming kicked in.

At 1.5 degrees of warming, extreme rain, snowfall or other precipitation events will be 10 percent heavier and 1.5 times more likely.

– Drought –

In drought-prone regions dry spells are twice as likely in a 1.5C world, and four times more likely if temperatures climb 4C. 

Capping the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5C rather than 2C would prevent an additional 200-250 million people from facing severe water shortages.

Limiting drought would also reduce the risk of related disasters such as wildfires.

– Food –

In a world that is two degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels, seven-10 percent of agricultural land will no longer be farmable.

Yields are also predicted to decrease, with corn harvests in tropical zones estimated to drop by three percent in a 1.5C warmer world and seven percent with a rise of 2C.

– Sea levels –

If global warming is capped at 2C, the ocean watermark will go up about half a metre over the 21st century. It will continue rising to nearly two metres by 2300 — twice the amount predicted by the IPCC in 2019. 

Because of uncertainty over ice sheets, scientists cannot rule out a total rise of two metres by 2100 in a worst-case emissions scenario.   

Limiting warming to 1.5C would reduce rising sea levels by 10 about centimetres.

– Species in peril –

All these impacts affect the survival of plants and animals across the planet.

Global warming capped at 1.5C negatively affects seven percent of ecosystems. At 2C, that figure nearly doubles.

An increase of 4C would endanger half of the species on Earth.