AFP UK

High tide boosted by storm surges wash across Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly intense tropical storms

Small island nations led calls at the UN climate summit Tuesday to tax oil companies’ windfall profits to pay for damages caused by natural disasters and enact a “non-proliferation treaty” to halt fossil fuel production.

Developing nations have pressed their case at the COP27 summit in Egypt for the creation of a “loss and damage” fund, arguing that rich nations are to blame for the biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions.

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It is about time that these companies are made to pay a global COP carbon tax on these profits as a source of funding for loss and damage,” the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, told fellow leaders at the summit in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” said Browne, who was speaking on behalf of the 39-nation Alliance of Small Island States, many of whose very existence is threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly intense tropical storms.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called Monday for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, however, told reporters “here is not the place… to develop fiscal rules.”

The contentious question of loss and damage was added to the COP27 agenda after intense negotiations.

The United States and European Union have dragged their feet on the issue in the past, fearful of creating an open-ended reparations regime.

Browne later told reporters that China and India, while not considered developed countries, should also fund loss and damage as they are the world’s top and third biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, respectively.

“China and India are major polluters, and the polluter must pay. I don’t think there is any free pass for any country,” he said.

The goal was to “accelerate” discussion on a loss and damage fund at COP27, he said, with the aim of having a mechanism in place at the next summit and for it to be “truly” operational by 2024.

– ‘Can’t sink our dreams’ –

Another island nation, Tuvalu, announced it was joining calls for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an initiative that seeks to stop new investments in coal, oil and gas globally and phase out production.

“The warming seas are starting to swallow our lands –- inch by inch,” Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano said in a statement.

“But the world’s addiction to oil, gas and coal can’t sink our dreams under the waves,” he said.

A Pacific neighbour, Vanuatu, was the first nation to join the treaty in September.

“Vanuatu and Tuvalu are the first countries to call for a new treaty as a companion to the Paris Agreement to align oil, gas and coal production with a global carbon budget,” said Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative.

“We will look back on this in history as the moment of reckoning, with overproduction that is locking in further emissions and holding us back from bending the curve,” Berman said.

Browne also recalled that his country and Tuvalu are among four island nations that have had registered a commission with the UN to “explore the responsibility of states for injuries arising from their climate actions and breaches in the obligations”.

“As small countries this is a new dynamic pathway of justice where the polluter pays,” he said.

Browne said small island states “will fight unrelentingly this climate crisis, and this includes fighting in the international courts and under international law”.

Flare stacks in Iraq burn off excess gas: the COP27 talks have been dominated by calls for wealthier nations to step up their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions

The United States sought to reassure the UN climate summit in Egypt on Tuesday that it will stick to its energy transition even if Republicans triumph in midterm elections.

The COP27 talks have been dominated by calls for wealthier nations to step up their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, while fulfilling pledges to financially help poorer nations green their economies and build resilience.

Developing nations devastated by natural disasters demanded that rich polluters compensate them for the damage caused by their emissions, with calls for a windfall tax on the profits of oil companies to help pay.

But stiff international criticism of Egypt’s treatment of a hunger-striking activist Alaa Abdel Fattah and the US midterm election also loomed large over the summit.

US President Joe Biden’s Democrats face a tough battle to hang on to their majority in Congress against Republicans, who are less favourable to international climate action.

A Republican victory could be a boon to the ambitions of former president Donald Trump, who is expected to make another bid for the White House.

Trump had pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Biden returned the United States — the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China — to the pact on his first day in office in 2020.

Biden won a major victory earlier this year when Congress passed the “Inflation Reduction Act”, which will see vast spending on green energy initiatives.

– ‘More determined than ever’ –

The “climate crisis doesn’t just threaten our infrastructure, economy and security — it threatens every single aspect of our lives on a daily basis,” US climate envoy John Kerry said on the sidelines of the summit, in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

He said that even if Democrats lose the election, “President Biden is more determined than ever to continue what we are doing.” 

“And most of what we are doing cannot be changed by anybody else who comes along,” Kerry said. “The marketplace has made its decision to do what we need to do to respond to the climate crisis.”

Some 100 world leaders were attending the summit on Monday and Tuesday, but Biden will only come on Friday after the midterms.

The first day of the summit was marked by dire warnings from UN chief Antonio Guterres, who told the COP27 that humanity faces a stark choice: “cooperate or perish”.

Nations worldwide are coping with increasingly intense natural disasters that have taken thousands of lives this year and cost billions of dollars.

They range from devastating floods in Nigeria and Pakistan to droughts in the United States and several African nations, as well as unprecedented heatwaves across three continents.

The world is “burning up faster than our capacity for recovery,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told fellow leaders.

– ‘Planet is burning’ –

Countries are under pressure to step up efforts to reduce emissions, in order to meet the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal of preventing temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era.

A UN-backed report said Tuesday that developing countries and emerging economies, excluding China, need investments well beyond $2 trillion per year by 2030 if the world is to stop the global warming juggernaut and cope with its impacts.

One after the other, leaders of developing nations called for the establishment of a “loss and damage” fund that would compensate them for the here-and-now destruction caused by natural disasters, arguing that rich nations are responsible for the biggest share of planet-heating emissions.

Sharif said the recent floods in Pakistan had cost his country more than $30 billion in loss and damage.

“This all happened despite our very low carbon footprint, and yet we became a victim of something with which we have nothing to do and of course it was a man-made disaster,” Sharif said.

With his country having to spend billions to feed its people and protect them from floods, he asked: “How on earth can one expect from us that we will undertake this gigantic task on our own?”

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne — speaking on behalf of a group of small island nations endangered by rising sea levels and tropical storms — said it was time to tax the windfall profits of oil companies to pay for loss and damage.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” Browne said.

A new generation of Greek farmers see high technology as key to their ailing sector

Eyes glued to his mobile phone, farmer Sotiris Mournos pores over the latest microclimate and humidity data about his fields on the plain of Imathia in northern Greece.

The high-tech farming techniques he uses are making slow progress in Greece’s tradition-bound and struggling agricultural sector, but growers like him see them as key to their future. 

Mournos, 25, employs a Greek smart-farming app to boost production of his family’s cotton fields and fruit trees.

Using real-time data recorded by a weather station, he can analyse and correlate the impact of weather conditions on his 10-hectare (nearly 25-acre) cotton plantation.

“We’ve managed to reduce the use of fertiliser and irrigation… (and thereby to) increase the financial return” of the farm, said Mournos, who gave up studying computer science at university to devote himself to the family holding in the town of Platy. 

Measuring the humidity or the nitrogen level in the soil helps to curb the excessive use of fertilisers and saves water, he notes.

As in many other southern European countries, Greece’s agricultural sector is chronically short of water and smart farming could help deal with that problem.

– Boosting yields –

The sector has also lost a major share of its available labour in recent decades, as young people snub farm work for better-paid jobs in services such as tourism.

Agriculture now represents just five percent of Greece’s GDP, half what it was 20 years ago. 

The government has budgeted 230 million euros ($231 million) over the next three years to revive the country’s farming industry.

Most of that derives from the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy innovation fund. 

“Most young people in my village prefer other jobs and have given up working in the fields,” Mournos told AFP. 

But he is making a go at farming, aiming to work smart by using the farming app for several years now.

It means he uses 40 percent less fertiliser on his cotton field and can avoid using two pesticide sprays — altogether saving 9,000 euros (about $9,000) — without affecting production rates. 

Analysts say the farming app is not widely used in Greece although interest is gradually picking up.

But persuading farmers who may be less technologically minded than Mournos to embrace it faces myriad challenges.

A key hurdle is the small size of Greek farms — less than 10 hectares on average — and the country’s largely mountainous terrain.

Greek farms are often family businesses or involve rented fields, making investment in tools and practices less appealing.

– Convincing farmers –

Meanwhile, an “endemic” lack of cooperation among farmers prevents them sharing costs, says Aikaterini Kasimati, an agricultural engineer at the University of Agronomy in Athens.

As a result, Greece lags far behind other European states in the use of smart farming, says Vassilis Protonotarios, marketing manager of Neuropublic, a company specialising in digital agriculture.

He said farmers could benefit from new technology without having to invest in expensive equipment or have “specialised digital skills”.

Then, there is the difficulty of convincing farmers to try something new.

Organic farmer Thodoris Arvanitis says his colleagues are not interested in new technologies because they don’t know enough about them and prefer long-used conventional methods. 

“Farmers won’t go after technology when they don’t have enough money for fuel,” he added, at his farm in the small town of Kiourka, some 30 kilometres (nearly 20 miles) north of Athens.

Attitudes may change in time as climate change puts additional pressure on farm costs, says Machi Symeonidou, an agronomist and creator of the agricultural IT startup Agroapps. 

The war in Ukraine and its impact on global food supplies also shows that it is increasingly necessary to produce food at a local level, said agricultural engineer Kasimati. 

“We see a constant degradation of fields and a fall in yield,” she said, adding that water was also becoming expensive.

“But as the technology becomes simpler and cheaper, these tools will see more use,” she added.

Beaver dams can improve the quality of river water by filtering out contaminants

Hotter, drier weather means beaver populations are spreading in the western United States, and their dams are helping to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on river water quality, according to a new study on Tuesday.

The findings — discovered almost by accident — offered a “rare bright spot” in an otherwise bleak landscape of climate change news, the lead author told AFP. 

Stanford University scientists and colleagues conducted the research over three years on the East River, a main tributary of the Colorado River in the US state of Colorado. 

It has long been known that beaver dams can improve the quality of river water by filtering out contaminants. 

But what came as a surprise is what the Stanford team described as a virtuous climate change-induced “feedback” loop.

It works like this: hotter, drier spells linked to a warming world often reduce water quality, mainly because less water leads to a higher concentration of contaminants such as nitrate, a form of nitrogen. 

At the same time, a changing climate has increased the range of industrious buck-toothed beavers, and widened the impact of their dams, thus helping to dilute the negative impact of global warming.

“In building more dams, they mitigate that degradation in water quality that’s caused by climate change,” lead author Christian Dewey told AFP. 

When the beavers’ dams raise water levels upstream, water is diverted into surrounding soils and secondary waterways, collectively called a riparian zone. 

“These zones act like filters, straining out excess nutrients and contaminants before water re-enters the main channel downstream,” according to a press release about the study, published in Nature Communications.

– ‘Rare bright spot’ –

The same contaminants — potentially harmful to humans, animals or plants in river water — are thus dispersed with little or no negative impact in soils. 

This is good news in the area where the research was conducted, as the Colorado River provides drinking water and supports livelihoods for some 40 million people, according to the US government. 

Nitrogen in particular promotes algae overgrowth, which starves water of oxygen needed to support diverse animal life and a healthy ecosystem.

The study found that the benefits provided by the beaver dams improved water quality in both high- and low-water conditions linked to climate change — whether hot and dry spells, or heavy rainfall and snowmelt.

In both cases, “the beaver dam pushed more water and nitrate into surrounding soil than did either seasonal extreme, leading to vastly more removal of nitrate”, Dewey said. 

He said he did not set out to study beaver dams initially, but one cropped up on the river he was testing for seasonal changes in hydrology. 

“It was incredibly lucky,” he said. 

He cautioned that the feedback dynamic may be unique to the particular conditions in western United States, and thus may not be found elsewhere. 

But the findings are still “a rare bright spot in climate news”, and perhaps an example of nature restoring balance. 

“We push too far, and then (there’s) sort of a swinging back in the other direction, at least in the case of beavers.”

High tide boosted by storm surges wash across Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly intense tropical storms

A group of small island nations joined calls on Tuesday for a windfall tax on oil companies to compensate developing countries for the damage caused by climate change-induced natural disasters.

Developing nations have pressed their case at the UN’s COP27 climate summit in Egypt for the creation of a “loss and damage” fund, arguing that rich nations are to blame for the biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions.

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It is about time that these companies are made to pay a global COP carbon tax on these profits as a source of funding for loss and damage,” the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, told fellow leaders at the summit in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” said Browne, who was speaking on behalf of the 39-nation Alliance of Small Island States, many of whose very existence is threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly intense tropical storms.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called Monday for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage.

The contentious issue of loss and damage was added to the COP27 agenda after intense negotiations.

The United States and European Union have dragged their feet on the issue in the past, fearful of creating an open-ended reparations regime.

– ‘Fossil fuel non-proliferation’ –

Browne acknowledged that the adoption of the agenda was “just one step” in the process, which gives a two-year space to negotiate.

“We look forward to the establishment and officialisation of the fund by 2024,” he said.

Browne also said a group of four island nations had registered a commission with the UN to “explore the responsibility of states for injuries arising from their climate actions and breaches in the obligations”.

“As small countries this is a new dynamic pathway of justice where the polluter pays,” he said.

Browne said small island states “will fight unrelentingly this climate crisis, and this includes fighting in the international courts and under international law”.

Another island nation, Tuvalu, announced it was joining calls for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an initiative that seeks to stop new investments in coal, oil and gas globally and phase out production.

“The warming seas are starting to swallow our lands –- inch by inch,” Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano said in a statement.

“But the world’s addiction to oil, gas and coal can’t sink our dreams under the waves,” he said.

A Pacific neighbour, Vanuatu, was the first nation to join the treaty in September.

“Vanuatu and Tuvalu are the first countries to call for a new treaty as a companion to the Paris Agreement to align oil, gas and coal production with a global carbon budget,” said Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative.

“We will look back on this in history as the moment of reckoning, with overproduction that is locking in further emissions and holding us back from bending the curve,” Berman said.

High tide boosted by storm surges wash across Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly intense tropical storms

A group of small island nations joined calls on Tuesday for a windfall tax on oil companies to compensate developing countries for the damage caused by climate change-induced natural disasters.

Developing nations have pressed their case at the UN’s COP27 climate summit in Egypt for the creation of a “loss and damage” fund, arguing that rich nations are to blame for the biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions.

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It is about time that these companies are made to pay a global COP carbon tax on these profits as a source of funding for loss and damage,” the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, told fellow leaders at the summit in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” said Browne, who was speaking on behalf of the 39-nation Alliance of Small Island States, many of whose very existence is threatened by rising sea levels and increasingly intense tropical storms.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called Monday for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage.

– ‘Fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty’ –

The contentious issue of loss and damage was added to the COP27 agenda after intense negotiations.

The United States and European Union have dragged their feet on the issue in the past, fearful of creating an open-ended reparations regime.

Browne acknowledged that the adoption of the agenda was “just one step” in the process, which gives a two-year space to negotiate.

“We look forward to the establishment and officialisation of the fund by 2024,” he said.

Browne also said a group of four island nations had registered a commission with the UN to “explore the responsibility of states for injuries arising from their climate actions and breaches in the obligations”.

“As small countries this is a new dynamic pathway of justice where the polluter pays,” he said.

Browne said small island states “will fight unrelentingly this climate crisis, and this includes fighting in the international courts and under international law”.

Another island nation, Tuvalu, announced it was joining a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an initiative that seeks to phase out coal, oil and gas globally.

“The warming seas are starting to swallow our lands –- inch by inch,” Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano said in a statement.

“But the world’s addiction to oil, gas and coal can’t sink our dreams under the waves,” he said.

A Pacific neighbour, Vanuatu, was the first nation to join the treaty in September.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers a speech at the leaders summit of the COP27 climate conference in Egypt

South Africa’s president, whose coal-dependent country is among the world’s top polluters, Tuesday criticised international funders for making it difficult for poorer nations to access aid to fight climate change.

Support from multilateral organisations “is out of reach of the majority of the world’s population due to lending policies that are risk-averse and carry onerous costs as well as conditionalities,” Cyril Ramaphosa told the UN COP27 climate summit.

Addressing the meeting in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, he said “funding institutions need to transform … the way in which they fund projects that will enable us to develop with regard to climate change”.

According to a UN-backed report released Tuesday, developing countries and emerging economies need investments well beyond $2 trillion annually by 2030 if the world is to stop the global warming juggernaut.

South Africa, one of the world’s top 12 polluters, last week revealed that it will require about $98 billion over the next five years to transition to net zero.

Last year, at the COP26 in Glasgow, Pretoria secured $8.5 billion in loans and grants from a group of rich countries towards its green transition — very little of which is grant funding.

“We found in the end that only 2.7 percent was grant money, other portions were concessional loans …offered by development funding institutions as well as normal commercial institutions,” Ramaphosa told a news conference after his address.

He called on rich nations to honour their commitments “because failing to honour these commitments breaks trust and confidence in the process”.

“More industrialised countries need to live up to the commitments they have made, knowing fully well that they have, through the development of their own economies, contributed a great deal more to the damage that many countries on our continent now labour under,” he told reporters.

The head of state assured the summit that South Africa, which generates about 80 percent of its electricity through coal, was on course to retire several of its ageing coal-fired power plants in the next eight years.

The World Bank last week granted South Africa $497 million to decommission one of its largest coal-fired power plants and promote renewable energy.

“Because South Africa already carries a fairly sizeable loan burden that it has to service … we require more grant funding” Ramaphosa said.

South Africa will require at least $500 billion dollars to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, according to the bank.

burs-zam/sn/fz

Bow makers fear the decimation of their industry if the trade in pernambuco is banned

Global classical stars including US cellist Yo-Yo Ma and British conductor Simon Rattle joined a campaign on Tuesday to stop Brazil blocking the trade in a rare wood used for making bows. 

The world’s greatest bows for violins and other stringed instruments are overwhelmingly made from the Paubrasilia Echinata, or pernambuco, which grows exclusively in northeastern Brazil and gave its name to the country.

But Brazil’s outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, has submitted a petition to criminalise trade in the wood, due to be heard by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at its next meeting on November 25.

Bow makers say the government’s claim that they are threatening the tree’s survival is absurd — not least since Bolsonaro has done so much to encourage industrial deforestation in the Amazon.

The world’s bow makers use only around 200 trees a year, according to British violin dealer Martin Swan, and have funded the International Pernambuco Conservation Initiative which has planted some 250,000 new seedlings since 2000.

Criminalising the trade will only encourage smuggling, adds the National Pau-Brasil Foundation, a Brazilian conservation group.

“Let us not make the musical world a scapegoat for deforestation,” said the petition signed by dozens of global musicians and orchestras.

Bow makers say banning the trade would decimate their industry, while also requiring musicians and orchestras to carry special passports for each bow made from pernambuco when they travel.

“We are not denying reality — there is a problem of deforestation in Brazil,” said French stringed instrument maker Fanny Reyre-Menard.

“But it’s not the bow makers who are responsible for it. They are part of the conservation effort.”

Artisans claim nothing beats the precise resistance, density and elasticity of pernambuco for projecting the sound of stringed instruments.

“This wood is the origin of the modern bow. If we replace it, we will no longer play the violin as it has been played for 250 years,” Parisian bow maker Edwin Clement told AFP.

Archaeologists discovered more than 20 bronze statues of deities created over 2,000 years ago

Italian archaeologists announced on Tuesday the extraordinary discovery of more than 20 bronze statues created over 2,000 years ago, almost perfectly preserved in the mud of hot springs in Tuscany.

The statues depict deities venerated at a sanctuary in San Casciano dei Bagni, established first by the Etruscans and then expanded under the Romans, according to Italy’s culture ministry.

Votive offerings and around 5,000 gold, silver and bronze coins were also found during three years of excavations at the site, which has drawn visitors to its natural thermal waters for more than two millennia.

Jacopo Tabolli, the Etruscan specialist who led the project, called it an “unparallelled” discovery that promised to shed new light on the period when the bronzes were created, from around the 2nd century BC to the first century AD.

It was during this time that the ancient civilisation of the Etruscans, conquered by Rome, was gradually absorbed into the Roman Empire.

“The Tuscan site is the largest deposit of bronze statues from the Etruscan and Roman age ever discovered in ancient Italy and one of the most significant in the entire Mediterranean,” Tabolli said. 

“It is unparallelled, especially because until now the statues from that period have mainly been terracotta.”

The hot spring water preserved the items to such an extent that inscriptions in Etruscan and Latin are still visible, including names of powerful Etruscan families.

The statues include depictions of the god Apollo and of Hygieia, venerated as the goddess of health. 

Massimo Osanna, director general of Italy’s state museums, said it was the most important Italian finds since the Riace Bronzes, and “certainly one of the most significant bronze finds ever made in the history of the ancient Mediterranean”.

In 1972, two ancient Greek bronze statues of warriors dating back to the fifth century BC were recovered in a near-perfect state of conservation near Riace in southern Italy.

The bronzes discovered in the Tuscan hot springs will be the centrepieces of a new museum, to which an archaeological park will eventually be added.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers a speech at the leaders summit of the COP27 climate conference in Egypt

South Africa’s president, whose coal-dependent country is among the world’s biggest polluters, Tuesday criticised international funders for making it difficult for poorer nations to access aid to fight climate change.

Support from multilateral organisations “is out of reach of the majority of the world’s population due to lending policies that are risk-averse and carry onerous costs as well as conditionalities,” Cyril Ramaphosa told the UN COP27 climate summit.

Addressing the meeting in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, he said “funding institutions need to transform … the way in which they fund projects that will enable us to develop with regard to climate change”.

According to a UN-backed report released Tuesday, developing countries and emerging economies need investments well beyond $2 trillion annually by 2030 if the world is to stop the global warming juggernaut.

South Africa, one of the world’s top 12 polluters, last week revealed that it will require about $98 billion over the next five years to transition to net zero.

Last year, at the COP26 in Glasgow, Pretoria secured $8.5 billion in loans and grants from a group of rich countries towards its green transition.

“We need a clear roadmap to deliver on the Glasgow decision to double adaptation financing by 2025” Ramaphosa said in his address.

He called on rich nations to honour their commitments “because failing to honour these commitments breaks trust and confidence in the process”.

The head of state also assured the summit that South Africa, which generates about 80 percent of its electricity through coal, was on course to retire several of its ageing coal-fired power plants in the next eight years.

The World Bank last week granted South Africa $497 million to decommission one of its largest coal-fired power plants and promote renewable energy.

South Africa will require at least $500 billion dollars to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, according to the bank.

burs-zam/sn/fz