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The ICRC cited Somalia as a country of particular concern

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Wednesday “an enormous level of suffering” awaits the world in 2023 with famine spreading.

Mirjana Spoljaric, who took over at the ICRC in October, told a Geneva press conference: “We expect an enormous level of suffering.

“As the world is trending at the moment we don’t see any easing of the humanitarian pressures, they will be immense potentially,” she said.

“There is a possibility that we will see very high levels of hunger in many parts of the world and insecurity in general.”

Not only will prices be high for food, it will “simply not be available in the same amounts due to a lack of fertilisers and due to, again, the impact of climate change.”

She cited Somalia as a country of particular concern.

“In our four hospitals we have seen a tenfold increase of wounds caused by violence, violent, armed violence, conflict and we are also witnessing a three fold increase of malnutrition in children.

“The situation is extremely alarming,” Spoljaric said, adding her next trip would be to the Horn of Africa were some 20 million people are suffering from malnutrition.

The ICRC is seeking 2.8 billion euros for next year, up on last year’s 2.4 billion.

But the ICRC chief said it might not be enough, “depending on how the situation evolves”.

Millions of vulnerable elderly people are still not fully vaccinated

The flare-up in Covid-19 cases in China was well underway before the government began easing restrictions, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Officials in China warned that cases are rising rapidly in Beijing after the government abruptly abandoned its zero-Covid policy, scrapping mass testing and quarantines after nearly three years of attempting to stamp out the virus.

“The explosion of cases in China is not due to the lifting of Covid restrictions. The explosion of cases in China had started long before any easing of the zero-Covid policy,” WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan told reporters.

“There’s a narrative that, in some way, China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden, the disease is out of control,” he added at the UN health agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

“The disease was spreading intensively because the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. 

“I believe the Chinese authorities have decided strategically that that, for them, is not the best option anymore,” he said, referring to the control measures.

Ryan said the Omicron variant of the virus, which was first detected around a year ago, meant China-style restrictions were not as useful as they had been against previous strains circulating when vaccination coverage was low.

“The super-transmissibility of Omicron really took away the opportunity for using public health and social measures aimed at full containment of the virus,” he told a press conference with the UN correspondents’ association.

Ryan said such measures had been primarily used to protect health systems while vaccination levels increased, but now their usefulness had changed.

“There is data from places like Hong Kong that show that the inactivated Chinese vaccines, with the addition of a third dose, performed very, very well. But it did require that third dose to show that effect,” he said.

And he stressed: “The increased intensity of transmission was occurring long before there was any change in the policy.”

Chinese leaders are determined to press ahead even though the country is facing a surge in cases that experts fear it is ill-equipped to manage. 

Millions of vulnerable elderly people are still not fully vaccinated and underfunded hospitals lack the resources to deal with an influx of infected patients.

The Boreal Forest, above The Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland, has increasingly been affected by wood bugs in the past 20 years, due to longer summers

Headlining the COP15 biodiversity talks is a drive to secure 30 percent of Earth’s land and oceans as protected zones by 2030 — the most disputed item on the agenda.

Some campaigners say the so-called “30×30” target is nature’s equivalent of the landmark 1.5C global warming target set at climate talks under the Paris Agreement.

But delegates negotiating a broad accord for protecting nature are divided over how to pay for “30×30” and how the measure would be applied. 

Here are some facts about the initiative, one of numerous targets under discussion at the talks taking place in Montreal until December 19.

– Too much? –

Fearful that COP15 will end with a less ambitious agreement, scientists and environmentalists insist 30 percent must be a minimum target for protecting nature, not a ceiling.

Currently, 17 percent of land and eight percent of the seas have protected status.

South Africa, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have argued for a target of 20 percent. Other countries, such as China, Japan and South Korea support 30 percent for land but want a less arduous target of 20 percent for the seas.

The target would be applied worldwide, so countries with big populations or small shorelines would not be obliged to contribute a disproportionate share.

Some countries would shoulder higher percentages, particularly ones that are home to areas of rich biodiversity, or places of strategic importance for arresting climate change — such as the Amazon and the Congo Basin.

– Not enough? –

Some say the 30 percent target is not ambitious enough.

“Thirty percent would be a laudatory goal if the year were 1952. But it’s 2022 and we don’t have the luxury of waiting,” said Eric Dinerstein, a biologist who authored “Global Safety Net,” a study on areas in need of protection.

“The simplest way to say it, as we biologists would like to put it, is that 50 percent is our 1.5 degrees.”

Oscar Soria of the civil campaign group Avaaz called too for a 50-percent target, in line with other NGOs such as Wild Foundation and One Earth.

He argued that if governments recognized indigenous peoples’ and other communities’ rights over their territory, the 30 percent protection target would have already been achieved.

Accounting for six percent of the world’s population and occupying 25 percent of its land, indigenous people are key players in the Montreal talks.

“We are here to send the message that we cannot achieve ambitious conservation aims unless our rights are fully taken into account,” said Jennifer Corpuz, a lawyer and member of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

– Subject to conditions –

Many NGOs say they will accept a 30 percent target if certain criteria are met, such as only including ecologically significant land in the protected areas and ensuring effective protection measures.

Some are demanding that a fixed percentage of the land be classed as strongly or totally protected — with barely any human activity.

Most of these elements have yet to be approved in the draft agreements under discussion.

Campaigners are therefore pressing for action from one of the negotiating blocs at COP15: the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People. The bloc is jointly led by Costa Rica, France and Britain and backed by 130 countries that support the 30 percent target.

Some are limiting the scope of these demands, however.

“If the criteria are too restrictive, countries will go and protect areas that are not of great interest for biodiversity,” said one Western negotiator who asked not to be named.

“But the richest areas are also the ones with the best resources: they have to be managed sustainably but not prohibited,” the negotiator added.

“There is a lot of talk about 30 percent, but what is key is also what is done to nature in the remaining 70 percent.”

Other key aims at stake in the talks are defending biodiversity in land management, reducing the use of pesticides, and restoring damaged land.

Lockdowns cut air pollution from transport in 2020, but that helped methane concentrations to build up researchers said

A mysterious surge in planet-heating atmospheric methane in 2020 despite Covid lockdowns that reduced many human-caused sources can be explained by a greater release from nature and, surprisingly, reduced air pollution, scientists said Wednesday.

Methane stays in the atmosphere only a fraction as long as carbon dioxide, but is far more efficient at trapping heat and is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures to date.

Released from the oil and gas, waste and agriculture sectors, as well as through biological processes in wetlands, the powerful greenhouse gas is a key target for efforts to curb global warming. 

But a new study published in the journal Nature suggests that cutting methane may be even more of a challenge — and more urgent — than is currently understood. 

Researchers in China, France, the US and Norway found that efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and air pollution will affect the atmospheric process that scrubs methane from the air. That means the planet-heating gas will linger longer and accumulate faster.

If the world is to meet the challenge of keeping warming to under 2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era, “we will have to act even more quickly and even more strongly to reduce methane”, said Philippe Ciais who co-led the research at France’s Laboratory for the Sciences of Climate and Environment (LSCE).

The researchers focused on the mystery of the concentrations of methane in the atmosphere in 2020, which had their biggest increase on record even as Covid-19 lockdowns saw carbon dioxide emissions fall.

– ‘Bad news’ –

What they found is potentially two pieces of “bad news” for climate change, said co-author Marielle Saunois of (LSCE). 

Firstly, they looked at inventories to assess fossil fuel and agricultural methane emissions and found that human sources of methane did indeed fall slightly in 2020.

Then they used ecosystem models to estimate that warmer and wetter conditions over parts of the northern hemisphere caused a surge in emissions from wetlands.

That confirms other research and is worrying because the more methane released, the more warming, potentially creating a feedback loop largely outside of human control. 

But that is only half of the story, the researchers found.

Researchers also looked at changes in atmospheric chemistry, because this provides a “sink” for methane, effectively cleaning it out of the air in a relatively short period by converting it to water and CO2 when it reacts with the hydroxyl radical (OH).

These hydroxyl radicals are present in tiny quantities and have a lifetime of less than a second, but they remove about 85 percent of methane from the atmosphere. 

They are the “Pac-Man of the atmosphere”, said Ciais: “As soon as they see something they eat it and then disappear.”

– ‘Dramatic’ –

The researchers simulated changes in OH using human sources of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide emissions that altogether affect the production and loss of hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere. 

They found that OH concentrations decreased by around 1.6 percent in 2020 from the year before, largely because of a fall in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions caused by the Covid lockdowns. Nitrogen oxide is emitted into the air primarily from burning fuel. 

A 20 percent reduction in NOx could increase methane twice as fast, Cias told a press briefing, adding: “This has surprised us greatly.”

The researchers said their study helps to solve the riddle of the rise in methane in the atmosphere in 2020.

But they acknowledged that more work would have to be done to answer the next mystery: why the rise in methane concentrations hit a new record in 2021. 

Ciais said lower nitrogen oxide emissions from transport in the United States and India, as well as continued low levels of air travel due to the pandemic may have played a part. 

Euan Nisbet, a professor of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway University who was not involved in the research, said the jump in methane in 2020 was a “major shock”.  

“Even more worrying is the rise in methane in 2021 — this was after the major Coronavirus shutdowns when the economy was recovering,” he told AFP. 

“As yet we don’t have detailed studies but something very dramatic seems to be going on.” 

Participants walk past several flags during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference during the Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Montreal

Delegates from developing countries at high-stakes UN talks on biodiversity staged a late-night walkout after talks broke down with wealthy nations over the contentious issue of funding, officials and non-profit groups said Wednesday.

The deterioration in dialogue comes on the eve of the high-level phase of negotiations involving the environment ministers of the 196 members at the summit, called COP15.

At stake is the health of the Earth’s ecosystems and the million plant and animal species threatened with extinction as a result of habitat destruction, pollution and the climate crisis.

“The countries left the meeting because they considered that it was impossible to make progress in the discussions because developed countries were not ready to compromise,” the nonprofit Avaaz said in an update.

David Ainsworth, a spokesman for the UN Environment Programme, told reporters: “The atmosphere deteriorated when the group started discussing concepts, in particular the global biodiversity fund proposal” — a new fund sought by low income nations to help them achieve their objectives.

Wealthy nations oppose creating a new mechanism and would rather reform existing financial flows.

China, which is chairing the summit, was set to hold a major meeting involving all heads of delegations to resolve the impasse.

The current finance gap for biodiversity ranges from between $600 billion to almost $825 billion per year, according to experts. 

A group of developing nations including Gabon, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia this year called for rich countries to provide at least $100 billion annually -– rising to $700 billion a year by 2030 — for biodiversity.

Major targets include a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030, eliminating harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies and tackling invasive species and reducing pesticides.

Along with no longer financing new oil and gas fields, HSBC said it will 'accelerate' activities in renewable energy

Banking giant HSBC on Wednesday said it would end financing for new oil and gas fields, a decision welcomed by environmentalists who nevertheless urged greater action from banks and government.

In an annual update of its climate transition plans, the London-headquartered bank said it “will no longer provide new lending or capital markets finance for the specific purpose of projects pertaining to new oil and gas fields and related infrastructure”.    

HSBC added in a statement that it was “committed to supporting and financing the transition to a secure net zero future”.

Responding, Greenpeace UK’s senior climate campaigner Charlie Kronick called the announcement “long overdue”.

He added in a statement: “Banks have been funding climate chaos to the tune of billions of pounds. Now one of the UK’s biggest banks has realised that there’s no place for new oil and gas in a world that is trying to tackle the climate crisis.”

Kronick called the announcement “an embarrassment for the UK government”, which is “pressing on with new oil and gas licences” as it looks to beef up energy security following the invasion of Ukraine by major fossil fuel producer Russia.

HSBC meanwhile said it would continue to provide finance and advisory services to energy sector clients at the corporate level, as long as their plans were in line with the bank’s targets to cut emissions.

– ‘Strong signal’ –

“HSBC’s announcement sends a strong signal to fossil fuel giants and governments that banks’ appetite for financing new oil and gas fields is diminishing,” said Jeanne Martin, head of banking programme at ShareAction.

“It sets a new minimum level of ambition for all banks committed to net zero. We urge major banks like Barclays and BNP Paribas to follow suit.”

Martin meanwhile stressed that “HSBC’s announcement only applies to asset financing, and doesn’t deal with the much larger proportion of finance it still provides to companies that have oil and gas expansion plans”.

Citing the International Energy Agency, the bank said “an orderly transition requires continued financing and investment in existing oil and gas fields to maintain the necessary output”.

HSBC “will therefore continue to provide finance to maintain supplies of oil and gas in line with current and future declining global oil and gas demand”.

The bank on Wednesday added it would “accelerate” activities in renewable energy and clean infrastructure following a previous announcement to provide between $750 billion and $1 trillion in sustainable finance and investment by 2030.

A year ago, the lender published a plan to stop financing thermal coal activities.

Une affiche du Sommet des dirigeants Etats-Unis-Afrique, à Washington, le 13 décembre 2022

A group of young Black Americans and their peers from African countries on Tuesday highlighted their common anxieties over climate change, shared as members of the global African diaspora. 

They were gathered at the African and Diaspora Young Leaders Forum in Washington, held on the sidelines of the Biden administration’s US-Africa Leaders Summit, in which some 50 leaders from the continent are participating this week. 

Michael Regan, the first Black American head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, called on the people in attendance to throw themselves into humanity’s fight against a warming world. 

“Young people have always been at the forefront of movements to change, and the environmental movement is absolutely no exception,” he said. 

“Your generation is leading the charge and fighting to secure a healthier, more just tomorrow.”

For activist Wafa May Elamin, society must “allow young people to really take charge” to tackle the “massive” climate challenges ahead. 

Elamin, a 30-year-old Sudanese-American, said she had been waiting for such an event for “a really long time” — the most recent iteration of this summit was organized eight years ago, during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

Other attendees of Tuesday’s meeting, which was organized by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, included Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black, South Asian and female US vice president, and Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo.

– ‘Guardians of our planet’ –

Speaking at the convention, actress and activist Sabrina Elba — a United Nations goodwill ambassador for the International Fund for Agricultural Development — said the environmental conservation of the immense African continent is especially close to the hearts of people whose ancestors came from Africa.

Elba recalled how her mother, who immigrated from Somalia to Canada, instilled in her a remembrance of their ancestral home: “As early as I can remember, she would say ‘give back, give back, give back, give back to the continent, so we can go back.'”

It was this relationship to Africa that inspired Elba — whose husband, the British actor Idris Elba, also spoke Tuesday — to get involved with the UN.

“It only took one visit back home to see a drought or famine or people really being affected by an issue that they have very little output towards,” she said. 

For her, the priority is to support the people living in areas in need of preservation.

“These people are the custodians of our planet,” she said.

– ‘Not a monolith’ –

But according to Elamin, funding for the fight against climate change is not distributed fairly. 

Regan acknowledged the unequal realities of working for a better planet.

“Countries should be required, in some way, shape or fashion, to ensure certain resources absolutely reach those who have been disproportionately impacted,” the EPA director said.

Jamaji Nwanaji-Enwerem, a doctor and assistant public health professor of environmental health at Emory University in Atlanta, was among those in attendance.

“African is not a monolith,” the 32-year-old said.

“So being able to just hear the stories and hear about other people’s experiences goes a long way in helping to develop solutions that are meaningful for all of us,” she explained. 

As the attendees discussed such possible solutions, Regan announced the United States would allocate $4 million for Peace Corps volunteers to work on projects combatting climate change in 24 Sub-Saharan African countries. 

“Are we doing enough? No. Should we be doing more? Yes, but in a democracy, it’s slow,” he said. 

DR Congo

More than 120 people were killed Tuesday as the worst floods in years battered DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa following an all-night downpour, authorities said in a provisional assessment.

Major roads in the centre of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.

The death toll — which was first estimated in the late afternoon to be at least 55 — jumped to more than 120 by nightfall. 

The government has announced three days of national mourning beginning Wednesday, according to a statement from Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde’s office.

City police chief General Sylvano Kasongo told AFP that the bulk of people dead were on hillside locations where there had been landslides.

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of nine members of the same family — including young children — who had died after the collapse of their home in the Binza Delvaux district.

“We were woken up at around 4:00 am (0300 GMT) by water entering the house,” a relative said.

“We drained the water out, and thinking that there was no more danger we went back indoors to sleep — we were soaked,” he said.

The family went back to bed and “just afterwards, the wall collapsed”.

Located on the Congo River, Kinshasa has seen a huge population influx in recent years.

Many dwellings are shanty houses built on flood-prone slopes, and the city suffers from inadequate drainage and sewerage. 

A major landslide occurred in the hilly district of Mont-Ngafula, smothering National Highway 1, a key supply route linking the capital with Matadi, a port further down the Congo River and a crucial outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.

Lukonde told reporters at the scene that about 20 people there had died when “homes were swept away”.

Searches are continuing for survivors, he said.

The highway should be reopened to small vehicles within the next day, but it could take “three or four days” for trucks, the prime minister said.

The streets of the up-market Gombe district — home to government buildings and usually spared the problems affecting other areas of Kinshasa such as inadequate waste disposal and power supplies — were also inundated.

– ‘Disaster’ –

In November 2019, around 40 people in Kinshasa died in floods and landslides.

Mont-Ngafula was one of the worst-hit areas, but a local resident said the flooding this time was even worse.

“We’ve never seen a flood here on this scale,” said Blanchard Mvubu, who lives in the Mont-Ngafula neighbourhood of CPA Mushie.

“I was asleep and I could feel water in the house… it’s a disaster — we’ve lost all our possessions in the house, nothing could be saved.”

He added: “People are building big houses and that blocks up the drains. The water can’t move freely and that’s what causes the floods.”

Another man, who gave his name as Freddy, said everything in his home was underwater,

“Shoes, food stocks, clothes — everything is lost, there’s nothing to be saved,” he said.

Close by, a young man was asking for 500 Congolese francs (24 US cents) from passers-by to carry them on his back across the submerged street.

Another man, who identified himself as a teacher, was walking barefoot in the water, holding a pair of shoes in one hand and a plastic bag containing documents in the other.

“I’ve got no other choice,” he said. “I have to give schoolchildren an exam.”

Landslides  are common in Mont-Ngafula, often triggered by heavy rainfall and rampant urban development.

A new study has described the "hemiclitores" of snakes for the first time

Female snakes have clitorises, according to the first detailed study on the subject Wednesday, in which the scientists lashed out at how little female sex organs have been researched compared to males across species.

Previous research had hypothesised that the organs on female snakes were scent glands, under-developed versions of penises, or were even there to stimulate males, rather than the other way around.

But the new study said it has “definitively” ruled out such theories, offering the first complete description of snake clitorises.

The findings suggest that clitorises may be common across squamates, the largest order of reptiles which includes snakes, and could play an essential role in how they reproduce.

However comparatively little research on the subject has been carried out, as in the case for the clitorises of pretty much all animals — including humans.

“Female genitalia are conspicuously overlooked in comparison to their male counterparts, limiting our understanding of sexual reproduction across vertebrate lineages,” wrote the authors of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Since the 1800s it has been known that male squamates have a dual sex organ called a hemipenis.

However it was not until 1995 that German herpetologist Wolfgang Boehme, who was researching monitor lizards, first described the female sexual organ, the hemiclitores.

Megan Folwell, a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the new study’s lead author, told AFP she started off by analysing the hemiclitores of a common death adder.

The team of Australian and American researchers went on to dissect 10 snakes from nine different species, including the carpet python, puff adder and Mexican moccasin. 

They found that snakes have two individual clitorises — hemiclitores — separated by tissue and hidden by skin on the underside of the tail.

For the death adder, the organ forms a triangle shape “like a heart”, Folwell said.

Some are quite thin while others take up almost all the area around the cloaca, the tiny opening for the digestive, urinary and reproductive tract. Sizes ranged from less than a millimetre to seven millimetres.

The organs have erectile tissue that likely swells with blood as well as nerve bundles which “may be indicative of tactile sensitivity, similar to the mammalian clitoris,” the study said.

– ‘Taboo subject’ –

“Snakes are very tactile animals,” Folwell said, “so there’s quite a high chance that they would get quite a lot of sensation even through the skin.”

If the snakes’ hemiclitores are stimulated during sex, it likely prompts longer and more frequent mating, resulting in a greater chance of reproductive success.

“Pleasure is such an important part of reproduction,” Folwell said.

It could lead to lubrication to prevent damage from the “very spiny hemipenis” of male snakes, she said, adding that “we don’t know”.

So why did it take so long for scientists to get here?

“It’s quite a taboo subject, female genitalia is not the easiest topic to bring up and be respected,” Folwell said.

“There’s also the fact that it is not the easiest structure to find,” she said. “Especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for or where.”

The study comes after a research abstract presented in the United States earlier this year said that the human clitoris has between 9,850-1,100 nerve fibres — around 20 percent more than the previously widely cited number of 8,000, which reportedly came from research carried out on cows.

US Secretary Antony Blinken (Right) speaks with Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi at a US-Africa summit in Washington

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo joined the United States on Tuesday in blaming climate change for major floods that have claimed around 100 lives in the capital Kinshasa.

“The DRC is under pressure but unfortunately it’s not sufficiently heard or supported,” President Felix Tshisekedi told Secretary of State Antony Blinken as they met at a US-Africa summit in Washington.

The flooding is an example of “what we have been deploring for some time,” he said.

“Support must come from countries that pollute and unfortunately trigger the harmful consequences in our countries that lack the means to protect themselves,” he said.

Blinken offered condolences for the deaths, saying the flooding was “further evidence of the challenges we are facing with climate and something we need to work on together.”

Despite a series of international conferences, scientists say the planet is far off course from meeting a UN-blessed goal of checking warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Blinken was also speaking to Tshisekedi as the United States puts pressure on Rwanda to stop alleged support for M23 rebels who have made rapid advances in the eastern DRC.

“Our country is unfortunately the victim of a secret aggression by Rwanda through the M23 movement,” Tshisekedi said.

“It is causing serious destabilization in part of our country that is already in distress, with hundreds of thousands of displaced living in precarious conditions.”

Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame is also in Washington, denies support to the M23, which is mostly made of Congolese Tutsis. 

Relations between Rwanda and DR Congo have been strained since the mass arrival in the eastern DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.