Every spring, when warm rays of sunshine herald the start of South Korea’s baking summer, fountains across Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun plaza suddenly burst into life, sending cooling jets of water into the air.

In any other city in the world, such an inviting sight would tempt young children to charge through the spray. But in the heart of the Korean capital, shouts of childlike delight are rare.

For a first-time visitor to Korea, there is a gnawing feeling that something is missing. Then it finally dawns – the children.

South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, and it continues to plummet, reaching new record-breaking troughs every year.

The latest figures show it fell by another 8 per cent in 2023 to 0.72, which is the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime.

For South Korea’s kindergarten teachers, the national dearth of children is already painfully evident and impacting their career prospects.

The country’s record-low birth rates are projected to cause the closure of roughly one-third of daycare centres and kindergartens by 2028, a report by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education warned in January.

This would mean the number of these institutions slipping from 39,053 in 2022 to just 26,637 in 2028, with 12,416 at risk of shutting down.

It’s a situation that London could soon find itself in. In Britain, nurseries are already closing due to government underfunding; babies are also quickly becoming a “luxury item”, says Joeli Brearley, the chief executive and founder of mothers charity Pregnant Then Screwed. “We’re running out of them. It is no surprise to us that fertility rates have hit the floor. We have one of the most expensive childcare sectors in the world, so much so that for three quarters of mothers, it no longer makes financial sense to work. With childcare fees outstripping the cost of housing for more than two thirds of families, almost half of families are borrowing money to pay their childcare bills.”

In England and Wales, the average birth rate declined to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. With its birth rate of just 0.72 children per woman, South Korea’s fertility rate is so critically low that experts predict the population will have halved by the year 2100.

When 31-year-old Dutch farmer Bastiaan Blok dug up his latest crop, the weather had taken a disastrous toll. His onions – 117,000 kilos of them – were the size of shallots.

“We had a very wet spring and a dry, warm summer, so the plants made very small roots,” said Blok, who farms 90 hectares in Swifterbant, in the reclaimed province of Flevoland. “Half of them were less than 40mm and normally at this size they aren’t even processed. We would have probably sold them for very little for biomass, or maybe to Poland for onion oil. It’s either far too wet and cold, or far too warm and dry, and there’s no normal growing period in between.”

The wettest autumn, winter and spring on record have threatened the spinach and potato crops, leading to parliamentary questions and warnings from farming union LTO. Evelien Drenth, LTO agriculture specialist, said 61% of Dutch farmers report lost yields due to extreme weather, diseases are up and sowing is late or sometimes missed. “Consumers and supermarkets need to get used to empty shelves sometimes for short-season crops like spinach … and also irregular-sized Brussels sprouts and broccoli,” she added.

The workweek is about to get a lot longer for some employees in Greece.

Starting July 1, workers in the private sector could be going into the office six days a week—as the 48-hour workweek goes into effect.

Select industrial and manufacturing facilities, along with businesses that provide 24/7 services, are eligible to extend the workweek beyond five days under new labor laws. Food service and tourism workers are not included in the longer workweeks.

The change to the labor laws was approved last September following productivity issues in the country, which have led many workers to put in extra hours and often not be compensated for the time. Officials also note there has been a shortage of skilled workers due to a shrinking population.

Toronto inhabitants fed up with rising rents are flooding city-run lotteries for affordable housing in new developments, but the chance of being selected for a subsidized unit is often less than 1%.

One new development in the city’s West End recently offered a random public draw to allocate 135 units with rents pegged to income ceilings that would cost hundreds of dollars less than market rates. Nearly 12,500 people entered the draw for the homes aimed at middle-income earners in the Galleria on the Park development.

Rents across Canada rose 9.3% in the year to May to reach C$2,202 (US$1,607), with prices in Toronto averaging C$2,479, according to a recent report.

In comparison a one-bedroom lottery unit in the Galleria on the Park development would cost C$1,589 a month to someone with an annual income of C$82,000.

Dozens of bodies were discovered in Delhi during a two-day stretch this week when even sundown brought no relief from sweltering heat and humidity. Tourists died or went missing as the mercury surged in Greece. Hundreds of pilgrims perished before they could reach Islam’s holiest site, struck down by temperatures as high as 125° F.

The scorching heat across five continents in recent days, scientists say, provided yet more proof that human-caused global warming has so raised the baseline of normal temperatures that once-unthinkable catastrophes have become commonplace.

‘Exceptional’ heat is arriving sooner and lasting longer

Though not all temperatures seen around the world this week were unprecedented, they were nonetheless evidence of how the climate has shifted in a way that makes hot weather more likely to arrive earlier and last longer.

All week long, “exceptional” conditions could be found across much of Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe and Southeast Asia. Surging air-conditioning demand crippled power grids in Albania and Kuwait. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the past week has seen more than 1,400 high temperature records fall around the globe.

Archive : https://archive.is/4p7Wb

A major hourslong power outage hit much of the Balkans on Friday as the southern European region sweltered in an early heat wave that sent temperatures soaring to more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

Montenegrin authorities said that an outage that lasted for several hours in the country’s power distribution system left almost the entire nation without electricity, while similar problems were reported in the coastal part of Croatia, and in Bosnia and Albania.

Nada Pavicevic, a spokeswoman for Montenegro’s state power distribution company, described the outage as a “disturbance of regional proportion,” and said authorities were still working to determine what happened.

A failure in an energy transmission line on Wednesday produced an unexpected blackout throughout Ecuador, the government said, days after announcing that there would be power outages in the country due to production problems.

Ecuador's Minister of Energy Roberto Luque said in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the failure was reported by the country's National Electricity Operator and caused "a cascade disconnection," leaving the nation without energy service.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16659287

First, you need to understand the factors that contribute to one person being low functioning and another high functioning.

Human health, development, and function are multifactorial: Genetics, epigenetics, microbiome, diet, environmental/industrial pollution, socioeconomic influences, etc.

I have a two-step proposal.

1. The first step is to limit the impact of low-functioning individuals. https://www.highiqpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/IQ-Bell-Curve.png. Right now society is set up so that society is run by the wealthy and the low functioning majority. This results in these people voting for, and implementing policies that exacerbate the problems instead of fixing them.
2. The second step is to take action to raise the level of functioning of the human population. This second part probably takes the most learning for the average person. Most people seem to have a very very poor understanding of human health, development, and function. But I tried to condense it into that one article.

My suggestion for tackling the first step is to implement a cognitive (IQ, EQ, etc.) test for city, state, and federal representatives.

Having an IQ test to vote seems problematic. Firstly because of how things like that were used in the past to disenfranchise certain populations. Secondly, the problem right now is that not enough people vote, and that results in the wealthy controlling the government and laws.

I think a better solution is (at minimum) a cognitive test for anyone running for a government position so that can be factored into people's assessment of them. But possibly that won't be enough and it will be necessary to set some minimum requirements for test results.

This way you don't give the option for dumb people to vote for other dumb people. They only get to choose between two intelligent ones.

Some smart people may be corrupt or sociopathic, so this test should be a full psychological evaluation.

I'm curious if it would be possible to get people like Ibram X. Kendi (who gives an interview here on antiracism, anticapitalism and the eugenicist origins of IQ and SAT tests) to agree on both implementation of this solution and an appropriate IQ/psych test for it. I would base my argument to people like him on this type of data [1][2].

My position is also based on polling data from Australia which showed that a political group that is in the vast minority in most countries is the most intelligent, and largest (percentage-wise) supporters of evidence-based policy and holders of evidence-based beliefs. This coincides with the IQ graph I linked earlier. A cognitive test requirement like this should boost the influence of that party and its supporters.

My suggestions for tackling the second step by making people smarter are in this document (which I haven't updated for years). It's doable via a variety of biological and societal interventions.

The problem again is that it's low-functioning people preventing us from implementing these fixes. Possibly if enough intelligent people understand and agree on these fixes and be vocal enough about implementing them we could get it done.

In my opinion, Fecal Microbiota Transplants (FMT) are one of the most promising aspects of this second step. One problem is the people who qualify to be stool donors appear to be extremely rare. You can read more about the current status of FMT in this blog. If you have the ability to influence or fund clinical trials, read this.

As is, with the health of the population rapidly declining, I feel like I'm living in Idiocracy, and surely collapse will be inevitable if nothing is changed.

For more than 30 years, José DeCoux woke each morning to a deafening noise. In his home in Ecuador's Los Cedros forest, monkeys squeal, squirrels scuffle, and 400 species of bird flit and squawk. A mist hangs in the trees, and ferns and mosses in countless shades of green cover every rock and tree trunk.

DeCoux moved to the Los Cedros reserve in northern Ecuador from the US in the 1980s. He was "sort of heeding the call to save the rainforest, or something", he told BBC Future Planet with a smile in April.

With the help of friends and non-profits including Friends of the Earth Sweden and the Rainforest Information Center of Australia, DeCoux bought land in Los Cedros forest, and a conservation and eco-tourism project was born. DeCoux managed the reserve until his death in May, four years after being diagnosed with cancer.

Despite extensive deforestation in the surrounding region, Los Cedros' 11,681 acres (4,800 ha) buzz and thrum with life. Its biodiversity is astonishing: more than 130 scientific papers have been published on the vast number of species that call Los Cedros home – from fungi and orchids to snails, jaguars and bears. Most of the reserve is a cloud forest where the air is heavy with moisture from drenching rain and permanent condensation, which fosters blankets of lichen and strange orchids. Many species can't be found anywhere else, such as the tiny orange Los Cedros rainfrog.

Life continues to thrive in Los Cedros, but its survival wasn't always certain – and it is largely thanks to a powerful, and increasingly influential, global legal movement that the forest is still standing.

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to change its constitution to state that nature has the same rights as people. The change was led by Ecuador's Indigenous movement, and marked one of the first major steps in what has become known as the 'rights of nature' movement – a movement centred on a legal framework that recognises the inherent right of the natural world to the same protections as people and corporations.

The rights of nature movement "is a move to transform natural entities from objects to subjects, in courts and in front of the law", says Jacqueline Gallant from New York University's School of Law's Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic. "But in a much broader sense, it's been a movement to reanimate and recentre nature as a subject of intrinsic worth," Gallant explains. This is in contrast, she says, to the Western view of nature as "an inanimate backdrop against which the drama of human activity unfolds".

"The rights of nature movement reanimates and recentres nature as a subject of intrinsic worth" – Jacqueline Gallant

To date, initiatives to recognise the rights of nature have been pursued in 44 countries, from Bolivia to Brazil and Uganda to the US. Some cases have defended a single animal, while other legal decisions have recognised the rights of rivers, mountains, and all of Mother Earth. Still, legal practice in this area is relatively new, with few clear precedents for what nature rights look like in action.

DeCoux initially took his case to court in 2019, when a mining company began explorations in the area. DeCoux argued that allowing mining in the forest would violate the rights of nature, and defended Los Cedros forest's right to exist, survive and regenerate. The case was thrown out of the lower courts – the judge "just didn't like it", DeCoux said – but was later selected by the Constitutional Court as a case that would provide a real world of example of the rights of nature. Finally, in 2021, DeCoux won. The judge ruled that mining would harm the biodiversity of the forest, and therefore violate the constitutional rights of nature. "The litigation was successful beyond our wildest dreams," DeCoux said.

The case was an opportunity for judges to look at the rights of nature beyond the theoretical framework of Ecuador's Constitution. It would help determine what these rights look like in action, and set a precedent for future cases, DeCoux believed.

Gallant explains this distinction. The US Constitution includes the right to free speech, for example, and centuries of case law now explain how this right plays out in the real world, she says. "Constitutions lay out the law in a level of generality that doesn't always provide a roadmap about how it plays out in practice," she says. "So that's why the ruling on Los Cedros is really important, because it helps explain what the rights of nature provisions in the Constitution actually mean in practice."

The ruling on Los Cedros was all the more powerful for specifying that it did not only apply to protected areas, but – as with any constitutional right – to the entire territory of the country. The judges were also clear that the area deserves protection in its own right, not just because it provides resources, like clean water, to humans.

Their verdict has turned the rights of nature from a constitutional idea into a practical reality. As Gallant says, "there are people around the world looking at it and seeing how a court has articulated what the rights of nature means in practice, and they say, 'Great, let's try and do this in this jurisdiction'. And that's how the global movement advances".

In Los Cedros, the verdict was resoundingly good news for the animals, plants and fungi that live there. Mining has not happened, and the forest has therefore not suffered. The mining companies had to remove their machinery immediately, and the court put a blanket ban on all future mining and all other extractive activities in Los Cedros. "The companies packed their bags and left less than 10 days after the decision came down from the Constitutional Court," DeCoux told the BBC when we spoke to him.

But the outcome of nature rights cases isn't always so clear, or positive – even when a court rules in nature's favour. The River Ganga in India, for example, was recognised as a legal person in 2017, but by 2023 pollution has continued to the extent that most of its water remains undrinkable.

"Some courts hand down the rulings and then forget about them, they never go back to them again," says César Rodríguez-Garavito, professor of clinical law and director of the More-Than-Human Rights (Moth) Project at NYU School of Law – an initiative that brings together law, science and the arts to advance rights for humans, non-humans and the broader web of life.

To quantify the impact of the court's decision on Los Cedros, Rodríguez-Garavito has spent time in the area, speaking to scientists and other key actors, and observing the outcomes two years on from the ruling. He has looked at the precise ways in which the ruling has been acted on, and the practical impact of that on the forest. His research concludes that Los Cedros has remained a sanctuary for biodiversity – and that this would very likely not have been possible without the ruling. "Definitely, both in and of itself, and compared to other rights of nature rulings, the picture is positive," he says.

However, Rodríguez-Garavito's findings also highlight that the forest remains vulnerable. The Ecuadorian government has passed the burden of protection to other state and private actors, who have limited resources to monitor and protect the land. And mining permitted in nearby areas could have "spillover effects" on Los Cedros, and boost illegal hunting, logging and mining on the reserve’s borders.

In his interview with the BBC, De Coux was adamant there was still work to do. "The game is not over yet," he said. "The forces of the extractive industries are still actively working against us.

"But I'm certainly very happy with the position we're in today because we've got a way forward."

Rodríguez-Garavito says that his research provides a template for tracking and measuring the impact of future legal decisions on the rights of nature. "We wanted to propose a methodology for future similar reports," he says. "We're trying to create some accountability."

The work of the rights of nature movement is powerful, but it cannot operate alone – and nor should it, Gallant says. Moth's work is interdisciplinary, bringing together science, culture and the arts – because, she says, "the judiciary alone can't do everything that's needed to promote a paradigm where the more than human world is valued more centrally and where we structure our politics and our culture to reflect that more".

Gallant points out that, importantly, the rights of nature movement is a vehicle for Indigenous principles and priorities to have sway, and that these ideas are leading the rest of the world.

"These [philosophical ideas] are not new inventions, they are things that Indigenous peoples around the world have been saying for time immemorial," Gallant says. "Movements and organisations in the Global South have been on the frontlines of advancing these concepts politically, legally, socially. It's a really good example of the Global North learning something really important from the Global South."

The patchwork plains of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain, were once known for their windmills.

But now it is wind turbines, their modern-day equivalent, which are much more visible on the region’s skyline.

The 28 vast turbines of the Sierra del Romeral windfarm, perched on hills not far from the historic city of Toledo, look out over this landscape.

Operated by Spanish firm Iberdrola, they are part of a trend that has accelerated Spain’s renewable energy output over the past half-decade, making the country a major presence in the industry.

Spain’s total wind generation capacity, its prime renewable source in recent years, has doubled since 2008. Solar energy capacity, meanwhile, has increased by a factor of eight over the same period.

This makes Spain the EU member state with the second-largest renewable energy infrastructure, after Sweden in first place.

Earlier this year, Spain's Socialist Workers' Party prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, described his country as "a driving force of the energy transition on a global scale".

The boom began soon after the arrival of a new government under Mr Sánchez in 2018, with the removal of regulatory obstacles, and the introduction of subsidies for renewable installation. The pandemic further accelerated the trend on a domestic level.

"The impact of Covid was very positive for our sector," says José Donoso, chief executive of UNEF, the Spanish Photovoltaic Association, which represents the solar panel sector. "People saved money, took time to think about what to do with it, and many of them decided that it was better invested on their roof than in their bank."

Meanwhile, the government introduced ambitious new targets, including covering 81% of Spain’s electricity needs with renewables by 2030.

However, behind this success story, there are concerns within the electricity industry caused by an imbalance between supply and demand with, at times, a surplus of electricity.

Even though the Spanish economy has bounced back strongly from the trauma of the Covid pandemic, and is growing faster than all of the bloc’s other big economies, electricity consumption has been dropping in recent years.

Last year, demand for electricity was even below that seen in the pandemic year 2020, and the lowest since 2003.

"What we saw until 2005 was that when GDP increased, demand for electricity increased more than GDP," says Miguel de la Torre Rodríguez, head of system development at Red Eléctrica (REE), the company that operates Spain's national grid.

More recently, he says, "we've seen that demand has increased less than GDP. What we're seeing is a decoupling of energy intensity from the economy".

There are several reasons for the recent drop in demand. They include the energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which caused businesses and homes across Europe to cut back on usage.

Also, energy efficiency has improved and become more commonplace.

The increased usage of renewable energy has also contributed to the reduction in demand for electricity from the national grid.

Mr Rodríguez says that during daylight hours, when solar energy output is particularly strong, the supply-demand balance can be pushed out of kilter, having an impact on prices.

"Since the power system always has to have an equilibrium – demand has to equal generation – that has meant there has been excess generation during those hours," he says.

"That has driven prices down, especially during certain hours, when the prices have been zero or even negative."

While such low prices are welcome for consumers, they are potentially a problem when it comes to attracting investment to the industry.

"This can make it more difficult for investors to increase their investment in new electricity based on renewable energies," says Sara Pizzinato, a renewable energy expert at Greenpeace Spain.

"That can be a bottleneck for the energy transition."

Concerns about Spain having an excess of electricity have led to discussion of the need to accelerate the "electrification" of the economy, which involves moving it away from fossil fuels. The Sánchez government has set a target of making 34% of the economy reliant on electricity by 2030.

"This process is going slowly, and we need to accelerate it," says UNEF’s José Donoso.

"Electricity is the cheapest and most competitive way to produce clean energy.

"We need facilities that use electricity in place of fossil fuels."

Shifting to a total reliance on electricity is seen as unrealistic, as some important sectors like chemicals and metals will find the transition difficult.

However, Mr Donoso and others see plenty of scope for swifter electrification. For example, Spain is trailing many of its European neighbours when it comes to the installation of heat pumps in homes, and the use of electric cars, which only make up around 6% of vehicles on the road.

Ms Pizzinato agrees that electrification is crucial, but says there are other ways of tackling the supply-demand quandary, including phasing out the use of nuclear plants more quickly, and increasing energy storage capability.

She says: "We need to engage more people and more industries in demand-side management, to make sure the flexibility needed in the system is out there to make generation and demand match better during the day and during the night."

Environmental organizations were incredulous when they learned that COP29, the next United Nations World Climate Change Conference, would be held in Baku, Azerbaijan this November.

A fossil-fuels heavyweight, the small Caucasus country [with a population of 10 million] the size of Austria produces 34 billion cubic meters of gas and 35 million tons of oil per year. And fossil fuels amount to around 90% of the country's exports.

On the sidelines of the COP preparatory conference in Bonn over the last two weeks, Environment Minister Mukhtar Babayev said that his country plans to continue expanding natural gas production in the coming years. However, Baku also wants to invest in renewable energies "at the same time," the minister, who will also chair COP29, told news agency AFP.

"I think in parallel — natural gas production and renewables — possibly will move together at the same time," he said.

'Authoritarian petrostate'

Critics are unimpressed with his plans. Babayev is a "former oil executive from an authoritarian petrostate," Alice Harrison from the international environmental organization Global Witness said back in January. German climate NGO Germanwatch declared around the same time that Baku was a "highly problematic" choice for COP29.

While such criticism can be voiced safely from abroad, domestic media and environmental activists in Azerbaijan don't enjoy the same freedom. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 25 such critics have been arrested or sentenced in the last year as the conference approaches. Numerous environmental activists and organizations there have also stated that their work is being hindered by the repressive atmosphere in the country.

Azerbaijani journalist Arzu Geybulla, who now lives in Istanbul, warned on the social media platform X that civil society in her country is in danger of being completely silenced before the start of the conference in November.

Autocratic rule

Azerbaijani authorities reject these accusations. But Azerbaijan has been ruled by the same family since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. President Ilham Aliyev, son of the first president Heydar Aliyev, has now been in power since 2003.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly alleged that political opposition and freedom of expression and assembly are being severely restricted. Azerbaijan is also said to be holding a "three-digit number" of political prisoners.

The intensifying crackdown on journalists is due in part to a stricter media law that was enacted in 2022. Since November 2023, several legal steps have also been taken to close down the remaining independent media outlets, Amnesty International reported.

Meanwhile, Aliyev's autocratic rule has further solidified as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Armenia, in which he claimed victory. For more than 30 years, dispute over the enclave, which is mainly inhabited by ethnic Armenians, has strained relations with Azerbaijan's western neighbor. In September 2023, Azerbaijani troops invaded Nagorno-Karabakh and expelled more than 100,000 Armenians. This escalation was preceded by a nine-month blockade of the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, which triggered a humanitarian crisis in the region. War crimes, including the killing of civilians and prisoners of war, were reportedly committed by the Azerbaijani military during the conflict.

Corruption reaches Council of Europe

Azerbaijan is also one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In Transparency International's annual ranking in 2023, it came in at 154th out of 180 countries. The organization writes in its report that corruption "erodes various levels of society and state, while undermining civic and political rights." It thus contributes significantly to Aliyev's hold on power.

Bribery has also been deliberately deployed by Baku outside the country — including of officials associated with the Council of Europe, an international organization that upholds human rights and rule of law, but is not affiliated with the European Union.

Azerbaijan has been a member since 2001. In 2012, Baku was revealed to have hosted up to 40 officials from the Council of Europe annually, showering them with expensive gifts. With this "caviar diplomacy," Aliyev was apparently trying to buy favorable assessments of the human rights situation in his country.

Europe looks the other way

The fact that the European Union has not yet criticized such corruption more harshly is due to Azerbaijan's role as an increasingly important supplier of oil and gas, observers say. Since the start of Russia's war in Ukraine, the EU has worked to become less dependent on Russian fossil fuels.

In 2022, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen therefore signed a declaration of intent with President Aliyev, according to which Brussels intends to double its gas imports from Azerbaijan in the coming years. Environment Minister Babayev's statement this week about increasing gas production must therefore be seen within this context.

This role as an energy supplier for Europe lends additional legitimacy to Aliyev's role as head of state. Following what he would consider to be a successful conclusion of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he is now primarily concerned with internal stability and brought the schedule for new presidential elections forward to take political advantage of his current popularity.

Aliyev will no doubt also want to use COP29 to present himself as a global player. But without any unwelcome criticism and dissent.

Climate skeptics are scapegoating a weather modification technique known as cloud seeding to deny the role of global warming in historic floods that have recently devastated countries from Brazil to Kenya.

Record rainfall brought to some regions by the natural weather cycle El Niño matches an expected increase in extreme events, experts say.

But online, claims have repeatedly been made that geoengineering—not carbon emissions—is to blame.

"Dubai airport looks like an apocalyptic movie. Videos of the flooding are insane," said Robby Starbuck, a conservative American commentator, to his more than 460,000 followers on X in April, after the Gulf city was hit by unprecedented downpours.

"I've seen some blaming climate change when the cause is actually from the use of weather modification. Cloud seeding where chemicals are sprayed in clouds to create rain caused this."

Claims that weather had been manipulated appeared after every major flood this year, including in Zimbabwe, the United Arab Emirates and other nations. According to Google Trends data, searches for cloud seeding reached a record high after the Dubai floods in April.

"I have not agreed to our planet having cloud seeding everywhere, have you?" was typical of posts among X users in late May, blaming the recent rainfall on a "man-made climate crisis."

Cloud seeding, which introduces tiny particles into the sky to induce rain over small geographical areas, has gained popularity worldwide as a way to combat drought and increase local water supplies.

But scientists say the technique cannot create weather—nor can it trigger rainfall at the scale observed in countries such as Germany and the United States.

"Due to the strong natural variability of clouds, there exists very little scientific proof that cloud seeding has indeed a measurable effect on precipitation," said Andrea Flossmann, co-chair of an expert team on weather modification at the World Meteorological Organization.

Experts, meanwhile, say climate change doubled the likelihood of floods in southern Brazil and worsened the intense rains caused by El Niño.

"There's definitely a consensus that climate change is responsible for many of these extreme weather events," said Mariana Madruga de Brito, a Brazilian scientist from Rio Grande do Sul, the state that suffered historic flooding in May.

She told AFP she saw people posting photos of clouds on social media shortly after the floods, claiming they had been "fabricated" and questioning scientific institutions.

But she insisted cloud seeding "cannot be causing events of this magnitude."

Reinforcing climate denial

Di Yang, an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, said extensive research over several decades has shown "no definitive large-scale or long-term impacts from cloud seeding."

Still, the technique has become a recurring target for climate skeptics. AFP has debunked several false claims of weather manipulation after major floods in recent years.

Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said that as severe weather events become more frequent, "climate deniers are putting extra efforts into claiming these extremes have nothing to do with climate change."

"You see this every summer now," he told AFP.

As more changes are recorded in seasons and ecosystems, Hood said "a slightly more conspiratorial and newer argument" is overtaking older narratives that simply deny Earth's warming "by trying to argue that extreme weather events have this other cause, whether it's geoengineering or something else."

Lincoln Muniz Alves, a researcher at the Brazil National Institute for Space Research, said the dissemination of false narratives not only obstructs effective communication during environmental crises but also "reinforces the views of those who deny the reality of climate change."

Weather modification methods are controversial in the scientific community, due in part to the potential for unintended consequences such as excess rain and pollution.

But experts say such caution should not discredit the reality of the climate crisis.

"This focus on cloud seeding misses the larger picture –- for more than a century, humans have been releasing greenhouse gasses (that) have warmed the planet and made heavy rain more likely in many regions of the world," said Edward Gryspeerdt, a research fellow at Imperial College London's Grantham Institute.

"We are already manipulating the weather at a global scale (larger) than would ever be possible through cloud seeding."

Days after being pummeled with eight inches of rainfall in only just hours — the kind of extreme downpour that supposedly occurs once every 500 years — South Florida continues to be deluged with historic storms and flooding.

The region of the state remains under a flood advisory on Friday after a series of storms dumped between eight and 20 inches of rain over large sections of Florida over the previous three days. Meteorologists expect another two to four inches of rain by Friday night, and some areas may get as much as 10 inches.

This extreme wet weather has left hundreds of people stranded in their homes. This storm system even yielded a tornado that tore through the community of Hobe Sound, north of Palm Beach, on Wednesday, uprooting or destroying at least 20 landmark ficus trees.

According to researchers, climate change both intensifies extreme weather events like tropical storms and floods and makes them more frequent. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican often described as a climate skeptic, has worked to scrub references to the problem from official state documents in his state. Activists like Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, argue that kind of denialism will ultimately backfire on the politicians who support it.

Archived link

Here is the article as pdf.

Huge planetary problems were fixed in the past, yielding lessons for the current climate crisis — yet this time a solution is justice - [Book review]

Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again Susan Solomon Univ. Chicago Press (2024)

From lead pollution to the hole in the ozone layer and climate change, Earth is no stranger to human-made — often, man-made — global disasters.

In Solvable, atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon describes how high-income countries, and the United States in particular, have repeatedly inflicted incredible amounts of damage on people and ecosystems. She relates the long and difficult struggles that concerned individuals — often from marginalized groups — faced in trying to convince governments to stop industries from destroying lives and the planet in the pursuit of profit. Solvable is a harrowing read, but Solomon is an engaging writer and there is a lot to learn in this book about the environmental crises of the past century.

Solomon relates the story of US marine biologist Rachel Carson, who rang alarm bells about persistent pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in her eloquent book Silent Spring (1962). Now that we know just how harmful these pesticides are, it is jarring to read how difficult it was to stop their use.

Carson described how falcons and other birds of prey started to lay eggs with thinner shells, then almost no eggs at all; various other bird populations shrank markedly; DDT in mammals led to the development of tumours and caused sterility. Although the overwhelming evidence for the effect of DDT on animals that Carson presented was independently confirmed by the then US president John F. Kennedy’s own science advisory council, Carson was belittled and portrayed as a hysteric by politicians and the media.

This playbook of deliberate ignorance of the scientific method, disinformation and a hefty dose of misogyny is all too familiar to those advocating for climate justice today.

In the United States, it took a non-governmental organization, the Environmental Defense Fund, and a few highly publicized lawsuits to ban DDT in 1972 — seven years after Carson’s death. Others followed suit, slowly, including in the European Union with partial bans from 1978 and the United Kingdom in 1984.

Yet, the chemical industry continued to manufacture and export DDT to countries that lacked regulation, such as those in Africa and southeast Asia. A global limit was placed on DDT use in 2004 — when the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants came into force. It’s hard to assess adherence, however, because there’s little monitoring.

Geopolitical inequities

In another parallel with the climate crisis, exported DDT found its way back to nations that had banned it, through global supply chains, such as those involved in importing fashion goods from Asia, which often rely on farms that use DDT to grow cotton. Similarly, by consuming goods produced in Asian nations, European countries are exporting their production of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as exploiting cheap labour.

As inexpensive, practical and short-lived alternatives have been found, DDT use is slowly fizzling out. As a result of the bans, populations of peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) in the United States and Europe are recovering. Solomon takes hope from this, even though she points out that the alternatives, such as neonicotinoids, are not harmless either. Because of them, bees are now dying out.

Lead additives in petrol and paint are another example of policymakers and industry dragging their feet. Solomon highlights how, in the 1920s, Thomas Midgley Jr, a chemist at the US automotive company General Motors (GM), discovered that adding tetraethyl lead to petrol increased the efficiency and lifespan of internal combustion engines. The health hazards associated with lead were well known — even the ancient Romans had realized, centuries before, that drinking wine from lead-lined pottery caused poisoning. Yet, GM’s compound, marketed under the trade name Ethyl, became widely used.

Lead contaminated the environment and caused serious public-health issues, affecting the brains and nervous systems of many children, causing comas, convulsions and even deaths. From the early 1960s, citizen groups demanded change, citing strong scientific evidence. Yet, policymakers didn’t feel compelled to stop the use of lead in paint and petrol for more than a decade. The US Environmental Protection Agency limited the amount of lead allowed in petrol in 1973. Although the harm such fuels caused — exacerbated by the increasing number of vehicles on the road — was known, they were only fully banned in the 1990s.

Lead-based house paints were banned in 1978 in the United States. Yet, even today, some people are still exposed to lead in old, peeling paints. Similar to climate change, it is often Indigenous communities, people of colour and other marginalized groups who are disproportionately paying the price, with their health and lives, for the decades of profits that have enriched a few in the petroleum industry.

Within a decade, now at the Frigidaire division of GM, Midgley had turned his attention to refrigerants and was involved in the creation of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), particularly Freon. CFCs were initially celebrated for their non-toxic, non-flammable properties, which made them ideal, or so it seemed, for use as coolants in refrigerators and as propellants in aerosol sprays. In the mid-1970s, it became apparent that these compounds break down at cold temperatures and react with ozone.

Over the next 15 years or so, CFCs created a massive hole in the ozone layer that protects Earth and its inhabitants from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. Rates of skin cancer rose. In what Solomon, rightly in my view, sees as an outstanding success of international collaboration, leaders around the globe agreed in the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out CFCs. The ozone hole is now closing. But, once again, this phasing out was planned to be very slow, and only sped up when CFCs were replaced with safer alternatives, in the mid-1990s — more than a decade after their harms were known, and only after companies making and using them had found a profitable alternative.

For Solomon, all these examples show that change happens when impacts are personal, perceptible and practical solutions are available — “the three p’s”. For the climate crisis, in her view, the three p’s have been met: its devastating consequences are being felt around the world and renewable energy has become affordable. Thus, she concludes, we can “do it again”.

Broader solutions

I love Solomon’s optimism and agree that it is important to show that the climate crisis is solvable. Yet, as a climate scientist and philosopher, I don’t quite share her outlook. Each struggle she explores, from pesticides and smog to lead in paint and petrol, demonstrates just how keenly policymakers listen to industry — over other people and living things.

None of these cases were solved by overwhelming scientific evidence, or public concern and outcry. Each time, the industry responsible let go of a harmful product (such as DDT) only once it was sure to make a profit from selling its substitutes (other pesticides) — a strategy it could implement owing to its immense lobbying power in governments. But to solve the climate crisis, technological substitutions won’t be enough.

The harms of persistent pesticides were known long before governments banned them.

Substituting every internal combustion engine with an electric vehicle is not sufficient, neither is replacing coal with solar energy: energy demand needs to fall, too. The consequences of climate change are already very dire. Unlike the issues with the ozone hole or peregrine populations, they will not go away once we stop burning fossil fuels.

Ecological restoration is essential. It includes the sustainable management of forests and rivers, as well as changes in agricultural practices to focus less on livestock and more on diverse, drought-resistant crops. These are not just technical issues that can be implemented by one industry. They require an innovative approach to environmental management, through more decentralized industries and wider participation. The industries that profit from exacerbating the climate crisis will not be the same ones that will profit from change. Ultimately, the justice issues that have been set aside in the more-limited solutions of previous planetary problems — which had inserted technological substitutes into an untouched business model — cannot be ignored any longer.

Solvable is essential reading. I am convinced that Solomon is right: the climate crisis is solvable and this fight does have parallels with previous global challenges. But to address — or rather, redress — the climate crisis, any solution must have human rights at its heart, instead of the continued profits of industries.

Over the past three years ... we've seen an even faster growth rate of accumulation of N2O into the atmosphere, almost 30 per cent faster than the previous decade.

Brazil has registered a record-breaking 5.5 million cases of dengue fever this year, a mosquito-borne virus that causes high fevers, rashes, and in some cases, death.

The surge in dengue has been fuelled by high temperatures induced by both climate change and the El Niño weather pattern, scientists and medical experts say.

Brazil is a case in point. Regions once relatively free of mosquitoes, such as North America and Europe, are becoming potential hotspots for the disease. In Paris, authorities have deployed “dengue detectives” to surveil mosquitoes ahead of the Olympic Games, and health officials last year warned the UK could become home to invasive mosquitoes by 2050.

Archived version

While officials boast that Russia's vast forests can help the country achieve its climate goals, experts say this won't be possible without significant change.

As the climate crisis intensifies, Russia is pinning its hopes on its vast forests to make up for its carbon emissions — the world’s fourth-highest — and even help the country become a global leader in carbon absorption.

But the country’s substandard conservation and ineffective forestry practices, combined with the impacts of climate change itself, make it more likely that Russia’s forests will become a carbon source rather than a sink in the next decade, experts told The Moscow Times.

"If the trend of increasing wildfires continues ... then within the next one or two decades, Russian forests will become a carbon source," a Russian forestry expert said.

From 2006 to 2023, Russia lost on average 1.9 million hectares of forests to fires annually — roughly the size of Slovenia or Fiji.

And according to the expert’s estimates, about a quarter of all logging in Russia targets its largely untouched old-growth forests — a major carbon reservoir.

As the planet continues to warm at an unprecedented rate due to human activity, carbon capture by ecosystems — alongside human emissions reduction — is becoming a significant climate solution, making forest preservation crucial, scientists say.

During the 2021 UN climate conference in Glasgow, President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow takes “the most serious and rigorous” measures to preserve forests by ramping up reforestation and combatting illegal logging and wildfires.

Yet experts doubt whether current measures will be enough for the future of Russia’s forests.

All three experts interviewed by The Moscow Times for this article requested anonymity due to the risks of speaking to a media outlet labeled a “foreign agent” by Russia.

Absorption quandary

In a persistent narrative framing the country’s forests as a catch-all solution to the climate problem, Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s special envoy for the environment, went as far as to claim that Russia’s forests could absorb the majority of global emissions.

“The more forests that are there, the more emissions are captured. And in this regard, Russia is a world leader. This gives me grounds to publicly state that Russia is the planet's ecological donor," Ivanov said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in 2022.

At SPIEF 2024 this week, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov echoed this view, saying that Russia’s “colleagues” — an apparent reference to Western countries — emphasize emissions reduction while neglecting absorption.

"The underlying reason is clear: the country [Russia] exports mainly carbon-containing natural resources and does not want to do anything” to reduce its emissions, a Russian forest management expert and member of the Scientific Council on Forests of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.

“That's why everyone has latched onto the role of forests without truly understanding the real situation [with them],” they added.

Researchers from the Moscow-based Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology found that Russia's greenhouse gas emissions appear to be higher than what its ecosystems can absorb.

The report’s authors also warned that Russia's ecosystems could become a carbon source after 2050 due to increased methane release from the continental shelf and melting permafrost.

An international team of researchers came to a similar conclusion in a 2022 study (here is the pdf), saying that wildfires and droughts make the carbon-sink status of Siberia’s forests less certain.

Russian forests fail to offset even the country’s own emissions, let alone those of others — and their absorption capacity has declined by nearly 20% since 2009, an exiled Russian environmental economist said.

Multiple threats

Experts say that the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in Russia’s regions every year are perhaps the biggest threat to the country’s forests.

According to the forestry expert, the area of forests lost to fires each year exceeds the area lost to clear-cut logging by two to three times on average.

Other climate-induced problems include the spread of pests that now survive warmer winters and destructive windfalls in some regions, the environmental economist said.

The picture becomes even bleaker when forest management practices are factored in, the forestry expert noted, with crucial decisions sometimes based on a “bouquet of legends” rather than scientific knowledge.

Specifically, reforestation efforts often involve planting spruce, pine and oak, which grow slower and therefore absorb less carbon than fast-growing birch or aspen, which would naturally overgrow if left untouched.

"Moreover, pioneer species are initially cleared [before reforestation] and during the growing process. And everything that is cleared rots away and goes into the atmosphere," they said.

The expert also pointed to the Far East Sakhalin region, which as part of its plan to achieve climate neutrality is planting larch. Because the chosen site is a raised bog peat with very poor soil, the expert said, the plantation will not survive.

"Roslesinforg [the federal forestry body] has lost so many specialists during Putin's time that they might no longer understand basic things like this," they said.

The forest management expert said the widespread practice in Russia of planting coniferous monocultures — a technique that dates back to the 18th century — appears to be outdated in today’s changing climate, given that conifers burn more easily than mixed or small-leaved forests.

"It is believed that if something dies or burns, we need to take budget money and spend it on the most expensive seedlings … of spruce or pine,” they said. “But the climate has changed, and there are more wildfires.”

The country also lacks incentives for long-term sustainable forest management, the environmental economist said, as forest users often lease rather than own plots.

"After clear-cutting — which is the main approach to timber harvesting [in Russia] — the plots are turned into a devastated wasteland for many decades. Reforestation measures are generally not very effective, and they are not truly implemented," they said.

A study of reforestation in the Moscow region from 1999 to 2022 by the Earth Touches Me environmental project showed that some young plantations perished due to a lack of proper care.

Hemp fields

Russian researchers have sought out creative ways to enhance carbon absorption beyond the capacity of the country’s forests.

Outside Russia's fourth-largest city of Yekaterinburg, scientists who planted industrial hemp discovered that it absorbs carbon dioxide up to five times more effectively than conifers.

The researchers envision long-term carbon storage products made from hemp ranging from clothing and ropes to tableware.

Their endeavor is part of a network of 18 sites across Russia known as “carbon polygons,” in which scientists explore the absorption capacities of various plants in hopes of helping Russia achieve carbon neutrality.

While experts doubt hemp’s reliability for carbon storage, they see the polygons’ benefit in enhancing Russian researchers’ knowledge, particularly in the regions.

"Clothing made from hemp becomes unusable within a few years, and the carbon contained in it will be released into the atmosphere,” the environmental economist said. “Today in the EU ... wooden houses can be certified as carbon removals if they last for 50 years or more."

“When individuals start to understand that deciduous species capture carbon more effectively and rapidly than conifers, there is hope that forestry management will eventually become more meaningful," the forest management expert said.

Despite Russia’s already strained carbon-capture capacities, the country aims to more than double carbon absorption by ecosystems by 2050.

Experts said this plan would be unrealistic unless significant additional actions are taken.

The forestry expert said that three key measures could bring Russia closer to fulfilling this task: banning logging in virgin forests, improving firefighting and developing forestry on abandoned agricultural lands.

Without more competent forestry management, Russia will not be able to preserve this natural treasure.

“As things stand now, there are absolutely no chances of saving the forests,” the expert said.

“And the situation will only worsen.”

Archived version

- Environmental charity Climate Force is collaborating with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and rangers to create a wildlife corridor that runs between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Australia: the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.

- Wildlife habitats in this region have become fragmented due to industrial agriculture, and a forested corridor is expected to help protect biodiversity by allowing animals to forage for food and connect different populations for mating and migration.

- The project aims to plant 360,000 trees over an area of 213 hectares (526 acres); so far, it has planted 25,000 trees of 180 species on the land and in the nursery, which can also feed a range of native wildlife.

***- The project is ambitious and organizers say they’re hopeful about it, but challenges remain, including soil regeneration and ensuring the planted trees aren’t killed off by feral pigs or flooding.***🌲

The planet just marked a “shocking” new milestone, enduring 12 consecutive months of unprecedented heat, according to new data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service.

Every single month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the world’s hottest such month on record, Copernicus data showed.

The news comes as the western US is experiencing its first heat wave so far this summer with temperatures soaring into the triple digits. But unprecedented heat has already left a trail of death and destruction across the planet this spring.

Dozens have died in India over the past few weeks as temperatures pushed toward 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit); brutal temperatures in Southeast Asia have caused deaths, school closures and shriveled crops; and as heat surged in Mexico, howler monkeys dropped dead from trees.

Human Rights Watch criticizes Germany over prosecution of environmental defenders: "Indictment of 'Last Generation' sets dangerous precedent"

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/28/germany-prosecutes-environmental-defenders

German environmental activists are facing increasingly harsh rhetoric and legal action from authorities as they mobilize to confront the climate crisis.

Last week, on May 21, Germany’s efforts to curb environmental activism took a disturbing turn when authorities used an offence typically reserved for prosecutorial pursuit of serious organized crime to indict Letzte Generation (Last Generation), a climate activist group known for disruptive protests such as roadblocks and other acts of civil disobedience, as a criminal organization. A conviction under federal law would pave the way for prosecuting anyone who participates in or supports Letzte Generation, including administratively or financially.

"This heavy-handed approach reflects a troubling trend in Europe of stifling civil society and climate activism", Human Rights,Watch says.

"Such actions chill public participation in protests against state policies or state inaction on a range of urgent issues."

The investigation into Letzte Generation as a criminal organization has involved armed police conducting predawn raids, storming private apartments while the activists were still asleep, and granting warrants for police to surveil the group’s communications, including calls made with media.

Last year the group’s website was temporarily seized during a fundraising campaign, with a notice from the police falsely labeling Letzte Generation a criminal organization and stating any donation constitutes illegal support for crime. This move by the police, despite no judicial assessment of the charges having taken place, exposes a deeply worrying bias against the group and raises questions about whether authorities are respecting due process.

International law protects the right to public participation in environmental matters and recognizes peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience as a legitimate form of assembly. Disruptions like traffic blockades, while inconvenient, generally do not constitute violence under international standards, although damage to or destruction of private or public property may.

While civil disobedience often involves breaking national laws, authorities are required to respond proportionately, giving due weight to the right to protest and the importance to the public interest of the issues at stake.

The government’s extreme response to Letzte Generation’s activism appears disproportionate, threatens the very right to protest, and smears climate activists when their cause has never been more urgent. Instead of intimidating environmental defenders, Germany should live up to its commitment to ambitious climate action and investigate the concerns that groups like Letzte Generation raise.

Wealthy countries sent climate funding to the developing world in recent years with interest rates or strings attached that benefited the lending nations, a Reuters data analysis found.

[The linked article contains some interesting diagrams.]

Japan, France, Germany, the United States and other wealthy nations are reaping billions of dollars in economic rewards from a global program meant to help the developing world grapple with the effects of climate change, a Reuters review of U.N. and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development data shows.

The financial gains happen as part of developed nations’ pledge to send $100 billion a year to poorer countries to help them reduce emissions and cope with extreme weather. By channeling money from the program back into their own economies, wealthy countries contradict the widely embraced concept that they should compensate poorer ones for their long-term pollution that fueled climate change, more than a dozen climate finance analysts, activists, and former climate officials and negotiators told Reuters.

Wealthy nations have loaned at least $18 billion at market-rate interest, including $10.2 billion in loans made by Japan, $3.6 billion by France, $1.9 billion by Germany and $1.5 billion by the United States, according to the review by Reuters and Big Local News, a journalism program at Stanford University. That is not the norm for loans for climate-related and other aid projects, which usually carry low or no interest.

At least another $11 billion in loans – nearly all from Japan – required recipient nations to hire or purchase materials from companies in the lending countries.

And Reuters identified at least $10.6 billion in grants from 24 countries and the European Union that similarly required recipients to hire companies, nonprofits or public agencies from specific nations – usually the donor – to do the work or provide materials.

Analysts said grants that require recipients to hire wealthy countries’ suppliers are less harmful than loans with such conditions because they do not require repayment. Sometimes, they said, the arrangements are even necessary – when recipient countries lack the expertise to provide a service. But other times, they benefit donors’ economies at the expense of developing nations. That undermines the goal of helping vulnerable nations develop resilience and technology to cope with climate change, the climate and finance sources said.

“Climate finance provision should not be a business opportunity,” Schalatek said. It should “serve the needs and priorities of recipient developing countries.”

Many of the conditional loans and grants Reuters reviewed were counted toward developed nations’ pledge to send $100 billion a year by 2020 to poorer countries disproportionately harmed by climate change. First made in 2009, the commitment was reaffirmed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Roughly $353 billion was paid from 2015 through 2020. That sum included $189 billion in direct country-to-country payments, which were the focus of the Reuters analysis.

More than half of that direct funding – about 54% – came in the form of loans rather than grants, a fact that rankles some representatives from indebted developing nations such as Ecuador. They say they should not have to take on more debt to solve problems largely caused by the developed world.

Countries of “the global south are experiencing a new wave of debt caused by climate finance,” said Andres Mogro, Ecuador’s former national director for adaptation to climate change.

At the same time, several analysts said, rich countries are overstating their contributions to the $100 billion pledge, because a portion of their climate finance flows back home through loan repayments, interest and work contracts.

“The benefits to donor countries disproportionately overshadow the primary objective of supporting climate action in developing countries,” said Ritu Bharadwaj, principal researcher on climate governance and finance at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK policy think tank.

Rich nations defend their climate funding

Representatives of the main agencies that manage climate funding for Japan, Germany, France and the United States – the four countries reporting the most such funding to the U.N. – said they consider the amount of debt a country is already carrying when deciding whether to offer loans or grants. They said they prioritize grants to the poorest countries.

About 83% of climate funding to the lowest-income countries was in the form of grants, the Reuters review found. But those countries also received, on average, less than half as much climate funding as higher-income nations that mostly received loans.

“A mix of loans and grants ensures that public donor funding can be directed to countries that need it most, while economically stronger countries can benefit from better-than-market rate loan conditions,” said Heike Henn, director for climate, energy and environment at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Germany has contributed $45 billion in climate funding, 52% of it loaned.

The French Development Agency (AFD) offers developing nations low interest rates that would normally be available only to the richest countries on the open market, said Atika Ben Maid, deputy head of the AFD’s Climate and Nature Division. About 90% of France’s $28 billion contribution came in the form of loans – the highest share of any nation.

”This is a classic example where a bad loan, which has been given to a country in the garb of climate finance, will create further … financial stress.”

Ritu Bharadwaj, principal researcher on climate governance and finance at the International Institute for Environment and Development

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said loans are “appropriate and cost-effective” for revenue-producing projects. Grants typically go to other types of projects in “low-income and climate-vulnerable communities.” The United States provided $9.5 billion in climate funding, 31% of it loaned.

“It should also be emphasized that the climate finance provisions of the Paris Agreement are not based on ‘making amends’ for harm caused by historic emissions,” the spokesperson said, when asked whether collecting market-rate interest and other financial rewards contradicts the spirit of the climate finance program.

The Paris Agreement does not state outright that developed nations should make amends for historic emissions. It does reference principles of “climate justice” and “equity” and notes countries’ “common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities” to grapple with climate change. It makes clear that developed countries are expected to provide climate finance.

Many interpret that language to mean that wealthy nations have a responsibility to help solve climate-related problems they had an outsized role in creating, said Rachel Kyte, an Oxford University climate policy professor who was World Bank special envoy for climate change in 2014 and 2015.

But the agreement was short on specifics. The pledge said nations should mobilize climate finance from “a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels.” It did not define whether grants should be prioritized over loans. Nor did it prohibit wealthy nations from imposing terms advantageous to themselves.

“It’s like setting a building on fire and then selling the fire extinguishers outside,” Ecuador’s Mogro, who was also former climate negotiator for the G77 bloc of developing countries and China, said of the practice.

Big needs, limited funding

Reuters and Big Local News reviewed 44,539 records of climate finance contributions reported to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the entity in charge of keeping track of the pledge. The contributions, from 34 countries and the European Union, spanned 2015 through 2020, the most recent year for which data are available.

The UNFCCC does not require countries to report key details of their financing. So reporters also reviewed 133,568 records collected by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to identify hiring conditions tied to climate-related finance over the same period.

The review confirmed that developed countries counted some conditional aid toward their $100 billion climate finance commitment. Because the UNFCCC records lack detail, Reuters could not determine if all such aid was counted.

To better understand the funding patterns revealed by the data, reporters consulted 38 climate and development finance analysts and scholars, climate activists, former and current climate officials and negotiators for developing nations, and representatives of development agencies for wealthy nations.

The Reuters findings come as countries try to negotiate a new, higher climate financing target by the year’s end. The U.N. has estimated that at least $2.4 trillion a year is needed to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement, which included keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Recent spending pales in comparison. Wealthy countries likely met the $100 billion annual goal for the first time in 2022 through direct contributions from country to country as well as multilateral funding from development banks and climate funds. The OECD estimates that wealthy nations funneled at least $164 billion toward the climate finance pledge via multilateral institutions – about 80% of it loaned – between 2015 and 2020, in addition to countries’ direct contributions.

Reuters was unable to determine the percentage of those loans that carried market interest rates or hiring conditions, due to uneven reporting by multilateral groups.

At least $3 billion of the direct spending went to projects that did little to help countries reduce emissions or guard against the harms of climate change, a June 2023 Reuters investigation found. Large sums went to a coal plant, a hotel, chocolate shops and other projects with little or no connection to climate initiatives.

A deepening hole

Heavily indebted countries face a vicious cycle: Debt payments limit their ability to invest in climate solutions, while extreme weather causes severe economic losses, often leading them to borrow more. A 2022 report by the United Nations Development Program found that more than half of the 54 most severely indebted developing nations also ranked among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

With the amount of financing for climate projects still far from what’s needed, however, some analysts argue that lending needs to be part of the climate finance equation.

Development aid representatives from the U.S., Japan, France, Germany and the European Commission say loans enable them to funnel far more money to significant projects than they could if they relied solely on grants.

In interviews with Reuters, eight representatives who have worked on climate issues in developing nations said they consider loans to be necessary to fund ambitious projects given the limited funding wealthy nations have allocated for climate finance. But they said future pledges should require that rich nations and multilateral institutions be more transparent about the lending terms and offer guardrails against loans that create suffocating debt.

“The way the international financial system works at the moment… is to dig even deeper a hole,” said Kyte, the former World Bank climate envoy who recently advised Britain in climate negotiations. “We have to say, ‘no, no more digging, we’re going to fill the hole and lift you up.’”

‘A bad loan’

Echoing years of pleas from developing nations, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell has publicly urged wealthy nations to offer so-called concessional loans, with very low interest rates and long repayment periods. This makes them less costly than those sold on the open market. UNFCCC and OECD had no comment for this report. UNFCCC instead referred Reuters to Stiell’s past remarks.

About 18% of climate loans from wealthy countries, or $18 billion, were not concessional, the U.N. reports from 2015 through 2020 show, including more than half of the loans that the United States and Spain each reported. These totals are likely underestimated, given that it is voluntary for wealthy nations to report to the U.N. whether their loans were concessional.

France gave a $118.6 million non-concessional loan to Ecuador’s port city Guayaquil in 2017 to build an aerial tramway. The loan, which France counted as part of its climate finance pledge, shows how the global program can create expensive debt in developing countries in exchange for few environmental gains, while lending nations benefit.

Dubbed the Aerovia, the cabled gondolas were billed as a climate-friendly alternative to the congested bridges connecting industrial Guayaquil to a neighboring city where workers live. Four years after its inauguration, the Aerovia transported roughly 8,300 passengers a day. That was one-fifth of the ridership projected in early planning documents – resulting in lower-than-expected revenue and environmental benefit.

Debt from the loan has added to Guayaquil’s $124 million budget deficit. Guayaquil expected to pay 5.88% interest, according to early planning documents. France was projected to earn $76 million in interest over the 20-year repayment period. That interest rate would be unusually high for a climate-related loan, finance analysts said. A 2023 OECD analysis of concessional loans from 12 developed nations and the European Union found they offered an average interest rate of 0.7% in 2020. Guayaquil and France declined to disclose the interest rate of the final loan agreement for the tramway.

“This is a classic example where a bad loan, which has been given to a country in the garb of climate finance, will create further … financial stress,” said Bharadwaj, the climate researcher from the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The loan agreement did not require Guayaquil to hire a French company. Nonetheless, French transportation company Poma won the contract to build the tramway, along with Panamanian company SOFRATESA, founded by a French citizen. The companies also operate the tramway, so the municipality collects no revenue from passenger fares to help repay the loan. Neither company responded to questions from Reuters.

Nearly all of the Aerovia’s components – including its cabins, electrical control panels and cables – were manufactured in France and Switzerland and then shipped to Guayaquil, according to a slide presentation prepared by the local government before the tramway’s launch.

To Euan Ritchie, senior policy adviser at Development Initiatives, an international policy organization, the project amounted to a “transfer of wealth from Ecuador to France.”

Contesting that claim, a spokesperson for the French development agency said that the tramway belongs to the city and that the agency assessed the risk of financial stress before approving the loan. The aerial tramway has already resulted in a “significant greenhouse gas reduction,” despite low ridership, said the spokesperson, who provided no estimates. The spokesperson said the agency does not participate in selecting contractors.

Still, France’s development agency trumpeted the successes of French companies in landing such contracts. The agency’s 2022 annual report said that more than 71% of its projects that year involved “at least one French economic actor,” garnering them 2 billion euros in “economic benefits.” The spokesperson declined to provide estimates of how French suppliers benefit from climate-related funding. French companies often win bids because they have “in-depth knowledge and local presence” in regions where AFD sends significant aid, the spokesperson said, adding that it “in no way favors any entities based on their nationality.”

Strings attached

Almost 32% of all Japanese climate loans required borrowers to use at least some of the money to hire Japanese companies, OECD records show. Those loans have funneled at least $10.8 billion back to the Japanese economy, the Reuters review found.

The loan requirements helped Sumitomo Corp and Japan Transport Engineering Co win three contracts worth more than $1.3 billion to supply 648 train cars for electrified railway and subway projects in the Philippines. A Sumitomo sister company, Sumitomo Mitsui Construction Co, won two contracts worth more than $1 billion to build rail expansion and station buildings.

A Sumitomo Corp spokesperson said that though the loans required the main contractor to be Japanese, they did not require the use of Japanese subcontractors. The spokesperson did not reply when asked if the company used local subcontractors for the Philippine rail project.

Japan Transport Engineering Co did not respond to questions.

Aid with hiring conditions robs local companies of business opportunities and eliminates chances for developing countries to build expertise in sustainable technologies, said Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. Eleven sources said the requirements contradict Paris Agreement clauses that urge parties to prioritize “technology transfer and capacity-building” for developing countries.

Asked by Reuters about Japan’s conditional loans, Kiyofumi Takashima, a spokesperson for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), said they carry very favorable terms for borrowers and usually involve local consultants, contractors and workers. Japanese consultants and contractors make “full efforts to transfer technology and skill” to local actors, he said.

JICA policy during the time period Reuters reviewed required that this type of loan carry an interest rate of 0.1% and a 40-year repayment period.

Conditional aid can carry additional costs because recipients can’t consider cheaper contractors. The OECD in 2001 recommended a halt to such requirements, citing its own 1991 study that found they can increase costs for recipient nations by up to 30%.

Saori Katada, a Japan foreign policy expert at the University of Southern California, cited academic research that has found that Japanese companies usually charge more than their counterparts from neighboring countries, like China, Korea or Taiwan.

“Maybe it’s a good quality, but it’s always very expensive,” Katada said.

Other countries frequently impose similar hiring requirements on grants. Reporters found that 18% of all climate-related grants reported to the OECD between 2015 and 2020 carried such requirements for all or part of the grant.

The European Union extended $4 billion in grants that required recipients to hire companies or agencies from specific countries. The United States reported $3 billion and Germany $2.7 billion in grants with similar strings attached.

A spokesperson from Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development said that their grants do not require hiring German companies and that there is no policy to favor national suppliers. However, they frequently require recipient countries to pay Germany’s international development agency, GIZ, for consulting and other technical services, the spokesperson said.

Nearly all of the European Union’s aid since 2021 has been free of such hiring requirements, an EU spokesperson said.

All aid, regardless of who gets the contracts to do the work, benefits recipient countries, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said. The spokesperson contested the notion that the U.S. had imposed grant conditions that funneled $3 billion back to its own economy. The aid might have required hiring of companies or agencies from other countries – not just the U.S. – said the spokesperson, who did not offer any specific examples.

OECD data lists U.S. companies, nonprofits or governmental agencies as the main entities receiving money from at least 80% of the U.S. conditional climate grants, totaling $2.4 billion.

This is “part of the same story of the financing going in the wrong direction,” Kyte said.

As vast parts of Florida sweltered in oppressive heat over the weekend, South Florida TV meteorologist Steve MacLaughlin criticized the state’s new legislation that deleted most references to climate change from state law, and urged his viewers to vote.

Meanhwhile there are signs like Monkeys ‘falling out of trees like apples’ in Mexico amid brutal heatwave. And there's Rare tornado hits Haiti, injuring more than 50 people and leaving hundreds homeless

Also this

Record-breaking heat in the Atlantic could fuel an unusually active hurricane season.

And this could affect the weather in other regions such as Europe, Africa, Central and South America.