UN warns of 'unprecedented' Afghan civilian deaths from Taliban offensives



Issued on: 26/07/2021 - 

  

Afghan men line up to apply for a passport in Kabul, with a rush of applications ahead of the final withdrawal of foreign troops from the country SAJJAD HUSSAIN AFP/File

Kabul (AFP)

The United Nations warned Monday that Afghanistan could see the highest number of civilian deaths in more than a decade if the Taliban's offensives across the country are not halted.

Violence has surged since early May when the insurgents cranked up operations to coincide with a final withdrawal of US-led foreign forces.

In a report released Monday documenting civilian casualties for the first half of 2021, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it expected figures to touch their highest single-year levels since the mission began reporting over a decade ago.


It also warned that Afghan troops and pro-government forces were responsible for a quarter of all civilian casualties.

"Unprecedented numbers of Afghan civilians will perish and be maimed this year if the increasing violence is not stemmed," UNAMA head Deborah Lyons said in a statement released with the report.

"I implore the Taliban and Afghan leaders to take heed to the conflict's grim and chilling trajectory and its devastating impact on civilians."

During the first half of 2021, some 1,659 civilians were killed and another 3,254 wounded -- a 47 percent increase compared with the same period last year, the UNAMA report said.

The rise in civilian casualties was particularly sharp in May and June -- the initial period of the Taliban's current offensives -- with 783 civilians killed and 1,609 wounded, it added.

"Particularly shocking and of deep concern is that women, boys and girls made up of close to half of all civilian casualties," the report said.

UNAMA blamed anti-government elements for 64 percent of civilian casualties -- including some 40 percent caused by the Taliban and nearly nine percent by the jihadist Islamic State group.

About 16 percent of casualties were caused by "undetermined" anti-government elements.

But Afghan troops and pro-government forces were responsible for 25 percent, it said.

UNAMA said about 11 percent of casualties were caused by "crossfire" and the responsible parties could not be determined.

The Taliban's ongoing assault has seen the insurgents capture half of Afghanistan's districts and border crossings as well as encircle several provincial capitals.

The fighting is largely in the rugged countryside, where government forces and insurgents clash daily.

UNAMA also noted a resurgence of sectarian attacks against the country's Shiite Hazara community, resulting in 143 deaths.

© 2021 AFP

Residential schools: How the U.S. and Canada share a troubling history
Alexander Panetta 

© U.S. Library of Congress Navajo boy Tom Torlino, left, is shown when he entered the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1882. On the right is a photo of him as he appeared three years later. The U.S. cabinet minister who leads the federal department…

A member of the U.S. federal cabinet says she wept when she heard news from Canada about what are believed to be unmarked burial sites of children's remains near a former residential school.

The news made Deb Haaland think of her own Pueblo ancestors such as her grandmother, who as a girl was taken from her family, put on a train and placed in the American version of a residential school for five years.

After crying, Haaland took action.

The New Mexico politician now leads the federal department that ran U.S. assimilation schools — she's the first Indigenous person to do so.

And she's launched an investigation into their legacy.

© Brian Snyder/Reuters U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in the first Indigenous person to run the department that operated U.S. assimilation schools.

In a memo last month to the Department of the Interior, she said the news from Canada should prompt a reflection on what Americans refer to as native boarding schools.


She requested a report by next year on the schools, their cemeteries and on the possibility of finding unidentified remains.

"I know that this process will be painful. It won't undo the heartbreak and loss we feel," she said in a speech announcing the initiative.

"But only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future we're all proud to embrace."

It's only fitting that movements to assess the legacy of assimilation schools in both Canada and the U.S. should occur simultaneously.

That's because they've been intertwined from the start. That point was made several years ago in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission report.
2 countries with a shared history

An architect of Canada's residential schools policy, in a 1879 paper, looked at boarding schools just established in the U.S. and urged Canada to create similar ones.

On the basis of that paper from Nicholas Davin, Canada's federal government opened three such schools, starting in 1883 in the future province of Saskatchewan.

Both countries borrowed ideas from reformatories being constructed in Europe for children of the urban poor, said the Truth and Reconciliation report.

Haaland's great-grandfather was taken to the institution that most influenced Canada's program: the now-defunct Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

The founder of that school, army officer Richard Pratt, infamously voiced the philosophy behind his program: "Kill the Indian [in him] … and save the man," meaning Indigenous peoples should be assimilated, not exterminated.

That philosophy inflicted waves of trauma on families.
'Our house was a battleground'

Warren Petoskey, a Lakota and Odawa man from Michigan, said one generation of children would be separated from their parents, and it affected their own parenting of the next generation.

He said his father wouldn't talk about his experiences at a boarding school — just like his grandfather before him refused to.

Petoskey said his aunt was slapped in the face by a teacher for speaking her mother tongue, and another woman he knows was punched and suffered lifelong damage to her jaw.

His aunt also described how a janitor would sexually abuse female students, one of them a member of his family he says was scarred for life.

"I never could understand growing up why our family was so dysfunctional," said Petoskey, 76.

"Our house was a battleground."

Petoskey has spent a lifetime trying to learn his ancestral language, Anishinaabe, which his father refused to teach him.
Taught to loathe own culture

Students were taught to hate their own culture.

It's not just that lessons presented a rose-tinted version of American history that glossed over uncomfortable details, like Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence — which talks about all men being created equal and then refers to Indigenous peoples as "merciless Indian savages."

It was occasionally rendered more explicit.

In South Dakota, James Cadwell recalls that at his church-run boarding school, decades ago, students were assigned to read books that referred to Indigenous peoples as savages.

"I've often thought, as I've gotten older, 'How detrimental was that to me as a young man?' " Cadwell said in an interview.

Then there were rumours, Petoskey said, about children who died while at the schools and were quietly buried.
Re-examining burial sites

A project is underway to discover whether there were any deaths covered up at the Michigan school Petoskey's father attended, the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School.

The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe is working with archeological researchers to better understand the history of the property that once housed the school, which operated from 1893 to 1934

.

© Matt Rourke/The Associated Press Ione Quigley, the Rosebud Sioux's historic preservation officer, attends a ceremony in Carlisle, Pa., on July 14, where children buried at a boarding school were disinterred.

The official record shows several children died while attending the school. Yet the tribe's own research raises broader questions: there's no record for 227 students who were enrolled there ever returning home.

Frank Cloutier, a spokesman for the tribe, said there are several possible explanations: children might have run away, documents might have been lost or perhaps something more sinister occurred.

"We don't want to jump to those conclusions," said Cloutier.

"We're not naive in thinking that there won't be any discoveries. But we want to handle this methodically and with some reverence and respect."

He said the news headlines from Canada helped raise awareness of the issue.
Remains being brought home

Ceremonies to repatriate the remains of children were already underway at the native boarding school founded by Pratt, Pennsylvania's Carlisle school.

Lauren Peters brought home the body of her great-aunt, Sophia Tetoff.

The Unangax̂ girl was taken from Alaska and spent five years at the school between 1901 and 1906, although, Peters said, she was rarely in a classroom and was mostly loaned out as a domestic worker.

The girl contracted tuberculosis and died. On her tombstone at the school, her name was misspelled and her tribe was misidentified.

This month, Peters saw to it that her relative was buried at home, in Alaska, in the same cemetery as her family, by a church on St. Paul Island.

She said she was deeply moved during the ceremony.

Peters, a doctoral student in Native American studies at the University of California, credits a group of schoolchildren for starting the repatriation project.

She said the Rosebud Sioux students were struck by the cemetery they saw when they stopped during a field trip at the site of the Pennsylvania school, which closed in 1918.

"Out of the mouths of babes — they said: 'Why are they still here? Why can't we take them home?' " Peters said.

"And that really started the process with the [U.S.] army," which now owns the site. Relatives can file paperwork to move remains.

Peters said Americans should brace for news similar to Canada's about undocumented deaths. In fact, she said: "I think it's going to be way worse," because there were many more Indigenous boarding schools in the U.S., more than 500 in all.
What will U.S. inquiries find?

The author of a book on the history of American Indigenous boarding schools said he's not certain the U.S. will find as many unmarked graves as appears to be the case in Canada.

David Wallace Adams said the U.S. schools, mostly government-run, were subject to more frequent inspections than the mostly church-run institutions in Canada.

"It remains to be seen," he said in an interview.

Yet his book, Education For Extinction, chronicles in detail the coercion, abuse and deaths that did occur in these U.S. schools.

By 1926, more than 80 per cent of Indigenous school-age children were attending boarding schools in the U.S., Adams wrote.

The system was scathingly criticized in a 1928 think-tank report and again in a congressional study led by Sen. Robert Kennedy published after his death.

"We are shocked at what we discovered," said the 1969 report, Indian Education: A National Tragedy, A National Challenge.

"Others before us were shocked. They recommended and made changes. Others after us will likely be shocked."

It called the treatment of Indigenous peoples a stain on the national conscience.

Around the same time, in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson gave a speech titled The Forgotten American.

He demanded an end to assimilationist policies and a shift toward self-determination. Johnson earmarked funds for community-driven curricula. A landmark 1975 law then shifted authority for government-run schools to the tribes.
The system today

The Department of the Interior still runs four off-reserve boarding schools today in Oklahoma, California, Oregon and South Dakota.

Haaland said these remaining schools bear little resemblance to their historical antecedents.

Once, children were beaten for speaking their ancestral language.

"Now it's encouraged," Haaland told a Washington Post podcast.

"[Enrolment is also] voluntary."

© Rick Bowmer/The Associated Press U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland attends a news conference at Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in April.

Cadwell witnessed a culture shift first-hand.

He recalls being a traumatized student, over a half-century ago, at a church-run boarding school in South Dakota.

He would cry himself to sleep during thunderstorms, with nobody to console him.

He recalls an alcoholic priest who drank while driving kids around — the priest told them to keep quiet about his drinking,and let them smoke cigarettes.

He later became a teacher at the same school, renamed Crow Creek Tribal School. Now semi-retired, Cadwell has taught industrial arts, the Dakota language, cultural programs and the planting of traditional crops like turnips.

"I don't remember digging turnips [as a student]. I don't remember going to dances," he said in an interview.

"If you fell and hurt yourself, the nurturing was not there at all. There was no nurturing."

Moldova's lavender flourishes after post-Soviet decline

A growing number of farmers in Moldova are fuelling a resurgence in lavender, the cultivation of which collapsed along with the Soviet Union SERGEI GAPON AFP/File

Valea -Trestieni (Moldova) (AFP)

Issued on: 26/07/2021 

Young couples and families pose for glamour shots as the sun lowers over Alexei Cazac's sprawling field of lavender outside the capital of Moldova.

"Once, in the first year the lavender was blooming, we came and the entire field was just filled with people," the 40-year-old farmer tells AFP on a recent visit.

"It's like the set of a photo shoot. We didn't plan it this way," he says.

Cazac, who planted his first bushels in 2015, is among a growing cohort of farmers in Moldova fuelling a resurgence in the aromatic herb, whose cultivation collapsed along with the Soviet Union.

The comeback in the small country bordering Romania has garnered attention not just from locals hungry for likes on social media, but also from global cosmetic firms headquartered in western Europe.

"After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the industry was forgotten," says Alexandru Badarau, president of the Lavender Growers Association.

"It collapsed precisely because our connection was severed with Moscow, where most of the essential oils produced in Moldova were exported," he tells AFP.

"We're working hard to revive it."

Around five or six newcomers to the industry are planting rows of the herb every year, he says, a trend which saw Moldova's lavender oil production double in 2021 to 20 tonnes compared to twenty years ago.

But that is still a far cry from 1989, when the country produced 180 tonnes.

Badarau's association says members export 99 percent of their oil to the European Union, specifically Germany, and to two other well-known producers: France and Bulgaria.

The oil is widely used in cosmetics and its aromas are hailed for their relaxing and soothing qualities that some believe counteract anxiety and insomnia.

Producers in Moldova say Bulgaria, which was also under the Iron Curtain, has benefitted greatly from the European Union after it became a member in 2007.

But where Bulgaria excels in quantity, Moldova trumps it in quality, they say.

The local variety yields less oil, concedes Nicu Ulinici, who inherited his father's farm and harvested his first bushels in 2014.#photo1

"But it's higher quality," he says. Its aroma is "more pleasant, softer."

For Badarau, lavender has won over growers in Moldova owing to its success in dry climates. This, he believes, will help farmers mitigate "risks associated with climate change."

Indeed, multinational cosmetics firm Weleda, which began sourcing Moldovan lavender in 2005, has described the country as "perfect" for the herb.

French fragrance company Mane is another major brand in Moldova whose subsidiary works in cultivation and production of essential oils.

Still, recent experience shows the future isn't guaranteed to be rosy.

The United States Agency for International Development said in 2017 that Moldova was still exposed to climate risks, with likely "adverse effects" for growers.

It said the industry had fluctuating economic success in one of the poorest countries to emerge from the Soviet collapse, with Moldova's market share still trailing far behind essential oil majors like Turkey and China.

Pointing to climate threats, the United Nations Development Programme said Moldovan farmers last year harvested up to 50 percent fewer bushels than in 2019, resulting from tepid spring temperatures and a summer drought.

The report also noted that demand for essential oils dipped during the coronavirus pandemic.

But producers in Moldova aren't fazed.

Badarau says his association has registered the brand Essential Oils of Moldova to promote products abroad, and that it was aiming for certification from an international agricultural quality assurance group.

This "is of great concern to the end consumer," he says.

In the meantime, there's money to be made from visitors drawn to the picturesque fields.

Cazac, who has over 60 acres of lavender, says he charges visitors the equivalent of about $3 to meander through his purple bushels.

On the horizon, he sees plenty of room for expansion.

"Moldova is producing much less than it could," he says.

"But first we need to prove we're producing a quality product at international standards."

© 2021 AFP

Iceland, home to world's most expensive feather treasure

Every summer in Iceland, there's a hunt for elusive eiderdown, used to make some of the world's best duvets and quilts Jeremie RICHARD AFP

Stykkisholmur (Iceland) (AFP)

Issued on: 26/07/2021 -

On a remote island in Breidafjordur Bay off the west coast of Iceland, a thousand-year-old harvest takes place -- the hunt for elusive eiderdown, used to make some of the world's best duvets and quilts.

The handpicked down sells for thousands of euros (dollars) a kilo, catering to those looking for exclusive products.

Every summer, nearly 400 Icelandic farmers comb through hollow surfaces in the rock, on the sand or in the tall grass to unearth a few handfuls of the grey feathers of this polar duck.

From May onwards, the eider comes to nest in sparsely populated marine landscapes around much of Iceland's coast where there is seaweed to feed its ducklings.

"When there are eggs, we only take a part of the down. And when the eider has already left the nest, we take everything," Erla Fridriksdottir, head of King Eider, one of the country's main exporters, told AFP.#photo1

The eider, a sea duck from the subarctic oceans, leaves a trail behind consisting of a natural treasure: one of the warmest natural fibres on the planet, both light and highly insulating.

The female, with her dark brown plumage with black stripes -- similar to that of a mallard but slightly larger -- releases the down from her breast and lines her nest with it to insulate it during incubation.

- Meticulous cleaning -

About 60 nests are needed to produce one kilo of down -- a quilt needs between 600 and 1,600 grams, depending on the quality chosen.

Worldwide, the annual harvest of eiderdown is no more than four tonnes, three quarters of which comes from Iceland, by far the world's largest producer, ahead of Canada and other countries bordering the Arctic.

There are five Icelandic companies exporting eiderdown, according to the Eider Farming Association, but around 15 companies in total involved in some capacity in its production.

On the island of Bjarneyjar, the tradition of searching for abandoned nests has been passed down for generations.#photo2

The local practice is said to have started in Iceland as Vikings from Norway settled on the island at the end of the 9th century.

Since 1847, the eider has been fully protected in Iceland, as hunting and picking its eggs are prohibited.

But it still faces dangers, as predators such as seagulls, crows, eagles, minks and foxes eat the sea ducks or their eggs.

"We feel that the ducks like to have their nests close to us, where we are staying," Jon Fridriksson, Erla's brother, told AFP, adding that it could be a strategy to keep predators at bay.#photo3

Once harvested, the down is dried in the open air so it doesn't mould.

Then Fridriksdottir's employees begin the first stage of sterilising and cleaning the down in a huge oven at a temperature of 120 degrees Celsius for eight hours.

"When the down comes in here, it's mostly going to be full of grass, eggshells and all kinds of things from the ocean… and we put it in the oven to kill off any organism and it (the high temperature) also makes the grass brittle," Pall Jonsson, in charge of the machines at the workshop in the nearby town of Stykkisholmur, told AFP.

In a second step, rotating machines remove other dirt from the down by pressing it against a thin wire mesh.

As a last touch, expert hands -- which no technology has been able to replace for this process so far -- do another thorough cleaning.#photo4

Even for the most experienced, it takes four to five hours to clean out a kilo of down by hand.

Finally, the down feathers are washed with water and disinfected, again by hand, before being wrung out and dried.

- 4,000-euro blankets -

While world famous, eiderdown production is a drop in the bucket of the world's total down production, estimated at 175,000 tonnes per year, according to the International Down and Feather Bureau.

According to Icelandic law, eiderdown must pass strict quality controls before being sold, ensuring cleanliness, smell, colour and consistency.#photo5

"You have to be able to pick up a 40-50 gram package between two fingers and if it remains intact and does not fall out, then the down is of good quality," Asgeir Jonsson, one of the inspectors, explains.

In addition to its rarity, the production of eiderdown -- from its manual collection to its rigorous cleaning -- helps explain its high price.

A simple duvet containing 800 grams of feathers is sold for about 640,000 Icelandic kronur (4,350 euros, $5,116).#photo6

The customers "are often nature lovers and people who care about the environment," Fridriksdottir said.

"It is the only one that is harvested, the other down is often a by-product of the food industry" added Fridriksdottir, whose small business mostly ships to Germany and Japan.

© 2021 AFP

'Generator' Turns Plastic Trash Into Edible Protein

Two U.S. scientists have won a 1 million euro ($1.18 million) prize for creating a food generator concept that turns plastics into protein.

© Carl Court/Getty Images Japan alone produces around 10 million tons of plastic each year, and three-quarters of it is discarded within 12 months. A new discovery could use microbes to turn it all into food.

Georgina Jadikovskaall, Zenger News

The 2021 Future Insight Prize went to Ting Lu, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Stephen Techtmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, for their project. It uses microbes to degrade plastic waste and convert it into food.

The German science and technology company Merck sponsors the prize. Global plastics production totaled 368 million metric tons in 2019. The only decline in the past 60 years came because the COVID-19 pandemic choked production of goods worldwide as factories sputtered and shipping slowed down.

At least 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world's oceans every year, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

"The winners of this year's Future Insight Prize have created a ground-breaking technology with the potential to generate a safe and sustainable source of food, while reducing the environmental harms associated with plastic waste and traditional agricultural methods," said Belen Garijo, Merck CEO and chair of the executive board.

"We congratulate Ting Lu and Stephen Techtmann for their promising research and hope that the Future Insight Prize will help to accelerate their efforts," he said.

© Statista Global plastics production totaled 368 million metric tons in 2019. Only the COVID-19 epidemic has been able to slow it down. Statista

The two scientists, who call their project a food "generator," focused on finding an efficient, economical and versatile technology that finds a use for plastics that are at the end of their useful life and would otherwise end up in landfills or oceans.

The resulting foods "contain all the required nutrition, are nontoxic, provide health benefits and additionally allow for personalization needs," according to Merck.

The scientists learned to exploit synthetically altered microbes, programming them genetically to convert waste into food.

  Ting Lu, professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, shared the 2021 Future Insight Prize with his research partner Stephen Techtmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, for their technique that converts plastic trash into edible protein. Merck KGaA/Zenger

Lu calls it "microbial synthetic biology." He said "engineered gene circuits" can advance a wide range of biotechnology solutions to future global problems.

"Environmental microbes are capable of catalyzing a wide array of chemical reactions, many of which may have industrial applications," said Techtmann. "My lab studies how complex microbial communities can cooperate to perform functions of industrial interest."

The two scientists say their joint research will allow them "to take the plastic waste generated in the world and turn it into something valuable: food and fuel."

The first winners of the Future Insight Prize, established in 2019, were Pardis Sabeti from Harvard University and James Crowe from Vanderbilt University, for research on how to detect and treat pandemic infectious diseases.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

Opinion: Small farms are the future of food systems

Small-scale farmers can play a crucial role in creating sustainable food systems. But more investment is needed, writes Sabrina Elba, UN Goodwill Ambassador for the International Fund for Agricultural Development.



Two years ago, my husband Idris and I traveled to Sierra Leone and met an amazing group of people. Rural men and women who had survived civil war, Ebola, and were eager to get on with their lives. The optimism in the air was palpable and the future seemed bright. Of course, back then we had no idea a pandemic was about to hit.

But the truth is even before COVID-19 began sweeping across the continent, African nations had for months been facing particularly severe difficulties. Countries across southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, were suffering the worst drought in decades, while plagues of locusts in East Africa, the worst in 70 years, had devastated crops, exacerbating existing poverty and threatening food supplies.

Our visit to Sierra Leone taught me something — namely that people are resilient. Whether it is wars, or natural disasters or a horrifying virus, people can rise up from just about anything if they get the right support.

It was on that same trip that I learned about the power of agriculture. How it is the linchpin of communities and how it spurs economic and social development. And it was in Sierra Leone that I learned that if we want to empower women and young people, and truly care for our land and our planet — we need to care about the people who plant the seeds around us, the world's smallholder farmers. They are the custodians of our planet.
Small in size, but large impact

Small farms make a huge contribution to global food security, producing at least 30% of global food. In sub-Saharan Africa, the role of small-scale farms is even more significant, accounting for 80% of the food produced. Globally, around 500 million small-scale farms support the livelihoods of more than two billion people.

Sabrina Elba works for the International Fund for Agricultural Development

Small farms actually have higher crop yields than larger farms, when the landscape conditions are similar. They also have much more biodiversity — not only of crops, but also more insect and animal life along the edges of the fields. Yet many small-scale producers live in climate "vulnerability hotspots" — if they aren't supported to adapt to the impacts of climate change, it will have a devastating impact on rural communities and the global food systems of which they are the backbone.

Small-scale agriculture is facing multiple challenges, including the need to feed a growing population on diminishing yields caused by the degradation of arable land, natural resources and biodiversity. Continued global temperature rises could cut crop yields by more than 25%, while more frequent extreme weather events will have devastating effects on farmers' land, livelihoods and food security.

We need to build the adaptive capacity of rural women and men to enable them to tackle our climate emergency and ensure Africa's long and short-term stability and progress.


Watch video03:08 Young farmers change the face of Zimbabwe's agriculture

Investing in the future

With the right kind of support, Africa has the ability to feed the world. Progress in African agriculture has been impressive — production is up 160%over the past 30 years, far above the global average of 100%. Yet there is vast room for improvement. Only 1.7% of climate finance goes to small farms. This is a tiny fraction of the billions needed to build greater resilience in both farming practices and food chains.

Without a safe and secure food system, without crop biodiversity and pollinators, we could all face food scarcity. This year, Germany, the UK and other governments have the opportunity to prevent a further hunger crisis by increasing their funding to sustainable agriculture through the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). With $1.55 billion (€1.32 billion), the IFAD can double its impact by 2030 and help more rural communities recover from the pandemic and rebuild their lives.

If countries act now and scale up their climate finance and food security commitments with a focus on small-scale producers, they are investing in the farms and food of the future. If they do not act, we will face more, and more frequent crises, in the years ahead.

Sabrina Elba is a model, activist and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Key UN climate science talks open amid floods, fires


Issued on: 26/07/2021 - 

Experts say the IPCC climate science report is "going to be a wake-up call" 

Robyn Beck AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Nearly 200 nations start online negotiations Monday to validate a UN science report that will anchor autumn summits charged with preventing climate catastrophe on a planetary scale.

Record-smashing heatwaves, floods and drought across three continents in recent weeks, all amplified by global warming, make the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment more than timely.

"It's going to be a wake-up call, there's no doubt about that," said Richard Black, founder and senior associate of the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.


The report, he noted, comes only weeks ahead of a UN General Assembly, a G20 summit, and the 197-nation COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The world is a different place since the IPCC's last comprehensive assessment in 2014 of global heating, past and future.

Lingering doubts that warming was gathering pace or almost entirely human in origin, along with the falsely reassuring notion that climate impacts are tomorrow's problem, have since evaporated in the haze of deadly heatwaves and fires.

Another milestone since the last IPCC tome: the Paris Agreement has been adopted, with a collective promise to cap the planet's rising surface temperature at "well below" two degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) above late-19th century levels.

Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels, methane leaks and agriculture has driven up the thermometer 1.1 degrees Celsius so far, and emissions are rising sharply again after a brief, Covid-imposed interlude, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The 2015 treaty also features an aspirational limit on warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, with many parties no doubt assuming this goal could be safely ignored.

But an IPCC special report in 2018 showed how much more devastating an extra 2 degrees Celsius would be, for humanity and the planet.#photo1

- Low-balling the danger -

"1.5 Celsius became the de facto target" -- and proof of the IPCC's influence in shaping global policy, IPCC lead author and Maynooth University professor Peter Thorne told AFP.

Scientists have calculated that greenhouse gas emissions must decline 50 percent by 2030, and be phased out entirely by 2050 to stay within range of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A third sea change over the last seven years is in the science itself.

"Today we have better climate projection models, and longer observations with a much clearer signal of climate change," climatologist Robert Vautard, also an IPCC lead author and director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, told AFP.

Arguably the biggest breakthrough is so-called attribution studies, which for the first time allow scientists to rapidly quantify the extent to which climate change has boosted an extreme weather event's intensity or likelihood.

For example, within days of the deadly "heat dome" that scorched Canada and the western US last month, the World Weather Attribution consortium calculated that the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without manmade warming.

But after-the-fact analysis is not the same as foresight, and the IPCC -- set up in 1988 to inform UN climate negotiations -- has been criticised by some for low-balling the danger, a pattern that Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes has called "erring on the side of least drama".

- 'Transformational change' -

From Monday, representatives from 195 nations, with lead scientists at their elbow, will vet a 20 to 30-page "summary for policymakers" line by line, word by word.

The virtual meeting for this first instalment -- covering physical science -- of the three-part report will take two weeks rather than the usual one, with the document's release slated for August 9.

Part two of the report, to be published in February 2022, covers impacts.

A leaked draft obtained by AFP warns that climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades even if planet-warming carbon pollution is tamed, and calls for "transformational change" lest future generations face far worse.

Part three, to be unveiled the following month, examines solutions for reducing emissions.#photo2

Based almost entirely on published research, the report under review this week will likely forecast -- even under optimistic scenarios -- a temporary "overshoot" of the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

There will also be a new focus on so-called "low-probability, high-risk" events, such as the irreversible melting of ice sheets that could lift sea levels by metres, and the decay of permafrost laded with greenhouse gases.

"Feedbacks which amplify change are stronger than we thought and we may be approaching some tipping point," said Tim Lenton, Director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.

© 2021 AFP

London, UK: Thunderstorms cause flash flooding, submerging roads and some train stations

Severe thunderstorms caused flash flooding across London on Sunday afternoon, sparking major transport delays.

© Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images Thunderstorms flooded roads and parts of the Underground rail system in London on Sunday, July 25.

London Metropolitan Police said the flooding had caused "severe disruption" on the North Circular Road, one of the major roads surrounding central London.

Several London Underground train stations were heavily flooded, disrupting services.


The "significant flooding" affected services across the transport network," a Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson said in a statement emailed to CNN.

Multiple stations on the rail network known as the Tube were closed, according to the TfL website.

"With multiple bus routes on diversion and some Tube and rail services affected and stations closed, we strongly advise that customers check for the latest information before they travel to ensure they have a safe and smooth journey," the TfL spokesperson said.

Two London-area hospitals, Newham University Hospital and Whipps Cross University Hospital, were affected by the rains.

Video: Passengers trapped inside submerged subway as China battles deadly floods (CNN)

A spokesperson for Barts Health NHS Trust told CNN in a statement that both hospitals are experiencing operational issues due to the heavy rainfall.

"We are working closely with our local partners to resolve the issues and maintain patient care and -- while services remain available for people in an emergency -- patients are asked to attend alternative hospitals where they can, to help us put solutions in place as quickly as possible," the spokesperson said.

In the Worcester Park area, social media video emerged of cars stuck in the floodwaters and rescue boats working in the area.

The London Fire Brigade said in a tweet that it had received hundreds of calls reporting flooding across London.

"We have now taken more than 600 calls to flooding incidents, including flooding to roads & properties, reports of ceilings collapsing & vehicles stuck in water. Crews used specialist water rescue equipment to rescue five people from a car stuck in flood water in #WorcesterPark," the brigade said.

CNN meteorologist Gene Norman said that the storms that erupted over London and southern England on Sunday came on the heels of record heat on Friday.

"That very warm air collided with an area of low pressure near northern France. This resulted the slow-moving storms the produced the deluges and prompted the UK Met Service to issue an Amber alert for storms with 75 to 100 millimeters (3 to 4 inches) of rain expected," he said. "A half-dozen flood warnings remain in effect as runoff causes rivers to rise. The heaviest of the rain should move out by Monday morning."

Norman said unofficial reports estimated some locations around London received 60-92 millimeters (2.3 to 3.6 inches) of rain in an hour on Sunday.

"The tell-tale signature of this kind of flooding is that the storms formed and moved repeatedly over the same areas, basically, raining faster than it can drain," he said.

© Victoria Jones/PA Images/Getty Images A pedestrian walks through a flooded area in St James's Park in central London on Sunday.

© Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images A car is pushed through floodwaters in London's Nine Elms district.

Extreme weather smashes records as scientists convene for UN climate talks




Issued on: 26/07/2021 -
Text by: NEWS WIRES|

Video by: Robert PARSONS

Nearly 200 nations start online negotiations Monday to validate a UN science report that will anchor autumn summits charged with preventing climate catastrophe on a planetary scale.

Record-smashing heatwaves, floods and drought across three continents in recent weeks, all amplified by global warming, make the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment more than timely.

"It's going to be a wake-up call, there's no doubt about that," said Richard Black, founder and senior associate of the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

The report, he noted, comes only weeks ahead of a UN General Assembly, a G20 summit, and the 197-nation COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The world is a different place since the IPCC's last comprehensive assessment in 2014 of global heating, past and future.

Lingering doubts that warming was gathering pace or almost entirely human in origin, along with the falsely reassuring notion that climate impacts are tomorrow's problem, have since evaporated in the haze of deadly heatwaves and fires.

Another milestone since the last IPCC tome: the Paris Agreement has been adopted, with a collective promise to cap the planet's rising surface temperature at "well below" two degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) above late-19th century levels.

Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels, methane leaks and agriculture has driven up the thermometer 1.1 degrees Celsius so far, and emissions are rising sharply again after a brief, Covid-imposed interlude, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The 2015 treaty also features an aspirational limit on warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, with many parties no doubt assuming this goal could be safely ignored.

But an IPCC special report in 2018 showed how much more devastating an extra 2 degrees Celsius would be, for humanity and the planet.

Low-balling the danger

"1.5 Celsius became the de facto target" -- and proof of the IPCC's influence in shaping global policy, IPCC lead author and Maynooth University professor Peter Thorne told AFP.

Scientists have calculated that greenhouse gas emissions must decline 50 percent by 2030, and be phased out entirely by 2050 to stay within range of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A third sea change over the last seven years is in the science itself.

"Today we have better climate projection models, and longer observations with a much clearer signal of climate change," climatologist Robert Vautard, also an IPCC lead author and director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, told AFP.

Arguably the biggest breakthrough is so-called attribution studies, which for the first time allow scientists to rapidly quantify the extent to which climate change has boosted an extreme weather event's intensity or likelihood.

For example, within days of the deadly "heat dome" that scorched Canada and the western US last month, the World Weather Attribution consortium calculated that the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without manmade warming.

But after-the-fact analysis is not the same as foresight, and the IPCC -- set up in 1988 to inform UN climate negotiations -- has been criticised by some for low-balling the danger, a pattern that Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes has called "erring on the side of least drama".

'Transformational change'

From Monday, representatives from 195 nations, with lead scientists at their elbow, will vet a 20 to 30-page "summary for policymakers" line by line, word by word.

The virtual meeting for this first instalment -- covering physical science -- of the three-part report will take two weeks rather than the usual one, with the document's release slated for August 9.

Part two of the report, to be published in February 2022, covers impacts.

A leaked draft obtained by AFP warns that climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades even if planet-warming carbon pollution is tamed, and calls for "transformational change" lest future generations face far worse.

Part three, to be unveiled the following month, examines solutions for reducing emissions.

Based almost entirely on published research, the report under review this week will likely forecast -- even under optimistic scenarios -- a temporary "overshoot" of the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

There will also be a new focus on so-called "low-probability, high-risk" events, such as the irreversible melting of ice sheets that could lift sea levels by metres, and the decay of permafrost laded with greenhouse gases.

"Feedbacks which amplify change are stronger than we thought and we may be approaching some tipping point," said Tim Lenton, Director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.

(AFP)

Scientists fear for wildlife in Ontario's boreal forest as wildfires get more frequent and intense
Logan Turner 

© Liam Cowan/WCS Canada More intense, frequent wildfires driven by climate change could have serious implications for the wildlife of northern Ontario's boreal forest, including the wolverine, a threatened species in the province, says wildlife researcher Matt…

As wildfires continue to burn through northern Ontario's great expanse of boreal forest, smothering the deep greens and blues of the land, experts are keeping an eye on the hundreds of animal species living within.

Although the 2021 fire season has already been one of the worst in the past decade, this year's fires aren't the most worrying — it's those yet to come.

"Animals are adapted to wildfire. Some animals head to the water and others escape ahead of the fire," said Connie O'Connor, director of the Ontario Northern Boreal Program for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) of Canada.

But as summers in northwestern Ontario become warmer and drier — something O'Connor and others have linked to climate change — fires are becoming more frequent, larger, hotter and more intense.

"My fear as a wildlife scientist is that these fires are going to get to the stage where it is too much for animals' natural adaptations to fire to handle any more, that it's going to kind of overwhelm them."
Water

O'Connor, an aquatic scientist by training, said many people don't really think about the relationship between fish and forest fires, but fish have certain adaptations to deal with fires, like naturally seeking in deeper, cooler places in the water systems.

"The ash that goes into the water, in the long term, it can even be a benefit to fish because it can increase the nutrients in the water for little aquatic bugs and stuff to grow."

But as industrial activities and the construction of new roads and dams continue to reshape parts of the boreal forest, and hotter temperatures possibly decrease water levels, O'Connor said, there could be increased "acute fish kills." That's because the same waterways and deep areas the fish have historically relied on would cease to exist, she said.

Then, firefighting efforts could harm fish species, "because the actual fire retardants can be toxic for them and those foam fire suppressants on top of water can block the oxygen."
Land

Before his work as a wildfire researcher, Matt Scrafford was a wildland firefighter on the front lines of the fires.

"We would often see animals running from these fires," he said. "I mean, we've had snowshoe hares running basically over top of us, or you'd see deer running, or chipmunks or squirrels … you'd see them fleeing the fires."

Mobile land species can often get out of the way of the fires, Scrafford said, but the problem is these forest fires are massive and changing the entire composition of landscapes.

"There's really not a lot of places for these animals to go, in the sense that these systems are filled up with animals to begin with, and there's not vacant territories everywhere for these animals to get pushed out."

Add in the disturbances to the boreal forest caused by forestry, mining and other human activity, and "you just get really high levels of disturbance," Scrafford added. That would create more competition for limited resources, and some species will inevitably suffer as a result.

The researcher points to the elusive species he studies: the wolverine, a threatened species in Ontario.

"We see so many instances of wolverines with missing eyes, and missing ears and missing sides of their skull … they really beat each other up," said Scrafford. "It's because there's fierce competition for habitat and there's fierce competition for the females."

Wolverines are territorial, and while they have large "home ranges," he said, all the disturbances could pit the few hundred wolverines against one another for disappearing habitats.

While he hasn't seen that happen yet, it's something Scrafford is keeping a close eye on as his research continues.

"There's definitely a relationship between this increased frequency of forest fires, and the severity of these fires and some negative effects on the wolverines."
Air

Even some of the most mobile of animals — birds — will be affected by the increasingly intense and frequent wildfires, said Claire Farrell, an associate conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

There is the natural forest fire regime, Farrell explained, where forest fires create patches of burned areas that later regrow.

"When you picture the forest, it's actually a mosaic of different ages of forests, different types of forest interspersed with lakes and wetlands. Because that mosaic is so different, different species of birds rely on those patches of habitat."

Some of Farrell's previous research focused on the nightjar, a family of birds that was previously considered to be one of Ontario's fastest declining species. She said nightjars actually use the large, open burn patches created by forest fires to fly around and catch large insects.

"As climate change is increasing the intensity and severity of forest fires, theoretically speaking, that would create more burned open stands for them, which they use to catch a lot of insect prey."

However, she warned that many other bird species, like the ovenbird, rely on old growth forest patches as habitat, and those areas could decrease with growing wildfires.

Farrell said people in northern First Nations have reported seeing new species shifting their ranges as they adapt to or find new habitats, and have stopped seeing some species that were always known to be there.

Echoing O'Connor and Scrafford, Farrell said there are still a lot of unknowns about how climate change, wildfires and other human-caused disturbances will cumulatively affect the wildlife of northern Ontario's boreal forest.

"That's something that we're keeping an eye on," she added.