Russia's growing ties to Syria amid military backing

TACKY KITSCH

Souvenirs showing pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a Damascus shop illustrate the deep ties between the two allies, after Moscow intervened to shore up Assad in Syria's civil war - 

LOUAI BESHARA
Agence France-Presse


February 28, 2022 — Damascus (AFP)

Russia, which invaded Ukraine last week, has honed its military know-how and sharpened its tactics after intervening over six years ago in Syria to shore up key ally President Bashar al-Assad.

The launch of Russia's military intervention in Syria marked a turning point in Assad's fortunes, and has enabled Moscow to deepen its military, economic and cultural ties with the regime.

Since pro-democracy groups first sought Assad's ouster in 2011, more than 500,000 people have been killed and the relentless conflict has triggered a wave of millions of refugees across the Middle East and Europe.

- Military presence -

In 2015, Russia began air strikes in Syria to support Assad's struggling troops.

It helped pro-regime forces wrest back lost territory in a series of victories against rebels and jihadists involving deadly bombardments and massive destruction.

More than 63,000 Russian military personnel have deployed to Syria, Moscow says.

It is unclear how many are currently stationed there.
Image



In February Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held talks with Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu who also inspected Moscow's Hmeimin air base in western Syria

Moscow has two military bases in Syria: the aerodrome in Hmeimim in the northwest and the naval port of Tartus, further south.

They are protected by S-300 and S-400 air missile defence systems.

Russia rules the skies across most of the war-torn country and the role of its air force there has been celebrated at home.

Bomber planes such as the Tu-22 and Tu-160 have flown from Russia to hit targets in Syria.

Russian warships and submarines have also played a prominent role backing Moscow's bombing campaign by firing missiles at Islamic State group targets from the Mediterranean.

Most of Russia's latest weapon systems have been tested in Syria, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in August, according to Russia's TASS news agency.

Officials and observers point out the presence of a "shadow army" of Russian mercenaries in Syria, including those working for private military company Wagner, which also deployed fighters in Ukraine in past months.

- Economic footprint -

Six years on, the Kremlin benefits from an outsized role in Syria's economy owing to its political and military ties with the Assad regime.

In recent years, Damascus and Moscow have signed several deals in energy, construction and agriculture.
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A handout picture from the Syrian Arab News shows a Russian soldier standing by T-90 battle tanks during the Victory Day military parade, in May 2021, at the Russian military Hmeimim base, southeast of the Syrian port of Latakia

They include one for Russian firm Stroytransgaz to take over Syria's largest port of Tartus for 49 years.

Another deal awarded the same company a 50-year concession to extract phosphate in the central region of Palmyra.

In March 2020, the Syrian government signed a $22 million production-sharing agreement with the General Petroleum Organisation and Stroytransgaz, according to the Syria Report, an online economic publication.

The deal authorised the Russian company to demine, rehabilitate, explore and develop the al-Thawra oil fields without paying taxes to the Syrian government, it said.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, Syria awarded four new oil exploration contracts to several Russian companies, the Syria Report added.

"A company called Capital was granted a contract for an offshore block, while Mercury and Velada signed three contracts between them for onshore blocks," the publication said this month.

The three companies were unheard of prior to these contracts.

Moscow has lent Damascus very limited amounts of financial aid, but it has supplied Syria with wheat as a form of assistance.

The Syrian government relies on Moscow for the bulk of its wheat imports.

On Thursday, the Syrian government adopted measures to shield its war-hit economy from the repercussions of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, state media said.

To shore up stocks of fuel and wheat, the Syrian government suggested it will limit distribution of basic imports to allow supplies to last for at least two months.

- Cultural influence -

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gained celebrity status across government-held Syria, and has visited the country at least twice since 2017.

In towns and villages near Moscow's bases in Tartus and Latakia, pictures of Putin hang from utility poles and buildings beside Russian flags.

In Damascus, Russian flags and posters of Putin appear in popular markets, and a few government buildings.

In the heart of the capital, a newly-renovated Russian cultural centre offers language lessons, workshops and lectures, while Syrian state TV airs a daily news bulletin in Russian.

The Syrian education ministry added Russian as an optional second foreign language in schools after English or French in 2014.

The Faculty of Arts at the University of Damascus houses a Russian language department, and more than 100 schools across Syria teach the language.

Decaying Congo tin mining town finds new hope in lithium

Date2/28/2022
(MENAFN- AFP)

Near the rusting carcass of a smelter, barefoot men and women scratch at the ground in the quest for cassiterite -- the tin oxide ore that generations ago gave the town of Manono a brief taste of the good life.

The diggers carry the sandy earth to the Lukushi River where women wash the grit in metal bowls, hoping to find some black nuggets from which to make a living.


Standing in the water from morning to evening, washing the spoil and looking for ore brings in between 15,000 and 18,000 Congolese francs ($7.50 to $9.00 / 6.70 to eight euros) per day.

"There is nothing else in Manono," said Marcelline Banza, a 28-year-old mother of three. "Life is very difficult."

Manono, a town in Tanganyika province in southeast DR Congo, is almost a textbook case of a mining town that went from boom to bust.


"Most of the people live below the poverty line and prefer to dig (for cassiterite) rather than work the fields," said Patrice Sangwa, the district's head doctor.

This isolated corner of the vast country is battling malnutrition, cholera and even a measles epidemic, which has killed dozens of children since December.

But hopes are rising that the impoverished town could be magically transformed.

The big news is that a large deposit of lithium -- the metal used to make rechargeable batteries in phones and electric cars -- has been found nearby.

- Quality ore -

After several years' exploration, Australian company AVZ Minerals, which owns a majority stake in a joint venture with Congolese firm La Cominiere, says it has discovered around 400 million tonnes of ore with a lithium concentration of 1.6 percent.

The find represents lithium reserves of some six million tonnes -- more than enough to compete with leading producers such as Australia, Chile, Argentina and China.

"It probably stands at the largest undeveloped resource in the world," said AVZ's chief executive, Nigel Ferguson, describing the find as "very unique."

"The quality is very good... very pure all the way through," he said.

In large sheds, the company stores cores drilled out of the rock at a depth of nearly 400 meters (1,300 feet), below the layers of soil, laterite and shale.

The samples are sent for analysis to Perth in Australia.

- Glory days -

Manono grew from the beginning of the 20th century, when Belgian settlers exploited a promising cassiterite deposit.

The mines, along with quarries, foundries, dams, housing and the railway, brought prosperity.

But little by little, after the turbulent years and shoddy management that followed independence in 1960, mining equipment deteriorated and Manono gradually became dormant.

Decline was abetted by falling prices for tin, although the coup de grace came from the war that led to the seizure of power in 1997 by Laurent-Desire Kabila, supported by Rwandan soldiers.

"We all fled. The foundry was destroyed, the houses looted, the European district devastated, that of the African executives too," recalled Paul Kissoula, a respected elder aged 70 who goes by the nickname of "Papa Paul."

A quarter of a century on, vegetation has grown over the ruins and slag heaps are covered with trees, while two steam locomotives, a crane and wagons are rusting by a roadside.

"There hasn't been anything for years," said "Papa Paul."

He was hired in 1974 by Congo Etain (Congo Tin) -- a public company that became Zairetain after the country changed its name to Zaire under the dictatorship of Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko, then La Cominiere (Congolese mining company).

- 'Waiting for the licence' -

AVZ is hoping for an operating licence after submitting a feasibility study for the site.

The company says it plans to invest $600 million to build a lithium processing plant with a capacity of 700,000 tonnes per year, and rehabilitate an old hydroelectric plant to provide power.

If all goes well, production could start in 2023, and hundreds of people could be employed, according to its scheme.

"People are suffering... AVZ will help us," said territorial administrator Pierre Mukamba Kaseya who, like everyone else, is "waiting for the licence."

"The project specifications also provide for work on roads, schools, hospitals," said Baccam Banza Cazadi, head of a secondary school.

"We want them to be able to succeed, for the province and for the country," he said. "There is hope."

Climate change has 'irreversibly' changed Florida, a new global report says

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Unchecked climate change has already changed Florida permanently and irreversibly—and the world has a limited window to stop it from getting worse, according to a new global report from the world's top scientists.

"The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future," says the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released on Monday.

The nearly 2,000-page report had a global focus, but Florida was repeatedly used as an example of a place where the impacts of climate change were already being felt, both economically and environmentally.

Those impacts aren't news to resident of the Sunshine State. It's tidal flooding from higher sea levels, even on perfectly sunny days, it's hotter days and nights, more harmful algal blooms and mosquito-borne illnesses, stronger and wetter hurricanes and less productive crops, livestock and fisheries.

Financially, studies have repeatedly shown buyers are already selecting homes and buildings that face less flood risk, which has already taken at least a $500 million toll on the Miami-Dade real estate market alone, according to a study cited in the report. This has led to the displacement of poorer communities, usually communities of color, from higher elevation neighborhoods in a process known as climate gentrification.

Adapting to it all is doable, but pricey. Florida has already spent hundreds of millions raising roads, homes and seawalls to defend against the incoming threats, but the report noted that at a certain point, there isn't enough money or technology to keep everywhere in the world habitable.

The IPCC report doesn't name a single event or global temperature that would tip the planet into civilization-ending chaos. Instead, it points out that this point has already been reached for some ecosystems around the world, like coral reefs.

If the planet reached 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, up to 99% of the globe's coral reefs will be lost, according to research cited in the report. But even under the best-case scenario, where the world stays under 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, 95% of coral reefs will be lost.

The world is currently at 1.09 degrees and an IPCC report issued last year suggested we could hit 1.5 degrees by 2040.

In a fiery speech, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the report "an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership." He railed against fossil fuels, the main source of climate change-causing greenhouse gasses, and urged the world to stop burning them immediately.

"This abdication of leadership is criminal," he said. "The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson on our only home."

But just because some parts of the world are irreversibly harmed doesn't mean the planet is beyond saving, the report said.

A focused, well-financed push to help the world adapt to climate change—as well as an equal push to stop burning fossil fuels as fast as possible—could lessen the horrors for humanity in store with unbridled global warming.

Miami-Dade County's sea level rise strategy, which calls for building higher and farther away from water, was name-checked in the global report as an example of a community with a clear-eyed look at the risks of climate change.

Florida's government has recently committed nearly half a billion dollars to local governments around the state to help them adapt to rising seas and temperatures, although none of that cash goes toward helping lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"We simultaneously need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to reduce the impacts of climate change... and we have a very limited amount of time to do this," said Adelle Thomas, a researcher at the University of the Bahamas and a lead author on the IPCC report.UN report to lay bare harrowing scale of climate impacts

2022 Miami Herald.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Climate migrants could face a world of closing doors



The number of climate refugees is going to increase in the coming decades, according to a major UN report on climate impacts and vulnerability

 (AFP/ASHRAF SHAZLY)


Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS
Mon, February 28, 202


People driven from their homes as global warming redraws the map of habitable zones are unlikely to find refuge in countries more focused on slamming shut their borders than planning for a climate-addled future, according to a top expert on migration.

From fleeing a typhoon to relocating in anticipation of sea level rise, climate migration covers a myriad of situations and raises a host of questions.

But one thing is sure: the number of climate refugees is going to increase in the coming decades, according to a major UN report on climate impacts and vulnerability released on Monday.


"We are on the cusp of a major environmental change that is going to redistribute populations on a planetary scale," Francois Gemenne, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, told AFP.

"But clearly -- given the current political climate -- we are not at all ready to confront this kind of question," he said in an interview.

"Rather, there's a tendency to shutter borders and erect walls topped with razor wire."

Which is why the temptation to raise the spectre of mass climate migration in order to spur more aggressive action in curbing carbon pollution is so dangerous, said Gemenne, a professor at Liege University in Belgium.

"Even if it's done with the best of intentions, this risks reinforcing xenophobic attitudes," he said.

But the problem is already here-and-now, even if so-called "climate migrants" have no legal status, nationally or internationally.

- Environment is economy -

"In 2020, some 30 million people were displaced by extreme weather events made worse by climate change -- three times more than the number displaced by violence or conflict," Gemenne said.

Most people forced to abandon their homes due to droughts, storms and floods made worse by global warming are in the global South, and most remain within the borders of their countries.

Many of those who do wind up on the edge of Europe or the southern border of the United States are often labelled "economic migrants", suggesting that they are pulled by opportunity rather than pushed by catastrophe, Gemenne said.

"My salary and yours does not depend on environmental conditions," Gemenne said. "But for a lot of people on this planet who depend on rain-fed agriculture, the economy and the environment are the same thing."

Sea level rise alone could displace hundreds of millions of people by century's end, with low-lying coastal regions expected to be home to more than a billion people by 2050, according to the IPCC report.

Vast expanses of agricultural land, particularly in deltas, are also at risk.

But predictions of how many climate migrants there might be in 30, 50 or 80 years are confounded by unknown variables and choices not yet made.

"It's very complicated and hard to say because we're talking about human behaviour, which can sometimes be irrational", Gemenne said.

"It's not really something that the IPCC can model."

- A 'virtual state'? -

The best projections to date may come from the World Bank, which has calculated up to 216 million people could be internally displaced by mid century, even under an optimistic greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

Although Gemenne said that does not mean this number will definitely be forced from their home.

Impacts can be softened by early warning systems, financial compensation or long-term planning, he added.

Indonesia recently made the extraordinary decision to move its capital to Borneo from Jakarta, on the island of Java, because the megapolis is being overtaken by rising seas and sinking due to depleted aquifers.

Rich countries "under the impression that big infrastructure projects will be enough to protect their populations" would do well to take note, Gemenne said.

The catastrophic flooding that ravaged parts of Germany and Belgium, as well as inundations in New York and cities in China should be a red flag, he warned.

"We need to collectively rethink where we can live, and where we can allow people to live."

For some countries, the forecasts are even more dramatic.

Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and other low-lying island archipelagos risk disappearing entirely, raising fundamental questions about the very definition of a nation state.

If a country disappears physically, can they still have a seat at the UN?

Do their citizens -- living, perhaps, as refugees in another nation -- become stateless?

Can there be such a thing as a "virtual state"?

"Climate change is going to challenge the very foundations of international relations," Gemenne said.

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News Item: From bad to worse: key IPCC findings on climate impacts

28th February 2022
SUSTAINABILITY

With nearly half the world population “highly vulnerable” to severe climate shocks and nature facing in some cases irreversible threats, UN experts unveiled Monday a harrowing picture of global warming impacts.

Here is a rundown on some of the major findings in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report from the key Summary for Policymakers:

– A here-&-now reality –

Severe climate impacts — once seen as a problem on the horizon — have become a here-and-now reality.

Global warming has already contributed to species decline and extinction; an increase in vector-borne disease; more deaths due to heat and drought; reduced yields in staple crops; water scarcity; and a decline in fisheries and aquaculture.

Climate change has adversely affected physical health worldwide, and mental health in regions where data is available. Even as needs increase, health services have been disrupted by extreme events such as flooding.

The rise in weather and climate extremes has already led to “irreversible impacts” in both human society and the natural world, the report concludes.

And it makes clear that this is only the beginning.

Impacts will intensify with every fraction of a degree of warming.

At 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, 14 percent of terrestrial species will face an extinction risk.

Meanwhile, billions more people will be exposed to dengue fever, and climate-driven extreme events “will significantly increase ill health and premature deaths”.

– High tide = high risk –

No matter how quickly carbon pollution driving global warming is drawn down, a billion people will be at risk from coastal climate hazards such as increasingly powerful storms amplified by rising seas.

The population exposed to once-a-century coastal flooding will double if oceans rise 75 centimetres (30 inches), well within the range of 2100 projections. Currently, some 900 million people live within 10 metres (33 feet) of sea level.

By 2100, the value of global assets within future 1-in-100-year coastal floodplains will be about $10 trillion in a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

– 1.5C overshoot (not OK) –

In the first instalment of its trilogy of reports, the IPCC’s August 2021 assessment on physical science kept alive the Paris Agreement goal of capping global warming at 1.5C.

But even then, it said temperatures would temporarily exceed that threshold, potentially within a decade.

In its latest report the IPCC outlines the stiff penalty involved in this so-called “overshoot”.

Additional warming above 1.5C “will result in irreversible impacts” on ecosystems such as coral reefs, mountain glaciers and ice sheets with enough frozen water to lift ocean tens of metres.

Permafrost stocked with twice the carbon in the atmosphere could become destabilised.

“The risk of severe impacts increases with every additional increment of global warming during overshoot,” the IPCC says with “high confidence”.

– ‘Adapt or die’ –

Adaptation barely figured in the IPCC’s equivalent report from 2007. By comparison, the new assessment — the sixth since 1990 — highlights the need to cope with unavoidable climate impacts on almost every page.

Overall, the IPCC warns, global warming is outpacing our preparations for a climate-addled world: “At current rates of adaptation planning and implementation, the adaptation gap will continue to grow.”

Whether it’s reducing food waste or promoting sustainable farming; restoring protective mangrove forests or building sea dams; planting urban green corridors or installing air conditioners — the search for ways to live with climate change has become urgent.

– ‘Maladaptation’ & trade-offs –

The IPCC also highlights the dangers of getting it wrong at a time when there’s no margin for error.

“There is increased evidence of maladaptation across many sectors and regions,” the report cautions.

Building a seawall to protect against storm surges made more destructive by sea level rise, for example, may result in further development in precisely the areas most exposed to danger, creating “lock-ins” and increased exposure over the long-term.
– Tipping points & compound impacts –

The report trains a spotlight on irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes in the climate system known as tipping points that would be triggered at different thresholds of global warming.

These include the melting of ice sheets atop Greenland and the West Antarctic, which have enough frozen water to lift oceans 13 metres.

In a more immediate future, some regions — north-eastern Brazil, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, central China — and coastlines almost everywhere could be battered by multiple climate calamities: drought, heatwaves, cyclones, wildfires, flooding.

Scientists have only begun to study the impact of such compound calamites.

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With ‘Limited Amount of Time Left,’ New IPCC Report Urges Climate Adaptation

Human and natural systems are already buckling under the influence of global warming, write the authors of a landmark report

By Chelsea Harvey, Sara Schonhardt, E&E News on February 28, 2022

Hurricane Maria damage in Roseau, Dominica, in September 2017. 

Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images


The lowly Bramble Cay melomys, a small Australian rodent, wasn’t the kind of animal that often made the news. But in 2019, it splashed across headlines.

The reason? It was the first mammal to go extinct because of climate change.

Named for the island where it used to live, the little rodent had been declining for decades. Scientists had warned for several years beforehand that it was either already extinct or nearly there, blaming its demise on a combination of sea-level rise and increasing tropical storms.

Now almost certainly gone, the Bramble Cay melomys is a grim reminder that some consequences of climate change are forever—and that some of these irreversible impacts are happening today.

Those warnings are among the stark messages contained in a landmark climate report released today by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of the world’s leading climate scientists. A rapidly warming world will hit humans and nature harder than expected, the report warns—and we’re far from prepared to deal with the fallout.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the report “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

“With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change,” he said.

The report is the latest of three in a major ongoing climate assessment by the IPCC—the sixth since the organization was established more than 30 years ago. The first installment in August, which focused on changes to the atmosphere, water and land, found that the window for limiting temperature rise to dangerous levels was nearly closed and that some of the shifts now in motion—such as sea-level rise—are irreversible (Climatewire, Aug. 9, 2021).

Today’s report focuses on how those physical changes will affect humans and natural ecosystems, and the ability of both to respond to what’s coming.

Its primary takeaways include a mix of warning and hope. Human and natural systems already are buckling under the influence of global warming. Some of them are approaching the limits of their ability to adapt. Some of them will be changed forever and won’t be able to bounce back—even if rising temperatures eventually recede.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Some places around the world still have time to put measures in place that can help them adapt to more extreme heat, severe storms, drought and flooding. But that will require more money and resources, better policies, understanding and involvement of local communities—and all of it without delay.

The Bramble Cay melomys is hardly the only irretrievable casualty of the warming world. Weather and climate extremes already have left some irreversible impacts as human and natural systems are pushed beyond their ability to respond, the report states.

Hundreds of other species around the world have gone locally extinct—not disappearing from the globe entirely but vanishing from some regions they used to call home. Some islands and other coastal areas are slipping beneath the rising seas, likely for good.

Within the last decade, residents of Louisiana’s rapidly shrinking island community of Isle de Jean Charles—many of whom belong to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe—have become widely recognized as the first U.S. climate refugees. Elsewhere around the world, entire island nations are facing the prospect of forced relocation as their homes disappear beneath the swelling ocean.

Many ecosystems that haven’t yet passed the point of no return are approaching the brink. Mass mortality events are plaguing forests and coral reefs around the world. Permafrost is thawing across the Arctic, releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane, degrading the landscape and threatening buildings and other infrastructure. Mountain glaciers are melting and shrinking, threatening local water supplies.

And around the world, human suffering is increasing as global temperatures rise.

Wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather events are growing more intense. Food and water insecurity is rising, particularly across parts of Asia, Africa, Central and South America and small islands. Malnutrition is affecting more children and expectant mothers. Small-scale farmers and fishermen are losing their livelihoods.

Extreme heat is killing people and damaging vital infrastructure, such as roads and power systems. Heat waves have reduced people’s ability to work outdoors in some places. Severe storms have dented or even decimated economic growth in countries that can often least afford to lose it.

And it will only get worse with each fraction of a degree of warming.

“We simultaneously need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to reduce the risks of climate change and also address losses and damages that are already being experienced,” said Adelle Thomas, a scientist at Climate Analytics and the University of the Bahamas and a co-author of the report. “And we have a very limited amount of time left to do this.”

‘MUCH MORE NEGATIVE THAN EXPECTED’

The world has warmed by just over 1 degree Celsius (that’s nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began rapidly pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It doesn’t sound like much, but that small amount of warming already has wreaked havoc on Earth’s climate system.

“One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we’re seeing adverse impacts as being much more widespread and being much more negative than expected in prior reports, than expected at the current 1.09 degrees that we have,” said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin, and a co-author of the IPCC report.

The report, which synthesizes thousands of recent climate studies, reveals that some climate consequences are happening faster than scientists had expected at this level of warming.

Infectious diseases are spreading into new parts of the globe. Species are going extinct. Ecosystems are dramatically transforming.

Already, between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people around the world—nearly half the global population—are “highly vulnerable” to the impacts of climate change, the report finds. Climate change is taking its toll on both the physical and mental health of communities all over the world.

The findings suggest that even small amounts of future warming may have dire consequences for the planet, Parmesan noted.

In another half-degree Celsius, the world will exceed the 1.5 C warming threshold, the most ambitious target of the Paris climate agreement. If that happens, the report states, “then many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks,” including a growing danger of irreversible climate consequences.

Climate impacts around the world will grow even worse with additional warming. That’s a distinct possibility if global climate action doesn’t accelerate. At the moment, the climate policies enacted by world leaders put the world on track for around 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century.

“The good news is that the IPCC makes clear that we can limit the extent to which these climate impacts worsen if we meet the Paris targets, but so far the world—including the US—is not on track to meet those pledges,” said Dana Nuccitelli, a research coordinator with the nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby, in an email to E&E News.

In land-based ecosystems, for instance, anywhere from 3 percent to 14 percent of all species may face a high risk of extinction at 1.5 C of warming. At 2 C, up to 18 percent may be threatened. At 3 C, it’s up to 29 percent—and the risk continues to grow with additional warming.

Sea-level rise will worsen as temperatures climb. And the coastal populations exposed to severe floods will increase as a result.

Both extreme rainfall events and severe drought are likely to increase in many places around the world. At 4 C of warming, around 10 percent of the entire global land area is likely to face a growing likelihood of both high river flows, increasing the risk of floods, and low river flows, increasing the risk of water shortages.

Hurricanes will grow more severe, likely causing more damage when they strike coastal communities. Wildfires will likely burn more land.

More people around the globe will suffer from extreme heat events. Heat is already the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States, and studies suggest it may cause hundreds of thousands of excess deaths around the world each year.

And food and water insecurity will continue to rise, as agriculture suffers and freshwater resources dwindle on a warming planet.

These impacts don’t affect all populations equally today, and they won’t in the future either. Certain parts of the world—particularly developing countries, small island nations and countries in tropical regions—are disproportionately at risk from many climate consequences, especially the effects of extreme heat and food and water insecurity.

And in nations all across the globe, including the United States, some populations are more vulnerable than others. These include lower-income communities, Indigenous communities and people of color, unhoused populations, and the elderly.

“Effective actions are those that reduce climate impacts and risks,” said Edwin Castellanos, a scientist at the University of the Valley of Guatemala and a co-author of the report. “And because these risks are different for different people, effective solutions need to provide site-specific actions. Putting vulnerable groups and countries at the heart of the decision-making process of how we respond to climate change can make societies more resilient.”

ADAPTATION: ‘CRITICAL TO OUR SURVIVAL’

Efforts to respond to climate impacts have improved and expanded. That’s particularly true for measures around water-related risks, such as the building of levees, early warning systems for flooding, wetland restoration and farm-based water management, the report states.

But progress on adaptation is uneven, driven in part by a lack of money needed to fund such efforts in places that face the greatest damage from rising temperatures.

Most adaptation efforts so far have been piecemeal and incremental—focused on reducing immediate climate risks rather than putting in place measures for long-term, transformational change, the report states.

They’re also small in scale and focused more on planning than implementation. And because those initiatives are geared toward current hazards, they are limited in their effectiveness as climate risks grow. And the warmer the world gets, the harder it becomes to adapt.

The report also finds that the gap between current adaptation efforts and what’s needed is widening and will only widen further if more action isn’t taken.

But there are feasible and effective adaptation options, according to the report. Heat health action plans can warn people of extreme temperatures and help protect them from exposure to prevent heat-related deaths. Restoring degraded forests can help them take in excess carbon rather than emit it. Protecting coastal or marine ecosystems, or creating corridors where threatened species can move to safer spaces, can help their survival.

But adaptation cannot prevent all the negative impacts of climate change, said Thomas, the Climate Analytics scientist and author.

In low-lying coastal communities, for example, the increasing intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes combined with sea-level rise will lead to losses that are irreparable. And the poorest and most vulnerable communities will be hit hardest, she said.

For some measures, such as water management, there is no amount of money or government support that can help with adaptation when there is no more water available.

The ability for human populations to respond to rising temperatures and try to hold them to the 1.5-degree limit also will depend on making sure natural systems are still capable of sucking carbon emissions from the atmosphere because reductions alone won’t be enough, said Parmesan from the University of Texas, Austin.

Yet the vast majority of climate finance goes toward efforts to reduce emissions, such as investments in clean energy infrastructure, rather than adaptation, Thomas said.

Another challenge? As climate damage dents economic growth, it can be harder for low-income countries to access the money needed to respond.

“Adaptation is critical to our survival in the face of climate change, but current financing schemes are underfunded and inaccessible to the majority of [small island developing states],” Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, which holds the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said in a statement.

“The solutions are there, the report shows that adaptation works. It is particularly clearer now, given the implications and vulnerability outlined in this report, that financing for loss and damage is more crucial now than ever,” Browne added.

World leaders will gather in Egypt toward the end of this year to hammer out ways to respond faster and more effectively to impacts like those outlined in the report. Previous reports have served as the foundation for targets like the 1.5-degree temperature limit included in the Paris agreement.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in a statement that while emissions reductions will continue to be crucial, “we must expand and expedite adaptation action.”

That matters since there also are limits to human adaptation—largely due to a lack of money and policies needed to support it. Those “soft limits” are currently playing out in low-lying coastal areas and among small-holder farmers who don’t have the resources to adapt further and will incur additional negative impacts from climate change as a result, Thomas said.

For coastal communities, what that means in practice is that installing sea walls, putting in sand dunes or restoring coral reefs or wetlands no longer will be financially feasible or may no longer be technically feasible, she explained.

But they can be overcome.

“If we put more resources toward adaptation, then additional adaptation options will open up,” Thomas said.

Time isn’t the only obstacle, either. Many countries that most need to respond to climate impacts are striving to develop and meet the needs of growing populations with limited resources. The report aims to show that adaptation and lower emissions can help with sustainable development.

But that will require increased international cooperation, especially a greater commitment to providing finance—which the report finds is currently insufficient—and also ensuring vulnerable countries have access to it.

It also will involve planning to respond to climate impacts when adaptation is no longer an option, such as relocating coastal communities when homes and livelihoods are eaten away by unstoppable rising tides.

Since the last report, there is further evidence that some adaptation can lead to unintended consequences that worsen the impacts of climate change—what’s known as maladaptation.

Examples include firefighting efforts in ecosystems that are adapted to fire and rely on it to prevent outbreaks of larger blazes or hard infrastructure that doesn’t allow for water runoff and can increase the likelihood of flooding. Sea walls that might protect coastal communities today might damage coral reef ecosystems offshore.

Maladaptation can exacerbate inequality and put communities at further risk, and it can be expensive to undo, the report states. What’s needed to avoid it is long-term planning that takes into account local contexts and works to integrate solutions across different areas.

“It really requires a systemic, comprehensive response—not just a piecemeal, standalone series of projects. [It takes] really thinking about how does the economy, climate resilience, food security, health all intersect and how a better understanding of climate change reshaping all of those sectors can help us build a more resilient, just and fair future,” said Shyla Raghav, vice president of climate change at Conservation International.

For adaptation to work, government support will be needed, the report finds. So too will clear, defined policies, better understanding of both climate impacts and solutions and access to the money to make them realities. Involving vulnerable communities, drawing on Indigenous knowledge and committing to climate justice is also vital, according to the report.

The fact that IPCC reports are endorsed by governments and provided to policymakers gives weight to their findings. And they do help influence policy, said Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

But so far it hasn’t been enough.

“We’ve had these reports coming out for decades, and we’ve known what the causes are, we know what the solutions are, and we’re just not implementing them,” Licker said.

Despite the dire conclusions, ramping up action could be harder at a time when the world remains locked in a global pandemic and as war embroils Ukraine, threatening stability in Europe.

“We will always have emergencies at hand that seem to be more urgent than climate change,” said Castellanos of the University of the Valley of Guatemala.

But that’s no reason to delay, he added.

“We need to start addressing these problems of climate change,” he said. “Otherwise it’s going to be more complicated or even impossible to do so in the future.”

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2022. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

UN climate report urges world to adapt now, or suffer later

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Report is latest in a series by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Thomson Reuters · Posted: Feb 28, 2022 

An exhaust pipe of a car is pictured on a street in a Berlin, Germany. A new UN report says countries have failed to rein in planet-warming carbon emissions. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Climate change is upon us and humanity is far from ready, the United Nations climate panel warned in a major report on Monday.

Noting that nearly half the world's population is already vulnerable to increasingly dangerous climate impacts, the report calls for drastic action on a huge scale, including that a third to a half of the planet needs to be conserved and protected to ensure future food and freshwater supplies and that coastal cities need plans to keep people safe from storms and rising seas.

"Adaptation saves lives," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said with the report's release. "As climate impacts worsen — and they will — scaling up investments will be essential for survival... Delay means death."

The report is the latest in a series by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) detailing the latest global consensus on climate science. This report, however, focuses on how nature and societies are being affected and what they can do to adapt.

• Catastrophic wildfires could increase 50% by 2100, UN report says

"This IPCC report shows what people around the world already know — that all countries need to take bold climate mitigation and adaptation action, because the costs of doing too little will be far too high," Steven Guilbeault, Canada's minister of environment and climate change, said in a statement.

"Canada is ready to continue leading this work. We only have to look at extreme weather events, such as the floods in British Columbia and the wildfires in Alberta in 2021, to see why addressing climate change matters to Canadians."

On nearly all counts, the report makes clear that climate change is impacting the world far faster than scientists had anticipated. Meanwhile, countries have failed to rein in planet-warming carbon emissions, which continue to rise.

"Unchecked carbon pollution is forcing the world's most vulnerable on a frogmarch to destruction," Guterres said in a video address Monday. "The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal."

Mitigation strategies

While governments need to drastically curb their emissions to prevent runaway global warming, they can also work to limit suffering by adapting to the conditions of a warmer world, the report says. Doing so means financing new technologies and institutional support. Cities can invest in cooling areas to help people through heat waves. Coastal communities may need new infrastructure or to relocate altogether.

"In terms of transformational adaptation, we can plan it and implement it now, or it'll be thrust upon us by climate change," said Kristina Dahl, a climate expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was not involved in writing the report.

• WHAT ON EARTH?
  This CEO wants to reduce emissions by turning buildings 'into Teslas'

But in some cases, the report acknowledges, the costs of adapting will be too high.

The report's release three months after global leaders met at a climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, highlights the urgency of efforts to contain global warming to within 1.5 C of pre-industrial temperatures.

Breaching that threshold will deliver irreversible damage to the planet, it says. And every increment of warming will cause more pain.

"Adaptation is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. There are limits to adaptation," said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and a report co-author. "We should reduce greenhouse gas emissions because if we don't, it's going to get really bad."

• Methane emissions are far higher than countries claim, report suggests

Limiting global warming to close to 1.5 C may not prevent losses to nature, societies or economies, but will substantially reduce them, the report says.

Having already warmed 1.1 C, the planet is expected to hit the 1.5 C threshold within two decades.

Poor, marginalized are 'most vulnerable'

Societies will fail to adjust well to a warming world if they aren't socially inclusive in tackling the task, the report warns. Solutions need to consider social justice and include Indigenous populations, minorities and the poor, it says.

"It's the poor and most marginalized who are most vulnerable," said Timon McPhearson, an urban ecologist at The New School in New York and one of the report's 270 authors. That includes people living in developing countries in Africa, South Asia and small island nations, as well as marginalized communities in wealthy nations such as the United States.

Without inclusive economic development in Africa, for example, climate change is expected to push 40 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030.

Providing social welfare or jobs that also protect the environment — for example, uprooting invasive trees that deplete water supplies — can go a long way toward helping vulnerable populations, said report co-author Christopher Trisos, a climate risk researcher at the University of Cape Town.

• By building in fire and flood zones, governments are still creating climate-change disaster risks, expert says

But time is running out to make the society-wide transformations needed, the authors warn. The decisions society makes in the next decade will set the climate path to come.

"There is a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future on the planet," said Hans-Otto Portner, co-chair of the IPCC working group that generated the report. "We need to live up to this challenge."

with files from CBC News

CBC's Journalistic Standards an

'No future': Rostov's young overcome fear to protest Ukraine war



There will be 'no tomorrow' if there is a nuclear attack, one protester says 

(AFP/STRINGER)

Andrea PALASCIANO
Mon, February 28, 2022

At first glance, there is no sign of a demonstration at the central square of Rostov-on-Don, a southwestern Russian city near the border with Ukraine.

Just a scattering of young people wearing headphones and hanging around on their own, studiously avoiding the clusters of police officers surveying the scene.

But these young Russians are here because of a call on messaging app Telegram to protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

After an hour of standing around in the cold, furtively trying to catch each other's eyes, some discreetly form tiny groups and exchange a few muttered words. No slogans, no banners, no chants.

The police conduct ID checks on those who linger too long. Journalists have their papers scrutinised and photocopied. Security agents wearing civilian clothing home in as soon as a reporter's microphone appears.

Russians have turned out en masse in big cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg to protest against the war despite hundreds of arrests.

In Rostov, far from the relative safety in numbers, the handful prepared to protest are brave and terrified in equal measure.

Clutching coffees to warm their hands, a young couple readily agrees to be interviewed on camera.

"Yes, please talk to us," says 30-year-old theatre technician Nikolai Kovaschevich.

- 'Everyone's frightened' -

"Threatening the world with nuclear weapons won't get us anywhere," he says.

"It's a dead end. There'll be no future. There'll be no children born. There'll be no tomorrow, in fact," he concludes, visibly upset.

His partner, 29-year-old vlogger Margarita Khaishbasheva, waves her arm around the empty square.

"Everyone's frightened. Everyone's scared of being jailed (or) getting huge fines they can't pay."

"We live in a police state. People live in terrible fear," she says, her voice cracking with emotion.

Standing alone a few metres away, Anton declines to give his surname. The 23-year-old English literature student is scared of being caught out by plain-clothes security officers and asks us for "proof you really work for AFP" before opening up.

Yet when a shaven-headed man in a black beanie zones in on us and pointedly stares, and a policeman asks for our papers for the second time in less than an hour, the young student stays by our side.

Anton hails from Lugansk, Ukrainian territory held by Kremlin-backed separatists just 200 kilometres (124 miles) north of Rostov.

"No one I know agrees (with the invasion of Ukraine)," he confides.

"No one wants these people to die. But only a few of us are prepared to do anything, to speak out or help. The others aren't."

- 'An insane war' -

Nikolai Zima, 18, is studying business. He was still underage when he started attending meetings in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned and then jailed in what his supporters say is punishment for standing up to President Vladimir Putin.

Today Zima says he is "ready to go to war" if he is called up.

"If we are attacked, yes, I'm ready to go," he says. "But not against Ukraine or other sister nations."

"This is an insane war. I'm totally against it. I can't remain indifferent," he says, casting round at the deserted square.

Irina Aroyan, who is there with her teenage son, is the only person carrying a "sign" -- a bow tied to her bag in the blue and yellow colours of the Ukrainian flag.

"I am ashamed of my country and my army, who aren't protecting anyone and who are attacking another country," the 52-year-old says.

Once an independent journalist, Aroyan now teaches English to young people "to make ends meet".

During the lessons she talks politics. "Unfortunately, all we have in Russia is propaganda and pro-Kremlin television," she says.

Of her 10 students, eight have told her they support the war.

"Sadly, 80 percent of young people are victims of this propaganda. They have no idea what's going on in the world."

apo/all/gil/dl

Up to 250,000 people attend Cologne's Ukraine solidarity march

Putin features prominently on this year's carnival floats 

(AFP/Ina Fassbender)

Mon, February 28, 2022

Up to 250,000 people, many waving Ukrainian flags, marched in the western German city Cologne, turning the traditional Rose Monday carnival celebration into a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The traditional carnival street festival had been called off this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But organisers decided instead to hold a peace march on Monday in solidarity with Ukraine.

Police said at the peak of the march, 250,000 people were present.

A minute's silence was held during the event, which organisers said aimed at sending a "strong signal against the fighting in Ukraine."

Henrik Wuest, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, was also at the march with a badge in Ukrainian blue and yellow colours.

"The people of Cologne would have liked to celebrate Rose Monday again after two years of pandemic, instead they are showing solidarity and standing up for peace in Ukraine," he wrote on Twitter.

In the tradition of Rose Monday, floats mocking political leaders were also on show at the march, with Russian President Vladimir Putin a key target of mockery this year.

One featured Putin as a puppet master manipulating Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, complete with dracula fangs.

Another float with a peace dove speared by a blood-spattered Russian flag was also prominent at the parade.

The Cologne march came a day after hundreds of thousands of people across Europe took to the streets to condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

In Berlin alone, police said turnout was at least 100,000.

hmn/sea/dl

‘Take oligarchs’ Riviera villas’: Ukraine conflict hijacks French presidential marketing campaign

The Ukrainian flag and anti-Putin messages painted on the gate of a villa belonging to the Russian president's former wife in Anglet, near Biarritz, on February 27, 2022. © Gaizka Iroz, AFP

By

 Europe Times News

Issued on: 28/02/2022 

The Communist nominee in France’s April presidential election has prompt storming Russian oligarchs’ winter palaces on the French Riviera and handing them over to Ukrainian refugees as candidates scramble to regulate their pitches in a marketing campaign hijacked by the conflict in Ukraine.

With the primary spherical of France’s presidential election lower than six weeks away, a lacklustre marketing campaign already overshadowed by the lingering Covid-19 pandemic has been thrown additional off beam by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Overseas coverage is usually a sideshow in French presidential campaigns, however Europe’s largest navy invasion since World Battle II has left France’s presidential hopefuls with no choice however to enterprise into geopolitics and take a look at their credentials as future commanders-in-chief. 

With a couple of notable exceptions, candidates for the Elysée Palace have scrambled to regulate their schedules, swapping marketing campaign occasions for pro-Ukraine rallies and making an attempt to make clear – or rectify – previous feedback on Russia’s president.

Fabien Roussel, the Communist Social gathering candidate finest recognized for his defence of French beef, has provide you with maybe essentially the most eye-catching proposal: requisitioning the Russian elite’s luxurious possessions on the French Riviera.

“Russian oligarchs near Putin personal quite a few billionaires’ villas on the Côte d’Azur. I suggest that the state requisitions them to welcome refugees from Ukraine,” the pinnacle of the Communist Social gathering posted on his Twitter feed on Saturday. He additionally referred to as on all French cities and villages to absorb at the very least one or two Ukrainian households displaced by Putin’s conflict.

Putin sympathisers on the backfoot

Roussel is one in every of a number of left-wing candidates polling within the low-single digits within the run-up to the election. They embody Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, the struggling Socialist candidate, whose marketing campaign rally in Bordeaux on Saturday was virtually completely targeted on the conflict in Ukraine.

Hidalgo’s staff had initially envisaged a festive occasion, putting in a big display for the group to look at France’s Six Nations rugby match towards Scotland. As an alternative, the stage was decked within the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine, whereas Hidalgo’s speech was rewritten from begin to end.

Showing on stage with a younger Ukrainian lady, the Socialist nominee referred to as for steeper sanctions towards Russia and urged the European Union to launch a fast-track membership course of for Kyiv. She additionally lambasted rivals accused of sympathising with Putin’s Russia – in a tactic mirrored by different mainstream candidates.

>> Ukraine disaster highlights stark divisions amongst France’s presidential candidates

On the appropriate of the political spectrum, conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse stated these “who defended” the Russian chief prior to now have been “now discredited to manipulate France”. The jab was aimed toward far-right pundit Eric Zemmour, who has often expressed his admiration for Putin’s nationalist pitch, and Nationwide Rally chief Marine Le Pen, who famously paid Putin a go to throughout the 2017 presidential marketing campaign.

Quizzed on the matter on the weekend, Le Pen stated the invasion of Ukraine had “partly modified [her] opinion of Putin”, accusing the Russian chief of “crossing a crimson line”. Like Zemmour, nonetheless, she warned towards imposing crippling sanctions on Russia, which she stated would harm the French public too.

Macron’s ‘bow and arrow’

Even earlier than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, galloping inflation had pushed the price of residing to the highest of French voters’ issues – forcing President Emmanuel Macron’s authorities to take pressing measures to shore up residents’ buying energy. 

The conflict in Ukraine has allowed Macron, who’s but to declare his candidacy, to stay above the fray and make use of his presidential prerogatives. Nevertheless, it has additionally sophisticated the matter of how and when he ought to declare his re-election bid, with simply days to go earlier than a March 4 ETN.

On Saturday, Macron made a short go to at France’s annual farming truthful in Paris – historically a can’t-miss occasion for incumbent presidents and challengers alike. He warned that the battle in Ukraine “will final” and “we should put together to face the results”.

Worldwide protests happen in solidarity with Ukraine

One candidate sure to skip the agricultural truthful was leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has refused to change his marketing campaign over the conflict in jap Europe. Touring the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion on the weekend, Mélenchon stated: “In a democracy, we don’t simply cease as a result of Russia has invaded Ukraine.”

Like Zemmour and Le Pen, Mélenchon has confronted a barrage of criticism because the begin of Russia’s navy offensive, with critics rounding on his latest remarks that NATO had provoked Putin with plans to “annex Ukraine”. 

Whereas criticising the Kremlin’s “insufferable” assault on Ukraine, Mélenchon caught to his “non-aligned” pitch on Sunday, stressing that France ought to avoid the tussle between Russia and the US-led Atlantic alliance. He additionally slammed the French authorities’s choice to ship defensive navy gear to Ukraine, urging Macron to press for a ceasefire as a substitute of “gesticulating like a bit boy with bow and arrows”.

Sudan group says 1 killed during fresh anti-coup protests






Sudanese protesters rally against the October 2021 military coup which has led to scores of deaths, thousands of injuries and numerous arrests of demonstrators, in Khartoum, Sudan, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. Placard has a photo of a demonstrator who was killed and Arabic at left that reads, "A generation from light lives to enlighten."

 (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)



Mon, February 28, 2022

CAIRO (AP) — Security forces killed a protester Monday as thousands of Sudanese once again took to the streets of Khartoum to denounce an October military coup that plunged the country into turmoil, a medical group said.

The protester was shot in the head as security forces fired live animation and tear gas at protesters marching in Omdurman, the twin city of the capital Khartoum, said the Sudan Doctors Committee.

Security forces also broke up protesters marching toward the presidential palace in Khartoum, injuring dozens, the committee said.


There was no immediate comment from authorities.

Monday’s marches were the latest in near-daily street protests since the military took over on Oct. 25, removing the civilian-led transitional government.

Since then, at least 83 people have been killed and over 2,600 injured in a bloody crackdown on protests, according to the doctors group.

The takeover has upended Sudan’s short-lived transition to democratic rule after three decades of repression and international isolation under autocratic President Omar al-Bashir.

The African nation has been on a fragile path to democracy since a popular uprising forced the military to remove al-Bashir and his Islamist government in April 2019.

Pro-democracy protesters call for the establishment of a fully civilian government to complete the now-stalled democratic transition.

The generals however insist that they will hand over power only to an elected government. They say elections will take place next year.