Namibia genocide: Opposition demands new deal with Germany

The Namibian opposition is demanding the renegotiation of a controversial genocide deal with Germany. But Berlin's reticence has led to even more resentment in Namibia.

Descendants of the victims of Germany's genocide of the Herero and Nama 

peoples want recognition and compensation

"For a long time, we thought the Greens were our friends," said Nandiuasora Mazeingo, chairperson of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation (OGF), shrugging his shoulders at news from Germany that the Berlin government sees no need to renegotiate the Joint Declaration with Namibia.

The deal was thought to have brought an end to years of negotiations to recognize the genocide of Herero and Nama people during the German colonial period in what is now Namibia.

However, the agreement led to heated debates in the Namibian parliament in September 2021.

"It seems like this issue in Germany is only about gaining political power," Mazeingo said in an interview with DW. "But we will outlast these governments because we are on the right side of history!" 

Still, the leader of the official opposition in Namibia, McHenry Venaani, has hope in the environmentalist Green Party, part of the Germany's governing coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) .

The president of the country's largest opposition party, Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), has written an open letter to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a member of the Greens, which DW has obtained. In it, he called for the agreement to be "renegotiated" and "restructured."

"Frau Baerbock had shown credibility while she was a candidate," Venaani told DW. "Now we have to see if she brings the same understanding as a minister."

Botswana and South Africa should join negotiations

Venaani is particularly concerned about the diaspora communities.

"There are descendants of genocide victims living in Botswana and South Africa — and they are left to fend for themselves," he said.

He wants their representatives to be included in the renegotiation process, but told DW that the German government could perhaps begin talks with the government of Botswana.

McHenry Venaani has called for the agreement to be 'renegotiated' and 'restructured'

Venaani's statements have been met with mixed feelings in Namibia. OGF chairperson Mazeingo rejected the politician's call for more government participation.

While agreeing with the demand to include the Herero and Nama in the diaspora, he criticized a possible participation of more governments as a "perpetuation of the exclusion."

He refered to the fact that the Ovaherero Traditional Authority (OTA) and the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) — which see themselves as the official representatives of the diaspora communities — were not part of the negotiations between Germany and Namibia.

However, Ileni Henguva, a traditional councillor for the Ovambanderu, said that the affected communities had actually been considered in the original negotiations with the German government, therefore he sees no need for further talks.

The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not want to comment on the demands when contacted by DW. As a matter of principal, Berlin does not respond to open letters, a spokesperson told DW.

"We respect the difficult decision making process and the discussions within the Namibian society and politics," the spokesperson said.

Demonstrators call attention to the genocide in Windhoek, Namibia in May 2021

'We will shame them'

The ministry also referred to discussions about the implementation of the joint declaration that took place in March 2022 between Namibian and German delegations in Windhoek.

Ultimately, renegotiating how the terms of the deal would be implemented seemed like a possibility, though this might not appease the critics in Namibia, where the OTA is demanding a completely fresh start to talks.

"We are not going to sign a sham agreement that makes Germany look good on the international stage," OTA representative Mazeingo emphasized to DW.

Herero people were driven off their lands by German settlers, and when 

captured were sent to concentration camps

Wording in dispute

He demanded an admission of guilt by the German government. In the eyes of the OTA, the biggest stumbling block lies within the wording of the Joint Declaration, which calls the atrocities committed between 1904-1908 a genocide "from today's perspective."

Opposition leader McHenry Venaani also wants a clear, legal recognition of the genocide. In his open letter to Baerbock, he wrote that the atrocities "cannot only be recognised in a moral and political sense." 

In his interview with DW, he referenced reparations again, describing the aid deal — worth €1.1 billion ($1.34 billion) to be paid out over 30 years under the Joint Declaration — as an insult.

"It's not about extracting the largest possible sum. We are only asking for a package that will sustainably improve the socio-economic conditions of the affected communities," Venaani said.

The PDM party leader argued that even the Namibian government has come to understand that the people of Namibia are not ready to accept this agreement.

This also applies to a possible apology by the German government. A "half-baked apology" would only lead to boos in the Namibian parliament, he said. OGF chairperson Mazeingo shared these sentiments.

"We are going to organize protests. We would make sure that whoever comes here to offer an apology is shamed, shamed to know that it is the biggest mistake that they have done to come to the people whom they have brutalized and to come here and pretend to offer an apology that is not genuine, " he told DW.

MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
Illegal workforce
Despite the fact that slavery is prohibited worldwide, modern forms of the sinister practice persist. More than 40 million people still toil in debt bondage in Asia, forced labor in the Gulf states, or as child workers in agriculture in Africa or Latin America.
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This aritcle was originally published in German.

DW RECOMMENDS

Germany rejects new negotiations over Namibia genocide

Berlin insists on implementing a controversial deal that recognizes the colonial-era genocide in Namibia. The plan draws strong criticism from politicians and some descendants of the victims, who demanded fresh talks.  

Ethiopia's Tigray hit by fresh air strike: Rebels, hospital

AFP , Wednesday 14 Sep 2022

Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray was hit by an air strike on Wednesday, local officials said, its second bombing in as many days which came shortly after authorities in the rebel-held region said they were ready for a ceasefire.

A member of the Afar Special Forces holds a gun next to a damaged house in the village of Bisober in Ethiopia s Tigray region. AFP

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The attack struck a residential neighbourhood in the regional capital Mekele, "killing and wounding innocent civilians", tweeted Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting Ethiopia's government for nearly two years.

He did not provide details of the casualties, but the bombing injured at least two women, said Fasika Amdeslasie, a surgeon at Ayder Referral Hospital, the biggest in Tigray.

"One was inside her compound and the other just at the gate of her compound going out," he said on Twitter.

AFP was not able to independently verify the claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for over a year.

The reported attack followed a drone strike on Tuesday on Mekele University, which the TPLF said caused injuries and property damage.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government has not commented on this week's reported bombings.

Tigray has been hit by several air strikes since fighting resumed in late August between government forces and their allies and TPLF rebels in northern Ethiopia.

The return to combat shattered a March truce and dashed hopes of peacefully resolving the war, which has killed untold numbers of civilians and triggered a humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia.

Both sides have accused the other of firing first, and fighting has spread from around southern Tigray to other fronts farther north and west, while also drawing in Eritrean troops who backed Ethiopian forces in the early phase of the war.

On Sunday, the TPLF said it was ready for a ceasefire and would accept a peace process led by the African Union, removing an obstacle to negotiations with Abiy's government.

The international community has urged the warring sides to seize the moment for peace.

Addis Ababa is still yet to officially comment on the overture by Tigrayan authorities, which dominated national politics for nearly three decades until Abiy came to power in 2018.

Abiy's government has declared the TPLF a terrorist group, and considers its claim to authority in Tigray illegitimate.

Untold numbers of civilians have been killed since the war erupted in Africa's second most populous country, and grave rights violations by all sides against civilians have been documented.

Abiy, a Nobel Peace laureate, sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF in response to what he said were attacks on federal army camps.

Syria reports 7 dead in first major cholera outbreak in years

AFP , Wednesday 14 Sep 2022

Syria's first major cholera outbreak in over a decade has killed seven people and infected more than 50, the health ministry said, amid widespread damage to water treatment infrastructure.

A cholera-infected woman receives treatment at a hospital in Syria s northern city of Aleppo on September 11, 2022. AFP

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In a statement late Tuesday, the ministry confirmed 53 cholera cases spread across five of the country's 14 provinces, with the highest number recorded in the northern province of Aleppo.

It said seven people had died of the illness.

The updated toll comes after the ministry reported two confirmed cholera deaths on Monday.

Cholera is generally contracted from contaminated food or water, and causes diarrhoea and vomiting.

It can spread in residential areas that lack proper sewerage networks or mains drinking water.

The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday of a "very high" risk of cholera spreading throughout Syria.

The WHO said the latest cases were the first reported in the country since 2009, when 342 cases were confirmed in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor and the northern province of Raqa.

More than a decade of civil war since then has damaged two thirds of Syria's water treatment plants, half of its pumping stations and one third of its water towers, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said.

Nearly half the population relies on alternative and often unsafe sources of water while at least 70 percent of sewage goes untreated, it added.

An outbreak of cholera hit neighbouring Iraq this summer for the first time since 2015.

Worldwide, the disease affects between 1.3 million and four million people each year, killing between 21,000 and 143,000 people.

Venezuela agrees to be guarantor in Colombia peace talks

NEWS WIRES - Yesterday

Leftist Venezuela has agreed to be a guarantor of future peace talks between Colombia and its last guerrilla group, both countries said Tuesday night.


Venezuela agrees to be guarantor in Colombia peace talks© Marcelo Garcia, AFP

This is the latest move toward strong new relations that had been severed until Gustavo Petro took power this month as the first leftist leader ever in Colombia.

Colombia has asked the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro to be guarantor of talks with the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the last active rebel group in a country torn by decades of conflict.

In a speech, Maduro said, "Of course we agree!"

It thus joins Chile and Cuba as guarantors of talks that the Bogota government hopes to hold with the ELN.

Colombia and its largest rebel group, the FARC, signed an historic peace accord in 2016 after decades of war.

Venezuela took part in that peace process, with Maduro involved at first as foreign minister in the government of the late socialist icon Hugo Chavez, then after 2013 as his successor.

"Peace in Colombia is peace in South America," Maduro said Tuesday.

Petro wants to resume talks with the ELN that his conservative predecessor Ivan Duque had started. They broke off after a rebel attack in 2019 that left 22 people dead.

Representatives of Petro's government and the ELN have already met in Havana.

Petro has said there would soon be a meeting with the ELN in Venezuela, which Colombian military intelligence has said is hosting senior ELN leaders.

After Petro took power in August, Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic relations after three years of rupture triggered by Colombia's recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela.

(AFP)

ISRAEL ETHNIC CLEANSING 
40 years on, survivors recall horror of Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila massacre


Dylan Collins
Tue, September 13, 2022 


Forty years after Christian militiamen massacred Palestinian refugees and Lebanese nationals in the country's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the horrors of the tragedy remain seared into survivors' memories.

Najib al-Khatib, whose father and 10 other family members were killed in the massacre, still remembers the stench of corpses.

It "lingered for more than five or six months. A horrible smell," the 52-year-old Lebanese survivor said.

"They would spray chemicals every day, but the smell stayed," he told AFP from the Sabra camp for Palestinian refugees, where he lives with his family.

From September 16 to 18, 1982, Christian militiamen allied with Israel massacred between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps on Beirut's outskirts. They also murdered at least 100 Lebanese and some Syrians.

Israeli troops, who had invaded in June that year as Lebanon's civil war raged, sealed off the camp while the militiamen went on their killing spree, targeting unarmed civilians.

Camp residents have been readying to mark the massacre's 40th anniversary on Friday.

"Until today, the smell is still in our heads -- the smell of the dead," Khatib said.

- 'Horses and corpses' -

Khatib walked down an alleyway in the impoverished Sabra camp where he witnessed the atrocities four decades earlier.

"This is my grandmother's house. During the massacre, it was full" of dead bodies, he recalled. "They were piled up here. Horses and corpses, all on top of each other."

"This area was full of people they killed," he said.

One of Khatib's most harrowing memories was finding his father's body at the door of his house.

"He was shot in his legs," he said. "They had hit him in the head with a hatchet."

Despite global outcry, no one has ever been arrested or put on trial for the massacre.

It came just days after the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel -- seen as a hero by many Lebanese Christians but hated by many in Lebanon for his cooperation with Israel.

In Israel, an inquiry found a number of officials, including then defence minister Ariel Sharon, were indirectly responsible.

It laid blame on Elie Hobeika, intelligence chief of the Lebanese Forces -- a right-wing Christian militia -- for the killings.

The LF, then allied to Israel, has maintained silence, never responding to the accusations.

A group of survivors tried to launch a lawsuit in Belgium against Sharon, but the court threw out the case in September 2003.

- 'Unimaginable' -

Umm Abbas, a Lebanese resident of Sabra who witnessed the massacre, recalled the "unimaginable scenes" that have gone unpunished.

"What did I see? A pregnant woman who had her baby ripped out of her stomach, they cut her in two," the 75-year-old said.

Another woman, "she was also pregnant, they ripped the baby from her stomach too", she said.

Sitting in an alley, Umm Abbas recalled bulldozers scooping up dead bodies and dumping them on top of each other.

"They put them all in a deep hole, I saw them," she said.

Survivors mark the massacre every year, some visiting the graveyard in Sabra where many of the victims were buried.

A simple stone memorial pays tribute to the "martyrs" of the massacre.

Palestinian Amer Okkar prayed at the site, where the makeshift graves still bear no tombstones.

"We found everyone slaughtered on the ground, in all the alleyways and along this street," the 59-year-old former militant remembered.

"We found pills and machetes and hashish and drugs on the ground -- no one could kill like that unless they were on drugs," he said.

dco/ho/aya/lg/smw

French court to rule on deadly 2009 Yemenia Airways crash

Anne LEC'HVIEN
Tue, September 13, 2022 

A French court on Wednesday will issue its verdict on involuntary homicide charges against Yemenia Airways over a 2009 crash that killed 152 people -- but miraculously left a 12-year-old girl alive.

The Yemeni national airline faces a maximum fine of 225,000 euros ($225,000) if found guilty of insufficient pilot training that led to fatal mistakes by the crew onboard, as prosecutors have alleged.

On June 29, 2009, flight Yemenia 626 was on approach to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros islands that lie between Mozambique and Madagascar, after departing from the airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

France's overseas territory of Mayotte is also part of the Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa. Among the 142 passengers and 11 crew were 66 French citizens.

Just before 11:00 pm the Airbus A310 plunged into the Indian Ocean with its engines running at full throttle, killing everyone on board except Bahia Bakari, then just 12 years old.

"I started to feel the turbulence, but nobody was reacting much, so I told myself it must be normal," Bakari told a Paris courtroom in May during the trial, attended by dozens of friends and relatives of the victims.

Suddenly "I felt something like an electric shock go through my body," she recalled, before blacking out and then finding herself in the water among the wreckage.

She had left Paris to attend a wedding in the Comoros with her mother, who perished in the crash.
- Series of errors? -

Investigators and experts found there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, blaming instead "inappropriate actions by the crew during the approach to Moroni airport, leading to them losing control".

According to analyses of the "black box" flight data recorders found on the ocean floor several weeks later, a series of erroneous decisions was made by pilots over nearly five minutes before the crash.

No one from Yemenia Airways appeared at the trial, where prosecutors accused the company of pilot training programmes "riddled with gaps" and of continuing to fly to Moroni at night despite several non-functioning landing lights.

Yemenia is charged with involuntary homicide and injuries. The company's lawyers have denied any wrongdoing, saying the airline is being made a "scapegoat".

Around 560 people have joined the suit as plaintiffs, many of them from the region around Marseille in southern France, home to many of the victims.

Several people aboard were travelling to the Comoros to celebrate the islands' extravagant wedding parties, which often bring together entire villages.

"It's an entire community that was on this plane," a lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, Claude Lienhard, said during the trial.

alv/js/jh/imm/smw

Hunger returns to haunt Brazil amid divisive vote

Joshua Howat Berger
Tue, September 13, 2022 


In a small cement house crumbling to ruins in Brazil's parched Sertao region, Maria da Silva, a graying matriarch struggling to feed her family, opens her empty refrigerator and breaks down in sobs.

The 58-year-old widow, whose creased brown face betrays her burdens, lost her family's main breadwinner when her brother, who worked in Sao Paulo, died of Covid-19 last year.

Now she and her family of eight, who are squatting in an abandoned shack, are among the 33.1 million Brazilians living in hunger.

The figure -- a 73-percent increase in the past two years, according to the Brazilian Network for Research on Food Security -- has become the subject of a bitter political battle as Latin America's biggest economy heads for elections on October 2.


Holding a nearly empty can of powdered milk for the three young grandchildren who live with her, ages three, two and 15 months, Da Silva gives a tour of her dilapidated house, which has no bathroom or running water.

"There are times when (the children) ask for food and I don't even have a biscuit or bread to give them," she says through tears on the small plot of land the family farms in Poco da Cruz, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.

Soaring food prices have forced the family to turn to begging, she says.

"I just pray to God to end my suffering."

The presidential front-runner, leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, regularly attacks far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro over the fact Brazil reappeared on the World Food Programme's "Hunger Map" last year, with 28.9 percent of the population living in "moderate or severe food insecurity."

It is a major setback for a country that had been removed from the map in 2014, after an economic boom and landmark social programs helped lift 30 million people from poverty during Lula's administration (2003-2010).

Bolsonaro has aggressively counter-attacked, accusing Lula of bankrupting Brazil with corruption.

Courting low-income voters, the incumbent has upscaled and rebranded Lula's signature welfare program, and is campaigning extensively in the impoverished northeast, home to a quarter of Brazil's 213 million people.

- Hard-won gains -

Sprawled across the northeastern interior, the Sertao, or hinterland, is a semi-arid expanse of brown-and-olive-green scrubland.

Known for cyclical droughts, it is a harsh but beautiful land with an outsize role in Brazilian literature, music and film.

Each generation here remembers its worst drought -- 1960, 1993, 2010 -- and the misery it caused.

Joao Alfredo de Souza, a community leader in the rural township of Conceicao das Crioulas, weathered all those.

"It cost us a lot of sweat and tears to overcome," says De Souza, a spry 63-year-old who heads a community founded by ex-slaves in the 18th century.

Gesturing from his front porch to a paved street lined with neat, trim houses, De Souza describes Lula's time in office as a watershed of ambitious programs promoting housing, electricity, water, welfare, education and "Zero Hunger."

But the retired farmer says times have been "very tough" since Covid-19 hit Brazil, killing 680,000 people and triggering an economic implosion followed by soaring inflation.

He says Bolsonaro has won some northeasterners' support by super-sizing Lula's "Family Stipend" welfare program -- rebranded "Auxilio Brasil."

Bolsonaro recently tripled the average payment from Lula's day, to 600 reais ($115) a month, and is now pledging to increase it to 800 reais.

De Souza is unimpressed by the election-year spending spree.

"Why is he doing this only now? It's shameful," he says.

He says Lula, a Pernambuco native, "understands the northeast," where he leads in the polls in every state.

"He's one of us."

- 'Africa of Brazil' -

A half-hour drive away down a bone-jarring dirt road, in Regiao de Queimadas, a settlement still dotted with traditional mud-and-stick houses, signs of progress are harder to find.

A team of officials in four-by-four trucks from the federal government's National Health Foundation is going door-to-door asking whether people have bathrooms.

Many don't.

"This place is the Africa of Brazil," says one of the officials, reflecting a widespread perception of the region among government bureaucrats in Brazil.

The program's ostensible goal is to build adequate facilities for those who need them.

The head of the local farmers' association, Edineia de Souza, is skeptical.

"These guys only come around at election time," says the 40-year-old corn and bean farmer.

"We're still waiting on the bathrooms from last time."

De Souza, who helps organize food donations for needy families with a grass-roots charity called Amigos no Sertao, hopes things will change if Lula wins.

"When he was in office, projects got done," she says.

But she doesn't place much faith in politics.

"Politicians never even come here," she says.

jhb/wd

How the tide turned on data centres in Europe

by Joseph BOYLE

Ireland was once the darling of the data industry but now has a de facto moratorium on new centres.

Every time we make a call on Zoom, upload a document to the cloud or stream a video, our computers connect to vast warehouses filled with servers to store or access data.

Not so long ago, European countries were falling over each other to welcome the firms that run these warehouses, known as data centers or bit barns.

Wide-eyed politicians trumpeted investments and dreamt of creating global tech hubs.

But then the dream went sour.

The sheer amount of energy and water needed to power and cool these server farms shocked the public.

The industry sucked up 14 percent of Ireland's power last year, London warned home builders that power shortages caused by bit barns could affect new projects, and Amsterdam said it simply had no more room for the warehouses.

Then things got worse.

The war in Ukraine helped spark an energy crisis across the continent, leaving consumers facing rocketing bills and countries contemplating energy shortages.

"Data centers will be a target," critical blogger Dwayne Monroe told AFP, saying the focus would only grow if Europe cannot fix its energy crisis.

Grassroots campaigns and local opposition have already helped to halt projects this year by Amazon in France, Google in Luxembourg and Meta in the Netherlands.

The Irish government, while reaffirming support for the industry, put strict limits on new developments until 2028.

The data industry says it feels unfairly targeted, stressing its efforts to source green energy and arguing that outsourcing storage to bit barns has helped slash consumption.

'Veil of shadow'

These arguments are playing out most spectacularly in Ireland.

Activists are campaigning on a broad range of topics and using local forums to push their case.

"They take up a huge amount of space but provide basically no employment," says Madeleine Johansson, a Dublin councilor for the People Before Profit party, which is campaigning on the issue.

Johansson recently had a motion passed in her council area banning the centers, sparking an almighty row with the national government that is yet to be resolved.

Dylan Murphy of Not Here, Not Anywhere, one of several climate groups pushing the issue in Ireland, has filed a motion in his local council in Fingal calling for companies to reveal the kind of information they are holding.

"There's a complete lack of transparency... about what data is actually being stored in these data centers," he said, calling it a "veil of shadow".

The tech industry continues to innovate new products that invariably require

 vast amounts of processing power and data storage.

The data industry says revealing that information would be impossible.

Michael McCarthy of Cloud Infrastructure Ireland, a lobby group, said activists had lost the argument on sustainability and were now throwing everything at the wall.

"Data centers definitely are large energy users but they're part of a cohort of larger energy users," he said.

McCarthy and industry figures in other countries say the real problem is years of underinvestment in national energy infrastructure.

He also pointed out that the industry in Europe had pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030.

And there are still countries hankering to get data firms to locate there—particularly Iceland and Norway.

Questions over metaverse

Against this backdrop, the tech industry continues to innovate new products that invariably require vast amounts of processing power and data storage.

Machine-learning tools, for example, are hugely energy hungry—Google said earlier this year they accounted for between 10 and 15 percent of its total energy usage.

The metaverse, an emerging concept for a 3D internet championed by Facebook owner Meta, would also be hugely energy intensive.

Critical blogger Monroe reckons the metaverse will buckle under its own weight, partly because of its data requirements. 

"The construction of the metaverse would require Facebook to build out a distribution of data centers that would rival what Amazon, Microsoft and Google have done for their clouds," he said.

AFP contacted Meta for a response.

As far as the carbon footprint of such innovation goes, energy experts interviewed by AFP said it would be difficult to assess.

The metaverse, for example, could help to reduce emissions in other areas by reducing the need for travel.

An energy official who did not want to be named questioned whether data centers were the best target for criticism when cryptocurrencies were so wasteful.

While data centers used about one percent of global energy output in 2020, cryptocurrency mining used about half that amount, according to the International Energy Agency.

McCarthy said those who opposed data centers needed to reckon with just how embedded they had become in everyday life, particularly since the pandemic.

"They facilitate how we can work and live online, that's the reality of it," he said.

Google plans to invest 3 billion euros in Europe

© 2022 AFP

CLIMATE CRISIS 

Europe records hottest summer ever in 2022, says climate monitor

The EU's climate monitor said the average temperatures from June to August topped the previous record that was set in 2021.

This year's summer was the hottest recorded in Europe

The summer of 2022 was the hottest in Europe's recorded history, the European Commission's climate monitor said on Thursday. It is the second summer in a row of record-breaking temperatures in Europe. 

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said temperatures in Europe had been the "highest on record for both the month of August and the summer [June-August] as a whole."

August 2022 hottest month recorded

Data showed August was the hottest month yet recorded by a "substantial margin" of 0.4 degrees Celsius.

"An intense series of heatwaves across Europe, paired with unusually dry conditions, have led to a summer of extremes with records in terms of temperature, drought and fire activity in many parts of Europe, affecting society and nature in various ways," senior C3S scientist Freja Vamborg said.

"Data shows that we've not only had record August temperatures for Europe but also for summer, with the previous summer record only being one year old," she added.

In addition, August 2022 was generally much drier on average in Western Europe and parts of the East. In Southeastern Europe and parts of Scandinavia, there was more rain than usual.

CLIMATE CRISIS: A WORLD LACKING WATER
Famine risk on the Horn of Africa
Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are currently experiencing their worst drought in over 40 years after successive failed rainy seasons. The dry conditions have led to a severe food security issue in the region, with 22 million people at risk of starvation. More than 1 million people have been forced to leave their homes during the drought, which is expected to continue for months.
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Heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in Europe and elsewhere

Much of the northern hemisphere has been battling droughts and wildfires as a result of rising temperatures.

In late August, the European Commission said that around two thirds of the continent was experiencing drought.

Low water levels on the Rhine Riverin Germany have disrupted supply chains, as some ships were unable to traverse the waterway fully loaded.

On Wednesday, a World Meteorological Organization report said that longer droughts and more frequent heatwaves are fueling wildfires that worsen air quality. The report called the consequences for human health and ecosystems a "climate penalty."

sdi/wmr (AFP, dpa)

CLIMATE CRISIS 

Pakistan floods threaten food security as critical crops destroyed

Agricultural land inundated by flooding is set to have long-term humanitarian and economic impacts in Pakistan. Billions of dollars worth of rice, sugar and wheat have already been lost.

International donors are providing food assistance as Pakistan's breadbasket has been flooded

Flooding in dozens of districts in Pakistan's Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab provinces have destroyed wide swaths of agricultural land.

The country could soon face food shortages if thousands of acres of cropland aren't restored. 

"We are concerned that if the farmlands aren't drained right now, we won't be able to plant crops for winter season, the most important of which is the wheat crop," Nazia Bibi, a farmer in Balochistan's Pishin district, told DW.

The damage to the agricultural sector has caused the government to warn of a looming food security crisis. It is already having to import tomatoes and onions from neighboring Afghanistan and Iran.

A vendor in the capital Islamabad told DW that he was currently unable to buy new stocks of vegetables to sell. 

"I am waiting for the imported stock of onions and tomatoes to reach the warehouses so we can sell those," he said, sitting next to his cart full of onions, which were mostly rotten.

Food assistance needed

Pakistan's National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is leading relief efforts in coordination with the United Nations and other international organizations.

The United Nation's World Food Programme (WFP) has so far provided over 464,000 people in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Sindh with relief food assistance.

The WFP added that it aims to expand this to 1.9 million people facing food insecurity in flood-affected districts, according to a September situation report.

Displaced flood-affected people stand in a queue to receive food in Sindh province

"The intensity of the situation in villages is such that people are snatching ration packs from each other during distribution drives," said Abid Mir, a social activist and professor at a university in Sindh. "It's really heartbreaking to see that."

Some of the food relief is coordinated by the National Disaster Management Agency, who organizes the distribution of aid to their provincial counterparts. 

Other food relief is being distributed directly by international organizations, said Muhammad Younas, an official at Balochistan's Provincial Disaster Management Authority.

"International NGOs have their own local partners who they give their aid to. They have their own mechanism and ways of assessing the damages and victims' needs," he told DW.

"They, however, must get permission from the government to work in a particular area.".

Although Pakistan's government plans to provide cash payments to over 4.5 million flood-affected households through the Benazir Income Support Programme, it has been criticized for not doing enough to prepare for the monsoon season.

Saqlain Abbas, a farmer in Punjab state's Rajanpur district, said the government hadn't done enough to protect people's homes and land.

"For years, my family has been reliant on cultivating rice and wheat to feed ourselves and now all our crops have been submerged in water," he said.

The WFP said it will begin climate resilience programs next year in Pakistan by "improving community infrastructure."

However, economist Kaiser Bengali, says that it won't be easy for the Pakistani government to attract a large amount of aid to make the country more flood resilient.

"One, there is a donor fatigue," he said. "Two, Pakistan needs to slash non-development expenditure, including the non-combatant defense budget, ration petrol and ban non-essential  

Economic impact of flooded agricultural sector

The monsoon floods come as Pakistan is facing an ongoing economic crisis, with high inflation making food staples more expensive.

Pakistan is also a major exporter of agricultural products and the flood damage will likely cut into a vital source of income.

Pakistan is the world's fourth-largest exporter of rice, for example.

According to the nation's Bureau of Statistics, Pakistan exported a record $2.5 billion (€2.5 billion) worth of rice during the 2021-22 fiscal year.

Flood-stricken Sindh province accounts for 42% of that rice production. A report assessing crop loss in Sindh conducted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a Nepal-based research organization, shows that flooding was particularly severe in rice-growing areas.

This has resulted in the estimated loss of 1.9 million tons (1.7 million tonnes) of rice, equivalent to an 80% loss of the province's forecast rice production.

Combined with an 88% loss of sugarcane and 61% loss of cotton, the total economic impact is worth $1.3 billion in Sindh alone, according to the report.

Three key vegetable crops in several districts in Sindh — tomatoes, onions and chili — face losses of $374 million, it added.

Edited by: Wesley Rahn