CRISPR and other new technologies open doors for drug development, but which diseases get prioritized? It comes down to money and science

C. Michael White, University of Connecticut
Thu, December 14, 2023 

So many diseases to treat, so little money and time. Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment via Getty Images


Prescription drugs and vaccines revolutionized health care, dramatically decreasing death from disease and improving quality of life across the globe. But how do researchers, universities and hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry decide which diseases to pursue developing drugs for?

In my work as director of the Health Outcomes, Policy, and Evidence Synthesis group at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, I assess the effectiveness and safety of different treatment options to help clinicians and patients make informed decisions. My colleagues and I study ways to create new drug molecules, deliver them into the body and improve their effectiveness while reducing their potential harms. Several factors determine which avenues of drug discovery that people in research and pharmaceutical companies focus on.

Funding drives research decisions

Research funding amplifies the pace of scientific discovery needed to create new treatments. Historically, major supporters of research like the National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry and private foundations funded studies on the most common conditions, like heart disease, diabetes and mental health disorders. A breakthrough therapy would help millions of people, and a small markup per dose would generate hefty profits.

As a consequence, research on rare diseases was not well-funded for decades because it would help fewer people and the costs of each dose had to be very high to turn a profit. Of the more than 7,000 known rare diseases, defined as fewer than 200,000 people affected in the U.S., only 34 had a therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration before 1983.

The passage of the Orphan Drug Act changed this trend by offering tax credits, research incentives and prolonged patent lives for companies actively developing drugs for rare diseases. From 1983 to 2019, 724 drugs were approved for rare diseases.

The viral ALS ice bucket challenge in 2014 was a fundraising success. Elise Amendola/AP Photo

Emerging social issues or opportunities can significantly affect funding available to develop drugs for certain diseases. When COVID-19 raged across the world, funding from Operation Warp Speed led to vaccine development in record time. Public awareness campaigns such as the ALS ice bucket challenge can also directly raise money for research. This viral social media campaign provided 237 scientists nearly US$90 million in research funding from 2014 to 2018, which led to the discovery of five genes connected amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease, and new clinical trials.

How science approaches drug development

To create breakthrough treatments, researchers need a basic understanding of what disease processes they need to enhance or block. This requires developing cell and animal models that can simulate human biology.

It can take many years to vet potential treatments and develop the finished drug product ready for testing in people. Once scientists identify a potential biological target for a drug, they use high-throughput screening to rapidly assess hundreds of chemical compounds that may have a desired effect on the target. They then modify the most promising compounds to enhance their effects or reduce their toxicity.

When these compounds have lackluster results in the lab, companies are likely to halt development if the estimated potential revenue from the drug is less than the estimated cost to improve the treatments. Companies can charge more money for drugs that dramatically reduce deaths or disability than for those that only reduce symptoms. And researchers are more likely to continue working on drugs that have a greater potential to help patients. In order to obtain FDA approval, companies ultimately need to show that the drug causes more benefits for patients than harms.


Sometimes, researchers know a lot about a disease, but available technology is insufficient to produce a successful drug. For a long time, scientists knew that sickle cell disease results from a defective gene that leads cells in the bone marrow to produce poorly formed red blood cells, causing severe pain and blood clots. Scientists lacked a way to fix the issue or to work around it with existing methods.

However, in the early 1990s, basic scientists discovered that bacterial cells have a mechanism to identify and edit DNA. With that model, researchers began painstaking work developing a technology called CRISPR to identify and edit genetic sequences in human DNA.

The technology finally progressed to the point where scientists were able to successfully target the problematic gene in patients with sickle cell and edit it to produce normally functioning red blood cells. In December 2023, Casgevy became the first CRISPR-based drug approved by the FDA.

Sickle cell disease made a great target for this technology because it was caused by a single genetic issue. It was also an attractive disease to focus on because it affects around 100,000 people in the U.S. and is costly to society, causing many hospitalizations and lost days of work. It also disproportionately affects Black Americans, a population that has been underrepresented in medical research.
Real-world drug development

To put all these pieces of drug development into perspective, consider the leading cause of death in the U.S.: cardiovascular disease. Even though there are several drug options available for this condition, there is an ongoing need for more effective and less toxic drugs that reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

In 1989, epidemiologists found that patients with higher levels of bad, or LDL, cholesterol had more heart attacks and strokes than those with lower levels. Currently, 86 million American adults have elevated cholesterol levels that can be treated with drugs, like the popular statins Lipitor (atorvastatin) or Crestor (rosuvastatin). However, statins alone cannot get everyone to their cholesterol goals, and many patients develop unwanted symptoms limiting the dose they can receive.

There are several statins on the market to treat high cholesterol levels. Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

So scientists developed models to understand how LDL cholesterol is created in and removed from the body. They found that LDL receptors in the liver removed bad cholesterol from the blood, but a protein called PCSK9 prematurely destroys them, boosting bad cholesterol levels in the blood. This led to the development of the drugs Repathy (evolocumab) and Praluent (alirocumab) that bind to PCSK9 and stop it from working. Another drug, Leqvio (inclisiran), blocks the genetic material coding for PCSK9.

Researchers are also developing a CRISPR-based method to more effectively treat the disease.

The future of drug development

Drug development is driven by the priorities of their funders, be it governments, foundations or the pharmaceutical industry.

Based on the market, companies and researchers tend to study highly prevalent diseases with devastating societal consequences, such as Alzheimer’s disease and opioid use disorder. But the work of advocacy groups and foundations can enhance research funding for other specific diseases and conditions. Policies like the Orphan Drug Act also create successful incentives to discover treatments for rare diseases.

However, in 2021, 51% of drug discovery spending in the U.S. was directed at only 2% of the population.. How to strike a balance between providing incentives to develop miracle drug therapies for a few people at the expense of the many is a question researchers and policymakers are still grappling with.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: C. Michael White, University of Connecticut.

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Artificial light lures migrating birds into cities, where they face a gauntlet of threats

Carolyn S. Burt, Colorado State University

Kyle Horton, Colorado State University
Thu, December 14, 2023 

THE CONVERSATION

The New York City borough of Manhattan at night, viewed from the Rockefeller Center observation deck. Sergi Reboredo/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Light pollution has steadily intensified and expanded from urban areas, and with the advent of LED lighting, it is growing in North America by up to 10% per year, as measured by the visibility of stars in the night sky. In our recent study, we found that the glow from cities and urban outskirts can powerfully attract migratory birds, drawing them into developed areas where food is scarcer and they face threats such as colliding with glass buildings.

Each spring and fall, migratory birds journey to or from their breeding grounds, sometimes traveling thousands of miles. En route, most birds need to make stopovers to rest and feed. Some species burn off half of their body mass during migration.

Migratory stopover sites are not random, and birds typically use the same locations from year to year. Because migration takes place on a continental scale, with billions of birds crossing North America each migratory season, it’s important for scientists to understand what attracts birds to these locations.

We found that light pollution was a top predictor of the density of migrating birds at stopover locations for both spring and fall migration across the continental U.S.

Why it Matters

Nearly all birds in North America – some 80% – migrate each spring and fall. And of those species that migrate, 70% travel at night.

Nocturnal migration has many adaptive benefits: For example, the weather conditions are better, and fewer predators are active. But it makes most migratory birds highly susceptible to light pollution. In North America alone, it is estimated that up to 1 billion migrating birds die each year from collisions with buildings.

Scientists don’t yet know why nocturnally migrating birds are attracted to artificial light, but research has shown that light pollution acts as an amplifying agent that draws more songbirds into urbanized areas. It often co-occurs with other environmental threats, such as water and air pollution and noise. All of these stressors disrupt birds’ behavioral and physiological processes during journeys that already are extremely taxing.

Lighting is part of the fabric of human structures, yet many people don’t think of it as a pollutant or perceive its harmful effects on nature – until events like the mass bird loss in Chicago on Oct. 4-5, 2023, when nearly 1,000 birds were killed after colliding with the McCormick Place Convention Center, make the problem impossible to ignore.

Baltimore orioles migrate twice yearly between their wintering grounds in Florida, the Caribbean and Latin America and their summer breeding zones, which stretch from Louisiana into central Canada. Kyle Horton, CC BY-ND

How we did our work

With colleagues at Colorado State University, Michigan State University, the University of Delaware, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Princeton University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the National Park Service, we sought to understand the complex drivers and large-scale patterns of stopover density by combining remote sensing data with geospatial tools. Mapping stopover locations has been a bird conservation priority for many years; now, for the first time, we have a complete view of where these stopovers are across the United States.

We were able to make novel maps at a continental scale using U.S. NEXRAD weather surveillance data – information from the same radars that meteorologists draw on to predict weather patterns on television and weather apps. We created 2,500 models using roughly 1 million locations across the U.S. and 49 predictor variables, including forest cover, precipitation, temperature, elevation and skyglow – diffuse brightness in the night sky from artificial light.

These maps capture fine-scale details that allow us to see increased densities of migrating birds following the winding banks of the Mississippi River, which provide an important refuge for depleted migrants to rest and refuel. We also created fall and spring hotspot maps highlighting regions where especially high numbers of birds made stopovers.

Radar detecting migrating birds lifting off from the St. Louis landscape on the night of May 10, 2023. Density of bird flocks increases from light blue to dark blue to green. Kyle Horton, CC BY-ND

We found that the presence of light pollution was a better predictor of bird densities than temperature, precipitation or tree canopy cover. These all were variables that we had expected to correlate with periods when birds would be on the ground, or with high-quality habitats where birds would be likely to stop over.

Other variables were associated with areas that birds were unlikely to use as stopovers. One example was the presence of agricultural crops, such as corn or soybeans. Fields planted with a single crop don’t provide adequate food or shelter for many bird species, so migrants are unlikely to rest there.

Light pollution is a human-induced change to the environment that may act as an ecological trap, drawing birds into substandard habitats and increasing their risk of collisions with buildings. Happily, its immediate effects can be quickly reversed with the flip of a switch.

Working to reduce artificial light through Lights Out campaigns and migration alerts, understanding when birds will be in airspaces and using bird-friendly glass that has patterns across its surface to make it more visible to birds, will reduce bird deaths from light pollution. Understanding the drivers and macro-scale patterns of stopover densities across the continental U.S. will better inform conservation actions like these.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Carolyn S. Burt, Colorado State University and Kyle Horton, Colorado State University.

Read more:

Scientists are using machine learning to forecast bird migration and identify birds in flight by their calls

Fireflies need dark nights for their summer light shows – here’s how you can help

Kyle Horton receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Carolyn S. Burt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Radar data helps scientists estimate weight of the world's biggest iceberg

Haley Ott
Thu, December 14, 2023 

The world's largest iceberg, A23a, which has an area approximately three times the size of New York City, weighs in at almost 1 trillion tons, CBS News partner network BBC News reports, citing data from the European Space Agency (ESA). Using data from the agency's CryoSat-2 mission, a spacecraft that carries a type of radar able to sense how much of an iceberg's mass is above the water, scientists have been able to work out information about how much is below the water.

A23a broke off from Antarctica in 1986 and almost immediately got stuck after a deep section of it grounded on the seafloor. Recently, it became dislodged and started drifting again

The A23a iceberg is seen in an image from the European Space Agency taken on Nov. 14, 2023. / Credit: European Space Agency

"Over the last decade, we have seen a steady 2.5m (about 8 feet) per year decrease in thickness, which is what you would expect given the water temperatures in the Weddell Sea," Andy Ridout, a scientist from University College London and the Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, told CBS News partner network BBC News.

Video shows ship's "incredibly lucky" encounter with world's largest iceberg

On the move once more, it's still unclear where A23a will be carried by wind and ocean currents. The enormous iceberg has reached the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where a number of different currents converge.

It's expected to drift through an area known as "iceberg alley," the BBC said, and its track will affect whichever part of the ocean and ocean floor it travels over.

Iceberg's are "responsible for very deep mixing of seawater," Mike Meredith, a professor from the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC.

"They churn ocean waters, bringing nutrients up to the surface, and, of course, they also drop a lot of dust. All this will fertilize the ocean. You'll often see phytoplankton blooms in their wake."

Sweden’s climate pollution should have been down. The Nord Stream pipeline leak sent it skyrocketing

Rachel Ramirez, CNN
Thu, December 14, 2023 


The major gas leak from the sabotaged Nord Stream pipeline last year pushed Sweden’s annual plant-heating emissions up by 7%, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency reported Thursday.

The agency’s estimates show the largest part of the 2022 leak occurred within Denmark’s economic zone, but a whopping 5.8 million tons of climate pollution spilled within Sweden’s territory.

Without the Nord Stream leak, Sweden’s climate emissions would have actually been down 5% from 2021 levels.

The pollution was in the form of methane, the main component of the fossil-fuel gas people use to fuel stoves and heat homes, which has more than 80 times more warming power in the short-term than carbon dioxide. This gas can seep into the atmosphere from landfills, livestock and the oil and gas industry, particularly with pipeline leaks.

The September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which pumped methane gas from Russia to Germany, was a major flashpoint in the energy war between Europe and Russia. Amid its invasion of Ukraine, Russia halted all gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 at the time, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. Authorities have yet to determine who was behind the sabotage.

At the time of the leak, UN Environment Programme detected on satellite a massive plume of concentrated methane. It later reported the ruptures were likely the largest single release of methane ever recorded.

Slashing methane emissions was a sharp focus in the early days of the recent UN COP28 climate summit in Dubai. Scientists have said that curtailing methane is the easiest and fastest way to change the path of rising global temperatures in the coming years due to its intense warming power.

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Historic climate deal does the ‘bare minimum’ as the world warms, burns and floods

Lucas Thompson and Denise Chow and Evan Bush
Thu, December 14, 2023 

If there was ever a year that called for bold global action on climate change, 2023 was it.

In what will likely go down as the warmest year on record — one rife with catastrophic floods, scorching heat waves, devastating wildfires and enduring drought — leaders from nearly 200 countries gathered to chart a path forward in the fight against climate change.

After more than two weeks of tense negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, representatives from 198 countries agreed Wednesday to “transition away” from fossil fuels.


It was a historic deal but one that once again fell short for many climate activists, who saw it as further evidence that efforts to address climate change are moving too slowly and are being compromised by fossil fuel interests.

Former Vice President Al Gore called the agreement an “important milestone” but added that acknowledging the role that the burning of fossil fuels has played in the climate crisis is “the bare minimum we need and is long overdue.”

“Whether this is a turning point that truly marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era depends on the actions that come next and the mobilization of finance required to achieve them,” Gore wrote Wednesday on the social media platform X.

Skepticism of what comes next is understandable. The COP agreement’s lack of a concrete plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels adds to growing concern that the big-picture moves necessary to avoid drastic environmental consequences are coming up short. Sure, the rise of clean energy technology and broader social awareness of global warming has spurred some optimism, but many environmentalists stress that these developments could mean little without a drastic reduction in how much carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere.

fossil fuel protest climate summit (Fadel Dawod / Getty Images)

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday that the era of fossil fuels “must end,” adding that science indicates it will be impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) without eliminating their use.

“Whether you like it or not, fossil fuel phase out is inevitable,” he wrote on X. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come too late.”

The COP28 climate summit was controversial from the start. The host country, the UAE, is an oil-rich nation, and the meeting’s president, Sultan al-Jaber, is chief executive of the UAE’s state oil company, ADNOC.

Early in the conference, Al-Jaber came under fire for claiming in an online event in late November that there was “no science” to support the need to phase out fossil fuels to limit global warming, as first reported by The Guardian.

The event came as faith that oil companies are committed to reducing fossil fuel emissions has dwindled. While major oil and gas companies previously signaled they would transition to clean energy and do their part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they have walked back many of those claims over the past year. Critics have accused the industry of “greenwashing,” all while companies have increased exploration and hundreds of new oil and gas projects have been approved around the world.

Throughout the meeting, which ran into overtime talks, critics questioned how much could be accomplished on fossil fuels when it was being held in Dubai and led by Al-Jaber. Those fears came to the forefront when it became clear that the final agreement would not commit to a fossil fuel phaseout.

While the phrases “transition away” and “phase out” sound similar, there are key distinctions between them. Phasing out means their use in energy systems will ultimately be eliminated, while “transition away” represents a compromise, implying their use will be cut but will still continue.

Nate Hultman, a former State Department official and the founder and director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland, said it was an open question going into the conference as to whether world leaders would seriously debate the future of fossil fuels.

“There was a risk this could have been an exercise in avoiding an issue,” he said.

But Hultman said the final agreement — which calls for countries to “transition away” from fossil fuels in an equitable way, to triple the amount of renewable energy installed by 2030, and to shore up leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane — makes clear that world leaders did reckon with a future without fossil fuels.

“The outcome indicates, this issue not only was substantially discussed, but highlighted in the text. There are good, strong elements,” said Hultman, who attended his 21st COP this year. “It will be important having this kind of signal sent about transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

Still, the agreement is nonbinding and its critics — in particular, leaders from poor, developing countries and island nations that are disproportionately affected by climate change — said it does not go far enough to eliminate fossil fuels and keep the world below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

Many climate scientists and activists have expressed frustration that calls to “phase out” fossil fuels were significantly watered down.

“The agreement emerging from COP28 rightly emphasizes nature as a solution, but the failure to acknowledge the need to phase out the use of fossil fuels is dispiriting,” Mustafa Santiago Ali, executive vice president of conservation and justice at the nonprofit National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement Wednesday.

Earlier in the week, as drafts of the agreement emerged, emotions ran even higher. Gore wrote Monday on X that “COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure.”

In the end, nations agreed for the first time in nearly 30 years of these U.N. summits that a shift away from fossil fuels was needed to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by or around 2050 and to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Merely mentioning what has been the elephant in the room at previous COP meetings was hailed as a major milestone.

“The very fact that the phasing out of fossil fuels has become center stage in an international arena would have been hard to imagine five years ago and is a significant advance,” said Michael Lazarus, a senior scientist and director of the Stockholm Environment Institute U.S., which is based in Seattle. “It means there is a shelf life, a due date, on fossil fuels now. We’re at a point where we can envision transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

Lazarus said the consensus nature of the international process — every country participating in deliberations effectively has veto power — makes global progress a grind.

“People talk about how it’s just words and not action, but the discourse that comes out of these international meetings have a remarkable resonance and ability to change the conversation,” Lazarus said. “Unless we have a sense of global action to phase out fossil fuels, to reduce emissions across the board, countries will not have the same incentives to act in the ways they need to.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Don't applaud the COP28 climate summit's loss and damage fund deal just yet – here's what missing

Shannon Gibson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Wed, December 13, 2023 
THE CONVERSATION

Shortly after the opening ceremony of the 2023 United Nations climate negotiations in Dubai, delegates of nations around the world rose in a standing ovation to celebrate a long-awaited agreement to launch a loss and damage fund to help vulnerable countries recover from climate-related disasters.

But the applause might not yet be warranted. The deal itself leaves much undecided and has been met with criticism by climate justice advocates and front-line communities.

I teach global environmental politics and climate justice and have been attending and observing these negotiations for over a decade to follow the demands for just climate solutions, including loss and damage compensation for countries that have done the least to cause climate change.

COP28 President Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, center, walks with world leaders and representatives of countries to the climate summit’s opening ceremony. The loss and damage fund was one of the first items approved. Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images

A brief history of loss and damage

“Breakthrough” was the term often used to describe the decision at 2022’s COP27 climate conference to finally construct a loss and damage fund. Many countries rejoiced at this “long-delayed” agreement — it came 31 years after Vanuatu, a small archipelago in the Pacific, first proposed compensation for loss and damage for climate-caused sea level rise in earlier negotiations.

The agreement was only a framework, however. Most of the details were left to a transitional committee that met throughout 2023 to forward recommendations on this new fund to COP28. A United Nations report outlined at the committee’s second meeting found that funding from wealthy nations to help poorer countries adapt to the ravages of climate change grew by 65% from 2019 to 2020, to $US49 billion. That’s still far below the 0 billion to 0 billion the U.N. estimates will be needed annually by 2030.

As the meetings went on, developing nations, long wary of traditional financial institutions’ use of interest-bearing loans, which have left many low-income countries mired in debt, proposed that the fund be independent. Developed nations, however, insisted the fund be hosted under the World Bank and held up the recommendations until right before COP28.
Devil is in the details

While any deal on funding for climate disaster damages was sure to be portrayed as a historic win, further investigation suggests that it should be welcomed with hesitation and scrutiny.

First, the fund contains no specifics on scale, financial targets or how it will be funded. Instead, the decision merely “invites” developed nations to “take the lead” in providing finance and support and encourages commitments from other parties. It also fails to detail which countries will be eligible to receive funding and vaguely states it would be for “economic and non-economic loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events.”

So far, pledges have been underwhelming.

Extensive flooding from extreme rain destroyed homes and livelihoods across Pakistan in 2022. Residents set up tents along a stretch of dry land. Fida Hussain/AFP via Getty Images

Calculations of early commitments total just over US0 million, with Germany and the United Arab Emirates pledging 0 million and the U.K. committing million. The United States, one of the largest climate change contributors, pledged only .5 million in comparison. It’s a shockingly low starting point.

Also, any notion that this fund represents liability or compensation by developed countries — a major concern for countries with long histories of carbon pollution — was removed entirely. It in fact notes that loss and damage response is based on cooperation instead.

In a rare win for the developing world, funds were made available — even at subnational and community levels — to all nations, though with yet-undetermined performance indicators.

Additional concern has been raised about the fund’s interim host – the World Bank. In fact, deciding on a host institution was one of the sticking points that nearly derailed earlier talks.

On one side, the United States and other developed nations insisted the fund be hosted by the World Bank, which has always been led by an American and has historically spread pro-Western policies. Developing countries, however, resisted the World Bank’s involvement based on their historical experiences with its lending and structural adjustment programs and noting the bank’s role for years in financing oil and gas exploration as cornerstones of development efforts.

World Bank President Ajay Banga speaks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at COP28 in Dubai on Dec. 2, 2023. Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

Following a stalemate and U.S. attempts to block a consensus, a compromise was reached to host the fund under the World Bank for four years, with guardrails to ensure its independence and impact. After this window, the host structure will be reviewed, leading to either a fully independent fund or continuation under the World Bank.

The concern for critics with this route is that the compromise risks ending up as a permanent hosting situation.

And there are more issues, such as the fund board’s composition, which only allows for national representatives, not civil society representatives such as from Indigenous groups, as developing countries requested. The scope of funding that will be allowed is also still up in the air. In the fund’s vague state, it opens the door for countries, as part of their loss and damage funding commitments, to count private loans, conditional import credits and even funding from the fossil fuel industry at the same time the industry continues to fuel climate damage.

What happens next, starting in 2024

To date, the international climate community does not have a solid track record when it comes to climate finance promises. Each successive fund — from the Green Climate Fund that supports green projects in the developing world to the Adaptation Fund that builds climate resilience for the most vulnerable nations — has been woefully undersourced from inception.

In 2021, the entire climate finance ecosystem, from national commitments to private investment, totaled 0 billion. Experts indicate that this sum needs to be closer to .3 trillion.

That target represents 20% year-over-year growth until the end of this decade – a significant ramp up from recent years.

From 2011 to 2020, total climate finance grew at just 7% annually. If this trend continues, not only will developing and most vulnerable countries lose faith in this process, but the very need for loss and damage funding will only grow.

The new fund board is mandated to hold its first meeting by Jan. 31, 2024. While this early start time is laudable, droughts will continue killing crops, and storms will continue flooding homes while the new fund engages in another series of meetings to determine who will qualify, how they can apply and how and when funds will actually be dispersed.

Researcher Will Erens, a student at the University of Southern California, contributed to this article.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.Like this article? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

It was written by: Shannon Gibson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Read more:

How should we compensate poor countries for ‘loss and damage’ from climate change?

Loss and damage: Who is responsible when climate change harms the world’s poorest countries?

COP27’s ‘loss and damage’ fund for developing countries could be a breakthrough – or another empty climate promise

Shannon Gibson is affiliated with the Global Justice Ecology Project.

At least $2.1 billion in new funds pledged at COP28, as foundations focus on health and agriculture

THALIA BEATY
Tue, December 12, 2023 

With the United Nations climate talks wrapping up in Dubai, foundations and other funders pledged at least $2.1 billion in new financing to reduce climate impacts, especially from agriculture, and increasing help for vulnerable communities.

The Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC, or COP28 summit, featured numerous firsts, including forums on health, food production and philanthropy. The estimated pledges, which do not represent a complete account of philanthropic commitments at COP28, came from a mix of foundations and private companies with some made in partnership with governments. They will be delivered over a range of timelines.

For the first time, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria sent a delegation to the conference, pledging to spend 70% of its budget, about $9 billion, in the 50 most climate vulnerable countries over the next three years.

"The honest answer is that the global health community, including us, was so focused on COVID-19, that we probably didn’t pay enough attention to all the signs of what climate change was doing to global health," said Peter Sands, CEO of the Global Fund.

His organization also launched a set of principles for financing projects at the intersection of climate and health along with the World Health Organization, the Green Climate Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation and COP presidency.

The first Business & Philanthropy forum offered foundations, donors and corporations a larger formal role at a time when COP28 leaders are looking to secure more financing from the private sector.

According to a report from ClimateWorks Foundation released earlier this month, philanthropic funding for climate change mitigation was essentially unchanged in 2022, after showing consistent growth for the past three years. The lack of growth is attributed to global economic conditions, including increased inflation.

“Every sector of society must do more to contribute, including philanthropy,” said Helene Desanlis, ClimateWorks’ director of climate philanthropy for global intelligence, which she said includes both increasing funding amounts and collaborating more closely with other funders and actors.

The forum announced new blended finance vehicles, which can fund initiatives through a mix of corporate investments and donations, as well as a call to direct funding for Indigenous peoples already working to protect the environment in their communities.

Ozawa Bineshi Albert, co-executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance, which advocates for people and organizations in frontline communities affected by climate change, said it’s a welcome idea to increase funding for Indigenous peoples, who she says always face an uphill battle to be heard in these meetings.

“It would be generous for me to say I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Albert. “There’s a difference between folks advocating to be benevolent caretakers of Indigenous people versus Indigenous people being at the table because they’

Albert said the Business & Philanthropy forum can be helpful, but government policy and regulation, especially in reducing carbon production, would be far more helpful.

“Should they and could they do more? Absolutely,” she said.“ Do I think their investment in this is going to rescue us from the crisis we’re in? No. The government still has to act. If we’re not reducing and eliminating the production of carbon with our energy sources, no matter how much philanthropy invests, we will never be able to dig out of the hole.”

Christie Ulman, president of the Sequoia Climate Foundation, which focuses on driving down emissions in part through transitioning to clean energy, said she is supporting their grantee organizations and partners at COP in advocating for ambitious targets for renewable energy and decreasing other pollutants like methane.

“We also are there encouraging the fossil fuel phase out agenda and mainstreaming that,” she said of her organization's role at the summit. Along with multiple other philanthropic funders, Sequoia announced a $450 million commitment to target the reduction of methane and other pollutants over three years.

Last year, Sequoia along with some of the same funders, pledged $500 million over three years to accelerate the transition to clean energy sources in low- and middle-income countries. So far, Ullman said that coalition has granted out 40% of the commitment, or around $200 million.

Ulman said that the investments are targeted to support the plans and projects that countries have already made around energy transitions and she hopes that additional funding will follow.

The Bezos Earth Fund pledged $100 million to support a plan by Pacific Island nations to protect and sustainably manage marine ecosystems. Bloomberg Philanthropies also made commitments around protecting oceans, transitioning to clean energy and supporting cities adapting to climate change.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has long focused on food insecurity through developing tools and technology to help farmers adapt to climate change, announced a new commitment of $100 million along with the United Arab Emirates, who committed another $100 million. Some of those funds will go to CGIAR, an agricultural research group, which the Gates Foundation has supported with more than $1 billion in grants over time.

“No other effort to adapt to climate change will have more impact,” Gates said in prepared remarks, of CGIAR.

The Gates Foundation and other funders also pledged a collective $770 million to expand the work of a fund founded by the UAE to eliminate neglected tropical diseases, called Reaching the Last Mile Fund.

Sands, of the Global Fund, advocated for using the existing global health architecture as much as possible to diminish the burden on health systems in individual countries and called for swift action in the short term as climate change exacerbates health inequities around the world.

“Fundamentally what it’s doing is making those who are most vulnerable and least able to access health services even more vulnerable and even less able to access how health services,” he said.

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Poor countries need trillions of dollars to go green. A long-shot effort aims to generate the cash

JAMEY KEATEN
Updated Tue, December 12, 2023 





Activists participate in a demonstration at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Dec. 8, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

 (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A large, long-shot effort is being developed to mobilize money to save Planet Earth.

Climate finance experts say trillions of dollars are needed for forestry projects and renewable energies like solar and wind in the developing world, all aimed at slashing pollution from the burning of oil, gas and coal, which cause climate change.

The price tag is eye-watering: Investment in energy-transition technologies were $1.3 trillion last year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental group, and that needs to at least quadruple to avoid a level of warming that scientists say would be catastrophic.

Even rich governments can't commit that kind of cash, and often struggle to get respective congresses and parliaments to sign off even on modest amounts.

Enter a plan to combine the cash-churning power of the private sector with carbon credits, a hot topic of discussion at the annual climate talks taking place in Dubai.

“It’s an enormous amount of capital to raise in a short time, so governments are going to have to be creative in terms of how they get there,” said Yousef Alhorr, founding chairman of the Global Carbon Council, an international carbon credit and sustainable development program based in oil-rich Qatar.

Carbon markets already exist and come with a good deal of baggage, so the plan has plenty of naysayers. Critics of the plan being developed say existing voluntary programs have been badly supervised — leading to cheating and rights abuses.

Proponents, like U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry, lenders like the World Bank, and the U.N. acknowledge the markets have room for improvement. They say their plan would improve monitoring and provide greater cash churn.

Such voluntary schemes would resemble carbon offsets like those long offered by airlines to travelers, who willingly pay an extra fee to compensate for the carbon generated by their flights, often to fund tree-planting projects or protection of existing forests.

The markets would work like this: Countries that take part could generate carbon credits based on projects aimed to meet their own climate goals, such as protecting existing forests from development or shutting coal-fired plants.

Private-sector players could then buy the credits, which would allow them to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. Heavy-polluting companies would be important customers.

Each credit would equal a ton of CO2 or the equivalent other greenhouse gases that can be reduced in the air, sequestered, or avoided by using green energies instead.

Money from the credits generated would go to local projects. The per-ton price of carbon would fluctuate in the market, meaning that the higher it rises, the more green projects could fetch through new credits generated.

In Dubai, the U.S. government along with the Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation announced a project called the “Energy Transition Accelerator.” It aims to guide the plan by using “high-integrity” carbon crediting to weed out possible cheats and support local communities and populations.

Until now, accountability has been largely by independent registries of carbon markets. The ETA scheme would give governments a bigger role in ensuring that safeguards are built in.

Chile, Dominican Republic and Nigeria are pilot countries for the ETA, which aims to be established by Earth Day in April. Proponents estimate that $72 billion to $207 billion could be mobilized for transition to clean power projects by 2035.

It’s a voluntary program, and companies like Bank of America, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, and PepsiCo have signed a letter of interest in participating.

In the past, companies participating in other carbon markets have made false claims about projects, known as greenwashing, and some financiers, farmers and others count a single project multiple times – meaning that the benefits are overestimated. Some corporate cheaters have cranked up emissions only to later reduce them and claim credits for going greener.

Critics say carbon credit programs let polluters keep polluting and have siphoned focus away from the most important goal — an end of use of fossil fuels, which is the No. 1 cause of global warming.

“Buying offsets from carbon markets without phasing out fossil fuels will always be greenwashing,” said Erika Lennon, senior attorney at Climate & Energy at the Center for International Environmental Law.

Kerry admitted “some people abuse” carbon credit systems and “they have done an injustice to everybody.

"We believe it is more than cured in the approaches that we’ve put together,” he said during a Dec. 4 panel event at COP28, where he detailed the Energy Transition Accelerator.

Simon Stiell, the executive director of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, cautioned against too much reliance on such programs. He said they “cannot substitute for government action” and should be coupled with “robust internal emissions cuts by the private sector.”

He called for new projects in agriculture, power storage, the retirement of fossil fuel assets, green hydrogen extracted through renewables, and electric mobility.

Still, it's hard to imagine governments footing the bill for energy transition at a massive scale.

Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank, said unifying a fragmented market to create bigger scale is needed. The Washington-based multilateral bank has devised its own carbon credit program, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.

In it, several countries including Guatemala, Vietnam and Congo plan over the next year to issue the first 24 million credits, and 11 other countries are lining up to join. The bank says the project hopes to get up to $2.5 billion through 2028.

“Ultimately, these credits have the potential to transfer billions of dollars to communities from companies and governments, voluntarily,” Banga told the panel event.

“This is hard, and we will be criticized: I’m pretty sure of that. We will make mistakes: I’m pretty sure of that,” he added. “But we will learn from them.”

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AP journalists Seth Borenstein and Sibi Arasu contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


Heard at UN climate talks: Quotes that tell the story

PETER PRENGAMAN
Wed, December 13, 2023 







Britain's Minister for Climate Graham Stuart speaks during a plenary session at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

 (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Over 14 days of U.N. climate talks, delegates from nearly 200 countries debated, made proposals, lobbed criticisms and did their best to convince each other how best to stop the planet from warming at a dangerous pace.

Much of the discussion at COP28, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, was technical, on subjects ranging from climate science to sustainable development. But ultimately the summit was about people— tens of thousands who came to have their voices heard. Here is a sampling of quotes that tell the story.

“These allegations are false, not true, incorrect and not accurate." — COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber on Nov. 30.

On the first day of the summit, al-Jaber denied a BBC report that said the oil-rich United Arab Emirates planned to make deals for oil and renewable energies during the negotiations. Al-Jaber runs both the UAE’s national oil company and a renewable energy firm. Leading up to the talks, many environmentalists and even politicians around the world argued that somebody from the oil industry, which is responsible for much of the emissions that cause climate change, shouldn’t be overseeing a climate summit.

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“At the start of COP27 in Egypt last year, many people said it wouldn’t be agreed, let alone created in 12 months.” — Mohamed Adow, director of climate think tank Power Shift Africa, on Nov. 30.

Adow was referring to a fund to help poor countries being hammered by the extremes of climate change, such as floods, droughts and hurricanes. The fund was established on the first day of the summit after it was approved but not finalized last year. While there are many questions long term — namely how much will rich countries contribute? — its approval underscored that the world community believes developed nations, which are most responsible for climate change, have a moral imperative to help countries being severely affected.

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“We are here all together, all the world together, to combat climate change and really, we’re negotiating for what? We’re negotiating for what in the middle of a genocide?” — Hadeel Ikhmais, a climate change expert with the Palestinian Authority, on Dec. 1.

During the two weeks of negotiations, the war between Israel and Hamas cast a long shadow over the event. Several world leaders expressed solidarity with Palestinians and there were several small pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

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"The commitments to cut methane are significant, but they address the symptom, not the source.” — Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, on Dec. 2.

Fifty oil and gas companies said they would sharply reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, across their operations by 2030. While celebrated by some climate experts, others noted that the pledge was voluntary, so not enforceable, and argued that it allowed the industry to simply continue its core business of drilling, extraction and export of oil.

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“Well, I mean, it’s cheesy doing CPR on the Earth. We’re kind of in a lot of trouble right now ... anything we can do to bring attention to this issue.” — Dr. Joe Vipond, an emergency room physician from Alberta, Canada, on Dec. 3.

For the first time in its history, the climate talks included health as one of its thematic days. As temperatures have crept up and extreme weather events have intensified, researchers are finding links between climate change and negative impacts on human health, including heat stroke, breathing problems and infectious diseases.

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“Please, help me, show me for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves." Al-Jaber, recorded in November, comments that surfaced Dec. 4.

The comments had the effect of a thunderclap. For environmentalists who opposed al-Jaber being COP28 president, it confirmed their narrative that an oil executive had no interest in leading the world toward less fossil fuel use. In a testy news conference the next day, al-Jaber said he had been taken out of context.

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“The last half year has truly been shocking. Scientists are running out of adjectives to describe this.” — Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess on Dec. 6.

As negotiators settled into the second week of the talks, scientists announced that November had been the sixth month in a row of record temperatures, an ominous reminder of how quickly the Earth is warming. Put another way, the discussions at COP28 had real world implications, something that many delegates mentioned.

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“We have to say how loud we’re going to be, what’s going to be written on the banners. We’re not allowed to name countries and corporations. So it’s really a very sanitized space.” — Lise Masson, from Friends of the Earth International, on Dec. 9.

While protests were allowed, as the tightly controlled UAE leadership had promised, there were so many restrictions that demonstrators said they struggled to be heard.

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“They’re scared. I think they’re worried." — Former Ireland President Mary Robinson on Dec. 9.

Robinson was speaking about the interests of oil and gas when it was reported that OPEC, the oil cartel, had written to member countries asking that they reject any agreement around phasing out fossil fuels.

__ “We will not go silently to our watery graves.” — Samuel Silk, Marshall Islands chief delegate and natural resources minister, on Dec. 11.

Silk was talking about a draft agreement that he and numerous others said had weak language on fossil fuels. The strong opposition to the initial draft would push delegates to negotiate for another two days.

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“Humanity has finally done what is long, long, long overdue.” — Wopke Hoekstra, European Union commissioner for climate action, on Dec. 13.

For the first time in 28 years of climate talks, delegates said in plain language that the world needed to transition away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. The upshot of that was a sharp ramping up of green energies like wind and solar. It will take years to judge what impact the decision has, but it has sent a clear message to the world about the need to radically shift its energy systems.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Editorial: After COP28, let's make this the 'beginning of the end' of fossil fuels

The Times Editorial Board
Wed, December 13, 2023 

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, second from left, claps at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Kamran Jebreili / Associated Press)


It took nearly three decades, but world leaders this week finally acknowledged the obvious: There is no way to slow climate change without winding down fossil fuels.

The agreement reached Wednesday by nearly 200 nations at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai is something of a breakthrough. For the first time, world leaders called for moving away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

Read more: Editorial: CalPERS must ditch fossil fuel investments. Its new 'sustainable' plan doesn't do that

It’s easy to criticize this deal, which followed two weeks of tough negotiations, as weak and insufficient. It is nonbinding and full of caveats and loopholes. It includes support for carbon capture technology and “transitional fuels,” code for natural gas, that would enable the continued burning of planet-warming hydrocarbons.

It calls for "transitioning away" from fossil fuels, rather than phasing out, which many entities, including the United States, the European Union and vulnerable island states, were pushing for. The weaker language is the reflection of heavy influence from polluting industries, OPEC and oil-rich nations that lobbied fiercely against targeting fossil fuels.

Read more: Editorial: On climate change, world leaders are saying one thing and doing another

But the agreement is a milestone nonetheless. There is now a baseline global consensus on the need to move beyond fossil fuels.

Whether this deal truly signals the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era, as U.N. officials have said, depends entirely on what steps countries take next to scale up clean, renewable energy and hasten the demise of planet-warming coal, oil and gas.

Now governments must quickly take action to avoid a disastrous future, including the collapse of ecosystems and mounting human suffering from worsening storms, fires, heat waves, floods and other climate-fueled disasters.

This will be a particular challenge for the U.S., which is the world’s top oil producer and is pumping out record amounts even as the planet records its hottest year. Oil and gas companies are doubling down on fossil fuels with big acquisitions and expansion plans, while using their record profits to attack, delay and undermine climate solutions including renewable energy and electric vehicles.

Read more: Commentary: Bird names shouldn’t honor bigots and enslavers — or anyone

But there are also signs of hope. The historic clean energy investments under the Inflation Reduction Act are beginning to transform the U.S. economy. In California, 1 in 4 new cars sold are now zero-emission and Los Angeles officials last year banned new oil drilling and will phase out existing wells.

Perhaps future generations will look back on 2023 as a turning point when the world’s leaders — hosted by a petroleum company executive in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, of all places — changed course and finally got on a path toward ending fossil fuels that endanger our planet and the life it sustains.

But it's up to all of us to hold our government accountable for delivering on these words and taking all necessary actions to close the door on the fossil fuel era.

If it’s in the news right now, the L.A. Times’ Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.