Fudged Figures, Gas, and Debt: Digging into MDBs’ “Climate Finance”

Half of all Multilateral Development Banks’ climate finance goes to Europe. Just 4% is grants. We don’t just need more but better climate finance.

By Petra Kjell Wright

November 15, 2024

Source: African Arguments

At the COP29 climate talks, World Bank President Ajay Banga (middle) committed to increase climate finance available through MDBs for low- and middle-income to $120 billion per year by 2030, much of it through leveraging private sector investment. Credit: Madeleine Race/Recourse.



At the COP29 climate talks, World Bank President Ajay Banga (middle) committed to increase climate finance available through MDBs for low- and middle-income to $120 billion per year by 2030, much of it through leveraging private sector investment. Credit: Madeleine Race/Recourse.

This week, at the COP29 climate talks, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) are patting themselves on the back. Side events, panels, and press releases all celebrate their achievements in aligning their activities with the Paris Agreement and delivering climate finance at record levels – $125 billion in 2023. The MDBs, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank, claim to “drive transformative change” in global climate action. However, a new report by Recourse, supported by 18 organisations and networks, tells a very different story – and raises critical questions about what “climate finance” actually is in the eyes of the MDBs. This comes at a critical moment with a new climate finance goal on the table at COP29.

The report scrutinised the MDBs’ own figures and found a plethora of problems. One of these is a lack of transparency on what is being counted. For example, Oxfam could not verify 40% – that’s $7 billion – of what the World Bank claimed as climate finance for one fiscal year. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) declared that they reached their target for 50% of their financing approvals to be for climate finance in 2022, three years early to their 2025 deadline, but failed to make the relevant data public. Meanwhile, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has not published any public record at all of what it counts as climate finance.

The funding is also not flowing to where it is most needed. Almost half of all MDB climate finance for 2023 did not go to the world’s most climate vulnerable countries. Instead, it went to Europe. Sub-Saharan Africa received a fraction – just 14% – and Asia little more – 21%. And despite public finance’s particularly important role in supporting efforts to adapt to climate change impacts, almost 80% of MDB climate finance went to emissions reduction activities (referred to as mitigation).

The financing models are also concerning. Climate Action Network (CAN) International, a network of over 1,900 civil society organisations, calls for climate finance to be delivered as grants, yet just 4% of MDB climate finance in 2023 came in this form. 70% took the form of loans. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) reported an even higher level of loans at 96%, while the AIIB has no proper grant function at all. Disturbingly, this means that climate finance is worsening the debt crisis in many countries and further undermining countries’ ability to deal with climate change.

Besides these critical issues lie a more fundamental problem – the fact there is no agreed definition of what “climate finance” is in practice. In this void, the MDBs have come up with their own principles for what type of projects count as climate finance, but with some significant flaws. The only kinds of projects that are fully excluded are coal and peat projects, as well as those leading to deforestation. However many other initiatives are allowed to be counted as climate finance, subject to some restrictions. This includes false solutions like carbon capture and storage, which is costly and not proven to work at scale, and highly polluting and greenhouse gas intensive waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration projects.

Another problem is that part of a project can be counted as climate finance, even when the rest of the project is highly greenhouse gas intensive. When scrutinising the MDBs’ publicly available documentation, there are some surprising and concerning finds. The AIIB, for example, counted almost half of its $153 million funding for an airport expansion project in Turkey as climate finance, disregarding the fact it will double the airport’s capacity – and in turn, more than double its emissions. The same bank also counted part of a greenfield gas power plant set to run for at least 22 years as climate finance – despite the long-term carbon lock-in that it represents for Bangladesh, one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. There is even evidence an MDB counted funding of a mega LNG project in East Africa as climate finance, according to OECD.

But the Paris Agreement isn’t just about greenhouse gas emissions and environmental destruction – it also calls for human rights obligations to be respected and promoted. Yet the MDB principles for climate finance are void of any requirement to protect and support those most vulnerable, including women and girls. They are completely gender blind. According to the MDBs, they rely instead on their own policies, which differ across the banks. But there is a wide range of evidence showing how these are lacking in numerous respects. For example, the AIIB and the ADB counted their investments in a hydroprower project in Nepal that has severely marginalised and displaced local Indigenous peoples, with women worst impacted, as 100% climate finance. In Mongolia, civil society is protesting a “climate smart” mining project, also counted as 100% climate finance by the ADB, due to the high risks to local communities, including Indigenous peoples.

In the first week of COP29, World Bank President Ajay Banga announced a big commitment to increase climate finance available through MDBs for low- and middle-income countries. He set an annual goal of $120 billion by 2030, much of it through leveraging private sector investment. But before they scale-up the quantity, the banks need to reassess the quality. Ultimately, the MDBs are accountable to the farmers, workers, women, Indigenous peoples, and the most marginalised communities in developing countries. These are the people that their climate finance should serve, whatever the goal agreed by countries here at COP29.

Time running out to stop the melting in Hindu Kush, Himalaya

Hindu Kush Himalaya region may experience up to 80pc ice loss under high emissions scenario, a study released on COP29 sidelines says.



Zaki Abbas 

Published November 13, 2024

As climate change threatens the cryosphere — the frozen parts of the Earth — at an alarming rate putting almost a quarter of humanity at risk, Pakistan has advocated for coordinated regional efforts and international support to save the eco-system and build climate resilience, particularly across the Hindu Kush and Himalaya region.

The study ‘The State of the Cryosphere 2024’, released on Tuesday on the sidelines of COP29 in Baku, urged urgent action to control emissions to save glaciers, which are melting at a rapid pace due to global warming.

“Under a high emissions scenario…Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), may experience up to 80% of ice loss. With very low emissions however, up to 40% of glacier ice in the HKH region could be preserved,” it said, adding that projections in a few glacier regions even show slow re-growth beginning between 2100 and 2300, but only with very low emissions and essentially carbon neutrality by 2050.

Against this backdrop, the environment ministers from the HKH met on Tuesday at the Baku Olympics Stadium to come together to save the “third pole” and to keep global temperatures below 1.5 Celsius.

This gathering aimed to discuss the rapidly increasing climate risks and vulnerabilities in the region and beyond, while identifying areas for urgent collective actions, inevitable to addressing the pressing challenges and fulfilling the hopes of the quarter of humanity impacted by these changes, said a statement.

It stated that over the past decade, the rate of glacier melting in the HKH has accelerated by 65 per cent compared to the previous decade (2000-2010) and the trend is projected to continue.

“Over the last decade, the rate of glacier melting in the HKH has accelerated by 65% compared to the previous decade (2000- 2010), and the trend is projected to continue.”

Speaking at the event, Bhutan Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay said this was an opportune time for the region to unite to push for a new collective quantified role that would directly address the need of the countries which were most vulnerable to climate change.

Pakistan Prime Minister Adviser on Climate Change Romina Khurshid Alam said no country across the HKH region could tackle the climate crisis in isolation and besides regional unity, international response was essential.

She said Pakistan stood for regional partnership aiming to save the ecosystem and species, and build climate resilience. She argued for easy access to climate finance to ensure these countries could erect safeguards to protect themselves from climate change.

She said Pakistan was experiencing first-hand the impacts of climate change, increasing the risk of natural disasters in the form of GLOFs and threatening water security and agriculture as well as biodiversity.

Other speakers included delegates from China, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. The event was organised by the Kingdom of Bhutan and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

Bleak state of Cryosphere

According to the State of Cryosphere 2024 report, if the current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are met, global temperatures will likely reach 2.3°C by 2100, leading to irreversible ice loss, significant sea-level rise, and severe impacts on coastal regions, mountain communities, and polar ecosystems.

In case of a high emissions scenario, the temperature may rise to 3-3.5°C, which will cause extreme damage, including rapid ice sheet loss, the disappearance of glaciers, and widespread permafrost thaw.

However, the 1.5°C temperature in line with the Paris Agreement can help stabilise the cryosphere and preserve part of glaciers but that cannot happen unless there is a drastic cut in emissions.

“This requires urgent action, however, with emergency-scale tightening of mitigation commitments and fossil fuel emissions declining 40% by 2030,” the report added.

In case there is no action to stop the melting of glaciers, “severe and potentially permanent changes to the water cycle, due to loss of snowpack and ice run-off during the warm summer growing season, will impact food, energy and water security.”

Produced as part of the 2024 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organised by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Centre for Peace and Security.

Header image: View of the landscape from Langtang, Nepal can be seen in this undated handout image. — Tika Gurung via Reuters

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024

Why Trump’s 2nd withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will be different

The president-elect could act faster this time.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to quit the global climate pact after he takes office in January. | Matt Rourke/AP

November 10, 2024 
By Sara Schonhardt

POLITICO US

The world is bracing for President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time — only this time, he could move faster and with less restraint.

Trump’s vow to pull out would once again leave the United States as one of the only countries not to be a party to the 2015 pact, in which nearly 200 governments have made non-binding pledges to reduce their planet-warming pollution. His victory in last week’s election threatens to overshadow the COP29 climate summit that begins on Monday in Azerbaijan, where the U.S. and other countries will hash out details related to phasing down fossil fuels and providing climate aid to poorer nations.

The United States’ absence from the deal would put other countries on the hook to make bigger reductions to their climate pollution. But it would also raise inevitable questions from some countries about how much more effort they should put in when the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter is walking away.

“Countries are very committed to Paris, I don’t think there’s any question about that,” said David Waskow, head of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative. “What I do think is at risk is whether the world is able to follow through on what it committed to in Paris.”

The Trump campaign told POLITICO in June that the former president would quit the global pact, as he did in 2017 during his first stint in the office. A campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Trump said as recently as last weekend that climate change is “all a big hoax.”

“We don’t have a global warming problem,” he said at a campaign appearance, in spite of a mountain of data that says otherwise — and projections that 2024 is set to be the warmest year on record, surpassing a milestone set last year.

Once Trump takes office in January, he could file a request to the U.N. to withdraw from the agreement again. It would take a year for that move to take effect under the terms of the pact, not the three years it did previously.

Over that time, the Trump administration could ignore past U.S. climate commitments established by President Joe Biden and refuse to submit any new plans for reducing greater amounts of carbon pollution, according to analysts.

As POLITICO reported in June, some conservatives have also laid the groundwork for Trump to go even further if he chose to. One option would remove the United States from the 1992 U.N. treaty underpinning the entire framework for the annual global climate negotiations, a much more definitive step that could do lasting damage to the effort to limit the Earth’s warming.

Either way, a U.S. withdrawal could leave the country sidelined from international discussions about the expansion of clean energy, allowing China to continue out-competing America on solar panels, electric vehicles and other green technologies, said Jonathan Pershing, a special envoy for climate change during the Obama administration.

“China is the world’s largest trading partner for virtually every country in the world, so their ability to influence is not diminished,” he told reporters Thursday. “If anything, it is increased with U.S. withdrawal.”

He added: “I think we lose when the U.S. is out, and with the U.S. out, China will step up, but in a very different way.”

The U.S. was an architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which requires the 195 countries that signed it to submit national plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and provide updates about their progress toward hitting those marks. It also calls on wealthier nations to pay for climate projects, but there are no penalties for not adhering to the agreement.

In the nine years since it was established, climate pollution has continued to rise globally — though arguably at a slower rate than without it. Disasters have hit harder from Nepal to North Carolina, inflating the need for climate finance into the trillions of dollars each year.

A second exit

The Paris Agreement was about a year old when Trump announced that he served the people “of Pittsburgh, not Paris” and was withdrawing. The move stirred international shock — and fears that other countries might follow the U.S. out the door.

Now the agreement “is in a different stage in its existence,” said Todd Stern, who helped finalize the Paris deal as the U.S. climate envoy. “I would be very surprised to see countries actually pull out.”

Biden reentered the agreement in 2021 and then announced that the U.S. would slash its emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels.

U.S. carbon pollution is falling, but not fast enough to meet Biden’s pledge — and stepped-up action by states, cities and businesses can get only part of the way there in the absence of stronger federal efforts.

The nations that signed the Paris deal are supposed to submit new plans by mid-February. If the world’s biggest economy isn’t contributing, it could send a signal to opponents of stringent climate action in China, India or Europe to do less.

“There are interests in all of these other countries that want to promote continued reliance on fossil fuels and a resistance to climate ambition,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate think tank E3G.

A test of how committed other nations are to the Paris Agreement will come at COP29.

They’re expected to set a new target for global climate aid — one that could reach up to $1 trillion a year. Biden administration officials will be at the table. But with a future Trump presidency looming over the talks, other countries might be less inclined to contribute more money.

COP29

‘We have seen this story’: Leaders react to Trump at climate summit

Beneath the brave words at the president-elect’s victory were real worries that action will stall without the United States.


U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell (left) and COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev speak at the global climate talks Monday. | Peter Dejong/AP

By Sara Schonhardt and Karl Mathiesen
11/11/2024 
POLITICO US

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The U.S. and other countries sought to reassure the rest of the world Monday that whatever happens when President-elect Donald Trump takes office, global efforts to arrest climate change will continue.

But lying underneath the show of resolve at the United Nations climate summit was a sense of real worry about how the absence of U.S. leadership will impede the effort — even if Trump’s ascension to the White House is less of a shock than it was eight years ago.

Unlike 2016, when Trump’s first victory lobbed a stun grenade in the middle of that year’s climate talks in Morocco, diplomats are more aware now that he could make real on his promises to walk away from the Paris climate agreement. He has also vowed to gut President Joe Biden’s climate law, which represents the United States’ most extensive effort to deliver on its goals for cutting planet-warming pollution

That Trump won again wasn’t shocking, said many of the people POLITICO spoke with as the COP29 summit opened on Monday in the capital of Azerbaijan, a Eurasian country that relies on the sale of oil and gas to drive its economy.

“We have seen this story,” said Canada’s former climate minister Catherine McKenna, referring to Trump’s first term. “And when that happened, we saw that the world stepped up.”

What’s generating more anxiety is knowing how far Trump 2.0 could go to unwind U.S. progress at a time when the world needs to be moving even faster to slash its carbon pollution, and not knowing how or whether the rest of the world will step up. This has implications for the blocs of countries seeking to shape the negotiations — including Pacific island nations threatened by the rising seas, developing polluters such as India that have bristled at Western calls for sharper pollution cuts, and European governments that have typically allied themselves with the U.S. in urging faster progress.

Biden’s top climate diplomat, John Podesta, said Monday that businesses, state governments and other important players in the U.S. remain committed to fighting climate change, even if the government under Trump will not be.

“Facts are still facts. Science is still science,” Podesta told a roomful of reporters. “The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country.”

He also argued that the Biden administration’s climate legislation has staying power, in large part because the benefits of shifting to a clean energy economy are starting to take hold. Private-sector energy projects triggered by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act are expected to bring more than $150 billion in announced investments and create an estimated 160,000 jobs, overwhelmingly in districts that Trump’s Republican Party represents in Congress.

As the second-largest source of climate pollution worldwide, the U.S. has far-reaching effects on the environment given the massive amount of fossil fuels it produces. That’s likely to be especially true under Trump, who continues to call global warming a hoax and vows to push more oil and gas drilling.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, wrote in an email. “He will deliver.”

Podesta and others in the U.S. delegation are “in a difficult position,” said a U.K. government official who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “The one thing they can argue is Trump pulled out of Paris first time around — and look where we are now. A lot is riding on whether Republicans see the value of IRA investments in their states.”

Other climate leaders, observers, activists and officials have echoed similar sentiments in the summit halls at Azerbaijan’s Olympic Stadium near the coast of the Caspian Sea.

Trump’s victory as president of the world’s largest polluter in history threatens to upset the global climate talks, which hinge on getting countries to pledge much greater climate aid to developing nations – on the scale of $1 trillion annually over the next decade.

Prospects of getting even a fraction of the aid out of Congress were always dim, prompting Biden’s diplomats to float various financing schemes that would not rely on the U.S. Treasury.

At the same time, economic powerhouse China and companies around the world, including inside the United States, are investing ever-greater sums into low-carbon technologies such as wind and solar power, batteries and electric cars.

Like McKenna, many leaders say the world has previously survived a U.S. retreat from global climate cooperation. State and city leaders who tried to fill the void say they’ll hold the line this time. Democratic Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, speaking with reporters last week, called Trump a “speed bump.”

“This second time, of course, there is a feeling of frustration, because at the end of the day, this is a global process,” said Sandra Guzman, founder of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean and a former negotiator for Mexico. “And every single party, particularly those that are major emitters like the U.S., play an important role.

“But to be very fair and honest, I don’t see the same sadness and deep concern that I saw the first time,” she added.

Guzman called it overly “U.S. centric” to believe that Trump’s victory would lead to global failure. She said she’ll be looking to see how countries such as China respond, and which governments step up to fill the void.

The U.S. withdrawal could offer China an opportunity to take more of a leadership role in shaping the talks — or at least capitalize on the gains to be made from making the clean energy technologies the world is demanding.

But China’s climate change envoy Liu Zhenmin said Monday that the idea of a U.S. withdrawal still worries Beijing.

“Everybody’s concerned about next steps … whether after the U.S. election, U.S. climate policy will or won’t change,” he told journalists.

For some diplomats, the problem is that at a moment when the world needs more global cooperation, Trump is setting up an environment in which there will be less.

In other words, the vibes are bad.

“I believe the main problem Trump’s election brings is the reduced multilateral cooperation. Also protectionism,” a European diplomat told POLITICO last week after being granted anonymity to share their political views.

Yet things are different from 2016 in other ways, too. The world is battling wars on two fronts, wealthy countries are facing budgetary pressure and European support for the green transition has earned detractors and blowback at the polls.

Each country sets its own nonbinding target for cutting greenhouse gas pollution under the Paris Agreement. But collectively they’re meant to amount to enough action to keep the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, while aiming for 1.5 degrees if possible. Every degree of warming could result in climbing damage. Global temperatures have already risen 1.3 degrees in the industrial era, and 2024 is expected to set another marker as the warmest year on record.

Nations have also agreed that it’s up to the countries with the most money and means – those, such as the United States and nations in Europe, that have contributed the most emissions over more than a century – to take the lead.

Without the U.S. participating in that effort, many countries might be compelled to argue against pleas that they should work harder.

For some of the most vulnerable nations, however, giving up on the climate fight isn’t an option.

When U.S. voters first elected Trump in 2016, officials in the Marshall Islands put their heads down and looked inward, developing a plan to protect the low-lying island chain from rising sea levels and other climate-induced threats, said Kathy Neien Jetn̄il-Kijiner, a negotiator for the Marshall Islands and daughter of president Hilda Heine.

We “developed this really intricate plan for trying to protect ourselves, rather than just waiting for others to tell us how to do that,” she said.

The United States has a complicated role in global climate negotiations. As much as it has tried to push other countries to take stronger action, it has pushed to limit global climate agreements to measures that it knows it can support, often blocking proposals to make governments’ pledges mandatory. It has long taken the position that the U.S. is not liable for compensating other countries for the damages inflicted by its pollution.

But Biden has also injected fuel into the clean energy transition by signing the country’s largest-ever climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, driving demand in the U.S. for greener technologies and pushing allies and competitors alike to follow.

That’s one outgoing message the U.S. administration could send with the potential for a lasting impact.

“This is about optics. This is about the real economy, and if they can actually mobilize and send a very clear, compelling signal on the direction of travel, they will have made a difference,” said Mohamed Adow, founder of the Nairobi-based environmental group Power Shift Africa. “You don’t look for change from politics. You look for change from the energy economy.”

The real economy was also on the mind of other climate leaders.

Simon Stiell, head of the United Nations’ climate body, opened the summit Monday by highlighting how climate disruption could send food and energy prices higher, while countries that chose not to participate in the clean energy transition would lose out to those that are driving it forward.

He also pointed to the importance of global climate cooperation and the need for participation by all nations.

The U.N. climate process, Stiell said, “is the only place we have to address the rampant climate crisis, and to credibly hold each other to account to act on it.”

Zia Weise, Charlie Cooper and Zack Colman contributed to this report.

COP29 opens with Trump climate withdrawal looming


By AFP
November 11, 2024

COP29 will focus on climate finance for developing countries - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV

Sara Hussein and Ivan Couronne

The COP29 climate talks open Monday in Azerbaijan, under the long shadow cast by the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to row back on the United States’ carbon-cutting commitments.

Countries come to Baku for the main United Nations forum for climate diplomacy after new warnings that 2024 is on track to break temperature records, adding urgency to a fractious debate over climate funding.

But Trump’s return will loom over the discussions, with fears that an imminent US departure from the landmark Paris agreement to limit global warming could mean less ambition around the negotiating table.

“We cannot afford to let the momentum for global action on climate change be derailed,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment.

“This is a shared problem that will not solve itself without international cooperation, and we will continue to make that case to the incoming president of one of the world’s largest polluters.”

Outgoing President Joe Biden is staying away, as are many leaders who have traditionally appeared early in COP talks to lend weight to the proceedings.

Just a handful of leaders from the Group of 20, whose countries account for nearly 80 percent of global emissions, are attending.

Afghanistan will however be sending a delegation for the first time since the Taliban took power. They are expected to have observer status.

Diplomats have insisted that the absences, and Trump’s win, will not detract from the serious work at hand, particularly agreeing a new figure for climate funding to developing countries.

Negotiators must increase a $100 billion-a-year target to help developing nations prepare for worsening climate impacts and wean their economies off fossil fuels.

How much will be on offer, who will pay, and who can access the funds are some of the major points of contention.

– ‘It’s hard’ –

“It’s hard. It involves money. When it comes to money, everybody shows their true colours,” Adonia Ayebare, the Ugandan chair of a bloc that groups over 100 mostly developing countries and China, told AFP on Sunday.

Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax”, has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement.

But Ayebare brushed aside the potential consequences of a US withdrawal, noting Trump already took Washington out of the Paris agreement during his first term.

“This has happened before, we will find a way of realigning.”

Developing countries are pushing for trillions of dollars, and insist money should be mostly grants rather than loans.

They warn that without the money they will struggle to offer ambitious updates to their climate goals, which countries are required to submit by early next year.

“Bring some money to the table so that you show your leadership,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the LDC Climate Group, whose members are home to 1.1 billion people.

But the small group of developed countries that currently contributes wants to see the donor pool expanded to include other rich nations and top emitters, including China and the Gulf states.

One Chinese official warned Sunday during a closed-door session that the talks should not aim to “renegotiate” existing agreements.

Liang Pei, an official at China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, urged negotiators to instead address “the climate crisis collectively, constructively.”

– ‘Worth it’ –

The talks come with fresh warnings that the world is far off track to meet the goals of the Paris agreement.

The climate deal commits to keep warming below 2C compared to pre-industrial levels, preferably below 1.5C.

But the world is on track to top that level in 2024, according to the European Union climate monitor.

That would not be an immediate breach of the Paris deal, which measures temperatures over decades, but it suggests much greater climate action is needed.

Earlier this year, the UN warned the world is on track for a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century based on current actions.

“Everyone knows that these negotiations will not be easy,” said Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

“But they are worth it: each tenth of a degree of warming avoided means fewer crises, less suffering, less displacement.”

More than 51,000 people are expected at the talks, which run November 11-22.

For the second year running the talks will be hosted by a country heavily reliant on fossil fuels, after the United Arab Emirates last year.

Azerbaijan has also been accused of stifling dissent by persecuting political opponents, detaining activists and suffocating independent media.

Why Trump’s 2nd withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will be different

The president-elect could act faster this time.


President-elect Donald Trump is expected to quit the global climate pact after he takes office in January. | Matt Rourke/AP

November 10, 2024 
By Sara Schonhardt

The world is bracing for President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time — only this time, he could move faster and with less restraint.

Trump’s vow to pull out would once again leave the United States as one of the only countries not to be a party to the 2015 pact, in which nearly 200 governments have made non-binding pledges to reduce their planet-warming pollution. His victory in last week’s election threatens to overshadow the COP29 climate summit that begins on Monday in Azerbaijan, where the U.S. and other countries will hash out details related to phasing down fossil fuels and providing climate aid to poorer nations.

The United States’ absence from the deal would put other countries on the hook to make bigger reductions to their climate pollution. But it would also raise inevitable questions from some countries about how much more effort they should put in when the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter is walking away.

“Countries are very committed to Paris, I don’t think there’s any question about that,” said David Waskow, head of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative. “What I do think is at risk is whether the world is able to follow through on what it committed to in Paris.”

The Trump campaign told POLITICO in June that the former president would quit the global pact, as he did in 2017 during his first stint in the office. A campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Trump said as recently as last weekend that climate change is “all a big hoax.”

“We don’t have a global warming problem,” he said at a campaign appearance, in spite of a mountain of data that says otherwise — and projections that 2024 is set to be the warmest year on record, surpassing a milestone set last year.

Once Trump takes office in January, he could file a request to the U.N. to withdraw from the agreement again. It would take a year for that move to take effect under the terms of the pact, not the three years it did previously.

Over that time, the Trump administration could ignore past U.S. climate commitments established by President Joe Biden and refuse to submit any new plans for reducing greater amounts of carbon pollution, according to analysts.

As POLITICO reported in June, some conservatives have also laid the groundwork for Trump to go even further if he chose to. One option would remove the United States from the 1992 U.N. treaty underpinning the entire framework for the annual global climate negotiations, a much more definitive step that could do lasting damage to the effort to limit the Earth’s warming.

Either way, a U.S. withdrawal could leave the country sidelined from international discussions about the expansion of clean energy, allowing China to continue out-competing America on solar panels, electric vehicles and other green technologies, said Jonathan Pershing, a special envoy for climate change during the Obama administration.

“China is the world’s largest trading partner for virtually every country in the world, so their ability to influence is not diminished,” he told reporters Thursday. “If anything, it is increased with U.S. withdrawal.”

He added: “I think we lose when the U.S. is out, and with the U.S. out, China will step up, but in a very different way.”

The U.S. was an architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which requires the 195 countries that signed it to submit national plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and provide updates about their progress toward hitting those marks. It also calls on wealthier nations to pay for climate projects, but there are no penalties for not adhering to the agreement.

In the nine years since it was established, climate pollution has continued to rise globally — though arguably at a slower rate than without it. Disasters have hit harder from Nepal to North Carolina, inflating the need for climate finance into the trillions of dollars each year.

A second exit

The Paris Agreement was about a year old when Trump announced that he served the people “of Pittsburgh, not Paris” and was withdrawing. The move stirred international shock — and fears that other countries might follow the U.S. out the door.

Now the agreement “is in a different stage in its existence,” said Todd Stern, who helped finalize the Paris deal as the U.S. climate envoy. “I would be very surprised to see countries actually pull out.”

Biden reentered the agreement in 2021 and then announced that the U.S. would slash its emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels.

U.S. carbon pollution is falling, but not fast enough to meet Biden’s pledge — and stepped-up action by states, cities and businesses can get only part of the way there in the absence of stronger federal efforts.

The nations that signed the Paris deal are supposed to submit new plans by mid-February. If the world’s biggest economy isn’t contributing, it could send a signal to opponents of stringent climate action in China, India or Europe to do less.

“There are interests in all of these other countries that want to promote continued reliance on fossil fuels and a resistance to climate ambition,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate think tank E3G.

A test of how committed other nations are to the Paris Agreement will come at COP29.

They’re expected to set a new target for global climate aid — one that could reach up to $1 trillion a year. Biden administration officials will be at the table. But with a future Trump presidency looming over the talks, other countries might be less inclined to contribute more money.

 

Microbes in mouth reflect lifestyle choices

New study in Nepal reveals that oral microbiomes differ among traditional foragers, agriculturalists and industrialists, and with behaviors like smoking and diet

Penn State

 

image: 

The research team gathered saliva samples from Nepali people over a range of subsistence strategies— from nomadic hunter gatherers to farmers to industrialized groups.

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Credit: Aashish Jha/New York University Abu Dhabi

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Lifestyle can shape the composition of beneficial bacteria and other microorganisms within the mouth, according to a new study led by Penn State biologists. The international team revealed how the “oral microbiome” differs over a range of subsistence strategies—from nomadic hunter gatherers to farmers to industrialized groups—and found that lifestyle, as well as specific lifestyle factors like smoking, can shape the microbiome. A paper describing the results appears Nov. 4 in the journal Microbiome.

A healthy oral microbiome, a community of microorganisms live in the mouth, plays an important role in aiding in the digestion of food, immune system support and protecting against invading pathogens, while an unhealthy oral microbiome has been linked to a variety of diseases in humans.

“The oral microbiome has been understudied, and most studies of the oral microbiome have been conducted in Western populations,” said Emily Davenport, assistant professor of biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team. “Although we have learned a lot from that, microbiomes look different around the world. By studying how the diversity and composition of the oral microbiome varies with lifestyle in a global context, we can improve our knowledge of how the oral microbiome impacts human health.” 

In a study of 63 Nepali individuals representing spectrum of dietary practices, the researchers examined how major lifestyle factors like subsistence strategy—how a person obtains the necessities of life like food and shelter—as well as more specific factors and behaviors, like smoking, may be contributing to differences in the microbiomes across populations. 

“We know from previous studies that there are differences in the microbiome between individuals that live in highly industrialized, Westernized societies and those that are nomadic hunter gatherers, but there is a broad spectrum of lifestyles between those,” said Erica Ryu, graduate student in biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and first author of the paper. “Our understanding of these relationships so far has been clouded by geography; it’s difficult to make statements about the impact of lifestyles when you are comparing people in different countries with, for example, different climates, access to medical care, and exposure to diseases. In this study, we comprehensively investigated the oral microbiome of individuals across a range of lifestyles from the same country, Nepal.”

The researchers studied the oral microbiomes of people from groups with a variety of subsistence strategies. These included foragers, who are hunters and gatherers and may not live in one location for the entire year; subsistence farmers who are hunter gatherers from groups that recently settled and began farming in the past 50 years; agriculturalists from groups that have relied on farming for several centuries; industrialists, who are expatriates from Nepal that immigrated to the United States within the last 20 years; as well as a group of industrialists who were born in the same area of the United States for comparison. They also asked a variety of questions about lifestyle, including diet, education, medical practices, and other behaviors.

The researchers sequenced the DNA of the microbes within saliva samples to determine the specific species of bacteria within each individual’s oral microbiome. They found that the composition of species within the oral microbiome tended to follow the gradient of subsistence strategies, with some specific species more prominent in foragers and one species more prominent in the industrialists, suggesting that lifestyle does indeed impact the oral microbiome. 

Additionally, the presence of several species of microbes were related to specific lifestyle factors, including smoking, the prominent type of grains in an individual’s diet — barley and maize vs. rice and wheat — and consumption of a plant called nettle. The researchers note that previous research has associated consistent smoking with oral microbiome composition in industrialized populations, and collectively this suggests that smoking habits play an important role in determining the oral microbiome across a variety of lifestyles.

“It makes sense that different microbes might feed on the different grains in a person’s diet, but it’s interesting that we also see an association with sisnu, also called nettle,” Davenport said. “Nettle is a fibrous plant often chewed by the foragers in this study, much like people might chew gum. Given its important role in Nepali cuisine, culture and medicine, it’s interesting to see it is associated with oral microbes.” 

The researchers stressed the importance of including lifestyle factors and behaviors in future microbiome studies as well as including populations from around the world.

“We studied populations in Nepal because it offered a unique way to explore the effects of lifestyle while controlling for a variety of other factors like geography that often obscure that effect,” Davenport said. “But it highlights the impact of lifestyle factors that likely play a role in other populations.  

“Whenever you make a shift—whether it’s to a different diet or different location or different culture—the microbiome can change too, and it’s important to understand to what extent and how quickly these changes occur,” she added. “Continuing to investigate how oral microbiomes vary across the globe will help improve our understanding of what exactly shapes the microbiome and how that impacts human health.”

In addition to Davenport and Ryu, the research team at Penn State includes Meera Gupta, undergraduate student at the time of the research. The team also includes Yoshina Gautam, Ahmed Shibl, and Aashish Jha from New York University, Abu Dhabi; Diana Proctor from University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; Dinesh Bhandari, Sarmila Tandukar, and Jeevan Bahadur Sherchand from the Institute of Medicine in Maharajgunj, Nepal; Guru Prasad Gautam from Tribhuvan University in Nepal; and David Relman from Stanford University.

Funding from the National Institutes of Health, Stanford University, and New York University Abu Dhabi supported this work.

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Journal

Microbiome

DOI

10.1186/s40168-024-01941-7 

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Nepali oral microbiomes reflect a gradient of lifestyles from traditional to industrialized

Article Publication Date

4-Nov-2024

A new piece in the grass pea puzzle - updated genome sequence published

John Innes Centre

 

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Photo taken at the Marchouch Field Station in Morocco, showing grass pea (right) next to a lentil crop (left) planted at the same time, suffering from lack of water.

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Credit: Matt Heaton

An international research collaboration has completed the most detailed genome assembly to date of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus).

This new chromosome-scale reference genome published in Scientific Data offers new potential to accelerate modern breeding of this underutilised legume for climate-smart agriculture.

Nearly twice the size of the human genome, the sequence was assembled from scratch and improves on an earlier draft assembly of the vigorous grass pea line LS007.

“We want to establish this new genome sequence as the reference genome for the grass pea community, and we’re delighted to share this valuable resource for other scientists to use and learn about grass pea,” explained corresponding author of the research Dr Peter Emmrich, a researcher at Norwich Institute for Sustainable Development (NISD) and visiting group leader at the John Innes Centre. 

“At a time of increasing weather shocks, this genome allows us to unlock the secrets of grass pea’s resilience, to further improve this crop for farmers, and inform development of other crops, such as peas,” he added.

Improvements in genome accuracy and completeness also allow researchers to study evolutionary links between species, helping identify gene pathways that could be used to improve the crop or to understand its remarkable drought tolerance. 

Dr Anne Edwards, research assistant at the John Innes Centre, said: “As we prepare for a future of increased climate change, we are going to need crops that can cope with drought, or flooding or inundations of salt water. This new genome sequence means that we are even closer to adding grass pea to the list of climate-smart crops of tomorrow. It’s an exciting time to be in the grass pea research community!”

What is Grass Pea? 

Grass pea is a crop grown in many regions of the world that is high in protein and resilient to drought and flooding. One of the oldest known cultivated plants, grass pea is now grown in Ethiopia, Eritrea, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. It has been used for centuries as an insurance crop, that survives when other crops fail and is safe to eat as part of a balanced diet.  

Grass pea is among a group neglected and underutilised crops that play a key role in local nutrition and livelihoods, but that historically have received little attention from breeders and researchers. However, its resilience to both drought and flooding makes it a promising crop for ensuring food security in a changing climate.

Grass pea’s widespread cultivation has been hampered due to a toxin contained within its seeds and shoots, which can, in malnourished people, cause the disease neurolathyrism, a condition which causes irreversible paralysis. 

Another major barrier preventing crop breeding improvements was the lack of a genome reference for the crop.

The availability of the new genome sequence means researchers could use gene editing and modern breeding methods to develop varieties of grass pea with improved agronomic characteristics or low or zero toxin content. This means that grass pea could be poised to make an important contribution to a more diversified and climate resilient food system in the future. 

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Journal

Scientific Data

DOI

10.1038/s41597-024-03868-y 

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A chromosome-scale reference genome of grasspea (Lathyrus sativus)

Climate shifts and urbanisation drive Nepal dengue surge


By AFP
November 1, 2024

A patient undergoes treatment for dengue in Nepal, where more than 28,000 have been infected by the mosquito-borne illness so far this year - Copyright AFP PRAKASH MATHEMA
Paavan MATHEMA

Nepal is fighting a surge in dengue cases, a potentially deadly disease once unheard of in the country’s high-altitude Himalayan regions, as climate change and urbanisation nurture fever-bringing mosquitoes in new zones.

Only a single case of dengue was recorded in Nepal in 2004. Two decades later, thousands of cases are being reported across the country.

Once confined to tropical regions in the country’s plains, dengue-carrying mosquitoes have begun breeding in the valleys and even cool mountainous areas, reaching elevations where its bite was once unknown.

Twelve people have died and more than 28,000 people have been infected this year, including 18 cases in Solukhumbu district, home to Mount Everest.

Doctors say the real number might be higher, as not everyone is tested.

“It should not be seen here at all,” Suman Tiwari, district health chief for Solukhumbu, which sits at an altitude of some 2,500 metres (8,202 feet).

“What is surprising is that some people with no travel history have also tested positive for dengue”.

In the worst cases, dengue causes intense viral fevers that trigger bleeding, internally or from the mouth and nose.

The capital Kathmandu, at an elevation of approximately 1,400 metres (4,600 feet), has seen over 4,000 cases.

“Unfortunately, it is expanding itself geographically,” said Sher Bahadur Pun, a doctor at Kathmandu’s Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital.

“Once upon a time, it was just seen in a certain area, but it is moving up towards mountainous regions, even up to the Himalayan foothills.”



– ‘Grown exponentially’ –



In some districts, hospitals have been overwhelmed with dengue patients suffering from crippling fevers, body aches and rashes.

“In the last decade, it has grown exponentially,” Pun said.

“After every outbreak, the number of infected people has increased… and my experience is that after every outbreak, it has become more deadly.”

In October, the UN health agency said the number of reported dengue cases worldwide has approximately doubled each year since 2021, with over 12.3 million cases, including more than 7,900 deaths, reported in just the first eight months of 2024.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the global spread an “alarming trend”.

Experts say changes in temperature and rainfall patterns driven by climate change and urbanisation are creating favourable conditions for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito responsible for transmitting dengue.

That means it can survive and breed at higher elevations.

Narayan Gyawali, a virologist who specialises in zoonotic diseases, said that urbanisation and increased mobility of people were also driving the dengue surge.

“When microclimates are established with urbanisation in new areas, internal temperatures become warm and there is humidity,” Gyawali said.

“A favourable environment is created for breeding and survival.”



– ‘Injustice’ –



This is the third consecutive year that Nepal has seen a dengue outbreak — an apparent shift from cyclical patterns where outbreaks are expected every two to three years.

The country’s worst outbreak was in 2022, with 88 deaths and nearly 55,000 cases, according to government figures.

Last year, 20 people died, with more than 50,000 cases.

“Dengue used to be reported in a cyclical trend, but in the last few years, it has been seen every year,” said Gokarna Dahal of the Health Ministry’s Epidemiology and Disease Control Division.

“Our preparation now is to fight with it every year”.

Dahal said it was an “injustice” that a developing country like Nepal — which makes a minimal contribution towards the burning of fossil fuels driving the planet’s warming — should shoulder greater impacts of climate change.

Meenakshi Ganguly, from Human Rights Watch, said that while the primary responsibility to protect its public’s health lies with Nepal, countries most responsible for global emissions also have an obligation.

“Those countries which are primarily responsible for global emissions need to do a lot more to protect people in countries like Nepal from the consequences of global warming,” Ganguly said.

“Combatting mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, which are spreading fast to new areas, needs to be part of that.”

Nobody Wants This (but Israel): On Security of Indian Peacekeepers

Aman Kumar | 28 Oct 2024

India is in danger of getting the notorious distinction of having its own soldiers harmed by the arms and munitions it has supplied to Israel.

Representational Image. 

In a significant escalation of conflict, Israel has attacked the United Nations (UN) peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

So far, two Indonesian peacekeepers and two Sri Lankan peacekeepers have been injured in the attacks by Israel, and fifteen peacekeepers have suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions to the smoke generated after firing by Israel.

Members of the Indian army are also currently stationed there as peacekeepers and are thus under serious and immediate risk of being attacked by Israel. In a cruel twist of fate, the Indian ministry of defence, through Munitions Indian Limited— a public sector undertaking, has supplied weapons to Israel during the ongoing conflict in Gaza and West Asia.

This post discusses the attacks from the perspective of international law, highlighting India’s contribution to the issue of attacks on UN peacekeepers.

Laying down the law

Way back in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to give an advisory opinion on the question of reparation in respect of damage suffered by either itself or by its agents while performing their duties.

Members of the Indian army are also currently stationed there as peacekeepers and are thus under serious and immediate risk of being attacked by Israel.

India was a one-year-old state at the time and still finding its feet in international law and diplomacy. It had just been a year since the Kashmir matter was taken to the UN, and just four months since the government of Hyderabad— which in its own words was “a State not a member of the United Nations”—had referred its dispute with India to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Still, India was one of the five States to submit their written statements to the court. However, it must be noted that peacekeepers are not considered ‘agents’ of the UN. As such, the question about reparation was not about the damage suffered by them.

India’s contribution to UN peacekeeping efforts

Over the years, India has contributed to more than 70 peacekeeping field missions of various types. It has been the largest contributor of troops to these missions.

The number of members of Indian contingents who have lost their lives on these missions is 177, as per India’s external affairs minister, Dr S. Jaishankar. The website of the Permanent Mission of India to the UN provides a list of 72 soldiers who have been awarded gallantry medals for their service while on these missions. This shows that India has been proactive in its role as far as the safety of the peacekeepers is concerned… till now.

Protecting the protectors

On July 26, 2022, two of India’s troop members of the Border Security Force— head constables Shishupal Singh and Sanwala Ram Vishnoi— in the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) were attacked and killed.

At that time, India was a non-permanent member of the UNSC and immediately called for a meeting of the UNSC. Subsequently, in a press statement, the UNSC said that “deliberate attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law”.

A few months later, in December 2022, India assumed the presidency of the UNSC. During its presidency, India launched a ‘Group of Friends’ to promote accountability for crimes against peacekeepers, as part of its ‘Protecting the Protectors’ initiative.

Over the years, India has contributed to more than 70 peacekeeping field missions of various types. It has been the largest contributor of troops to these missions.

This was done to implement the UNSC Resolution 2589 of 2021 which was also piloted by India. That resolution had called upon “member States hosting or having hosted UN peacekeeping operations, to take all appropriate measures, in accordance with their national law, and international law, as applicable, to bring to justice perpetrators of the killing of, and all acts of violence against UN personnel.”

The Group of Friends initiative of India was joined by Bangladesh, Egypt, France, Morocco and Nepal as co-chairs. It has had two meetings so far, in 2023 and 2024, and currently has 40 member States.

At the 2024 meeting, India launched a database “designed to record crimes against peacekeepers and monitor progress in holding perpetrators accountable”.

Protecting the perpetrators?

In the aftermath of Israel’s attack on the UNIFIL, on October 13, 2024, 34 UNIFIL members issued a joint statement condemning the attack and asked that such attacks must be stopped immediately and investigated adequately.

India decided not to join in issuing the statement. However, once the statement was out, the official account of the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations expressed its support for the statement almost as an afterthought.

Subsequently, it also attached its name to the statement. One wonders why the government did not join the statement from the beginning, especially since it had already released a statement on the attacks on October 11, 2024, where it had expressed concern “at the deteriorating security situation along the Blue Line” and had reiterated that the “inviolability of UN premises must be respected by all, and appropriate measures taken to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers and the sanctity of their mandate”.

Considering that only Israel had attacked the peacekeepers, it is curious that India decided not to name it, and instead ambiguously asked “all” to ensure the safety of peacekeepers.

Indian weaponry and the Israeli army

The Indian ministry of defence has been supplying weapons to Israel and providing private Indian companies with licences to supply weapons to Israel.

Considering that only Israel had attacked the peacekeepers, it is curious that India decided not to name it, and instead ambiguously asked “all” to ensure the safety of peacekeepers.

Recently, a petition was filed challenging this action of the government. It was argued by the petitioners that by supplying weapons to Israel, India might be aiding in the commission of international crimes.

A Supreme Court Bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India, rejected the petition. As I have argued in an earlier post, the court failed to appreciate the international law arguments within the petition.

Now we have a situation where, potentially, the buyer of Indian weapons might end up attacking members of Indian peacekeeping forces themselves. It will indeed be a cruel irony.

I say ‘potentially’ because, in its media briefing on October 17, 2024 referring to Israel’s attack of October 13, 2024, which caused skin irritation to 15 UN peacekeepers, the official spokesperson of the Indian ministry of external affairs said that “in that particular zone we did not have any of our Indian troops”.

Considering Israel’s aggression throughout this month, further attacks on the peacekeepers cannot be ruled out. One can only hope that the Indian government will take some action to protect its troops before it is too late.

Aman Kumar is an alumnus of Sainik School Rewa, Madhya Pradesh. Currently.

Courtesy: The Leaflet