Yet another pessimistic report from a think tank.

The world’s largest economies will suffer severe human and economic consequences of climate change, especially if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to a new study from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), an Italian research center.

“From droughts, heatwaves and sea level rise, to dwindling food supplies and threats to tourism — these findings show how severely climate change will hit the world’s biggest economies, unless we act now,” said Donatella Spano, senior member of the CMCC’s Strategic Council and a scientist at the University of Sassari. “As scientists, we know that only rapid action to tackle emissions and adapt to climate change will limit the severe impacts of climate change,” Spano explained.

It found that climate change impacts such as extreme heat and sea level rise are already causing death and destruction in the world’s leading economies, and that if climate change continues unabated, it will also lead to new plagues that proliferate in warmer climates. With medium to high emissions, as temperatures rise in the northern U.S., the Zika virus — which has previously been locally transmitted within the country only in Florida and Texas — could threaten 83 percent of the population by 2050. More than 92 percent of U.S. residents could be at risk from dengue fever.

If emissions remain high, Europe will have 90,000 deaths from extreme heat each year by the end of this century, up from 2,700 currently.

All of this has economic implications too. In a high-emissions future, countries such as France and Indonesia might lose one-fifth or more of their fishing catch due to warmer ocean temperatures, and sea level rise could wreck coastal infrastructure, resulting in projected losses of 404 billion euros ($468 billion) for Japan and 815 million euros ($945 billion) for South Africa by 2050.

U.S.

On the U.S., the CMCC report said:

Under a low emissions scenario projected temperature variations will remain contained at around +1.5°C, both by 2050 and 2100. Under a high emissions scenario, with no reduction in GHG emissions, much greater temperature anomalies are expected by both 2050 and 2100.Considering the different scenarios, precipitation trends show a general increase in annual precipitation at a country level. Higher increments are reported under a high emissions scenario even if characterized by higher variability with respect to the historical period and to the other scenarios.Rising temperatures, reduction in average annual precipitation, and intensification of extreme events such as heat waves and drought, affect production variability with a tendency towards yield reduction for many cultivated species, accompanied by a probable decrease in food quality. Crops respond to increases in temperatures with changes in duration of the growing season, early appearance of phenological phases and potential shifts of cultivation areas toward higher latitudes and altitudes for better growing conditions. However, impacts vary significantly depending on the geographical area and specific crops in question.Climate change is expected to have an impact on the productivity of several major crops, although this may in part be offset by the fertilizing effect of higher CO₂.Climate risks imply substantial increases in water demand (up to 30-35% in some areas) to maintain agriculture production, which will require adaptation practices and crop varieties enhancing water-use efficiency to limit increasing stress on water resources.The duration of individual heatwaves and the heatwave season have also been increasing, along with heatwave intensity. Future scenarios of 1.5°C, 2°C and 4°C mean temperature increases indicate that heatwaves will last longer throughout the entire country.Heat related health impacts from increasing air temperatures in urban areas are furthermore accentuated by air pollution. Wildfires, on the rise in the West, contribute to lower air quality in cities near the wildland–urban interface.In 2018, there was a 54% increase in heat-related deaths in the U.S. compared to the 2000 to 2004 baseline. 34.7% of U.S. heat-related mortality from 1991 to 2006 can be attributed to human-induced climate change.Under a medium emissions scenario, annual premature deaths due to long-term exposure to near-surface ozone and heat will increase from 299 per million (2010) baseline, to 307 per million in 2050.With only 5% of the world’s population the U.S. uses nearly 17% of the world’s energy. In 2018, transport claimed 40% of energy demand – mainly to fuel road transport. The industrial sector claims over 17% of energy demand, almost at par with the residential sector. The tertiary sector accounts for 13.6% of final energy demand; energy use in agriculture and forestry is negligible. Air conditioning accounts for a substantial share of final residential electricity, 26.4%.Hotter summers are boosting air conditioning use, resulting in more frequent and longer power outages. The Southwest blackout at the end of the summer of 2011 left 2.7 million people without power for 12 hours.Warmer summers are predicted to increase electricity demand, resulting in higher summer peak loads. Milder winters are expected to decrease energy demands for heating, but by a smaller scale than the increase in summer cooling needs. Overall, net energy demand is predicted to increase. Higher temperatures might affect the energy mix, reducing demand for oil and natural gas used to heat homes, and instead increasing electricity demand for cooling needs.The USA has the largest economy in the world in terms of GDP. The COVID 19 pandemic reduced growth rates in 2020, whereby the U.S. lost 3.5% of real GDP. However, it has recovered quickly with a growth rate of 6.4% in 2021.Climate change will have an effect on the growth rate and overall systematic economic performance of the country. National losses in GDP may be significant, reaching 2.4% of GDP or 415 billion EUR by mid century under a low emissions scenario, and drastically rising to 10.5% of GDP, or 1.8 trillion EUR, under a high emissions scenario by the end of the century. The costs of climate change are borne unequally across the US, exacerbating pre-existing inequality.By the end of the century, under a high emissions scenario the poorest counties are likely to experience substantial damages in the range of 2-20% compared to gains exceeding 10% of county income in some regions.As a result of climate change, the expected damage from hurricanes is predicted to increase in the future for the U.S. Probabilistic estimates of the damages caused by hurricanes and coastal storms show that there could be additional damages amounting to 108 billion USD by the end of the century. Natural disasters are already imposing significant costs on the U.S., whereby in 2017 there were 300 billion USD worth of damage to homes, businesses, infrastructure and goods.The agricultural sector in the U.S. is significant, producing almost 330 billion USD in agricultural commodities annually. The forestry sector is an important contributor to wealth production, providing a range of important goods and services from timber products to places of recreation. Wildfires in particular will pose a risk to the majority of the U.S. It is estimated that mitigation efforts could save the USA’s economy between 8.6 and 11 billion USD in wildfire costs relative to a business-as-usual scenario until 2100.Expected effects on crop yields are highly heterogeneous across crops and regions. This tendency leaves the aggregate damage estimates quite modest relative to the size of the U.S. economy, and potentially some benefits from climate change could be experienced.Some estimates place the damage to crop yields under a high emissions scenario in the range of -8.2 to +19 billion USD by mid century and -12 to +53 billion USD by the end of the century. More recent studies emphasize smaller potential gains.Nevertheless, damage from extreme weather events may be substantial. The EPA estimates that greenhouse gas mitigation measures could avoid damage of up to 6.6 to 11 billion USD in the agricultural sector by 2100 compared to a business-as-usual scenario, and additionally 0.52 billion to 1.5 billion USD in the forestry sector.

China

On China, the report said:

Precipitation trends show a clear tendency to increase, under all emissions scenarios, with a large variability among the involved models and with respect to the reference period. Increase in precipitation is much greater under a high emissions scenario and longer time ranges.Relative sea level rise has been observed over the past century in China, with an average increase of 2.18 millimeters per year during the past century and approximately 3.4 millimeters per year since 1995. The latest IPCC projections indicate that, by 2050, global sea levels may rise between 0.18 meters, under a low emissions scenario, and 0.23 meters, under a high emissions scenario.China’s coasts, in particular its industrialized and heavily populated delta megapolis, are at high risk from sea level rise and storm surges. With urban settlements typically located and developed along shorelines and river estuaries, these are at high risk from flooding, particularly during the wet season.The Chinese coast is densely populated, and the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta are both some the most exposed areas and home to approximately 300 million people and a GDP of 3.4 trillion USD.Climate change and sea level rise is increasing the probability of coastal flood occurrence, vulnerability and risk. Under a medium emissions scenario the total population exposed to the annual coastal flood level is expected to increase from 23 million to 30 million by 2050.Rice is the dominant crop in the south; wheat is found in most provinces, but particularly in eastern regions; maize cultivations are found from the northeast to the southwest; and sugarcane extends mainly over southern to central regions. Other crops include potatoes, sugarbeets, and various other vegetables and fruits. Major cash crops include mandarins in the south and apples and pears in the north. Food crop production helped keep undernourishment levels below 2.5% of the total population in 2018. However, water withdrawal for agriculture is substantial and accounted for 64.4% of total water withdrawal in 2015, in a country where water stress is estimated to stand at 43%.The magnitude of change in crop productivity for main cereals in China commonly varies between + and – 20%. General increases in wheat productivity are expected throughout China, with the largest gains in the eastern plains. Similar gains in productivity are projected for rice, although these will not be as pronounced as for wheat. Most positive increases in rice productivity are expected in northeastern China, whereas decreases are expected in central China.A general decline of productivity is projected for maize in East and Central China, and for sugarcane throughout most of its growing region. Increased occurrence of severe droughts would double drought-related yield losses under a high emissions scenario. Widely cultivated fruit and tree crops such as citrus will witness climate related risks to productivity increasing from southeast to northwest, with yield losses mostly associated with seasonal water shortages.China’s urbanization rate has seen a sharp rise from 16.2% in 1960 to 61.4% in 2020. Now, growth of urbanization rates and of absolute size of urban population is gradually slowing down, with urbanization rate expected to reach 80% by 2050. Urbanization is fuelled by high rates of migration. Climate change induced migration to cities may occur due to those for whom farming becomes an unviable livelihood.Just over 10% of the population is living in one of the six megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, and a quarter of the population lives in urban areas between 1 and 5 million inhabitants. While the share of population living in cities with more than 1 million inhabitants is expected to grow further, smaller cities, and in particular those with less than 300,000 inhabitants, will decrease slightly.Growth rates of urbanization rates and of absolute size of urban population is gradually slowing down, with urbanization rate expected to reach 80% by 2050. Built up areas cover 2.66% of China (248,533.59 square kilometers), although densities along the coastline and in the north-eastern plain are much higher.Under a medium emissions scenario, the increases in heatwave-related excess mortality will be around 87%. In 2018, there was a 45% increase in heat-related deaths, compared to the 2000-2004 baseline period. 21.3% of heat-related mortality in China from 2003 to 2008 can be attributed to human-induced climate change.A recent study finds that the decrease in heating demand is going to be more than compensated by the increase in cooling needs, resulting, by the end of the century, in a net increase of electricity demand of 16,603 PJ (or 4612 billion KWh) in 2050 under a medium emissions scenario.China is the third largest economy of the G20 group and the one showing the highest GDP growth rates.In a vast area like China, economic impacts from climate change can be extremely different from region to region. Thus the national average clearly provides only a very aggregated view of climate change costs.This said, under more moderate climate change scenarios like a low emissions scenario, some net gains may occur. Indeed by mid century, economic effects range from a potential gain of 98 billion EUR (0.8% of GDP) to a loss of 195 billion EUR (1.6% of GDP).However, potential gains vanish with time and, in the second half of the century, China is expected to experience a net loss also under a low emissions scenario. Under a high emissions scenario GDP effects are unambiguously negative and could reach a loss of 772 billion EUR (or more than 6% of GDP).China’s extensive manufacturing industry produces 12% of global exports and accounts for 32% of national GDP. By mid-century, climate change is predicted to reduce production in the manufacturing industry by 12% if no adaptation measures are implemented. This translates to a loss of about 33 billion EUR and a 4% decline in annual GDP.As temperatures increase, and in the absence of any further adaptation measures, more people will be exposed to flooding risks, and the economic costs are projected to increase drastically. China is particularly vulnerable to damages from the flooding of its river basins.

Japan

On Japan, the report said:

Japan ranks 4th in terms of GDP among G20 economies. Japan was badly affected by the COVID crisis, recording a decline of 4.8% in real GDP in 2020. In 2021 this trend has reversed and the country has seen 3.3% growth.There is a noticeable variability across estimates of the overall economic impact of climate change for Japan, although estimates under similar assumptions tend to converge across studies.The projected overall macroeconomic impacts for Japan range from moderate GDP losses (0.8 %) under a low emissions scenario in 2050, to a loss larger than 10 % under a high emissions scenario by the end of the century.Japan features the 7th longest coastline in the world. Just under half of its population, and about the same proportion of industrial production, is vulnerable to an increase in sea level, due to the increased risk of coastal erosion, storm surges and typhoons.Within the service macro-sector, the main economic impacts will likely affect trade and transportation. Japan’s economy and manufacturing sector are based on highly sophisticated technologies, requiring a wider array of inputs which are usually not produced domestically, but imported. This dependence from imports may also be an important source of climate vulnerability.For instance, it is estimated that 17% of Japanese imports during the period 2008-2018 originated from countries heavily threatened by climate change. At the same time, Japan could benefit from a possible opening of the transpolar Arctic route for freight transport, which would reduce its distance from northern Europe by 37%. However, the actual viability of such a route might be severely limited by safety and environmental factors, and hence the benefits, if any, might be very limited.The economic losses induced by projected sea level rise in Japan are massive. Assuming constant levels of coastal protection, in the low emissions scenario asset losses could reach 203 and 537 billion EUR in 2050 and 2070, respectively.Under a high emissions scenario losses could increase to 404 and 1,255 billion EUR in 2050 and 2070.

Germany

On Germany, the report said:

The history of German forests is strongly linked to human intervention and is still largely shaped by the massive reforestation efforts carried out after the devastation of the Second World War. Almost all German forests are considered secondary forests with a prevalence of conifers, although deciduous temperate species such as beech and oak are constantly increasing.Despite being a very populous country, forests in Germany cover over 30% of the land surface with a very stable trend in recent decades. According to the Third National Forest Inventory, more than 1,100 million tons of carbon are stored in living trees and deadwood removing approximately 52 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year. Forests are currently considered an important carbon sink for the country.Germany ranks first the Eurozone and fourth in the G20 group for GDP. The country recovered quite well after the 2008-2009 economic crisis showing, in the 2010-19 period, an average annual real GDP growth rate of roughly 1.9%. It has been hit severely by the COVID crisis, recording a decline of nearly 5% in real GDP growth rate in 2020.Despite its developed and technology-rich economy, Germany may face no to marginal systemic losses and negative growth impacts from climate change. GDP losses can be significant already by mid century under a low emissions scenario peaking at 1.35% of GDP or 45 billion EUR.They can more than double reaching 98 billion EUR or nearly 3% of GDP by the end of century under a high emissions scenario.In the second half of the century, if coastal defenses are not upgraded to contrast increasing climate change risk, expected annual damages to coastal infrastructure could reach more than 74 billion EUR under a high emissions scenario.

India

On India, the report said:

Under a low emissions scenario projected temperature variations will remain contained under +1.5°C, both by 2050 and 2100. Under a high emissions scenario, with no reduction in GHG emissions, much greater temperature anomalies are expected by both 2050 and 2100.Precipitation trends show a very complex signal, under all emissions scenarios, with a very large variability among climate models. This can be explained considering the complexity of the precipitation regime and dynamics requiring more detailed spatial and temporal analysis.Relative sea level rise has been observed over the past century around the coast of India, with a yearly average increase of approximately 1.56 millimeters per year since the 1990s. The latest IPCC projections indicate that, by 2050, global sea levels may rise between 0.18 meters, under a low emissions scenario, and 0.23 meters, under a high emissions scenario.On average, one in 100 extreme sea level events are expected to rise from 2.05 meters at present day to 2.23 meters by 2050 under a medium emissions scenario.Waves and storms around the Indian coast are expected to change in the future. Recent projections show an increase in wave heights and periods along much of the Indian coast, with maximum wave heights increasing by more than 30% in some locations. At most locations along the east coast, wave periods are expected to increase by almost 20%, whereas along the west coast an increase of around 10% is expected. Similarly, water elevation due to cyclone activity is expected to increase.Approximately 64 million people live in low elevated coastal areas that are less than 10 meters above sea level. These areas are exposed to both coastal erosion and storm surges, with the highest exposure found on the east coast of India. Most of the people in low lying coastal areas are concentrated in the Ganges Delta, one third of which is within the Indian territory, including the city of Kolkata which is home to 4.5 million people.With a growing coastal economy and an increasing population in coastal areas, India has been managing recent coastal risks with large scale investments aimed at protecting infrastructure, with numerous programs dealing with coastal risk management.Under a medium emissions scenario, the population exposed to the annual coastal flood level is expected to increase from 17 million to 21 million by 2050.With a population of 1.37 billion people, India is one of the most populous countries in the world. Given its large spatial distribution and agro-ecosystem diversity, several farming systems exist with a significant cultivation of rice, wheat, sugarcane, vegetables and fruit trees.Whereas agricultural contribution to national GDP has declined over the last decades, a large share of the population still depends on agriculture for its subsistence. Irrigation schemes are still expanding to enhance food security. In fact, over 14% of India’s population is thought to be undernourished. Agriculture adsorbs over 90% of total water withdrawal in a country with high stress on water resources, raising severe sustainability issues if it is to sustain further irrigation development and cope with climate risks.India’s urbanization rate is expected to grow from 35% in 2020 to more than 50% in 2050. Migration from rural areas due to climate impacts is expected to contribute substantially to this increase in urban population.Smaller urban areas with less than 300,000 inhabitants have a predominant role in terms of share of the urban population. However, megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants are home to one-fifth of the urban population. Urbanization rates are growing rapidly, and urban areas are growing faster than rural areas. India’s urban population is expected to grow from 340 million in 2008 to 590 million by 2030, an increasing trend which is expected to continue until 2050 in all types of cities, but in particular in megacities.Built-up areas cover 2.27% of India (67,385.25 square kilometers).The current (2019) energy mix of total primary energy supply in India is dominated by coal (45%), oil (25.6%) and biofuels (20%). Natural gas accounted for 5.7% of total primary energy supply and hydro, solar and wind together accounted for 2.5%. India is dependent on imports for both coal and oil. Despite having rich coal reserves, domestic production cannot keep pace with demand. A lack of domestic oil reserves leaves India highly reliant on crude oil imports.India ranks 7th in terms of GDP in the G20 group, with one of the largest growth rates. Due to COVID, for the entire 2020/21 financial year, the overall rate of contraction in India was, in real terms 7.3%.The agricultural sector in India is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change such as increasing temperatures and variability in rainfall. This will have significant repercussions for the Indian economy and the country’s food security that relies mostly on domestic production to meet the needs of a growing population.In particular, declines are projected for rice and wheat yields due to climate change, with economic losses by the mid-century between 43 and 81 billion EUR (or 1.8-3.4% of GDP).This is also expected to have substantial effects on Indian farmers’ income. It is estimated that in the absence of any adaptation measure, climate change could decrease average farm incomes by 15%, peaking at 25% for unirrigated areas, by the end of the century.

 As of 2019, roughly 72,000 people in New Zealand are exposed to coastal flooding – about 50,000 homes worth at least $12.5 bn. Around 43,000 Auckland residents are directly threatened by rising sea levels, and at least 10,000 houses across New Zealand’s four major coastal cities are at risk of becoming uninsurable within the next 30 years.

Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) estimates the amount of local infrastructure exposed to sea level rise to be in the realm of $14 bn, but adds that that is a conservative estimate.

Australia’s government 2050 net zero emissions plan relies on a “gross manipulation” of data that suggests trees and soil can absorb far more carbon dioxide than is actually possible, according to experts. 

Should we be surprised by the deceit? Should we believe Australia is the only country to falsify its figures?

Australia’s  long term emissions reduction strategy was criticised for not including new policies and relying on new technology to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the 2030s and 2040s.

It assumed 10-20% of the emissions cut needed by 2050 would come from paying for international and domestic offsets, including planting trees and other vegetation on marginal agricultural land and techniques to improve the health of the soil. This would allow some fossil fuel industries to operate beyond 2050 by effectively cancelling out their emissions by drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The Australian government has not released the modelling underpinning the plan, but the strategy document suggests 63m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year could be sequestered in trees and other vegetation and potentially more than 103m tonnes a year could be stored in soil on cropping and grazing land. Several experts say these estimates went beyond the upper bounds of what publicly available peer-reviewed science suggested was possible.

Richard Eckhard, a professor of sustainable agriculture at the University of Melbourne, said some of the per-hectare soil carbon storage numbers were roughly double what was likely to be achievable.

“Soil carbon will not be enough to offset agricultural emissions, let alone the coal industry,” he said. “The idea we can bail out the coal industry with soil carbon is just fanciful.”

Polly Hemming, a carbon offsets expert with the Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank, said the government’s strategy assumed tree planting could capture 42 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare each year. But the most you could store in optimum conditions – in giant mountain ash forests, for example – was about half that: roughly 19 tonnes per hectare each year for up to 25 years, she said.

“There’s just no way you could ever get to that 42m tonnes a year they are talking about, especially because they are talking about using marginal lands,” Hemming said.

On soil carbon, the government report said there was limited data available on how much could be stored across Australia, but cited two estimates. The first, by CSIRO, suggested 35-90m tonnes could be stored annually. The second and more prominent in the report was by AgriProve, a soil carbon business that earns revenue through the government’s emissions reduction fund. It said there was potential for at least 103m tonnes annually to be stored across the country.

Eckhard said it made little sense that the government would use data from a business working in the area as it created a potential conflict of interest. “Why did the government not go to the best soil science available?” he said.

Hemming said the government had assumed that up to 4.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide could be stored per hectare of soil each year, when the published science suggested the upper limit in optimal conditions was about 1.8 tonnes per hectare. “Best practice science that’s publicly available says this isn’t credible,” she said.

She said the government strategy did not seem to acknowledge that a stand of trees or piece of land could not keep sequestering carbon dioxide indefinitely as each would eventually reach equilibrium and not be able to store any more. Both Eckhard and Hemming said it also did not factor in the impact of climate change-enhanced bushfires and drought on natural carbon stores.

Eckhard said soil carbon in Australia was 90% dependent on rainfall, and that was expected to decline in many areas. “Why would we hedge our future climate change strategy on something that climate change itself is going to challenge?” he said.

Bill Hare, a scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics, said the strategy had confirmed the government was exaggerating the amount of carbon dioxide that could be stored in the land. “It’s a gross manipulation of what’s possible,” he said.

He said the report suggested the government’s technology-led approach could lead to as little as a 66% cut in actual emissions by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, and leave up to 215m tonnes a year that was supposed to be addressed through domestic and international offsets.

Selwin Hart, the UN secretary general’s special adviser on climate change, this week criticised Australia’s approach. “Where countries are depending on technologies that have not yet been developed, or indicating they intend to cut in the 2030 and 2040s, quite frankly, that’s reckless and irresponsible,” he said.

The cost of natural disasters were expected to almost double by 2060 and backed the importance of markets to help Australians cope as the planet heats up.

The National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy identified a range of perils including intensifying cyclones, rising sea levels and heatwaves. Citing evidence by Deloitte Access Economics, it said the cost of natural disasters in Australia would increase from about $38b to $73b by 2060 even with ambitious global action to reduce emissions.

But, as the emissions reduction strategy, it came with no new funding. It said the government’s role should include helping markets to develop ways to build resilience into the values of assets under threat from global heating.



Hemming said the policy just re-announced existing initiatives. “There are no clear targets or timelines,” she said.

Australia’s 2050 net zero emissions plan relies on ‘gross manipulation’ of data, experts say | Australian politics | The Guardian

Glasgow’s Scottish Events Campus (SEC) has formally become United Nations  territory for the duration of the global conference.

Juan Pablo Osornio, of Greenpeace International, explained “Glasgow is essentially about who the world belongs to and who we are as human beings”

 He added, “Long-term pledges are not worth the paper they are written on, unless they are anchored on national policy, backed by enforcement, and motivated on action: on coal plants being shut down and wind farms being open; on no more internal combustion engine cars on the street, replaced with a safe, comfortable, fast and carbon free transportation system; and on abundant, lush and diverse ecosystems all over the world.” 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres predicted a “catastrophic global temperature” and has said that “ We are still on track for climate catastrophe even with the last announcements that were made.“ He pointed out that “We know that humanity’s future depends on keeping global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. And we also know that, so far, parties to the Paris Agreement are utterly failing to keep this target within reach.”

COP26: the Heat is On, But Climate Leadership is Off, Warns UN Report | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Gender equality in the EU is still a long way off.

“It will take nearly three generations to achieve gender parity at the current pace,” said the 2021 Gender Equality Index report from the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE).

The unequal burden usually carried by women in unpaid household work and childcare was exacerbated by the pandemic and global lockdowns.

EU is ′three generations′ away from gender equality — report | News | DW | 28.10.2021

 Climate finance needs to rise sharply to $5 trillion a year globally by 2030 to fund measures to fight climate change, researchers said, warning that transformation across economies is too slow to meet international temperature goals.

World needs $5 tln in annual climate finance by 2030 to act fast (trust.org)

Although several international bodies link migration and the climate crisis, the concept of climate migrant or refugee does not exist in the international legal framework. Driven out by poverty, lack of basic services, violence and climate-related phenomena, millions of people leave their countries in Central America every year, heading mainly to the United States, to find work and to reunite with family.

But in the face of the increasing crackdown on immigration in the U.S. since 2016 under the administrations of Donald Trump (2016-January 2021) and current President Joe Biden, many undocumented migrants have opted to stay in places that were previously only transit points, such as Mexico.

The problem is that Mexico also tightened the screws, as part of the role it agreed with the U.S. to perform during the times of Trump, who successfully pressured the governments of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-December 2018) and current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to step up their own anti-immigration measures. And this has not changed since Biden took office. As Mexico has become a magnet for migration, measures against immigration have been stiffened. This year, through August alone, immigration authorities detained 148,903 people, almost twice as many as in all of 2020, when the total was 82,379. Of the current total, according to official data, 67,847 came from Honduras, 44,712 from Guatemala, 12,010 from El Salvador and 7,172 from Haiti. Deportations are also on the rise, as up to August, Mexico removed 65,799 undocumented migrants, compared to 60,315 in the whole of 2020. Of these, 25,660 were from Honduras, 25,660 from Guatemala, 2,583 from El Salvador and 223 from Haiti. In Mexico, according to official figures refugee applications increased from 70,406 in all of 2019 to 90,314 this year up to and including September, of which 26,007 were filed by Haitian migrants. Migrants from Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela account for the largest number of applications. Despite the large rise in applications, Mexico only approved 13,100 permanent refugees in September: 5,755 from Honduras, 1,454 from El Salvador, 733 from Haiti and 524 from Guatemala.

Like the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. Drought and devastating hurricanes drive people from their homes to safer areas or across borders in search of better lives.

Honduras is one illustration of this phenomenon. Since 1970, more than 30 major tropical storms have hit the country, leaving a trail of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. Hurricanes Eta and Iota struck in 2020. For this year, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) predicted 17 hurricanes on the Atlantic side before the official end of hurricane season on Nov. 30.

In early September, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández also declared a drought emergency, another increasingly recurrent and intense phenomenon in Central America.

Caribbean island nations such as Haiti are also suffering from climate emergencies. The country was hit by Hurricane Elsa in June and by Tropical Storm Fred and Hurricane Grace in August, on top of an Aug. 14 earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale that claimed thousands of lives.

In 2017, a particularly lethal year, hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck Haiti. As a result, Sadaam decided to leave, heading first to Chile that year and now to Mexico, where he has applied for humanitarian asylum.

Recent studies and migration statistics show that the paths followed by migrants and climate disasters in the region are intertwined.

Between 2000 and 2019, Cuba, Mexico and Haiti were the hardest hit, by a total of 110 storms which caused 39 billion dollars in damage, affected 29 million people and left 5,000 dead, 85 percent of them in Haiti, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

In 2020, internal and external displacement due to disasters soared in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras. But the international migratory framework has not yet accepted the official category of climate refugee, despite growing clamor for its inclusion.

Armelle Gouritin, an academic at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences-Mexico, told IPS that the scientific community has linked the sudden events to the climate emergency, whose influence on internal and external migration flows is growing.

“There is evidence that they are increasing. It is quite difficult to say to what extent the volume of migration is growing, because there is little quantitative data. It is hard to compare. It tends to be invisible, especially because of slow onset processes such as drought and desertification,” she explained.

In her 2021 book “The protection of internal climate migrants; a pending task in Mexico”, the expert described scenarios linked to migration, such as gradual-onset phenomena, sudden-onset disasters (hurricanes or violence generated by water shortages), relocations decided by the authorities, sea level rise and the impact of renewable energy megaprojects.

The World Bank study “Groundswell: Acting on Internal Climate Migration” warns that Mexico must prepare for the confluence of climate disasters and migration flows, and projects 17 million internal climate migrants in Latin America. The report,  estimates that the number of climate migrants will grow between 2020 and 2050, when between 1.4 and 2.1 million people will migrate in Mexico and Central America. Mexico’s central valley, where the capital city is located, and the western highlands of Guatemala will receive migrants, while people will flee arid, agricultural and low-lying coastal areas.

Few countries are prepared to address the climate dimension of migration, as is the case of Mexico. The general laws on Climate Change, of 2012, and on Forced Internal Displacement, of 2020, mention climate impacts but do not include measures or define people internally displaced by climate phenomena. In the United States, undocumented Mexicans are experiencing the same thing, as deportations of Mexicans could well exceed the levels of all of 2020, since 184,402 people were deported that year compared to 148,584 as of last August alone.

 Detentions, deportations and refugee applications, migration will continue, as long as droughts, floods and storms devastate their places of origin.

Climate Crisis Fuels Exodus to Mexico, Both Waystation and Destination | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 In its annual report on violence against the descendants of Brazil’s original inhabitants, the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) said there were 182 murders of Indigenous people in 2020, compared with 113 murders in 2019, a 61 percent increase as land invasions of Indigenous territories increased and the government failed to provide protection.

There were 263 reported land invasions of Indigenous territories, CIMI said, an “alarming” increase of 137 percent over the previous year. Of 1,289 reservations in Brazil, 832 are waiting for official recognition.

The report blamed the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro for failing to protect Indigenous communities, while pushing legislation that would open their reservations to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration and the building of hydroelectric dams. Last year, Bolsonaro’s government saw “the deepening of an extremely worrying scenario in terms of Indigenous rights, territories and lives,” the report said. Bolsonaro has emboldened illegal miners, squatters, and loggers, whose invasions of reservation territories have exacerbated the spread of the coronavirus.

The Brazilian president recently visited an Indigenous territory and defended illegal mining which has an “enormous impact on the environment and Indigenous people”, Cesar Munoz, Americas senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Thursday on Twitter.

Bolsonaro has previously praised US army cavalry colonel George Armstrong Custer for clearing Indigenous people from the plains of North America.

He has also criticised reservations for occupying valuable land and has said he will not grant another inch of land claimed by Indigenous communities. He is backed by powerful farm interests, as part of a group of lawmakers known informally in Brazil as the “beef, Bibles and bullets” bloc.

Violence targeting Indigenous people surges 61 percent in Brazil | Indigenous Rights News | Al Jazeera

 Angus Taylor, Australia’s emissions reduction minister has declared he will use the COP26 climate summit to promote Australia as a good place to invest in fossil fuel projects.

The emissions reduction minister said on Thursday that Australia was a “safe and reliable destination to invest in gas, hydrogen and new energy technologies”.

It followed his announcement that the Morrison government had rejected a call to join a US and European-led pledge to cut emissions of methane – a potent greenhouse gas released during gas and coal extraction and by livestock – by 30% by 2030.

Angus Taylor to promote fossil fuels at Glasgow Cop26 climate summit | Australian politics | The Guardian

With COP26 almost upon us, will it solve the climate crises we face?

The most serious problems facing society today is that of its ecological damage and harm. The list of bad news on the environment is seemingly unending. Each of these issues represents a serious menace in its own right. Decisive action against carbon emissions and global warming is long overdue. The laws that have been enacted and regulatory agencies that have been established have at every turn been subverted by the very corporations and businesses responsible for the CO2 pollution. The regulations themselves have been watered down; agencies aren’t funded adequately to act on them and are frequently corrupted by corporate interests; enforcement of even inadequate regulations has been poor, raising the question of whether the laws and regulations were ever intended to be anything more than window dressing by the class of capitalists that owns the fossil fuel industries. To understand why legislation hasn’t worked and what kind of action will work to end this worsening environmental nightmare, it must be understood that the environmental crisis lies in the nature of the capitalist economic system. Capitalist-class rule over the economy explains why government regulation is so ineffective: under capitalism, the government itself is essentially a tool of the capitalist class. Politicians may be elected “democratically,” but because they are financed, supported and decisively influenced by the economic power of the capitalist class, democratic forms are reduced to a farce.

 Attempts under this system to solve our climate emergency with techno-fixes often create new problems. It will take a fundamentally different type of social and economic system to even begin to rationally address the problem — a socialist society, freed from what Marx once referred to as “the furies of private interest” that now control technology and its application. Endangering the air, the soil and the water, putting our children and future generations at risk and making land unfit for farming and habitation are evidently less important to governments than saving a large capitalist enterprise the trouble of cleaning up its mess properly. As always, the moneyed interests come first, and people last. It seems all too obvious that every move ruling classes make is calculated to increase their profits or consolidate their power over the peoples and the countries they control. The cleanup of polluted waters, the reclamation of wetlands, and the restoration of the natural environment generally will have to wait for the advent of socialism. That is the only sane, logical and practical way to eliminate all such unnatural disasters because it is the only way to take control of the economy away from impervious and brutish ruling classes and place it under the direct control of society as a whole. Because of capitalism and the insane motivation on the part of the capitalists to keep initial investment to a minimum to make the most profit, especially near-term profit people are exposed to toxic surroundings.

Hurting the environment is not an inevitable by-product of modern industry. Methods exist or can readily be developed to safely neutralise, recycle or contain most industrial wastes. Less polluting forms of transportation and energy can be built. Adequate supplies of food can be grown without deadly pesticides. The problem is that, under capitalism, the majority of people have no power to make these kinds of decisions about production. Under the capitalist system, production decisions are made by the small, wealthy minority that owns and controls the industries and services — the capitalist class. And the capitalists who make up that class make their decisions to serve, first and foremost, one goal — that of maximising profit for themselves. That is where the environmental crisis begins. Socially harmful decisions are made because, in one way or another, they serve the profit interests of the capitalist class. The capitalist class and its government will never be able to solve the environmental crisis. They and their system are the problems.

The action workers must take is to understand their economic and political power as operators of the industries and services by building and integrating into ONE MOVEMENT with the goal of building a new society with completely different motives for production — human needs and wants instead of profit — and to organise their own political party to challenge the political power of the capitalists, express their mandate for change at the ballot box and dismantle the state altogether. The new society they must aim for must be one in which society itself, not a wealthy few, would own the industries and services, and the workers themselves would control them democratically through their own organisations. In such a society, working people themselves would make the major decisions controlling the economy, electing representatives to various committees, councils and congresses that would administer the economy. Such a society — a socialist industrial democracy — is what is needed to solve the environmental crisis, by placing the economic decision-making power of the nation in the hands of the workers, by eliminating capitalist control and the profit motive in favour of a system in which workers produce to meet their own needs and wants, the necessary resources and labour could be devoted to stopping climate change at its source and better clean up the damage already done.

What is to prevent the workers in socialism from polluting the environment just like the capitalists? Socialism would place a priority upon protecting nature because the totality of the social interest would determine production decisions, not the narrow, material self-interest of a minority of society that is driven by competition.  Material self-interest compels capitalists to maximise profits, to the detriment of the social interest – not simply because they personally desire ever greater wealth, but because competition constantly threatens to eject them from their seat of privilege. The occasional capitalist or CEO who attempts to act in a benevolent manner generally doesn’t last too long, as the company in question will fall behind its competitors if it spends significantly less on improved productivity, to remain competitive. Accordingly, except in cases where a pollution control measure substantially improves productivity or otherwise promises a substantial increase in profits, capitalists are virtually driven to use the least expensive method of waste disposal – spewing it into the air, water or land.

Simply dumping wastes into the environment would still be less “expensive” — in terms of the labour-time necessary to dispose of them — in a socialist society. But in the cooperative-based economy of socialism, the compelling anti–social force of competition would be absent. Moreover, with the end of exploitation, workers would be able to satisfy all of their material needs with but a fraction of the present work–week. And with employment opportunities and economic security guaranteed to all, no worker would have to fear the economic consequences of a particular workplace or area of production being shut down due to environmental considerations.

With their basic material needs so readily and assuredly met, the liberated people of a socialist society will have every incentive to devote a considerable quantity of labour time to improving the quality of life in other ways. Certainly, the desire to live in a clean, healthy, spacious and aesthetically pleasing environment, and an appreciation for the wonders and beauty of wilderness environments, are fairly universal among humankind.

There is a collective self-interest in breathing clean air, drinking clean water, eating clean food, living a long, healthy life and enjoying both the scientific and aesthetic bounty of nature, it is safe to predict that workers would vote to allocate the energy necessary to virtually eliminate pollution at the point of production.

Thus, while in an abstract sense it is true that the self-governing producers of a socialist society could democratically decide to continue polluting the environment, it would defy all reason and human nature to project such a decision. It is no more valid or credible a supposition than supposing that everyone under socialism could decide to burn down their own home or commit suicide someday.

 Under capitalism, the profit motive and competition form a systematic barrier against the protection and restoration of the environment. In a socialist society, that barrier will be destroyed and humankind’s common needs and wants will guide economic decision-making. Since those needs and wants include a clean and healthy environment, a socialist society will take the steps needed to create one.