One in three people in informal settlements in the global south live in floodplains and are at risk of a “disastrous flood”.
That is according to a new study published in Nature Cities, which measures the flood risk of global-south populations living in “slums” – as defined by UN-Habitat.
Using a combination of machine learning, satellite images, household surveys and socioeconomic data, the study finds that these slum populations are often concentrated in regions that have recently or frequently experienced severe floods.
Though large slum communities are vulnerable to floods, limited locational choices often mean that inhabitants have nowhere else to go, according to the study.
The research reveals the consequences of socioeconomic challenges when compounded with environmental pressures driven by urbanisation.
Dr Gode Bola, a water risk and climate scientist at the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Centre, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:
“Slums in the Congo Basin used to face flooding to an extent that communities could deal with. Rainfall, which is where climate change is coming in, has meant people are facing larger floods and it’s difficult for people to adapt.”
Hotspots and vulnerability
According to the UN definition used by the study, slum households are those in urban areas that lack at least one of the following: “durable housing, sufficient living space, easy access to safe water, adequate sanitation and security of tenure.”
Using this, the study estimates that at least 17% of the global-south population, equivalent to more than 880 million people, live in slums. For some countries, such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, a majority of the population live in slums, the authors note.
Many of these slum communities are situated in areas that face substantial flood exposure. The study identifies northern India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Rwanda and the coastal regions of Rio de Janeiro as notable hotspots – as the map below illustrates:
Beyond physical exposure, these communities face social vulnerabilities that are exacerbated by flooding. Poor infrastructure, limited access to social services and a lack of institutional support impede effective responses to floods in these areas, the study finds.
At 80%, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of slum populations living in floodplains, the study finds.
Despite these challenges, relocation opportunities for people living in slums are slim. Financial constraints and reduced access to employment make it difficult to move to safer areas. Flood zones often offer cheaper land or housing, which pushes poorer households into vulnerable areas, the study finds.
For example, flood-prone areas in Mumbai in India, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Jakarta in Indonesia are considered “low value”, the authors say, making it more accessible to those in urban areas with lower incomes.
Nevertheless, the need for housing and an income continue to draw people to these flood-risk zones, separate research suggests.
Bola tells Carbon Brief:
“These slums are less expensive and poor people can afford the land. They buy this plot of land for life and asking them to relocate is asking them to have savings to buy another plot when there are no loans or government assistance.”
Disastrous floods
The authors mapped where slum populations are concentrated and where disastrous floods have historically occurred across 129 countries in the global south.
Disastrous floods were categorised in the study as events that resulted in “severe societal disruption, often leading to fatalities and severe humanitarian consequences”.
Their findings showed that, across the global south, those living in slums make up 35% of the total population, but account for 41% of those who live in flood-prone areas. This suggests that slum residents are more likely to settle in flood-risk areas in comparison to non-slum residents.
In fact, the study finds that in countries which often face disastrous floods, such as Bangladesh, slum residents are overrepresented in nearly all areas where disastrous floods have occurred.
Rourkela and Kinshasa’s slums
Floods in Rourkela, India, and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, in recent months illustrate the issue of slums being situated in floodplains.
Heavy monsoon downpours caused floods in slum settlements in Rourkela, while floods and landslides devastated 13 communes in Kinshasa’s urban slums, resulting in 165 deaths.
In Kinshasa, rapid urban growth is pushing development into floodplains without proper infrastructure, making floods worse and recovery harder, according to a recent article by researchers. As a result, healthcare systems and transportation are routinely damaged.
In India, separate research suggests that slum settlements are prone to flooding because many are in low-lying areas on the periphery of water bodies, without proper storm-water drainage.
According to the new study, rapid urbanisation and land pressures will likely drive even more slum populations into flood zones in the global south, indicating that the cases of Rourkela and Kinshasa could become an even more frequent reality.
Flood protection
The “intensifying” effects of climate change amplifies the need to address the location of slums in the global south, the authors state.
However, other research has shown that minimal policies to support slum communities in flood zones exist. Yet, as rapid urbanisation occurs, slums continue to spread into high-risk areas.
Poor governance has failed to recognise the rights and needs of the urban poor in city planning, according to research from Cities Alliance.
The study in Nature Cities mentions that governments are often politically reluctant to formally recognise slums because doing so could increase pressure to deliver services, complicate future development plans or damage the international image of the city or country.
Dr Nausheen Anwar, director of Karachi Urban Lab and principal researcher and urban climate resilience lead at the International Institute for Environment and Development, tells Carbon Brief about the government response to flooding of informal settlements in Karachi in 2022.
Anwar, who was not involved in the new study, says:
“People were living alongside the banks of those specific channels and were quickly labelled as encroachers, even though many of them had tenure in these informal settlements and the supreme court essentially backed the entire plan for eviction. This is where the role of the law became very effective in displacing people and razing their homes.”
The authors of the study say their findings can be used to inform data-driven policies that address flood risk, as well as to help shape local regulations.
In the study, they call for governments to recognise the inequalities that slum populations face and to acknowledge slum communities as key stakeholders. This would mean considering their needs and interests when designing policies to respond to climate change.
The authors also suggest that communities be empowered through capacity building, including training in sanitation and waste management.
Anwar adds:
“Data speaks for itself whether it comes in the form of numbers or is quantitative or qualitative…We need that to buttress the sort of changes we want to make on ground in terms of influencing policy agendas and planning interventions, whether it is at the local scale or going up even at the global scale.”
The post Third of ‘slum residents’ in global south are exposed to ‘disastrous’ flood risks appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Third of ‘slum residents’ in global south are exposed to ‘disastrous’ flood risks
Climate Change
Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges
The clean energy sector is showing resilience despite challenges thrown at it by a hostile White House, a recent report found. A string of legal victories has further dampened the Trump administration’s efforts to halt wind and solar power.
The Trump administration has abandoned its effort to halt wind energy projects across the United States and dropped its challenge to the court ruling that tossed President Donald Trump’s order freezing federal permitting and leasing for wind projects. States that challenged the order hailed the development as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition.
Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges
Amid reports that the government could weaken the UK’s electric vehicle (EV) targets, Carbon Brief analysis reveals the nation’s EV drivers are saving more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs, compared with running a petrol car.
Battery EVs (BEVs) are roughly four times more efficient than combustion-engine cars, making them far cheaper to run – particularly since the Iran crisis caused a spike in fossil-fuel prices.
The savings from driving BEVs are also more than three times higher than for “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs), which evidence shows are mostly driven with their combustion engines.
In total, the more than 2m BEVs, 1m PHEVs and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are saving drivers around £3bn a year, Carbon Brief’s analysis shows, as illustrated in the figure below.
In addition, these EVs are avoiding the need for nearly 2.5bn litres of fuel and cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 7m tonnes each year.
Despite recent news that EVs are now cheaper to buy than petrol cars, as well as having far lower running costs, BBC News says the government is “set to water down” its EV sales targets.
The broadcaster explains that the current goal, under the UK’s “zero-emissions vehicle” (ZEV) mandate, is for 80% of new car sales to be BEVs by 2030.
It says that the government is set to consult on weakening this to between 50% and 70%, following “lobbying” by carmakers and trade unions.
According to the Sunday Times, prime minister Keir Starmer “is understood to have overruled the energy secretary [Ed Miliband] after sustained pressure from industry, the Unite union and Peter Kyle, the business secretary”.
The car industry has consistently claimed there is insufficient demand for BEVs to meet the targets under the ZEV mandate, yet the government says manufacturers have “over-complied” to date. Independent analysts say the industry is on track to continue beating the ZEV mandate goals.
The industry has been able to beat its targets by using a wide range of “flexibilities”, which were introduced after a previous round of lobbying. These allow carmarkers to meet part of their EV targets by selling more efficient combustion cars, such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
The ZEV mandate is the single-largest part of the government’s plans to meet its legally binding climate goals over the next decade.
The advisory Climate Change Committee (CCC) previously warned that the extra flexibilities would result in a larger number of hybrids being sold, at the expense of battery EVs.
When it consulted on the ZEV mandate in 2023, the then-Conservative government noted that PHEVs do not deliver the cost and CO2 savings they are advertised with.
It pointed to “dramatic” differences between the performance of PHEVs in test cycles and what they deliver under real-world conditions.
In practice, less than a third of miles driven in PHEVs are fuelled by electricity, with petrol making up the rest. As a result, cost and CO2 savings from BEVs are three times larger than for PHEVs.
The post Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK’s EV drivers are now saving £1,100 each a year – and £3bn in total
Civil society groups have called for an investigation into the first carbon credits approved under a new UN mechanism, alleging the project is linked to Myanmar’s military junta – which the UN says is guilty of human rights abuses – and has “massively” overstated its climate impact.
The programme, which aims to cut emissions by distributing efficient cookstoves across Myanmar, received approval to issue around 650,000 carbon credits from the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in February, in a landmark moment for the Paris Agreement’s carbon market. Only two projects have been given the green light by the mechanism’s regulator so far.
But two reports published last week, led by the Global Forest Coalition and Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch, raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in conflict zones where civilians have faced airstrikes and mass displacement as well as its emission-reduction calculations.
Project continued after military coup
Myanmar has been ravaged by a brutal civil war since the country’s military overthrew the democratically elected government in a coup d’état in February 2021. The military regime has attacked civilian populations, persecuted ethnic minorities and committed widespread sexual violence, among other serious human rights violations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said in April.
The cookstove programme started in 2018 under the previous UN-run carbon offsetting scheme – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – as a partnership between Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) and the Climate Change Center (CCC), a South Korean NGO, with investment from private South Korean firms.
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The project continued operating after the coup. For most of the period between 2021 and 2022 in which the issued credits were generated, MONREC was led by Colonel Khin Maung Yi, who was sanctioned by the European Union in 2021 for supporting the military regime, the Global Forest Coalition report said.
CCC acknowledged engaging with government authorities after the coup but said this “should not be interpreted as political endorsement” of the junta. The South Korean NGO added that abandoning the programme when political circumstances changed “would not necessarily have been the most responsible outcome for the households involved”.
Conflict prevents on the ground verification
The Global Forest Coalition report raised particular concerns about the project’s implementation in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, including Sagaing Region, an anti-junta resistance stronghold that has been most heavily affected by the conflict and routinely targeted by airstrikes and violent attacks. The region accounts for more than a third of Myanmar’s 3.8 million internally displaced people.
The NGOs said that, in addition to ethical concerns about carbon credits being produced by the military government in an area actively affected by its attacks, this raises questions over the ability to effectively verify the climate integrity of the projects.
Before carbon credits are issued, external auditors need to validate the claims made by project developers and confirm that the emission reductions claimed are correct. This process usually includes site visits to a representative sample of households to check how the improved cookstoves are being used.
But, because of the “volatile political situation” in Myanmar, the auditing team was not able to leave the capital Yangon and could only speak to project participants remotely via Zoom, project documents show.
“Due to ongoing armed conflict on the ground, the data currently used to justify carbon credit issuance in Sagaing by the Burmese military junta is unverifiable and highly likely fraudulent,” said Zaw Tuseng, founder and president of the Myanmar Policy Institute, which contributed to the report, in a written statement. “This demands an immediate suspension of credit transfers until a neutral, conflict-sensitive audit can be conducted.”
“Exceptional circumstances”
CCC told Climate Home News that, although it recognises that on-site verification is “generally preferable, particularly in complex operating environments”, the decision to opt for remote controls was not taken “as a discretionary shortcut, but as an approved alternative under exceptional circumstances”.
The South Korean NGO added that it reviewed the feasibility of the project at community level “on an ongoing basis” and it “did not identify conflict-related incidents that directly affected project implementation activities in participating communities during the monitoring period”.
A spokesperson for the UN climate change body told Climate Home News that, when site access is not possible, the UN carbon credit mechanism allows for “alternative verification approaches while still maintaining conservative assumptions and environmental integrity safeguards”. “These provisions ensure that crediting can only proceed where evidence is reliable,” they added.
Contested methodology
Carbon markets are seen as an important channel to raise money to help low-income communities in developing countries switch to less polluting cooking methods, both reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality. But several cookstove offsetting projects have faced criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions.
The project in Myanmar uses a contested methodology developed under the earlier Kyoto Protocol that was rejected last year by The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a watchdog that issues quality labels to carbon credit types, because it found it “insufficiently rigorous”.
EU carbon credits could supercharge world’s clean cooking push, France says
After transitioning from the CDM to the new mechanism, the project was required to apply “more conservative” assumptions to calculate emission reductions, which resulted in 40% fewer credits being issued, according to the UN climate change body.
“The result is consistent with environmental integrity requirements and ensures that each credited tonne genuinely represents a tonne reduced and contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, which oversees the mechanism, said in February.
Too many credits issued
But Carbon Market Watch claimed in a second report last week that, despite the adjustment, the project is still likely to issue seven times more credits than its real climate impact justifies, comparing its calculations with values from peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The biggest driver of the credit inflation, the group said, is the failure to account for “stacking” – the widespread practice of households using multiple stoves at the same time, including more polluting ones the project does not monitor.
Peer-reviewed science considers a stacking rate of 68% a conservative assumption, but the methodology used by the Myanmar programme makes no allowance for it at all, the report said.
CCC disputed those findings. In a written response to Climate Home News, it said the project was developed under methodologies approved within the UN climate framework and that external recalculations by researchers are not “determinative of the level of crediting achieved”.
The credits are expected to be used primarily by major South Korean polluters to meet obligations under the country’s emissions trading system – a move that will also enable the government to count those units toward emissions reduction targets in its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the UN climate body told Climate Home News.
Myanmar will use the remaining credits to achieve in part the goals of its own national climate plan under the Paris Agreement.
“Over-crediting, at any magnitude, cannot be compatible with the climate ambition of a world striving to limit global warming to 1.5ºC,” said Isa Mulder, an expert at Carbon Market Watch.
The post UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns
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