Sergio Díaz is legal director at the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.
As governments submit their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ahead of COP30, almost all of them share one glaring omission. While the climate plans speak of expanding renewables or boosting efficiency, almost none directly confront the other side of the equation – the production and use of fossil fuels.
This silence is indefensible. Ignoring fossil fuels – the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions – not only defies scientific imperatives to cut emissions at the source, it undermines countries’ legal obligations under the Paris Agreement and customary international law, as clarified by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In contrast, decisive commitments would uphold their legal obligations, protect the 1.5C global warming threshold and secure the just transition the world urgently needs.
For years, governments have deliberately sidestepped fossil fuels in their climate plans, highlighting renewables and net-zero targets while continuing to expand oil, fossil gas and coal with impunity. States know fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis, yet according to the latest Production Gap Report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), they still plan to produce 120% more by 2030 than is compatible with 1.5C.
Fossil fuel impunity
That impunity needs to end. International courts have now removed any doubt that such conduct is not only scientifically reckless, it can also be unlawful.
In its July advisory opinion, the ICJ – the world’s highest court – confirmed that states must act with due diligence to prevent significant environmental harm, and that the content of their NDCs matters. Submitting a plan that ignores fossil fuels while approving new drilling licenses or maintaining subsidies may constitute an internationally wrongful act.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights reached the same conclusion this year, ruling that states are legally obliged to regulate fossil fuel exploration, extraction, transport and processing in order to protect human rights.
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Two rare exceptions – Colombia and Vanuatu – show the legal and political pathway that others must now follow. Both countries explicitly address fossil fuel production and use in their updated NDCs, and have also joined calls for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Colombia has suspended new oil and gas exploration contracts, is planning the phase-out of coal power, and has become the first Latin American country to endorse the Treaty initiative.
While not a fossil fuel producer, Vanuatu, for its part, is spearheading the Pacific call for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific and advocating for new governance structures such as a Pacific Energy Commissioner, alongside a global Fossil Fuel Treaty. As stated in its NDC, Vanuatu aims to steer the Pacific into becoming the “first region in the world to achieve the equitable phaseout of fossil fuel production and use”.
Weak NDCs fuel climate disasters
But for now, the example set by these two countries is the exception, not the rule. Excluding goals for cutting fossil fuel production or consumption from national climate plans is not a technical oversight – it is a failure with direct human and planetary costs.
Every weak NDC and every new drilling licence means more lives lost: from deadly heatwaves to rising seas swallowing homes, to communities displaced by fires and floods.
Instead, NDCs should include concrete measures to phase out fossil fuel production and consumption based on quantified equitable targets, halt new licensing, end subsidies and support workers and communities through a just transition. Failure to do so will undoubtedly pave the way for climate litigation worldwide, but sadly, not in time to prevent further climate catastrophes.
The ICJ has spoken, science has spoken, communities on the frontlines have spoken, and the message is simple: the threat of fossil fuels must be addressed urgently and directly.
Time for non-proliferation treaty
But no country can take on this task alone, which is why Colombia and Vanuatu have joined a growing group of 17 countries calling for a global Fossil Fuel Treaty.
What could a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty look like?
Similar to past treaties that ended the spread of nuclear weapons or landmines, the pact would create a framework to halt fossil fuel expansion, phase out production fairly and mobilise the necessary finance for a just transition. It would not replace stronger, more ambitious NDCs, but instead help governments to deliver on their plans.
As governments finalise their new NDCs, they should follow the path charted by Colombia, Vanuatu and other nations participating in the development of a Fossil Fuel Treaty to promote quantified fossil fuels phase-out targets, international cooperation and a livable, fair future for all. There is still time.
The post Countries must confront fossil fuels head-on in their NDCs appeared first on Climate Home News.
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Samantha Kemnah looked out the foggy window of her home in New Berlin, New York, at the 150-acre dairy farm she and her husband, Chris, bought last year. This winter, an unprecedented cold front brought snowstorms and ice to the region.
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Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
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