Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
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This week
Crude geopolitics
VIOLENT SPIKE: The escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas drove global oil prices up this week, the Times reported. On Monday, Brent crude rose to $88.15 a barrel as markets feared “wider regional instability”, Al Jazeera reported. Amid the violence, Saudi Arabia could hold the “key” to global oil prices, said Bloomberg. On Wednesday, the leaders of Iran and Saudi Arabia discussed the “need to end war crimes against Palestine” in their first phone call since resuming ties, Reuters reported. US treasury secretary Janet Yellen indicated that additional sanctions on Iranian oil “could be coming”, the New York Times reported.
SUBSEA SABOTAGE? Elsewhere, gas prices surged in response to fears that Russia sabotaged an undersea pipeline between Finland and Estonia, the Daily Telegraph reported. Finnish president Sauli Niinistö on Tuesday said the leak had signs of “external activity”, Politico reported, while Iltalehti reported that state and defence authorities suspected Russia being behind the attack.The loss of the pipeline could expose both Finland and Estonia to winter shortages, experts told the New York Times.
1.5C ‘breached’
NEW RECORD: According to an analysis published by BBC News, the world “breached” 1.5C, “a key warming threshold” for a record number of days this year, accounting for “about a third of days in 2023”. The broadcaster clarified that “breaching Paris [Agreement] thresholds doesn’t mean going over them for a day or a week, but instead involves going beyond this limit across a 20- or 30-year average”. Temperatures have also been driven up by the onset of El Niño conditions, the story added.
TEMPERATURE CHECK: Elsewhere, many climate scientists have been left puzzled by “Earth’s fever suddenly spik[ing] so high in September”, Inside Climate News reported. The lack of certainty has sent “a shiver of unease through parts of the climate science community”, with scientists “who have authored important climate science research together” contradicting one another, “at least partly”, about the possible causes, the publication said. Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor, added that the September temperature spike is “certainly pushing the boundaries of model expectations”.
Around the world
- HEAT ATTRIBUTED: Heat scorching large parts of South America in September was made “100 times more likely” by human-caused climate change, according to a new analysis by the World Weather Attribution initiative.
- NICKEL DROPS: New data showed that tropical forests occupying an area equivalent to the size of New York have been cleared across 329 nickel mines in Indonesia since 2017 as demand for nickel batteries has increased, the Financial Times reported.
- COAL RECEIPTS: The Financial Times alleged that the influential Indian conglomerate the Adani Group “inflated” imported coal costs, leading to millions of Indian consumers and businesses overpaying for electricity. The group responded saying it uses an “open, transparent, global bidding process”.
- ESKOM EXIT: Mpho Makwana has quit as chairman of South African power utility Eskom even as parts of the country reel from floods, Bloomberg reported. It has previously called the gig “the worst job in global energy”.
77
The number of countries that just had their hottest September on record, according to climate science initiative Berkeley Earth.
Latest climate research
- A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that humans are “more vulnerable to moist heat stress than previously proposed”.
- Warming oceans and oxygen loss could drive a centuries-long irreversible reduction in marine ecosystem habitability, with impacts lasting “well after global temperatures have peaked”, said new research in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
- Small Island Developing States could face flood damages 14 times higher than at present under a scenario of very high greenhouse gas emissions and no adaptation, according to a new Nature Sustainability study.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief analysis by Josh Gabbatiss found that the UK has fallen nearly 40% behind on its pledge to rapidly scale up climate finance for developing countries. Instead of increasing steadily to meet a £11.6bn target over five years, the UK’s climate spending abroad has fallen two consecutive years in a row and is off track by around £2bn. The chart above shows the amount of annual international climate finance provided by the UK from the financial year 2011/12 to 2022/23, indicated by the blue line. Dotted lines indicate the annual average spend that would be required to meet the £11.6bn goal by 2025/26, both from a starting point of 2020/21 (yellow) and a starting point of 2022/23 (red). This analysis is from a three-part Carbon Brief investigation into the UK’s international climate finance commitments. Read parts one, two and three – which was covered by the Guardian.
Spotlight
Lessons from Sikkim’s deadly flash floods
Devastating flash floods in India’s north-eastern Himalayan state of Sikkim claimed 37 lives last week, with scores still missing. In the aftermath, Carbon Brief looks at whether authorities were adequately prepared for such an event – and how it could be linked to climate change.
The deadly floods that burst the largest dam in India’s smallest state – the 1,200 MW Teesta III project in Sikkim – have been at the centre of a charged debate on climate change and infrastructure development across the country, after a brutal monsoon in the Himalayan region.
While the event was initially characterised by Indian authorities as a “cloudburst” – an episode of heavy rain – scientists and meteorological experts later confirmed that the floods were caused by a breach of Sikkim’s “largest and the fastest-growing” South Lhonak glacial lake, during an event known as a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF).
“Part of the slope next to the glacier fell and crashed into the lake like the wall of a house, creating a tsunami wave that eventually managed to overtop and erode the dam,” Jakob Steiner, a research fellow at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), told Carbon Brief.
This also caused parts of the glacier to collapse into the lake, he said. Permafrost has been thawing in the region and destabilising the barriers that once held the two kilometre-wide lake in place, he added.
Rainfall, while intense, was “not apocalyptic” in north Sikkim, he said, as data now confirms.
The South Lhonak GLOF had been modelled in a 2021 paper led by scientist Dr Ashim Sattar at the Divecha Institute for Climate Change, who told Carbon Brief that it was “heartbreaking” to see the events in Sikkim unfold. He added:
“Our research did not predict when this is going to happen, but it assessed the potential damage it could have downstream. The science we produce is often restricted to a scientific community, but it has to go to the common people and policymakers.”
Policymakers knew for more than a decade that the area was vulnerable to a GLOF event, according to a report in the Hindustan Times. Since 2006, activists and communities have pointed out that environment impact assessments for the Teesta III dam did not factor in the risk of earthquakes or GLOFs, Scroll.in reported – but authorities did not take action or address blindspots.
Draining glacial lakes before they burst has been attempted in the past, but, according to Sattar, “getting equipment to higher elevations is very, very challenging” and focusing on non-structural measures is also important, such as early warning systems, awareness and resilience-building.
Experts and activists have called for an urgent overhaul of India’s dam safety mechanism.
“We have the data, we have an understanding of the change in the cryosphere, so you can start at 8am tomorrow and do proper risk assessments for each and every valley,” said Steiner. He added that there is a need for central funding for early warning systems, but that this has to be “done together with the people who are supposed to be warned”.
On the question of whether this GLOF was linked to human-caused climate change, he added:
“I don’t need an attribution study to tell you that this glacial lake is linked to a changing climate because it would not have formed if you didn’t have climate change.”
He added that, with continued global emissions, there will be a limit to the degree that Himalayan communities can adapt:
“We don’t have the money or the capacity to keep putting in these early warning systems, while we keep putting more CO2 in the atmosphere. We have to change something at the source. There are many culprits in this murder.”
Watch, read, listen
‘CRUCIAL DECADE’: What does COP28 – its global stocktake, fights over loss and damage funding and 1.5C – mean for developing countries in an “overshoot” world and how should India chart its path in a changing energy, geopolitical and legal landscape? Carbon Brief moderated a discussion with the Centre for Policy Research’s Prof Navroz Dubash, Dr Lavanya Rajamani, Dr Radhika Khosla and Shibani Ghosh.
ARCTIC MONITORS: Scientific American talked to Inuvialuit climate monitors who are recording how climate change is causing their town north of the Arctic Circle in Canada to erode away.
SEEDS OF WAR: Wild Relatives, a film streaming on TrueStory, traced the journey of seeds from the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard to Lebanon, in an attempt to recreate a gene bank destroyed by the outbreak of war.
Coming up
- 9-15 October: World Bank and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings, Marrakech, Morocco
- 14 October: Australia Indigenous rights referendum
- 14 October: New Zealand general election
- 15 October: Poland parliamentary election
- 17-20 October: Fourth Meeting of the Transitional Committee (TC4) on the operationalization of the new funding arrangements for responding to loss and damage, Aswan, Egypt
- 19-20 October: CBD resumed second part of COP15 | Nairobi, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), faculty at the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) Initiative. Salary: Unknown. Location: Gangtok, Sikkim, India
China Dialogue, ocean editor | Salary: £39,776.18. Location: London (remote work considered for international candidates) - Bank Track, campaign lead for banks and climate and banks and nature | Salary: €3,300-3,700 per month. Location: Hybrid (Netherlands or remote) with travel to the Netherlands two to four times a year
DeBriefed is written in rotation by Carbon Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 13 October 2023: Israel and Hamas conflict hits oil prices; 1.5C ‘breached’; Lessons from India’s flash floods appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Özgür Özel is the leader of Turkey’s main opposition “New Party” and a member of parliament from Manisa.
The world is running out of time to deliver on the Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report concludes that the chance of keeping warming below 1.5C without overshooting it is gone. Even if every country delivers its current national pledges, the planet is heading for about 2.6C of warming this century.
This is the backdrop as governments and their leaders gather in Antalya for COP31, ten years after the Paris Agreement took effect. Turkey lies in the Mediterranean, one of the regions most exposed to climate change, and hosting the summit is a real opportunity.
It is also a responsibility, and that responsibility begins at home. The world does not lack targets. What it has lacked – almost everywhere – is delivery. If Antalya is remembered for anything, it should be for shifting the focus from what countries promise to what they actually do.
For many people in Turkey, the climate crisis is already part of daily life. In 2021, forests in Manavgat, a district of Antalya, burned for more than a week. Last year, wildfires forced more than 50,000 people from their homes around the western coast city of Izmir. This October, Istanbul had its heaviest rainfall in more than 80 years, with the floods killing at least eight people.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
Electrification, the fossil fuel transition, adaptation to rising impacts, climate science and trade are key themes as governments gather for COP31 in TürkiyeBrazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable
The COP30 presidency’s voluntary timetable asks countries to plan first, then build up clean energy – only turning to oil and gas supplies from 2031
Measurable outcomes
Two weeks of climate negotiations cannot deliver everything that is needed to resolve the crisis, but COP31 can push for a few things that can be measured. The first is a voluntary fossil-fuel transition roadmap, with national milestones for 2030 and 2035 reported in the same format every year.
The second is a stronger commitment to protecting forests, with progress tracked over time. The third is yearly reporting on progress towards the agreed $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance by 2035, backed by a financial roadmap.
On adaptation, the indicators agreed in Belém should become funded national plans. By COP32, we should be able to see how many countries have an adaptation plan and the financial commitment behind each one.
Regional resilience partnership
The summit also has an unusual shape. Turkey hosts, Australia leads the negotiations, and the Pacific island nations play a central role. Climate diplomacy now sits at the centre of energy security, trade and development, and Turkey, which bridges developed and developing economies, is well placed to help build consensus between them. The lasting value of its presidency will depend on the practical partnerships it leaves behind.
One such partnership could connect two very different regions. On a map, the Mediterranean and the Pacific seem to have little in common, but their problems look similar: eroding coastlines, salt creeping into aquifers, failing harvests, fishing towns with fewer fish.
Turkey and Australia could launch a Mediterranean–Pacific Climate Resilience Partnership, linking coastal cities, scientists, institutions including development banks and island governments. It does not need a new bureaucracy. It can start with a few projects: shared satellite data and early-warning systems, better coastal flood defences, and trials of water-saving farming in the communities most at risk. What matters is visible results on the ground, not a ceremony.
Turkey’s track record
Turkey does have progress to point to. It has committed to net zero by 2053, and its solar and wind capacity has grown fast. The sunshine, the wind and the industrial base are all there. But the long-term direction of the energy mix is still unclear.
Turkey also signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26, pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. With four years left, COP31 is a chance to show how that promise will be kept.
COP30 roadmap says faster use of existing tools can halt forest loss by 2030
And while the summit celebrates zero waste, Turkey took in more than half a million tons of European plastic waste last year, much of it bound for Mersin and Adana. On November 21, the day after COP31 closes, an EU ban on plastic-waste exports to non-OECD countries takes effect. Turkey, as an OECD member, is exempt. That should worry us more than it seems to.
None of this will carry much weight unless Turkey’s own record holds up. A leadership at odds with its own environment and its own citizens will struggle to inspire global confidence in its commitment to protecting the planet.
Threat to local climate action
Cities are where adaptation happens. Water, flood protection, waste and urban planning fall largely to municipalities. That is why the imprisonment and removal of more than 50 elected opposition mayors, including the mayor of Istanbul, matter for environment and climate policy, as well as for democracy.
When local leadership is disrupted, investment plans stall and work on flood defences and water supplies loses continuity. As a result, local governments are left paralysed.
Comment: From Australia to Chile, our cities are driving a green investment boom
Inconsistent policymaking when it comes to the environment and climate deepens the problem in Turkey as it does in other countries. A few practical steps would make a real difference.
Set out a gradual, well-planned energy transition. Stop new construction in streambeds and drinking-water basins and put zoning maps online. Inspect every imported plastic shipment and cap total imports. Hold public hearings on environmental impact assessments before permits are issued, not after. And publish an independently audited climate scorecard each year covering emissions, renewables capacity, forest loss and adaptation spending.
This could set an example beyond Turkey. Many emerging economies are trying to cut emissions while protecting jobs and keeping industry competitive. Digital tools and artificial intelligence are already available to help forecast wildfire risk, reduce grid losses and track water use.
With the 1.5C limit now set to be breached, Antalya’s success will be measured by the greenhouse gases avoided, the investments delivered and the forests still standing in the years that follow. It is our responsibility to watch closely and see whether those commitments are delivered, transparently and in line with international standards.
The post Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.
Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action
As oil companies pull out of Argentina’s oil heartland in the Patagonian province of Chubut, workers and communities are struggling to secure their future, with little say in the decisions being made about it.
“The impacted are fragmented, the exploiters organised,” said José Glinski, a member of parliament from the province.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, where Argentina’s oil industry began in 1907, those words carry particular weight. For nearly 120 years, oil has shaped the city’s economy and that of Chubut province, which helped power Argentina for decades. Now the companies that built their fortunes there are shifting their investments elsewhere, threatening an economy that has depended on oil for generations.
Argentina’s national oil company, YPF, whose roots lie in Comodoro Rivadavia, is selling off its mature oilfields in the region to concentrate investment in the shale oil and gas reserves of Vaca Muerta, further north. According to Glinski, around 10,000 direct jobs have gone in Chubut, and unemployment has climbed from 2% to 10% in a single year.
“And this while all remaining companies have kept extremely high levels of profit,” he said.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
Glinski blames government policy as much as the companies. “Companies are choosing to leave and the government lets them do so, while weakening tax and environmental regulations, leaving the city without the necessary income to organise the transition.”
Nobody has yet worked out who will clean up the old fields and more than 6,000 wells, look after the workers who remain, or pay for whatever comes next.
Comodoro Rivadavia is not alone. From Mejillones and Tocopilla in Chile to La Guajira in Colombia and Appalachia in the United States, from Scotland to Mpumalanga in South Africa and East Kalimantan in Indonesia, places built around fossil fuels for generations face some version of the same problem. As investment moves elsewhere, plans to protect workers, support communities and repair damaged land often lag far behind, if they exist at all.
Building an economy beyond fossil fuels
In Comodoro, as locals call the city, the community has not been passively waiting for oil to run out.
“We have looked into multiple alternatives for the territory, including building on geothermal capacity, an agricultural programme that could reinforce food security and focus on cultures that are not too water dependent, and exploring also aquaculture built on local species,” explained Ruben Zárate, who heads Comodoro Conocimiento, a public agency created by the municipality to develop economic opportunities. “The only alternative is economic diversification.”
But having ideas is one thing. Finding the money and securing the political support to put them into practice is another. In many countries, decisions that shape a region’s economy are made in the capital or in company boardrooms, and local authorities have little say, and few resources, when a major employer pulls out.
Glinski points to deals struck at the national level that leave communities without a meaningful say in decisions affecting their future.
“Some of the barriers relate to the absence of regulation of private actors which have negotiated conditions at the national level that prevent provinces or territories from capturing benefits that could be useful to fund the transition,” he said. “Comodoro had no voice in these deals.”
