Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Climate chaos
DEADLY DISASTER: Devastating landslides have killed 167 people, with another 191 missing, in the Wayanad district in Kerala, India, reported the Indian Express. Prime minister Narendra Modi announced compensation of 200,000 Indian rupees (about $2,390) per person for the families of the deceased and 50,000 rupees (about $600) for those injured, the newspaper said.
CLIMATE FACTOR: The Hindustan Times noted that scientists have attributed the landslide to a “combination of climate change, excessive mining and loss of forest cover in the region”. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi called for “mapping of landslide-prone areas and…an action plan to address the growing frequency of natural calamities in the ecologically fragile region”, reported the Independent.
FLASH FLOODS: More than 10,000 people displaced from conflict in Sudan’s Sennar state – alongside other refugee and host communities – have been severely impacted by extreme rainfall and flash floods in Kassala state, reported the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At least five people have reportedly died, including a child, the report said. Other affected areas include Aj Jazirah, East Darfur and North Kordofan, according to ReliefWeb.
Sizzling Olympics
HEATWAVE GAMES: A rapid attribution analysis found that the “heat dome” striking the Paris Olympics and the “scorching temperatures” across western Europe and North Africa this week would have been “impossible” without the “fossil-fuelled climate crisis”, reported the Guardian. Scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said human-caused global warming made the heatwave “2.5C to 3.3C hotter”. Leading climate scientist Dr Friederike Otto told reporters: “Climate change crashed the Olympics on Tuesday.”.
KEEPING COOL: BBC Sport said that organisers used hoses and misters to keep spectators cool at the Paris Olympics. In Marseille, where temperatures reached around 40C, athletes taking part in sailing events wore “ice vests” to try to counteract the heat, the broadcaster added.
TRIATHLON TIMEOUT: The men’s triathlon was postponed due to “unsafe pollution levels” in the Seine following heavy rainfall in the French capital, reported Sky Sports. The organisers blamed the postponement on climate change, with Aurélie Merle – the Paris 2024 director of sports – saying: “We are living in the 21st century where, unfortunately, there are far more meteorological events…which are beyond the control of the organisers.”
Around the world
- UK RENEWABLES: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband announced an increase to this year’s renewable energy auction budget to a record £1.56bn on Wednesday, reported BBC News.
- HARRIS APPROVED: Inside Climate News reported that Kamala Harris has clinched an endorsement from the Green New Deal Network – “a key coalition of progressive, youth-led and environmental justice-focused climate advocates” – which had previously held back its endorsement for president Joe Biden.
- FUND FIGHT: The EU is gearing up to pressure wealthier “emerging” economies, such as China, to pay into the climate fund at the COP29 climate summit, reported Politico. Currently, only countries categorised as “industrialised” under the 1992 UN climate treaty contribute climate finance under the Paris Agreement.
- OFFSETS BLOW: A review by the Science Based Targets initiative, a global auditor of corporate climate targets, has concluded that “various types of carbon credits are ineffective”, reported Bloomberg.
- COP16 SAFE: Reuters reported that “Colombian rebel group” Estado Mayor Central has withdrawn its threat, issued earlier this month, to disrupt the UN biodiversity summit COP16 taking place in October in the Colombian city Cali – as a “gesture of [their] will for peace”.
7,500,000
The methane emissions, in tonnes, from US oil and gas facilities – four times more than the estimates of regulators – which is equivalent to the annual energy needs of over half of US homes, reported the Financial Times.
Latest climate research
- A new research paper published in Nature Communications found that current policies put the world on a trajectory with a 45% chance of crossing tipping points in the Earth system by 2300, even if the global average temperature is brought back to 1.5C later on. Carbon Brief had all the details.
- The UK would gain “benefits” worth £164bn if it meets its 2033-2037 climate targets, said a study published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences covered by Carbon Brief.
- A new study in BioScience proposed a way to preserve the Earth’s “increasingly threatened” biodiversity on the moon through the creation of a lunar biorepository – a storage facility for biosamples – by developing a system using cryopreserved fish fins.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Deep-sea mining mapped
Carbon Brief published an in-depth explainer this week into what the emerging field of deep-sea mining means for climate change and biodiversity. The map, taken from the article, shows the current designated areas for deep-sea mining exploration, with each of the orange dots representing exploration contracts within four significant zones: Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Indian Ocean and Northwest Pacific Ocean. The colours indicate the types of deep-sea mineral resources targeted. Polymetallic nodules – formed of iron and manganese silicates and hydroxides – are in green. Polymetallic sulphides – with copper, zinc, lead, iron, silver and gold – are in blue. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts – with high cobalt concentration and other rare elements – are in pink.
Spotlight
Tuvalu’s plan to be first ‘digital nation’
This week, Carbon Brief reports on how the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is aiming to become the world’s first digital nation in response to climate change.
Tuvalu, a small nation comprising a group of nine islands in the South Pacific, is among the most vulnerable to climate change. The Guardian has reported that rising sea levels are an “existential threat” for island nations such as Tuvalu. In 2023, a NASA report indicated that sea levels in Tuvalu had risen nearly six inches (15cm) over the past 30 years.
Estimates show that, by 2050, more than half of the land area of Funafuti – the capital – could be flooded.
According to the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, less than 0.03% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the Pacific Island region.
Yet, as Tuvaluan minister Simon Kofe noted in his address to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 while standing knee-deep in the sea, “Tuvalu is sinking”. Invoking the issue of climate justice, he said:
“In Tuvalu, we are living with the realities of climate change and sea level rise.”
Rising sea levels in Tuvalu are already “leaching soil, killing crops and spoiling drinking water”. A recent National Geographic article also underscored food security challenges, with cultivating staple crops such as taro, breadfruit and coconut becoming difficult due to seawater infiltration. Flooding has become routine, with intense tides sweeping over the sole airstrip and homes monthly.
Facing the possibility of becoming entirely submerged and uninhabitable, Tuvalu has developed the Future Now project and aims to become the world’s “first digital nation”, existing in the “metaverse”, a virtual reality project started by Facebook.
Digital replicas
Addressing delegates in his COP27 speech, Kofe, standing in front of a digital replica of Te Afualiku, the first island in Tuvalu to be digitised, said:
“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation.”
This serves as the model for the digital recreation of all Tuvalu’s islands and its landscape, including “the coral atolls and reefs, the lagoon, the porous sandy soil, the palm trees and what is left of the pandanus, breadfruit and taro” – before it potentially physically disappears, he said.
The plan includes using satellite imagery, photographs and drone footage capable of capturing details as fine as grains of sand on the beach and the direction of ocean currents.
Tuvalu has completed a thorough three-dimensional LIDAR scan of all 124 islands and islets and began enhancing its national communications network – laying the groundwork for its digital nation, Kofe told delegates at COP28.
It has also started exploring a digital ID system using blockchain technology to connect the Tuvaluan diaspora, enabling their participation from across the world, the project developers said. This digital platform will allow Tuvaluans to connect, explore their heritage and engage in new business opportunities across various sectors, they added.
Additionally, the project has begun the development of a digital archive of Tuvaluan culture, with contributions from citizens who were encouraged to preserve their most valued personal items to create an evolving record of their heritage.
‘Digital sovereignty’
If Tuvalu’s physical land becomes uninhabitable, it also prompts a discussion of statehood and sovereignty. Under current international law, a defined physical territory is a prerequisite for statehood.
In order to become the first digital nation, Tuvalu – recognising the evolving notion of state sovereignty – redefined statehood through a constitutional amendment in 2022 to say:
“The State of Tuvalu within its historical, cultural and legal framework shall remain in perpetuity in the future, notwithstanding the impacts of climate change or other causes resulting in loss to the physical territory of Tuvalu.”
Tuvalu’s permanent and digital sovereignty is now recognised by 25 countries, with the Pacific Island Forum also redefining its territory, maintaining that its statehood would continue regardless of the impacts of climate change.
Watch, read, listen
GLACIAL MELT: Tortoise Media’s Slow Newscast podcast talked about the “unlikely” climate activists in Switzerland who won a key climate change case, but now face backlash.
SOLARE CANTARE: The Volts podcast spoke with Joel Jean, co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar, to explain all about perovskite solar.
NIGERIA’S ‘OIL CURSE’: A new FT Film explored the challenges facing Nigeria’s oil sector and whether ending fuel subsidies could help to break the “oil curse”.
Coming up
- 6 August: G20 fourth energy transition working group, virtual
- 9 August: International day of the world’s Indigenous peoples
Pick of the jobs
- Harris for President, climate engagement director | Salary: $90,000-$110,000. Location: Wilmington, US
- Ember, climate policy analyst I Salary: AU$78,246. Location: Remote
- Carbon Brief, section editor (science) I Salary: £47,000. Location: UK/hybrid
- Reuters, senior energy correspondent I Salary: Unknown. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 2 August 2024: Deadly rains from India to Sudan; ‘Fossil-fuelled’ heat hits Olympics; Tuvalu’s plan to be first ‘digital nation’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.