Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
This week
Extreme heat across the globe
SUPERLATIVE EXTREMES: Much of the world is experiencing extreme heat, with temperature records being broken on several continents but little western news coverage. Axios reported that temperatures in Japan are being “broken by rare margins”. The outlet added that Maximiliano Herrera, an independent climatologist who tracks weather records, “has been increasingly struggling to come up with new superlatives to describe” the extreme heat.
AFRICAN HEAT: Late last week, the Nigerian weather agency “predicted a prolonged heatwave across the country”, with temperatures forecast to rise above 40C, according to the Cable. In Kenya, the current “excess heat” could “persist till March”, the Standard reported. And “scorching” temperatures in parts of South Africa led to warnings for residents to stay indoors, the Witness said.
ASIAN EARLY BLOOMER: According to the Weather Channel, Japan’s iconic cherry blossoms are blooming early amid record heat there. The Thaiger reported that Thailand “is bracing for a severe heatwave”, while Cambodia’s meteorological ministry issued several advisories this week that maximum average temperatures could reach 37C, according to the Khmer Times.
AUSTRALIA ‘SWELTERING’: The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that “parts of Western Australia have sweltered through their hottest night on record” this week. “Extreme fire danger” led to school closures in the state, another article said.
Around the world
- US REGULATIONS: US president Joe Biden is reportedly planning to “slow” the roll-out of tailpipe-emissions regulations – one of his administration’s “most ambitious strategies to combat climate change”, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, US agencies are “scrambl[ing] to finish” environmental regulations “to ensure that a Republican Congress and White House can’t erase them next year”, Politico reported.
- CLIMATE COCKTAIL: A deadly cholera outbreak in southern Africa “was likely triggered by a cocktail of issues”, Al Jazeera wrote, including “more severe flooding linked to climate change”. Heavy rainfall in the Amazon also triggered an alert for oropouche fever in the Brazilian city of Manaus, according to Folha de S. Paolo.
- BACK-BURNER?: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is pursuing a second term, Politico reported, with “little appetite for expanding the Green Deal” amid concerns over “competitiveness, migration and defence”. However, a later Politico story quoted the draft manifesto of her party saying: “We want to further develop the Green Deal.” The Financial Times quoted von der Leyen saying: “We must achieve the climate targets…with the people and with the business sector.”
- SOLAR SOARS: “‘World-leading’ electricity production” in China’s north-western deserts is being “fuelled by forces of nature”, with wind and solar making up more than half of the nearly 500 gigawatt capacity, according to the South China Morning Post.
- EXTREMES AND ADAPTATION: Bangladesh was hit by 185 extreme weather events between 2000-19, according to a report covered by DownToEarth, which added that “adaptation policies and local initiatives have saved many lives”.
- HIGH COURT CLAIMS: Three environmental groups are seeking legal action against the UK government over its decision to approve its “carbon budget delivery plan” in March 2023 without fully considering the risks, the Press Association wrote.
$281 billion
The profits of the “big five” oil majors – Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies – since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the campaign group Global Witness.
Latest climate research
- New research by World Weather Attribution, covered by Carbon Brief, found that climate change had no significant impact on Chile’s recent deadly wildfires.
- Climate change is affecting the feeding and migration patterns of bowhead whales, which could lead to more collisions with ships in the future, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters.
- A paper in Environmental Research Letters found that increasing population density could raise the carbon emissions from mangrove forest degradation by 50,000% by the end of the century.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
China will need ‘record drop’ in emissions to meet target
Amid rapid growth of electricity demand, China’s energy emissions will now need to fall by a record 4-6% by 2025 in order to meet the government’s “carbon intensity” target – its CO2 emissions per unit of economic output. New analysis for Carbon Brief found that China is “at risk of missing” its other key climate targets for next year, but most of these can still be achieved if the country returns to pre-2020 levels of energy demand growth while maintaining last year’s “acceleration of clean energy deployment”. The analysis was covered by publications including the Straits Times, the South China Morning Post, Reuters, the Guardian and Bloomberg.
Spotlight
Guest post: Why climate change matters for the pandemic treaty
In this spotlight, Dr Colin Carlson, a climate epidemiologist at Georgetown University, explains the connections between climate change and the proposed global pandemic treaty, as it enters the final stages of negotiations.
For more than a year, World Health Organization (WHO) member states have been working towards a new treaty that would formalise the lessons learned during the Covid-19 response.
On 19 February, delegates met at the WHO headquarters in Geneva to begin the eighth and penultimate session of negotiations. If countries can agree on final language, the Pandemic Agreement could then be adopted at the World Health Assembly in May.
The climate community has not paid much attention to these negotiations – nor has climate change featured heavily in the negotiations.
In the latest draft of the treaty, climate change is only mentioned once: the WHO and its member states are trying to move towards a “One Health” approach that protects human health, animal health and the environment, including “taking action on climate change”.
Scientists have demanded more of a focus on preventing disease emergence, but for the most part, other drivers – such as wildlife trade and deforestation – have upstaged climate.
But scientists are also starting to see connections between pandemics and climate change.
Animals are on the move, and bringing their viruses to new places. Rising temperatures make another pandemic of Zika virus or another mosquito-borne disease more likely – and next time, the risks to the US and Europe will be far greater. Hotter temperatures also mean more antibiotic resistant bacteria – which will make the next flu or coronavirus pandemic more deadly.
Investment and surveillance
In that light, climate change makes the Pandemic Agreement all the more urgent.
It could mean countries spend more on surveillance, helping scientists spot new diseases as they show up.
Investments in clean water, sanitation and primary healthcare would also reduce the burden of climate-sensitive diseases such as cholera and malaria, while more investments in veterinary workforce would help to protect animal health from emerging diseases such as avian influenza.
Most importantly, the proposed Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System would create a new framework for scientists around the world to share pathogen genomic sequence data with each other.
Pharmaceutical companies that access those data to design vaccines and therapeutics would then have to share some percent of their vaccines to the WHO, ensuring that low- and middle-income countries will have access to life-saving medicines – a massive step towards solving vaccine inequity and reducing disease risk in regions that are projected to see the largest increases in exposure because of climate change.
But first, the treaty has to survive the next three months. Since negotiations started, the PABS System has been flagged as a potential deal-breaker for high-income countries.
If the treaty falls through, health could become a much bigger problem for climate policy than it already is – after four million climate change-related deaths and counting.
Watch, read, listen
DEEP-SEA SECRETS: The rediscovery of a 1970s-era deep-sea mining test site may shed light on the method’s lasting environmental impacts, the Post and Courier wrote.
ENERGY EQUITY: On the New Books Network podcast, two researchers discussed equitable clean energy and a just transition in north Africa and the Middle East.
MEKONG’S MANGROVES: The Mekong Eye explored how Vietnam’s mangrove forests have been felled in the name of economic growth – and how they might be saved.
Coming up
- 19 February to 1 March: Sixth UN environment assembly, Nairobi, Kenya
- 25 February: Belarus parliamentary elections
- 26 February: UN Plastics Treaty: Reuse – a climate and plastic solution, Nairobi, Kenya
- 27-28 February: G20 disaster risk reduction working group meeting, Vila Do Conde, Brazil
Pick of the jobs
- Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, strategic communications lead | Salary: Unknown. Location: remote, anywhere in the world
- Climate Risk Lab at the University of Cape Town, postdoctoral research fellow (four opportunities) | Salary: ZAR 410,000-475,000. Location: Cape Town, South Africa strongly preferred
- Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, country programme manager | Salary: £41,593-£44,651. Location: Monrovia, Liberia
- Stockholm Environment Institute, water programme research associate | Salary: unknown. Location: Bogotá, Colombia
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 23 February 2024: Extreme heat from Asia to Africa; China risks missing 2025 CO2 targets; Why climate change matters for the pandemic treaty appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
-
Under US pressure, World Bank says it will back gas “where appropriate”
The US wants the World Bank to expand its gas support while climate campaigners are pushing for it to end – its head spoke this week of limited backing for the fossil fuel -
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock
After governments again failed to agree a timeline, nearly 120 IPCC authors pledged to complete their assessment on time and with full scientific rigour -
Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
-
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock
After governments again failed to agree a timeline, nearly 120 IPCC authors pledged to complete their assessment on time and with full scientific rigour -
Under US pressure, World Bank says it will back gas “where appropriate”
The US wants the World Bank to expand its gas support while climate campaigners are pushing for it to end – its head spoke this week of limited backing for the fossil fuel