Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Plastic treaty pause
BUSAN BUST: Efforts to finalise a global treaty on plastic pollution failed to reach agreement in Busan, South Korea, Reuters reported. The newswire said more than 100 nations wanted the treaty to cap plastic production, but “a handful of oil-producers were prepared only to target plastic waste”. Carbon Brief previously explained how failure to address plastics production could affect efforts to tackle climate change.
FINGER POINTING: Saudi negotiators were accused of “leading” efforts to block limits on plastic production, which relies mostly on fossil fuels, said the New York Times. A French official was quoted by Agence France-Presse saying: “We also are worried by the continuing obstruction by the so-called like-minded countries.” Members of this group include China and India, which opposed limits on plastic production, according to the Hindustan Times.
POST MORTEM: The talks foundered, in part, because, as with the UN climate regime, they rely on making decisions by consensus, found analysis from the Independent. Negotiations will continue next year based on the current draft text, said the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
Around the world
- DESERT COP: UN talks on desertification began in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Monday, reported Le Monde. The COP16 land summit will last for two weeks, it said.
- PRABAWO’S PLEDGE: Indonesia leader Prabawo Subianto’s pledge to phase out coal power by 2040 would entail “massive costs, reforms”, the Jakarta Post reported. The country would need to build 8 gigawatts (GW) of renewables and retire 3GW of coal each year to meet the target, according to Ember analysis cited by Bloomberg.
- COAL CURTAILED: A high court in South African capital Pretoria overturned plans for 1.5GW of new coal-fired capacity, the Mail and Guardian reported. It said the “landmark” ruling found the government had failed to adequately consider the impact of coal on children’s rights, particularly their right to a health environment.
- MONSOON FLOODS: More than 30 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced by floods in Malaysia and Thailand, Al Jazeera reported. The outlet noted climate change is “causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely”, according to scientists.
- CHINESE CURBS: Beijing has banned exports to the US of a series of critical minerals needed for low-carbon technologies, Reuters reported. China wanted to “safeguard its national security and interests”, said China Daily.
- HISTORIC DISCOVERY: Brazilian oil giant Petrobras and Colombian Ecopetrol have discovered Colombia’s “largest ever gas deposit”, according to Oilprice. The gas could double the country’s existing reserves, but the outlet says its energy sector is “grappling” with a government that supports the “transition away from fossil fuels”.
$100bn
The funds needed by Caribbean countries over the next 20 years to become “climate resilient”, according to comments from the International Monetary Fund reported by La Vanguardia.
Latest climate research
- The Arctic Ocean could see its first ice-free days before 2030, according to findings in Nature Communications.
- The recent “surge” in global temperatures has been “intensified by record-low planetary albedo” (reflectiveness), said a study in Science.
- A Nature Climate Change perspective critiqued the idea of climate “tipping points”, saying they “confuse and can distract from urgent climate action”.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
At COP29 in Baku, developed-country parties such as the EU, the US and Japan agreed to help raise “at least” $300bn a year by 2035 for climate action in developing countries. This target faced a strong backlash – and a closer inspection of climate-finance data helps to explain why. Carbon Brief analysis showed how pledges from before the COP29 deal would already bring climate finance up from $115.9bn in 2022 to around $200bn by 2030. Counting contributions from developing countries – something “encouraged” under the new goal – could raise this to $265bn. These pre-existing funds mean the target is achievable for developed countries with virtually “no additional budgetary effort”, according to experts.
Spotlight
Landmark climate case kicks off
This week, Carbon Brief interviews a leading international law scholar about a landmark climate case at the UN international court of justice.
The international court of justice (ICJ) has opened two weeks of hearings on states’ climate-related legal obligations – and the consequences, if “significant harm” is caused.
The case stems from a UN general assembly (UNGA) request for an “advisory opinion” from the ICJ. It is the ICJ’s largest ever case, with more than 100 countries and international organisations making interventions, deploying a wide variety of legal arguments.
In his opening address, Ralph Regenvanu, climate envoy for Vanuatu, which pushed for the case, said: “[T]his may well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity.”
Carbon Brief interviewed leading international law scholar Prof Philippe Sands to find out more about the legal issues at stake and the wider significance of the ICJ case.
Carbon Brief: Would you be able to start by situating this case in its wider legal context and explaining why it could be so consequential?
Philippe Sands: Well, it’s the first time the international court of justice has been called upon to address legal issues relating to climate change. The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and, although the advisory opinion that it hands down will not be binding on states, it is binding on all UN bodies. The determinations that the court makes will have consequences that go very far and that will have a particular authority, in legal and political terms. Of course, everything turns on what the court actually says.
CB: Would you be able to summarise the key legal arguments that are being fought over in this case?
PS: [F]or me, the crucial issues are, firstly, what the court says about the state of the science: is it established, or is there any room for doubt? Secondly, what are the obligations of states having regard to the clarity of the science. Thirdly, are there legal obligations on states in relation to the climate system that exist and arise outside of the treaty regime – the 1992 [UN Framework] convention [on climate change], the Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement and so on and so forth. And, related to that, fourthly – this is the most intense, legally interesting aspect – what are the responsibilities of states for historic emissions under general international law? And, in particular, are the biggest contributors liable under international law to make good any damages that may arise from their historic actions…The practicalities are that islands are disappearing with sea level rise. Are historic polluters of greenhouse gases responsible for the consequences of those disappearances?
CB: If you were going to make a bet, which way would you say the court would go on that key question of whether it’s just the [UN] climate regime that gives rise to obligations [on states], or whether there could be obligations from other parts of the law?
I think the court will proceed very carefully. I don’t think it will want to close the door to the application of other rules of international law…The broader issue here is that, essentially, the legislative system has broken down. The states have been unable to legislate effectively and efficiently to address the issues related to climate change. And, so, what has happened is that a group of states have essentially gone to the General Assembly and said: “The legislative system is broken down. Let’s now ask the judges to step in and tell us what the applicable principles and rules are.” The difficulty that that poses for the judges, who will be conscious that the legislative system has not delivered, is that it’s not the function of judges to legislate.
The full transcript of the interview can be read here.
Watch, read, listen
ZHENMIN SPEAKS: In a long interview with China Newsweek, Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin reflected on the outcome of the COP29 climate talks, including the “disappoint[ing]” $300bn finance goal, and said the global energy transition is “irreversible”.
‘WAKE UP’: In a “viewpoint” article, Guardian economics editor Heather Stewart wrote that rising food prices were a sign of the “destabilising impact of [the] climate crisis”.
TALKING COP: Carbon Brief’s Anika Patel joined the All Things Policy podcast to discuss COP29, the upcoming Trump presidency and China’s actions at the summit.
Coming up
- 2-13 December: UN Desertification Conference, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 2-13 December: International court of justice hearings on the obligations of states in respect of climate change, The Hague, Netherlands
- 7 December: Ghana presidential and parliamentary elections
Pick of the jobs
- International Energy Agency, junior energy modeller/analyst | Salary: €5,741 a month. Location: Paris
- University of Oxford, director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History | Salary: Unknown. Location: Oxford, UK
- Mongabay, staff writer – California biodiversity | Salary: $54,000-$75,000. Location: California
- University of East Anglia, senior research associate – land use resource and engagement | Salary: £37,999. Location: Norwich, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 6 December 2024: Plastics talks collapse; $300bn finance goal analysed; Landmark climate case kicks off appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The governor’s office said the city’s two main reservoirs could dry up by May, much sooner than previous timelines. But authorities still offer no plan for curtailment of water use.
City officials in Corpus Christi on Tuesday released modeling that showed emergency cuts to water demand could be required as soon as May as reservoir levels continue to decline.
Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders
Lena Luig is the head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a member of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
As toxic clouds loom over Tehran and Beirut from the US and Israel’s bombardment of oil depots and civilian infrastructure in the region’s ongoing war, the world is once again witnessing the not-so-subtle connections between conflict, hunger, food insecurity and the vulnerability of global food systems dependent on fossil fuels, dominated by a few powerful countries and corporations.
The conflict in Iran is having a huge impact on the world’s fertilizer supply. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of urea, the main synthetic fertilizer derived from natural gas through the conversion of ammonia.
With the Strait impacted by Iran’s blockades, prices of urea have shot up by 35% since the war started, just as planting season starts in many parts of the world, putting millions of farmers and consumers at risk of increasing production costs and food price spikes, resulting in food insecurity, particularly for low-income households. The World Food Programme has projected that an extra 45 million people would be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, if the war continues until June.
Pesticides and synthetic fertilizer leave system fragile
On the face of it, this looks like a supply chain issue, but at the core of this crisis lies a truth about many of our food systems around the world: the instability and injustice in the very design of systems so reliant on these fossil fuel inputs for our food.
At the Global Alliance, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform food systems, we have been documenting the fossil fuel-food nexus, raising alarm about the fragility of a system propped up by fossil fuels, with 15% of annual fossil fuel use going into food systems, in part because of high-cost, fossil fuel-based inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has also been flagging this threat consistently, most recently in the Pesticide Atlas and Soil Atlas compendia.
We’ve seen this before: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked global disruptions in fertilizer supply and food price volatility. As the conflict worsened, fertilizer prices spiked – as much from input companies capitalizing on the crisis for speculation as from real cost increases from production and transport – triggering a food price crisis around the world.
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Since then, fertilizer industry profit margins have continued to soar. In 2022, the largest nine fertilizer producers increased their profit margins by more than 35% compared to the year before—when fertilizer prices were already high. As Lena Bassermann and Dr. Gideon Tups underscore in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Soil Atlas, the global dependencies of nitrogen fertilizer impacted economies around the world, especially state budgets in already indebted and import-dependent economies, as well as farmers across Africa.
Learning lessons from the war in Ukraine, many countries invested heavily in renewable energy and/or increased domestic oil production as a way to decrease dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But few took the same approach to reimagining domestic food systems and their food sovereignty.
Agroecology as an alternative
There is another way. Governments can adopt policy frameworks to encourage reductions in synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, especially in regions that currently massively overuse nitrogen fertilizer. At the African Union fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, African leaders at least agreed that organic fertilizers should be subsidized as well, not only mineral fertilizers, but we can go farther in actively promoting agricultural pathways that reduce fossil fuel dependency.
In 2024, the Global Alliance organized dozens of philanthropies to call for a tenfold increase in investments to help farmers transition from fossil fuel dependency towards agroecological approaches that prioritize livelihoods, health, climate, and biodiversity.
In our research, we detail the huge opportunity to repurpose harmful subsidies currently supporting inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides towards locally-sourced bio-inputs and biofertilizer production. We know this works: There are powerful stories of hope and change from those who have made this transition, despite only receiving a fraction of the financing that industrial agriculture receives, with evidence of benefits from stable incomes and livelihoods to better health and climate outcomes.
New summit in Colombia seeks to revive stalled UN talks on fossil fuel transition
Inspiring examples abound: G-BIACK in Kenya is training farmers how to produce their own high-quality compost; start-ups like the Evola Company in Cambodia are producing both nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed with black soldier fly farming; Sabon Sake in Ghana is enriching sugarcane bagasse – usually organic waste – with microbial agents and earthworms to turn it into a rich vermicompost.
These efforts, grounded in ecosystems and tapping nature for soil fertility and to manage pest pressures, are just some of the countless examples around the world, tapping the skill and knowledge of millions of farmers. On a national and global policy level, the Agroecology Coalition, with 480+ members, including governments, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations, is supporting a transition toward agroecology, working with natural systems to produce abundant food, boost biodiversity, and foster community well-being.
Fertilizer industry spins “clean” products
We must also inoculate ourselves from the fertilizer industry’s public relations spin, which includes promoting the promise that their products can be produced without heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Despite experts debunking the viability of what the industry has dubbed “green hydrogen” or “green or clean ammonia”, the sector still promotes this narrative, arguing that these are produced with resource-intensive renewable energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a costly and unreliable technology for reducing emissions.
As we mourn this conflict’s senseless destruction and death, including hundreds of children, we also recognize that peace cannot mean a return to business-as-usual. We need to upend the systems that allow the richest and most powerful to have dominion over so much.
This includes fighting for a food system that is based on genuine sovereignty and justice, free from dependency on fossil fuels, one that honors natural systems and puts power into the hands of communities and food producers themselves.
The post Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.
Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems
Parts of the Southern and Northeastern U.S. faced tornado threats this week. Scientists are trying to parse out the climate links in changing tornado activity.
It’s been a weird few weeks for weather across the United States.
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