Janet Ofeforpa was at her family cassava farm in south-east Ghana when overflowing water from the nearby Akosombo hydro-electric dam unexpectedly came rushing onto her land.
In a panic, she ran home to gather her children and the few belongings they could salvage and fled to higher ground.
The family is now among the more than 26,000 displaced by the floods. They are sheltering at a local school, unsure when or how they will be able to return to their land and rebuild.
“I have three children and I’m the only one who takes care of them”, Ofeforpa told Climate Home outside the school shelter. “One of them is Delali who I was helping prepare to go to university. All those preparations were taken away.”
Janet Ofeforpa outside the school she and her family are sheltering in in Mepe (Photo: Elikem Akpalu)
Ofeforpa lives in Mepe, one of the towns that was hardest hit. Entire homes were flattened, crops were wiped out, schooling was put on hold and the flooding of toilets, cemeteries and rubbish drumps has led to a surge in typhoid and cholera cases.
The flooding happened because heavy rains had increased the volume of water in the Akosombo dam dangerously close to its limit.
In September, the government-owned electricity company which manages the dam – the Volta River Authority (VRA) – began what it calls a “controlled spillage” of water from the reservoir.
This is a standard practice after heavy rainfall that typically doesn’t have a significant impact on downstream communities. But this time it caused the worst destruction since the dam was built in the 1960s.
Climate change’s role
The kind of unpredictable and heavy rainfall which filled up the reservoir has become the new norm in West Africa, which scientists link to climate change.
But many locals allege the disaster was the result of government negligence too, with the VRA failing to properly warn people their homes may flood.
Togbe Korsi Nego VI, the Paramount Chief of Mepe, spoke to Climate Home from his home, where local volunteers had gathered to help distribute donated water sachets, rice and sleeping mats. His phone rang constantly.
“This is not a natural disaster. This is a man-made disaster,” he said. He added that “nobody came to warn us” and “the government has refused to take responsibility”.
Togbe Korsi Nego VI, the paramount chief of Mepe, sits on his throne (Photo: Elikem Akpalu)
Were they warned?
The VRA says it did put out warnings and deputy minister Freda Prempeh accused victims of ignoring them.
The VRA’s website claims that on September 8, it notified “key stakeholders” of potential spillage in the coming days.
Four days later, they issued a press release “notifying the public of the consistent rise in water levels and the need to commence spilling”.
A car is destroyed by flood waters (Photo: Elikem Akpalu)
But this didn’t reach everyone. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is the member of parliament for North Tongu, which includes Mepe.
Despite his position, he told Climate Home he was not among the “key stakeholders” that VRA says it warned on September 8.
“They kept us in the dark,” he said. “I just saw a press statement on the twelfth of September [but] they didn’t talk about the water volumes [or] how significant this will be.”
Accusing the VRA of “recklesness and negligence”, he added “nobody came here to engage communities, to prepare us to evacuate”.
Lessons to learn
Ghana is not the only country where warnings have failed to reach those who need them.
In August 2021, 12 disabled people drowned in a care home in Germany when the River Ahr burst its banks, with the local district authority was accused of ordering an evacuation too late.
A girl learns at the school in Mepe flood victims are sheltering in (Photo: Elikem Akpalu)
Ilan Kelman is a professor of disasters and health at University College London, specialising in disaster prevention. He said that it’s not enough for authorities like the VRA to be aware of a risk, they need to make potential victims aware.
“A successful warning has to involve the people affected from the beginning, long before any hazard appears, so that they know exactly what the issue is [and] have the choices and resources to settle elsewhere”, he said.
Nella Canales, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said that it need to be clear whose job it is to manage a risk like flooding.
“There has to be communication,” she said.” It’s not enough to just say that the person receiving the risk is now accepting part of the risk management responsibilities. The risk owner should be the one who has the capacity to manage it.”
After pressure from MPs like Ablawka, the government announced a parliamentary inquiry to investigate what went wrong.
Awusife Kagbitor pictured at the door of the classroom she is sheltering in (Photo: Elikem Akpalu)
Until then, people like Awusife Kagbitor, a flood-hit resident sheltering in a cramped classroom with 15 members of her family, are left to fend for themselves.
“A lot of people came to take our pictures with a promise to help,” said Kagbitor. “So far, they’ve spoken in the wind.”
Government and VRA officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The post Ghana’s flood victims blame government for overflowing dam destruction appeared first on Climate Home News.
Ghana’s flood victims blame government for overflowing dam destruction
Civil society groups have called for an investigation into the first carbon credits approved under a new UN mechanism, alleging the project is linked to Myanmar’s military junta – which the UN says is guilty of human rights abuses – and has “massively” overstated its climate impact.
The programme, which aims to cut emissions by distributing efficient cookstoves across Myanmar, received approval to issue around 650,000 carbon credits from the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in February, in a landmark moment for the Paris Agreement’s carbon market. Only two projects have been given the green light by the mechanism’s regulator so far.
But two reports published last week, led by the Global Forest Coalition and Brussels-based NGO Carbon Market Watch, raised serious concerns about the project’s implementation in conflict zones where civilians have faced airstrikes and mass displacement as well as its emission-reduction calculations.
Project continued after military coup
Myanmar has been ravaged by a brutal civil war since the country’s military overthrew the democratically elected government in a coup d’état in February 2021. The military regime has attacked civilian populations, persecuted ethnic minorities and committed widespread sexual violence, among other serious human rights violations, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said in April.
The cookstove programme started in 2018 under the previous UN-run carbon offsetting scheme – the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – as a partnership between Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) and the Climate Change Center (CCC), a South Korean NGO, with investment from private South Korean firms.
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European, island states seek clear future for global roadmap to cut fossil fuels
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The project continued operating after the coup. For most of the period between 2021 and 2022 in which the issued credits were generated, MONREC was led by Colonel Khin Maung Yi, who was sanctioned by the European Union in 2021 for supporting the military regime, the Global Forest Coalition report said.
CCC acknowledged engaging with government authorities after the coup but said this “should not be interpreted as political endorsement” of the junta. The South Korean NGO added that abandoning the programme when political circumstances changed “would not necessarily have been the most responsible outcome for the households involved”.
Conflict prevents on the ground verification
The Global Forest Coalition report raised particular concerns about the project’s implementation in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, including Sagaing Region, an anti-junta resistance stronghold that has been most heavily affected by the conflict and routinely targeted by airstrikes and violent attacks. The region accounts for more than a third of Myanmar’s 3.8 million internally displaced people.
The NGOs said that, in addition to ethical concerns about carbon credits being produced by the military government in an area actively affected by its attacks, this raises questions over the ability to effectively verify the climate integrity of the projects.
Before carbon credits are issued, external auditors need to validate the claims made by project developers and confirm that the emission reductions claimed are correct. This process usually includes site visits to a representative sample of households to check how the improved cookstoves are being used.
But, because of the “volatile political situation” in Myanmar, the auditing team was not able to leave the capital Yangon and could only speak to project participants remotely via Zoom, project documents show.
“Due to ongoing armed conflict on the ground, the data currently used to justify carbon credit issuance in Sagaing by the Burmese military junta is unverifiable and highly likely fraudulent,” said Zaw Tuseng, founder and president of the Myanmar Policy Institute, which contributed to the report, in a written statement. “This demands an immediate suspension of credit transfers until a neutral, conflict-sensitive audit can be conducted.”
“Exceptional circumstances”
CCC told Climate Home News that, although it recognises that on-site verification is “generally preferable, particularly in complex operating environments”, the decision to opt for remote controls was not taken “as a discretionary shortcut, but as an approved alternative under exceptional circumstances”.
The South Korean NGO added that it reviewed the feasibility of the project at community level “on an ongoing basis” and it “did not identify conflict-related incidents that directly affected project implementation activities in participating communities during the monitoring period”.
A spokesperson for the UN climate change body told Climate Home News that, when site access is not possible, the UN carbon credit mechanism allows for “alternative verification approaches while still maintaining conservative assumptions and environmental integrity safeguards”. “These provisions ensure that crediting can only proceed where evidence is reliable,” they added.
Contested methodology
Carbon markets are seen as an important channel to raise money to help low-income communities in developing countries switch to less polluting cooking methods, both reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality. But several cookstove offsetting projects have faced criticism from researchers and campaigners who argue that climate benefits are often exaggerated and weak monitoring can undermine claims of real emission reductions.
The project in Myanmar uses a contested methodology developed under the earlier Kyoto Protocol that was rejected last year by The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a watchdog that issues quality labels to carbon credit types, because it found it “insufficiently rigorous”.
EU carbon credits could supercharge world’s clean cooking push, France says
After transitioning from the CDM to the new mechanism, the project was required to apply “more conservative” assumptions to calculate emission reductions, which resulted in 40% fewer credits being issued, according to the UN climate change body.
“The result is consistent with environmental integrity requirements and ensures that each credited tonne genuinely represents a tonne reduced and contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, which oversees the mechanism, said in February.
Too many credits issued
But Carbon Market Watch claimed in a second report last week that, despite the adjustment, the project is still likely to issue seven times more credits than its real climate impact justifies, comparing its calculations with values from peer-reviewed scientific literature.
The biggest driver of the credit inflation, the group said, is the failure to account for “stacking” – the widespread practice of households using multiple stoves at the same time, including more polluting ones the project does not monitor.
Peer-reviewed science considers a stacking rate of 68% a conservative assumption, but the methodology used by the Myanmar programme makes no allowance for it at all, the report said.
CCC disputed those findings. In a written response to Climate Home News, it said the project was developed under methodologies approved within the UN climate framework and that external recalculations by researchers are not “determinative of the level of crediting achieved”.
The credits are expected to be used primarily by major South Korean polluters to meet obligations under the country’s emissions trading system – a move that will also enable the government to count those units toward emissions reduction targets in its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the UN climate body told Climate Home News.
Myanmar will use the remaining credits to achieve in part the goals of its own national climate plan under the Paris Agreement.
“Over-crediting, at any magnitude, cannot be compatible with the climate ambition of a world striving to limit global warming to 1.5ºC,” said Isa Mulder, an expert at Carbon Market Watch.
The post UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s first Paris Agreement carbon credits face human rights and climate concerns
In a packed room last Friday, the COP30 Presidency presented preliminary elements of the work on the global roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels and some European and small island governments argued the roadmap should be integrated into the formal negotiation process. But besides the global work, how is Brazil’s national roadmap coming along?
“The presidential order [by Lula at COP30] was that the ministries of environment, finance and energy should work together,” Flávia Bellaguarda, extraordinary advisor to Brazil’s environment ministry, told Climate Home News in Bonn.
“We do have different points of view about what the roadmap means. We have to face our contradictions and bring them to the table because the roadmap is about energy security, economic security, social security,” she said, adding that “we have reached a common place of the guidelines of what must be addressed on the roadmap”.
Those guidelines—that Bellaguarda couldn’t share yet—are now under revision by the Brazilian presidency and then will be analysed by the National Energy Policy Council (CNPE). After those revisions, the three ministries will begin working on the roadmap itself and its governance. That work will include consultations with different stakeholders, including representatives of the energy sector and civil society organisations.
The Brazilian government still prefers not to give dates for these next steps because “they do not expect it to be something quick,” but rather to respect the steps and time that the process requires.
Roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels are, at least for now, voluntary for each country. “There is no right and wrong on how to do the roadmap. Countries know what is best for each reality,” said Bellaguarda, encouraging countries to advance on their national roadmaps alongside the global one. “It’s not easy to address the issue nationally, but it’s totally necessary.”
The post Bonn Bulletin: Ministry divisions complicate Brazil’s roadmap away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
Bonn Bulletin: Ministry divisions complicate Brazil’s roadmap away from fossil fuels
As Pacific peoples we are descendants of the greatest navigators the world has ever known. Today we are navigating the greatest global challenge of our time: climate change and the end of the fossil fuel age.
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