In a school in South Africa, a group of students stare at a row of small plants growing in a greenhouse. Each one is involved in the lesson, caring for the growing crops.
But this is no ordinary classroom setting. These children are learning about aquaponics, a method of growing plants and fish in a mutually beneficial water system. This ancient technique of food production is now being taught to millions of schoolchildren after being introduced by the South African government seven years ago.
Laerskool Kempton Park on the edge of Johannesburg was one of the first schools to introduce the subject with the aim of improving food security. This is a serious challenge in a country where an estimated 19.7 million people, or around 30% of the population, experience moderate levels of food insecurity, meaning that they struggle to afford enough food for a healthy, balanced diet.
Bringing the farm to school
Aquaponics is a way of supporting communities to access food in a sustainable and efficient way. The solution is simple: fish waste is turned into available nutrients by bacteria in the water. Plants absorb these nutrients and the cleaned water is returned to the fish tank.
There are multiple benefits to this approach. The system doesn’t require chemical fertilisers, soil or large tracts of land. It is also highly efficient, with recirculated water being used over and over again. This is an important feature in areas of South Africa that experience drought or unpredictable weather.
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Aquaponics can offer a range of benefits depending on the local context. In South Africa, townships in major cities such as Johannesburg don’t always have the space to produce their own food, while in other places, such as the Northern Cape, extreme weather is making agriculture much harder.
At Laerskool Kempton Park, the students have benefited from the innovative work of INMED, a non-profit organisation that supports vulnerable children and families in the country.
INMED has trained hundreds of teachers and over 7,000 children on the benefits of aquaponics. With the help of funding from the Adaptation Fund through the UNDP-Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA), the organisation was able to develop its own aquaponics system to be used in schools.
Scaling up the solution
INMED describes its prototype as a ‘plug and play’ system, designed to be modular and easy to install and manage. The system includes a 2,000-litre fish tank powered by a solar pump to circulate water. The design is simple with a view that it could be easily replicated across different school settings.
Unathi Sihlahla, director at INMED South Africa, told Climate Home News that “aquaponics speaks to a number of challenges… including limited access to nutritious food, high youth unemployment, water scarcity, and in many cases, poor or no access to arable land.”
INMED’s prototype allows communities to work around these problems as it doesn’t need soil and uses far less water than conventional agriculture.
“We’ve seen schools that previously had no food production now able to grow vegetables consistently, while also producing fish. That food often goes straight into school meals or supports vulnerable households nearby,” Sihlahla added. The project estimates that over 5,300 kilogrammes of food have been harvested in each quarter the system has been operating.
As aquaponics is now part of the school curriculum, many educational departments across South Africa have been looking at ways to teach the subject. INMED’s innovative design could provide a handy solution. The organisation has already started to roll it out across different provinces and a new collaboration with the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Education is in the works. INMED is also scaling the ‘plug and play’ model in Tanzania.
Giving youth a sense of pride
For educators, teaching schoolchildren new agricultural skills is not only about improving food security, but also about creating the next generation of farmers. This group will need to grow food with the increased threat of extreme weather events and having knowledge of alternative methods, such as aquaponics, could be key.
“Agriculture is not seen as something young people want to go into, but when they are exposed to something like aquaponics, it feels modern and relevant,” said Sihlahla, adding that some students have started their own projects at home or are looking to continue studying the method.
“There’s also a sense of pride. Producing food that supports your school or community changes how young people see themselves and their role.”
Engaging the next generation
The Adaptation Fund’s support for young people extends beyond South Africa. Several other related projects aim to equip youth with practical skills for climate adaptation.
In Costa Rica, a $10-million project implemented by private foundation Fundecooperación included several creative youth-focused programmes in climate-vulnerable areas. It trained young people in coral reef restoration and farming techniques, involved high school students in community water resource monitoring and management, shared knowledge on adaptation through a theatre tour in schools, and created an art mural competition using AI.
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In Lesotho, meanwhile, climate education is being integrated into the school curriculum through climate-smart agriculture materials and teacher training rolled out across primary and secondary schools. This is equipping students from an early age with practical, locally relevant knowledge to build resilience.
“Children and young people are among the most vulnerable to climate change,” said Mikko Ollikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund. “These programmes are not only training young people in adaptation but empowering them.”
Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.
The post Young South Africans take up sustainable agriculture for food security appeared first on Climate Home News.
Young South Africans take up sustainable agriculture for food security
Aiqun Yu, Christine Shearer and Joe Hittinger work at Global Energy Monitor, a US-based organisation that seeks to provide the worldwide energy transition with transparent data and analysis.
With global oil and gas prices soaring at the start of the Iran war, China quietly broke ground on three major coal-to-gas and coal-to-chemical projects worth roughly $10 billion in two regions with abundant coal resources.
But as a Chinese saying goes, “three feet of ice does not form in a single day”. China’s push to use coal as a substitute for imported oil and gas has been gathering momentum since the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022, prompting a recalibration of energy security priorities in Beijing and beyond.
The policy raises new concerns, threatening China’s climate goals and growing reputation as a global clean energy leader by creating renewed demand for coal.
A new expansion wave
Over the past three years, China has entered a new cycle of investment in so-called “modern coal chemicals”, differentiated from conventional coal chemicals. Four pathways – coal-to-gas, coal-to-liquids, coal-to-olefins, and coal-to-ethylene glycol – account for the bulk of new modern coal-chemical capacity under development.
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According to Global Energy Monitor data, proposed and under-construction coal-to-gas capacity is approaching three times current operating capacity. Together, 34 projects under active consideration represent more than 1 trillion yuan ($150 billion) in planned investment and could add roughly 300 million tonnes of annual coal demand if completed, equivalent to South Africa’s entire coal mining capacity.
Most projects are in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Ningxia, regions with plentiful coal resources and relatively low mining costs. Xinjiang has emerged as the epicentre of the new boom, accounting for more than half of all proposed modern coal chemical projects.
Why the world abandoned coal chemicals
Coal chemicals are often presented as an emerging industry, but the technologies themselves are more than a century old.
Earlier “conventional” coal chemistry was a byproduct of coking, a process run primarily for iron and steel making. “Modern” coal chemistry instead uses gasification to convert coal into synthesis gas, a versatile building block for fuels, plastics, fertilisers and other chemicals that would traditionally be made from oil or gas.
These modern processes were developed in the early 20th century and expanded during periods of wartime fuel shortages. For example, Germany relied heavily on synthetic fuels during the Second World War while South Africa developed similar technologies in the apartheid era to reduce vulnerability to international sanctions.
Once cheap oil and gas became widely available, however, most countries moved away from coal chemicals, which required large amounts of energy, water and capital investment, and generally produced more pollution and carbon emissions than the conventional alternatives.
Today, only a handful of commercial coal gasification facilities operate outside China.
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The current expansion is not China’s first attempt to build a major coal chemical industry.
A previous boom emerged during the 2010s, driven by many of the same arguments: high oil prices, concerns over energy security and expectations that technological improvements would unlock a new era of coal-based industrial growth.
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The outcome was far from successful. Dozens of projects were proposed, but many were delayed, suspended or scrapped before completion, and there were difficulties among those that did get off the ground.
Three of China’s four operating coal-to-gas projects reportedly spent much of the past decade operating at a loss, and several large coal chemical facilities generated only marginal returns despite government support.
Policy support is driving the revival
Backers say technological improvements have made the industry more competitive than it was a decade ago.
Yet coal chemical projects remain highly dependent on oil and gas prices. When international prices rise, coal-derived products can appear competitive. When prices fall, the economics often deteriorate rapidly.
More than changes in technology, government policy has played a pivotal role in the sector’s revival.
Following power shortages in 2021 and the energy market disruptions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, energy security became a national priority. Coal production expanded, particularly in western China, boosted by government support.
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A key policy change in 2022 exempted coal used as industrial feedstock from certain energy consumption controls, easing regulatory pressure on coal chemical projects.
The impact of such measures highlights the degree to which coal chemicals depend on expansive and favourable policy treatment to remain viable.
At the same time, the current expansion is creating new demand for an industry confronting structural decline as China races to renewables in electricity generation.
The cost to China’s climate leadership
Converting coal into fuels and petrochemical products also releases substantially more carbon dioxide than conventional oil- and gas-based alternatives, which themselves are a major source of emissions.
Proponents argue that coupling production with green hydrogen and carbon capture could resolve the emissions problem, but the arithmetic doesn’t support this.
Sinopec’s flagship Dalu coal-to-olefins plant, paired with a 10,000 tonne-per-year green hydrogen demonstration, displaces less than 2% of the plant’s annual coal use. Replicating this across the proposed buildout would consume enormous quantities of clean energy just to partially decarbonise an inherently dirty process.
China could instead leverage that same industrial capacity and policy support to lead the development of cleaner chemical pathways, such as green ammonia for fertiliser, bio-based and CO2-derived feedstocks for plastics, and e-fuels or biofuels where liquid fuels are still needed.
Rather than locking in another generation of coal-dependent infrastructure, China should learn from the lessons of the past and seek a cleaner and more viable industrial future.
The post China’s coal-chemicals boom risks repeating the mistakes of the past appeared first on Climate Home News.
China’s coal-chemicals boom risks repeating the mistakes of the past
Welcome to the Project Cosmos homepage.
The project was launched by Carbon Brief in June 2026 following an 18-month research and development effort.
The aim: to build the world’s largest database of climate change research.
Containing more than 1.8 million unique publications linked by 40 million citation relationships, the Cosmos database represents the most complete and expansive mapping of human knowledge on climate change ever assembled.
The articles and visuals below will guide you through how the Cosmos database was built, as well as all the subsequent analysis, including the Cosmos 500 rankings of most cited authors, publications and institutions.
The post Project Cosmos appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/project-cosmos/
This is the vast “cosmos” of academic literature and evidence that underpins humanity’s knowledge of climate change.
Every “star” – all 1.8m of them – represents one of the studies inside Carbon Brief’s Cosmos database.
The coloured “nebulae” and “galaxies” within this cosmos illustrate where clusters of studies share similar citations and, hence, areas of common academic focus.
The post Mapped: Inside Carbon Brief’s Cosmos database of 1.8 million climate studies appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-inside-carbon-briefs-cosmos-database-of-1-8-million-climate-studies/
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