A United Nations human rights expert has asked the government of Nigeria for an urgent explanation of the forced eviction of 30,000 people in Lagos State in the last week.

Four people are reported to have died in the latest operation to clear irregular developments along the state’s waterfronts. Residents in the Otodo Gbame community say they suffered brutal treatment and are now homeless. Most of the people affected lived in poor fishing communities and say they have lost their livelihoods and food sources as well as their homes and possessions.

“It has been brought to my attention that the evictions may have involved the extreme use of force and fire by the Nigerian police force and Lagos State Government, leaving individuals and families scrambling in the middle of the night to find safety and shelter,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Leilani Farha.

“The mass displacement and reports of four deaths are deeply disturbing,” she stressed.

In an urgent communication on Thursday November 17 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland, Ms. Farha asked the Nigerian government for information on the evictions, the methods used and their compliance with international human rights law.

She is also questioning whether the community was given adequate notice or alternative accommodation, as required by international law. The operation took place only days after the Lagos State High Court had issued an injunction restraining demolitions in the waterfront communities.

“What makes these evictions particularly concerning is that they were carried out in blatant disregard of a court order and have completely ignored international human rights guidelines on forced evictions,” the UN Special Rapporteur said.

“International law is clear: there must be consultation with the affected community, all alternative options to eviction must be explored, and a resettlement plan must be in place should the evictions be carried out,” she noted. “Under no circumstances should force or fire be used,” the expert urged.

The people affected, from the Egun and other ethnic minority populations, with no other options, lived in poor-quality homes along creeks and other waterfronts.

“It takes many years to build a home, a community, and a sense of trust with government, but only days to destroy it. It is truly unfortunate that so many people are left with literally nothing but memories of their former lives and questions about their human rights,” the independent expert said.

Ms. Farha, a Canadain, is the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context. She took up her mandate in June 2014. She is is the Executive Director of the NGO Canada without Poverty, based in Ottawa, Canada.

A lawyer by training, for the past 20 years, Ms. Farha has worked both internationally and domestically on the implementation of the right to adequate housing for the most marginalized groups and on the situation of people living in poverty.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

A new global initiative, launched on Wednesday, November 16 2016, at the UN climate meeting in Marrakech, aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and save thousands of lives by protecting peatlands – the world’s largest terrestrial organic soil carbon stock.

The Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI) will mobilise governments, international organisations and academia in a targeted effort to protect peatlands, which contain almost 100 times more carbon than tropical forests.

Peat consists of partially decayed plant material, which has accumulated under water-logged conditions over long periods of time. Peatlands can be found on every continent and are regionally known as peat swamp forests, fens, bogs or mires.

According to scientists, greenhouse gas emissions from drained and burning peatlands account for up to five per cent of anthropogenic carbon emissions. According to them, these emissions are rising due to increasing peat degradation and loss from agriculture and fires, and driving the world closer to a dangerous tipping point.

The GPI notes that rising temperatures can cause a chain reaction in which thawing permafrost switches boreal and Arctic peatlands from carbon sinks to sources, emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gas. Peat carbon stocks are equivalent to at least 60 per cent of all atmospheric carbon, meaning they hold the potential to send climate change spiraling out of control.

“Even with current pledges under the Paris Agreement, we are heading for a global temperature rise of over three degrees Celsius this century,” said Erik Solheim, head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “This will cause misery and chaos for millions of vulnerable people, so we cannot afford to let any opportunity to reduce emissions slip by.

“Taking urgent action through the Global Peatlands Initiative can help us limit climate change. It is critical we do not reach the tipping point that will see peatlands stop sinking carbon and start spewing it into the atmosphere, destroying any hope we have of controlling climate change.”

Despite their importance, peatlands are coming under increased threat, mainly from conversion for palm oil and pulp wood production. Drainage of peatlands can result in environmental problems, most visible being the enormous fires in Indonesia and Russia in recent years.

In Indonesia, the worst days of the peat forest fires resulted in emissions greater than the daily emissions from the entire United States economy. In the Nordic and Baltic states, drained peatlands are responsible for 25 per cent of all emissions.

The impacts of peatland degradation go beyond emissions. Recent studies have suggested that the 2015 Indonesian peat fires affected 43 million people, indirectly killed up to 100,000 people through the toxic haze, and led to US$ 16.1 billion in overall economic damage (twice the value of the Aceh Tsunami Reconstruction).

The GPI, led by UNEP with support from over a dozen partners, is believed to be the largest collaborative effort on peat so far. It aims to increase the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of peatlands in countries with significant peat deposits, delivering benefits for agriculture, biodiversity and the climate.

The founding members of the Global Peatlands Initiative are the governments of Indonesia, Peru, the Republic of Congo, UNEP, FAO, Joint Research Centre of the EC, CIFOR, Wetlands International, UNEP-WCMC, GRID-Arendal, Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, European Space Agency, WRI, Greifswald Mire Centre and SarVision/Sateligence.

African civil society groups at the 22^nd Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) holding in Marrakech, Morocco have called on U.S. president-elect, Donald Trump, to issue a statement denouncing his twitter comment about global warming, failure to which they will join other movements campaigning for the reversal of his election.

“Mr. Trump must issue a statement reassuring the international community that his twitter remarks were just but campaign rhetoric, else, we will not tolerate any leaser who seeks to derail gains already made in the fight against climate change,” said Mithika Mwenda, the Secretary General for Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), at a media conference on Thursday, November 17, 2016.

Trump came under heavy criticisms especially from his opponent, Hillary Clinton, during their race to the Oval Office, following his remarks on twitter that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

In one of the presidential debates, Trump further said that the issue of climate change is an issue that requires further probing, and that money used to fight the phenomenon should be channelled to other uses.

“There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of climate change. Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria,” said the president-elect.

He continued, “We should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population. Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels. We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.”

And now that the American people have given him the key to the White House, civil societies and other interested parties all over the world are worried that his position and views towards climate change may carry the day, hence, lead to the withdrawal of US from the climate negotiation processes.

America is one of the world’s top three emitters of greenhouse gases, which are responsible for global warming.

By 2011, the top carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters were China, the United States, the European Union, India, the Russian Federation, Japan, and Canada. These data include CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, as well as cement manufacturing and gas flaring. Together, these sources represent a large proportion of total global CO2 emissions.

“Africa is the lease emitter of these gases, yet the continent is the most affected by climate change,” said Mwenda.

In that regard, as the Marrakech negotiations comes to a close on Friday November 18, 2016, the African Civil Society called on leaders to accelerate momentum on climate action with the coming into force of the Paris Agreement.

New study finds six G20 countries are failing to take action in line with their Paris Agreement pledges

Argentina, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States have not been undertaking sufficient domestic efforts to match their pledged nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to a new analysis published on Thursday, 17 November 2016 at the United Nations climate change summit (COP22) holding in Marrakech, Morocco. It was prepared by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The report on “Assessing the consistency of national mitigation actions in the G20 with the Paris Agreement”, by Alina Averchenkova and Sini Matikainen, concludes that the six G20 countries “lack overall framework legislation or regulation on climate change, and need to move from sectoral to economy-wide targets and extend the timeframe of their targets to 2030”. The six countries also are “either behind on meeting their 2020 targets or have not set any”.

The results from the “Paris consistency monitor” are based on an assessment of past and present action by G20 countries against three indicators: the consistency of domestic emissions reductions targets with those pledged in NDCs; progress towards meeting 2020 emissions reduction targets pledged under the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements; and past performance in ratcheting up the ambition for climate change mitigation based on the evidence of country responses to the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements.

Six G20 countries (Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy and the UK), together with the European Union as a bloc, were found to have undertaken action that is “either completely or mostly consistent with the key requirements of the Paris Agreement”.

The report was launched on Thursday at an official side event, hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Inter-Parliamentary Union at the COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco.

An accompanying detailed study of climate change policies in the European Union, China and the United States examined some of the key drivers, including economic factors, institutional settings and features of the political systems, as well as the role of public opinion, interest groups and party politics.

The report on “Climate policy in China, the European Union and the United States: Main drivers and prospects for the future”, was published jointly on Thursday by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre on Climate Change Economics and Policy in collaboration with the think-tank Bruegel.

The report states: “Over the past decade, China, the EU and the US have all made progress in developing and implementing climate policies. Yet each of these three jurisdictions faces unique challenges in delivering on, and raising the ambition of, their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. This study highlights where levers for more ambitious climate policies lie and where structural factors as well as economic or political developments will likely help or hinder progress.”

The report draws attention to challenges for the United States arising from this month’s Presidential election.

It states: “For the US, bottom-up action by cities or States could help to ratchet up ambition at the federal level. A few proactive States should champion more ambitious US climate policy. At the same time, a committed executive branch could make further use of provisions under the Clean Air Act to advance climate policy at the federal level. However, this seems unlikely to happen under the recently elected Donald Trump.”

The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment was established in 2008 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Institute brings together international expertise on economics, as well as finance, geography, the environment, international development and political economy to establish a world-leading centre for policy-relevant research, teaching and training in climate change and the environment.