The Bread of Life Development Foundation (BLDF) has called for the review of Nigeria’s National Water and Sanitation Policy to align it with the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seeks to achieve universal coverage for safe water supply and sanitation by the year 2030.
According to the BLDF, 15 years is enough to ensure every Nigerian citizen has access to safe drinking water supply and sanitation services. Photo credit: vanguardngr.com
“The present Water Supply and Sanitation Policy was approved in the year 2000 in the context of the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs) which ended last year. Now is the time to start the march towards achieving the newly adopted SDGs, particularly Target 6 on safe drinking water supply and sanitation.
“This necessitates a review of existing strategies that has not worked; and the formulation and development of new policy instruments, guidelines, strategies, funding mechanism, and allocation of sectoral rules and responsibilities to turn the dream of universal coverage of safe WASH by 2030, into a reality,” said the BLDF in a statement signed by its Programme Officer, Taiwo Owolabi.
According to him, the 36 state governments across the federation also need to review and update their water supply and sanitation policies in this light, particularly since urban and rural water supply and sanitation is statutorily a state and local government responsibility.
He described as unfortunate the fact that Nigeria, despite its enormous financial resources, was not able to achieve the MDG and its target for water supply and sanitation, even as he called for trebling of efforts to achieve the SDG for water supply and sanitation, “which is a much more ambitious target because it calls for universal coverage of safe drinking water and sanitation by the year 2030”.
His words: “Now is the time for federal and state governments in Nigeria to start making ambitious plans and allocating adequate public funds to achieve the SDG goal for water supply and sanitation; while new policy declarations, strategy documents, and implementation guidelines developed in this regard must be backed by firm political commitment and action.
“We have another 15 years to give our people access to safe drinking water, and it is our belief that 15 years is enough to eradicate open defecation in Nigeria; 15 years is enough to stop the incidence of preventable infant and maternal diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhoid in Nigeria; and 15 years is enough to ensure every Nigerian citizen has access to safe drinking water supply and sanitation services.
“Now is the time to update national and state policy instruments, sector strategies and implementation guidelines and ensure adequate public financing backed with strong political will in order to achieve the SDG 6 for water supply and sanitation.”
The global platform “Break Free” has been launched, courtesy of the Climate Action Network (CAN). It features a series of peaceful, coordinated actions that aim to disrupt the fossil-fuel industry’s power by targeting the world’s most dangerous and unnecessary fossil fuel projects.
According to Nnimmo Bassey, “We cannot allow fossil fuel addicts to burn the planet. The time for the shift is now.”
This May, thousands of people from around the world will join actions taking place across six continents aiming to halt dirty fossil fuel operations and demonstrate support for an accelerated ‘just transition’ to 100% renewable energy. Major actions are currently planned in countries such as Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, US, Germany, Philippines, Australia and more – led by the communities that have spent years already fighting dangerous fossil fuel projects.
“Hot on the heels of the largest ever climate mobilisations in history activists are once again stepping back into the ring to strike a body blow against a fossil fuel industry that’s on its knees.” said Wael Hmaidan, the Director of CAN. “More and more people are joining the fight because they see how fossil fuels are destroying the planet, risking the economy, and creating injustice for local communities. The movement is here to stay, there is no end to it, until the final bell tolls for the fossil fuel industry.”
On the back of the hottest year in recorded history, communities worldwide are demanding governments put words into action after delivering the historic Paris Agreement in December where 196 parties signalled the end of the the fossil fuel era. In order to address the current climate crisis and keep global warming below 1.5C degrees fossil fuel projects need to be shelved and existing infrastructure needs to be replaced, now.
“The science is clear: we need to keep at least 80%, if not more, of fossil fuel reserves in the ground,” said Payal Parekh, the Global Managing Director of 350.org, “communities worldwide are experiencing first hand the consequences of climate change and the damage inflicted by the fossil fuel industry. It’s up to us to break free from fossil fuels and accelerate the shift towards a just transition to 100% renewable energy. It’s in our hands to close the gap between what current commitments will achieve and what science demands is necessary in order to protect our common home.”
The climate movement’s commitment to scaling up its resistance to the fossil fuel industry comes at a time when renewable energy is already more affordable and widespread than ever before. These new tools give communities at the front lines of climate change new ways to respond to the crisis and build their own power.
“Moving towards 100% renewable energy is possible with the political will to make the change” said Arif Fiyanto, Coal Campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia. “There are no major economic or technical barriers to a future supported by renewable energy. Any new infrastructure built to support fossil fuels expansion, such as coal mines, power plants, oil rigs and export terminals will be a waste of money and further lock us into a path to irreversible climate change.”
Post-Paris, the fossil fuel industry is running scared with prices plunging and companies going bankrupt. Now, ramped up civil disobedience will show that the industry’s social licence to operate is fast evaporating. Such peaceful civil disobedience brings people from all walks of life, and not just seasoned climate activists, to challenge both politicians and polluters to accelerate the unstoppable energy transition already underway.
One such example is last year’s Ende Gelände (Here And No Further), which saw 1500 people take part in a daring act of civil disobedience to shut down Europe’s biggest source of CO2 emissions. On the urgency at hand, Hannah Eichberger from this grassroots anti-coal alliance said: “It’s time now for a grassroots energy transition that does not only exchange one source of energy for the other but that tackles the root causes of natural destruction and social injustice: corporate power.”
The struggles against the fossil fuel industry and the environmental, social, economic and political destruction they’ve wielded has been underway across regions for many years.
“Fossil fuels have brought horrendous pollutions to the Niger Delta alongside unimaginable human rights abuses while severely harming communities, said Nnimmo Bassey, Nigerian activist from the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, “We cannot allow fossil fuel addicts to burn the planet. The time for the shift is now. No one will set us free. We must break free ourselves, now,” he added.
These peaceful worldwide mobilisations taking place in May serve as an important point in the climate movement’s trajectory to increase pressure on the fossil fuel industry. The global struggle to finally break free from fossil fuels will continue making this a struggle the world cannot ignore.
Under the GPSC, the international community is investing over a billion dollar in the sustainable cities of the future
Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson of the GEF
City leaders from around the world who met on Wednesday in Singapore, the island city-state off southern Malaysia, have launched the Global Platform for Sustainable Cities (GPSC), which is part of an initiative funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The GPSC is expected to mobilise up to $1.5 billion over the next five years for urban sustainability programmes in 11 developing countries, including Brazil, Cote D’Ivoire, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Senegal, South Africa, and Vietnam.
Coordinated by the World Bank and supported by multilateral development banks, UN organisations, think tanks and various city networks, the GPSC is a knowledge sharing programme that will provide access to cutting-edge tools and promote an integrated approach to sustainable urban planning and financing. The GPSC will work with a core group of 23 cities, but will reach many more by sharing of data, experiences, ideas, and solutions to urban challenges, and by linking the knowledge to finance that will influence investment flows toward building cities’ long-term urban sustainability.
“If planned and managed well, compact, resilient, inclusive, and resource-efficient cities can drive development, growth, and the creation of jobs, while also contributing to a healthier, better quality of life for residents and the long-term protection of the global environment,” said Naoko Ishii, GEF CEO and Chairperson. “In a rapidly urbanising world, how we design and build the cities of the future will play a critical role in protecting the global commons, the planet’s finite environmental resources that have provided for the stable conditions enjoyed by humanity for thousands of years.”
By 2050, more than two billion more people will live in cities, a 50 percent increase from today, and the vast majority of this growth will take place in developing countries, mostly in Asia and Africa. The new Global Platform is designed to help mayors and other municipal leaders take more informed decisions in the day-to-day management of their cities, including improving access to clean water, energy, and transport, as well as efforts to mitigate climate change. It supports cities in pursuing evidence-based approaches to urban planning, including geospatial data, and establishing urban sustainability indicators.
“Linking knowledge to finance is critical to directing investment flows to quality and sustainability. We see this platform as a great opportunity to connect cities not only to cutting-edge knowledge, but also to development banks and financial institutions,” said Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, Senior Director of the World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural, and Resilience Global Practice. “The World Bank will work closely with the partner institutions and the existing city networks to build a broad cooperation to support cities in translating knowledge into action and investment.”
In particular, the GPSC will provide cities with ways to help confront issues like climate change, to which cities are uniquely vulnerable, as almost half a billion urban residents live in coastal areas, increasing their exposure to storm surges and sea level rise. Cities also consume over two-thirds of global energy supply, and are responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
The products and services provided by the GPSC will include studies, workshops, and online data that will leverage existing expertise in order to promote an integrated approach to tackling complex, multi-sector issues. With common metrics and guidelines in place, the lessons learned from the initial 23 cities can also be shared with hundreds of other cities via a wide range of city networks and other partners.
The GPSC is the foundation of the wider GEF sustainable cities initiative that is expected to create a strong network of cities that will act as global ambassadors for urban sustainability planning, with tangible benefits at both the local and global levels. As a GEF partnership, the initiative, formally called the ‘Sustainable Cities Integrated Approach Pilot’, will involve city municipalities, GEF agencies, development entities, city networks, and technical institutions. Civil society organisations will also contribute.
It will be implemented by the World Bank in partnership with the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Development Bank of South Africa, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation.
The GPSC launch event was held during Singapore Urban Week, organised by the World Bank in partnership with the GEF and key partners in Singapore, including the Center for Liveable Cities and IE Singapore.
Cross River State governor, Prof. Ben Ayade, has lashed out at critics of his administration’s proposed Super Highway project, accusing them of playing politics to the detriment of national development.
Gov Ben Ayade of Cross River State
At a Twitter engagement session on Monday with some media executives and civil society practitioners, the governor, via his Twitter handle “@ben_ayade,” insisted that having another road other than the existing highway has become a necessity as the nation’s economy expands.
Unveiled recently, the 260km Super Highway is planned to lead from a proposed deep sea port at Esighi in Bakassi Local Government Area, run through the Cross River National Park and the Ekuri Community Forest, and up to Katsina Ala in Benue State, at a cost of N700 billion or about $3.5 billion.
Already, bulldozers have begun destroying farms at Etara/Eyeyen and are continuing towards Ekuri and Okuni forests/communities, preparatory to the construction of the highway.
Local and international voices have however risen against the project, urging the authorities to reroute the highway along a less damaging path and away from community forests and the National Park.
But the governor remains adamant, maintaining that potitical interest, rather than genuine sustainable development motives, is fueling opposition to the increasingly controversial road project.
His words: “I think we should stop playing politics with issues of development. Since when did construction of road become a sin? Please Cross River State is more important than partisan politics. We should support what is good irrespective of our leanings. We have to learn to play politics of development.”
Ayade, a Professor of Environmental Management, questioned the rationale behind the clamour against the project, demanding: “The current highways in the state, were they built in the skies? When the present highway was constructed, was it not through forest?”
He, however, declined further comments when a range of questions were thrown at him, simply saying: “I am sure in this age of technology you can get that information on your own.”
His Tweet-mates wanted to know, for example, the corporate status of the Port Harcourt, River State-based Broad Spectrum Industries Limited (BSIL), a major player in the project. Investigations appear to show that the firm is relatively new and has no experience in road or port construction, a revelation that calls into question its track record in that regard.
The journalists and activists were likewise curious about the funding and the economics of the deep sea port and superhighway project, which some reports say BSILwill bankroll to the tune of N700 billion (US$3.5 billion).
A source said on Monday: “However, it is unclear where this staggering sum of money is meant to be coming from. It was rumoured that the funds were potentially coming from Germany or the UK or Israel but all efforts to find out more about the alleged funding for the superhighway construction project have proved futile. There are also reports of contributions from Heritage, Skye and Zenith banks. Do the funds for the construction of the highway actually exist? What kind of company would spend US$3.5 billion on the construction of a port/superhighway if the port will only pay back US$30 million a year? This would thus take over 100 years to pay back and that’s not including a discount rate! What kind of company would invest such large sums of money with such bad returns? There has been no transparency on this aspect of the project.”
Questions are also being raised about the engineering feasibility of the project.
The source disclosed; “It is notable that there do not seem to have been any engineering studies carried out to inform the design of the project. If there have been engineering studies, they have also been kept secret. The communities along the proposed route all attest that there have been no engineers surveying on the ground. Without such surveys how can one even determine the cost of the superhighway? How would one know, for example, how many substantial bridges are required or how many millions of tons of rock and soil have to be moved to pass through the hilly terrain?
“However, it is clear from contour maps that the terrain of the proposed route passes though some of the hilliest terrain in the entire country. This is slightly better than the mountainous route that was originally proposed through the heart of the National Park but such lack of basic research calls into questions the seriousness of the actual plan to build such a highway. How can a scheme of this size not be based on any field-based engineering surveys?”
Similarly, there were also queries concerning the existence or non existence of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report or public consultation on the route.
“The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act of 1992 specifies that any construction project that is likely to have a significant impact on the environment or on people must have an EIA carried out and must receive an environmental permit from the Federal Ministry of Environment (FMEnv) beforeforest clearance works of any sort take place. Such an EIA must involve documented consultation meetings with a wide range of affected stakeholders before the final project design is concluded and approved. So, given the huge impact this project will have on one of Nigeria’s last surviving rainforests and the impact on the lives of thousands of people, how can such a scheme go ahead without an EIA which is made publicly available?
“If an EIA has been carried out who was consulted? Certainly none of the many communities or environmental NGOs have been consulted about the route. Reports from the villages say the superhighway construction has been awarded to several local contractors who are able to hire bulldozers. The local contractors have been apportioned 10 km each to bulldoze. How can clearance of the forests for the route commence be allowed without an EIA permit from the Federal Government?”
As a way out, observers are suggesting that, as an alternative, the state government should upgrade the existing Calabar-Ikom-Obudu highway.
“The existing Federal Highway from Calabar through Ikom to Obudu already serves all the purposes that the government wants the super highway to achieve. It links Calabar with Benue State and provides the route for trade. Communities and trade routes already exist around this road, whilst the super highway would necessitate new feeder roads, which would cut more into the rain forest. Furthermore, this would be much less costly and will do far less damage to the state’s forests and communities,” said the source.
As the world celebrates the International Women’s Day on Tuesday, March 8, WaterAid is calling for water, sanitation and handwashing facilities with soap in schools, describing these as essential to gender equality.
A school toilet for girls
According to the organisation, one in three schoolgirls around the world do not have access to safe, private toilets at school, a situation that increases the likelihood that girls will drop out at puberty and entrenching the cycle of poverty.
Women and girls, who make up more than half the world’s population, are said to be more deeply impacted than men and boys by a lack of access to safe water, basic sanitation and hygiene (WASH). They are also often more affected by poverty, inequality, lack of access to health care and by global economic crises.
Oluseyi Abdulmalik, the WaterAid Nigeria spokesperson, submitted in a statement: “Globally, some 1.2 billion women and girls still live without adequate sanitation and 330 million women and girls still live without access to clean drinking water. The overwhelming majority of these women and girls live in the developing world. One-third of schools globally and more than half of schools in the world’s Least Developed Countries do not have access to adequate sanitation, according to UNICEF monitoring.
“Dirty water, poor sanitation and poor hygiene including lack of handwashing facilities with soap is primarily a women’s issue, impacting women and girls’ health, safety and right to education more than men, and needs addressing at the highest levels.
“While we must celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women and acknowledge their many significant contributions to society, the global theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, ‘Pledge for Parity’ highlights that we must also remain keenly aware that progress has slowed or has remained minimal in many places across the world, including in Nigeria. This deceleration in progress continues to keep the gender gap wide open and urgent action is needed to accelerate gender parity.”
Dr Michael Ojo, WaterAid Nigeria Country Representative, was quoted as saying: “On International Women’s Day, when we celebrate how much women have achieved, it is also important to remember that one in three women and girls still do not have the simple dignity of a safe, private place to relieve themselves, and to care for themselves during their periods.
“As long as this is the case, these women and girls will find their health, well-being and education compromised. The world’s leaders promised to eradicate extreme poverty and leave no one behind in the new United Nations’ Global Goals on Sustainable Development. Sanitation is a critical and often overlooked component of delivering on gender equality.”
According to him, WaterAid’s research and experience has shown that when women are empowered to speak out on access to water and sanitation, communities – including homes, schools and medical facilities – are more likely to accommodate the needs of girls and women, improving everyone’s health, well-being and economic status.
Abdulmalik revealed that dirty water and lack of sanitation are responsible for the diarrhoeal deaths of more than 150,000 girls under five each year across the world.
“Women and girls who must spend hours a day seeking water cannot spend that time at school or in income-generating activities. Eliminating that burden, and giving girls the time and opportunity to focus on education, will ultimately lead to healthier, better-educated families, who have a better chance of working their way out of extreme poverty,” Abdulmalik added, saying:
“We are calling on governments to make safe, private toilets and handwashing facilities a priority in schools as well as in homes and healthcare facilities, to help prevent unnecessary deaths and keep girls in school.”
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) must not channel its money through two international commercial banks that are allegedly funding the coal industry, civil society groups meeting at the GCF’s Board in Songdo, South Korea, have said.
Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S
In a statement released on Monday, the groups claimed that the GCF must reject applications for accreditation by big banks HSBC and Crédit Agricole, which are seeking to receive and manage GCF funds.
“The Green Climate Fund Board must reject HSBC and Crédit Agricole. Creating new business for big banks with large fossil fuel portfolios and poor records on human rights and financial scandal would undermine the very purpose of the Fund,” said Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S.
“To accredit HSBC and Crédit Agricole is to short-change the vulnerable communities and the countries that the Fund is meant to directly benefit. There is no profit to be made in building the resilience of those adversely impacted by climate change. Public funds must be used to support local communities in developing countries, not to subsidise big banks,” said Sam Ogallah of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.
The GCF’s mandate to work directly with developing country institutions is what makes it innovative, the groups say. Targeted funding will help to build skills and expertise in poor countries, allowing governments to better meet the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries.
Sam Ogallah of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)
“Accrediting HSBC and Crédit Agricole would be inconsistent with both the Paris Agreement, and with upholding high human rights standards. Any private sector partner of the GCF must have a credible strategy in place to make its entire portfolio and operations consistent with keeping global temperature rise to no more than 2 °C, let alone well below 1.5 °C,” said Annaka Peterson of Oxfam.
“The accreditation of these banking giants would jeopardise the reputation of the Green Climate Fund and expose it to unnecessarily high fiduciary risk. HSBC and Crédit Agricole provided US$7 billion and US$9.5 billion, respectively, to the coal industry between 2009 and 2014, and their coal financing does not show a clear downward trend. Moreover, HSBC is deeply embroiled in massive financial scandal,” said Yann Louvel of BankTrack.
A U.S. judge recently ordered the release of a report by an independent monitor overseeing the cleanup of HSBC’s massive money laundering – the report is said to be so damning that it would provide a “road map” for criminals seeking to launder money and finance terrorism.
About 172 NGOs released a statement calling for the rejection of HSBC and Crédit Agricole by the GCF. A copy of the statement can be found here. Appended to the statement are annexes on the fossil fuel financing trends of HSBC and Crédit Agricole, both of which fail to show a clear downward trend, while their renewables financing trails far behind their fossil fuel financing.
For generations, the Ekuri people have relied completely on their ancestral forest for all of their needs. It provides not only fruits, vegetables and other forest products but also their medicines and shapes their unique culture, language and identity. The Ekuri Initiative, an NGO, was established to protect their forests and has successfully brought development benefits to their villages at the same time. But now this forest, and with it the entire Ekuri way of life, is threatened with destruction.
The governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, has announced the construction of a 260 km superhighway to go from the coastal city of Calabar to a small town called Katsina-ala in Benue State to the north.
The superhighway will rip through the heart of the Ekuri rainforest, apparently opening it up to farming, logging and hunting on a massive scale.
The government has acquired a 20 km wide swathe of ancestral land of thousands of other forest-dependent villagers along the entire 260 km length of the six-lane superhighway.
The Ekuri know that their forest, homes and way of life are at stake. They intend to protect their forest through peaceful protest and are calling for international support.
The Ekuri blocked the arriving bulldozers from entering the forest and refused to accommodate the construction workers. The workers have since begun destroying the forest in a neighboring community.
“When citizens become dispensable as the superhighway project in Cross River State is suggesting, they rise up in defence of right and life. If Ekuri community and everyone else fail to speak out, the 33,600 hectares of pristine tropical forest in this community in addition to several thousand hectares of forest and farm lands in other locations in Cross River will give way to a superhighway,” said a source.
Ekuri people kick against the projectBulldozers at work clearing the Super Highway’s route passing through parts of BokiThe ineffectiveness of ban on logging in Cross River State is exposed as wanton timber extraction goes on in Boki, close to Boje, the LG headquarterTimber extraction in Boki
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has decried the controversy surrounding the promised monthly stipend to unemployed Nigerians, urging the Federal Government to convene a high-level committee on the National Basic Income Scheme.
Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria
One of the cardinal campaign promises of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) during the last general elections was a monthly stipend to unemployed Nigerians when the party is elected to power at the center.
President Muhammadu Buhari, while in Saudi Arabia in an interactive session with Nigerians last week, reportedly said that the payment of the monthly handout of N5,000 as promised by the APC which is the platform on which he emerged as president, was not his priority.
In a statement issued in Enugu, ERA/FoEN described the president’s remarks as a double speak of the present administration on the issue, saying it is “unfortunate and smacks of taking Nigerians, particularly the unemployed, for granted”.
ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Godwin Ojo, was quoted in the statement as saying: “We are perplexed that this issue has lingered with back and forths from the APC and the Presidency. Nigerians refuse to accept the current administration’s attempt to renege on this promise which is one of the several on which it rode to power. This is not acceptable.
“While ERA had welcomed the APC initiative when it was made during the elections, we had also pointed out that the N5,000 pledged was meagre and should be jerked up to above N10,000 to reflect the existing reality of massive poverty and disenchantment in the land. It is therefore a let-down that the APC-led government is now doing a u-turn by failing to implement the policy.”
According to him, the government should look for a way to generate funds to fulfill the pledge, even as he recommended that the ERA/FoEN proposal for sustainability of the initiative through a National Basic Income Scheme (NaBIS) for the unemployed is hinged on taxing wealthy Nigerians to pay those that are socially excluded.
He added: “The Federal Government should set up a high level National Task Force to explore ways of its implementation. ERA/FoEN suggests that a one percent tax on earnings exceeding N500,000 can complement budgetary provisions for NaBIS.
“From that source the nation can sustain the payment of the stipend. The NABIS is a social security system that ameliorates to an extent the inequality in the land and redresses the widening gap of inequalities.
“We cannot allow our people and particularly those willing to work to continue to wallow in poverty and idleness when a few are stinking rich and display their opulence in abominable abandon. This administration should do a rethink.”
China will this week release its 13th Five-Year Plan, a new economic, social and environmental blueprint for the country’s development through 2020.
After years of astronomical growth, China’s economic expansion has begun to slow. But instead of doubling down on the fossil fuel-intensive strategy that helped produce the country’s runaway growth, China’s leaders have stated that the old growth model has run its course, and that the country will build toward a more environmentally and economically sustainable model of development. Recent signs show that the country is already beginning to shift in this direction, and the new Five-Year Plan provides the opportunity to build on that progress.
China has made significant strides in decoupling energy use and emissions from economic growth – as of 2014 China was on track to exceed its 2015 energy and carbon intensity reduction targets. Three key trends have emerged:
Rebalancing the Economy: China’s leaders clearly intend to shift the impetus of the economy away from investment in heavy industry and toward consumer spending, services (such as retail businesses), innovation, and more innovative and efficient manufacturing. Under China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, services moved from 43 percent of the economy in 2010 to 51 percent last year, replacing manufacturing (which went from 47 percent to 41 percent of the economy) as the largest contributor to China’s GDP. Services continue to grow at a faster pace than manufacturing.
Limiting Coal: After years of steep growth in coal consumption, regional coal and carbon limits and new-coal-plant bans have been followed by a leveling off of coal use in 2014 and reduced output in heavy industries like steel (down 2 percent last year) and cement (down 6 percent). A continued shift away from these energy-intensive industries would weaken a major driver of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Non-Fossil Energy: China is the world leader in renewable energy, breaking records last year for installation of wind (32 gigawatts last year, 129 total) and solar power capacity (18 gigawatts last year, 43 total), and clean energy investment ($111 billion, nearly double U.S. investment).
Moreover, China-U.S. cooperation on climate has become an important driver of domestic, bilateral and global action. As part of last year’s breakthrough international agreement to address climate change, China committed to peak its carbon emissions around 2030 (with the intention to peak earlier), to derive around a fifth of its energy use from non-fossil sources by 2030, and to reduce the carbon intensity (carbon emitted per unit of GDP) of its economy by 60 to 65 percent from 2005 levels by the same date. These pledges complement the progress China is already making and set the stage for new action.
China’s New Five-Year Plan
China’s 13th Five-Year Plan will be an important foundation for this new action. The 12th Five-Year Plan outlined high-level policies and set development and environment-related targets, such as those for reductions in energy intensity and carbon intensity and an increase in the share of energy used from non-fossil sources. The new plan will likely define similarly broad goals and a framework for boosting further progress.
Early signs indicate that strengthening the shift to a sustainable development path will be a key focus. In a communique issued last fall outlining the broad contours of the plan, China’s leaders stressed the importance of innovation and the role of consumption in growth. They also emphasized environmentally sustainable development and called for greater accountability for environmental damage.
Further signs of alignment in this direction continue to emerge. Recently, China’s National Energy Administration stated that it would constrain the construction of new coal-fired power plants, particularly in regions with excess capacity. Authorities have halted approvals for new production capacity and called for eliminating unneeded capacity in coal mining and steel production. Several ministries called on the financial sector to withhold finance from industrial producers that fail to comply with environmental targets and policies. Further, China’s State Council recently issued a new urbanisation roadmap calling for resource and energy conservation and environmental protection.
And finally, for China to achieve its climate targets set out ahead of COP21 in Paris, it will need to pursue stronger action in both the short and long term. The 13th Five-Year Plan and its implementation will provide early signs of how it’s going to do this.
Don’t Expect the Five-Year Plan to Have All the Details
The plan will inform decision-making at all levels—the central government, ministries and agencies, provincial and local governments, and state-owned enterprises. However, the main document is broad and high level. Finer details – in particular those concerning climate and energy – will continue to be elaborated in 2016 and afterward, as specific sector and provincial targets and plans are established and responsibilities for implementation are allocated amongst the ministries.
China has made considerable progress in recent years. Signs are good – and expectations are high – that the 13th Five-Year Plan and follow-on sectoral plans will expand the country’s environmental protection efforts and launch a new wave of climate action.
The World Bank will hold a $20 million auction for carbon credits from projects designed to cut methane emissions, offering up to 10 times the current market value, the bank has said.
Greenhouse gas increases are leading to a faster rate of global warming. Photo credit: earthtimes.org
The auction, to be held on May 12 2016, comes at a time when investment in carbon-cutting projects under U.N. programmes has slowed as countries debate the design of a new global climate pact to come into force in 2020.
Methane is regarded as a highly potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide.
The so-called Pilot Auction Facility will offer tradable price guarantees, or a strike price, of $3.50 per ton for carbon dioxide emission reductions, compared with current traded prices around 0.35 euros ($0.38).
Participants will bid on the premium they are willing to pay for the contracts with the premium bid starting at $0.06 per tonne.
Negotiators from almost 200 countries agreed at last year’s climate talks in Paris to support the international trading of carbon credits as part of a new global deal but have yet to decide on the rules or the types of projects that could be included.
In the bank’s first auction, held in July last year, 12 winners secured $2.40 per credit for a total of 8.7 million credits.
