A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows climate adaptation costs for developing countries are likely to be two to three times the current estimates of $70 to $100 billion per year.
Achim Steiner, UNEP
The UNEP Adaptation Gap report says this will happen even if global emissions are cut drastically to meet the agreed goal of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) at the climate talks has acknowledged that the $100 billion to be mobilised by developed countries by year 2020 is a starting point to climate adaptation. Their aim, according to the Chair, Nagmeldin El Hassan, is to see a 1.5oC or 2oC warming limit.
Martin Kaiser, Head of Climate Politics in Greenpeace, said: “If the Paris treaty is to make a difference, countries must agree to phase out fossil-fuel emissions to zero and lead us to a renewable energy future”.
He wants businesses causing the problem to be held accountable and compensate the victims of their dirty actions, a position shared by African civil society.
Christian Aid has also called for negotiators at the ongoing UN climate summit in Lima to heed the warnings.
Christian Aid’s Senior Climate Change Advisor, Mohamed Adow, said: “This UNEP report outlines in stark detail the huge costs of adapting to climate change being faced by poor countries around the world. Already some developing countries are reaching the limit they can bear with their limited resources. The poor and most vulnerable should not be left alone with the option to simply adapt or die.”
He described as “a cruel irony” that the rich countries whose carbon emissions helped create these climate change impacts do not want adaption to be a central part of the Paris agreement.
“It’s important that action on emissions is linked to action to help countries adapt. While emissions cuts remain low it is even more vital that adaption support increases,” said Mohammed.
African civil society, led by the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), has stated that any climate change deal that is leading to 3oC of warming should be resisted as it will cause untold problems of hunger, starvation, disasters, conflicts and wars in Africa.
On the evening of 7th December, 2014 (today) candle and solar-lantern lit vigils are taking place all over the world. People are gathering to show their concern about climate change.
Building on the momentum from the People’s Climate March where they mobilised tens of thousands of participants, faith groups are holding vigils in 13 countries to pray for progress towards an international agreement to address climate change. The vigils take place even as leaders are gathered for the crucial Lima climate talks.
As part of the project #LightForLima, Climate Aid Initiative in collaboration with other environmental NGOs in Lagos will be home to a vigil at Ndubuisi Kanu Park, Alausa at from 5pm-7pm.
“We want our leaders to hear the moral imperative for action,” said Oluwatosin Kolawole of Climate Aid. “These vigils represent the voices of the human spirit, expressed through our religious and spiritual traditions and through many people’s personal convictions. The vigils show love and concern for our children, vulnerable people and our precious planet.”
Oluwatosin Kolawole added “We want our Leaders to know they have our support to be more determined and generous in finding ways to a meaningful global agreement on climate change”
Leaders from Muslim and Christian communities, and people from a variety of spiritual backgrounds, are leading the vigils in countries including Australia, Canada, India, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, UK, and the USA.
Proposed activities at the vigil include: Opening Song; Brief Statement of the Harm Caused by Climate Change; Talk: what do we love that we want to protect from climate change; Readings or Prayers from a Variety of Sacred Texts; Prayers for the Leaders of the World and for those harmed by climate change; Song; Lighting of candles; Call to Action (invite attendees sign the Our Voices petition on cell phones); Prayer or statement of commitment to continue praying, meditating and advocating for a climate agreement; Closing Prayers; and, Closing Song.
Kolawole submitted: “This month, just weeks after the largest climate mobilisation ever, the world’s two biggest polluters – the United States and China – announced their most ambitious climate action yet. That is not a coincidence: it’s a sign that our pressure is working, and that we need to apply much more.
“The emissions of China and the US have been used by governments around the world as an excuse to dodge their own responsibilities. But this new agreement leaves these governments with nowhere left to hide and opens the door for real progress from global governments. Time is running out for our leaders to reach an agreement to save us from devastating climate change.”
The Federal Government of Nigeria has introduced 24 environmental regulations aimed at adopting sustainable environment good practices. The regulations are now in force.
Dr. Ngeri Benebo, irector-General and Chief Executive Officer of NESREA
Sokoto State Coordinator of the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), Alhaji Jubril Inuwa, disclosed this recently in Wamakko.
Inuwa, who spoke at the flag-off of Security Awareness, Early Warning Signs and Environmental Sustainability Sensitisation programme organised by the State Office of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), also said that the regulations were aimed at providing legal frameworks for the adoption of sustainable and environment-friendly practices in
environmental sanitation.
He said: “The purpose of these regulations is to provide legal framework for the adoption of sustainable and environment-friendly practices in environmental sanitation and waste management to minimise pollution.”
Enumerating some of the regulations to include National Environmental Sanitation and Waste Regulations 2009, Inuwa added that they were also to prevent and minimise pollution and ensure tranquillity of the human environment, among other purposes.
He explained that public awareness and provision of environmental education was a vital way of effective enforcement of environmental regulations.
Speaking, Director of NOA in Sokoto State, Alhaji Abubakar Danchadi, said that the objective of the programme was to increase security awareness of the people.
Members of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change recently in Lima, Peru at the sidelines of the COP 20 UN climate summit met officials of a team of civil society organisations (CSOs) operating under the aegis of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).
Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change, Nagmeldin G. Elhassan (right), in a handshake with Samual Samson Ogallah of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)
Nagmeldin G. Elhassan, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators (right)
Delegates at the meeting. Dr Uyi Ojo of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) is at extreme left)
Solving the problem of global climate change is impossible without huge shift in private sector investments, since this sector represents trillions of dollars with vast majority of economic activities around the world.
This is the view of Civil Society in contributing to a discussion at the ongoing climate change talks in Lima, Peru.
Dr. Thomas Jallah of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA). Photo credit: awoko.org
According to Dr. Thomas Jallah of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), what is needed most is policy changes and regulations particularly in developed countries “to shift private investments from brown to green”.
“National governments could do far more to shift incentives so that trillions of dollars of private investments will flow to sustainable climate-friendly activities,” he said.
Such measures, Dr. Jallah noted, may include strong legally-binding emission targets, output limit and scaling down fossil fuel power stations.
Business and industry groups attending the COP20 say they strongly support the works of the parties to address climate risks to emission mitigation and adaptation.
“We welcome the targets taken on by the EU and those announced by the US and China” said representative, Miles Austin. “We hope to see far more progress in the short term and encourage you to ensure the markets can make their fullest contribution and the private sector investment and action is capitalized to the utmost.”
The Business and Industry (BINGO) Day at the COP20 presented the activities and messages of business and industry organizations concerned about the potential impacts and opportunities presented by the negotiations.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says the year 2014 is on track for being one of the hottest, if not the hottest, on record, according to preliminary results issued at the side lines of the UN Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru.
WMO Secretary General, Michel Jarraud
The changes, according to the estimates, are largely due to record WMO high global sea surface temperatures, which are predicted to likely remain above normal until the end of the year.
The report says high sea temperatures, together with other factors, contributed to exceptionally heavy rainfall and floods in many countries and extreme drought in others.
The high January to October temperatures, according to WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud, occurred in the absence of a full El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
ENSO occurs when warmer than average sea-surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific combine, in a self-reinforcing loop, with atmospheric pressure systems, thus affecting weather patterns globally.
During the year, sea surface temperatures increased nearly to El Niño thresholds but this was not coupled with an atmospheric response. However, many weather and climate patterns normally associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) were observed in many parts of the world.
“The provisional information for 2014 means that fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century. There is no standstill in global warming,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud,” he says.
He adds that what was observed this year is consistent with what they expect from a changing climate.
Jarraud explained that record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods destroyed livelihoods and ruined lives. He said what is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface, including in the northern hemisphere.
Record-high greenhouse gas emissions and associated atmospheric concentrations according to Jarraud are committing the planet to a much more uncertain and inhospitable future.
UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres
Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), commenting on the report expressed fears over the fact that then changing climate the risks of extreme weather events will have an increased impact on humanity.
“Fortunately our political climate is changing too with evidence that governments, supported by investors, business and cities are moving towards a meaningful, universal climate agreement in Paris 2015”
She explained that an agreement that keeps a global temperature rise below 2 degrees C by putting in place the pathways to a deep de-carbonisation of the world’s economy and climate neutrality or ‘net zero’ in the second half of the century is urgently needed.
WMO’s provisional statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2014 indicated that the global average air temperature over land and sea surface for January to October was about 0.57° Centigrade (1.03 Fahrenheit) above the average of 14.00°C (57.2 °F) for the 1961-1990 reference period, and 0.09°C (0.16 °F) above the average for the past ten years (2004-2013).
The reports says if November and December maintain the same tendency, then 2014 will likely be the hottest on record, ahead of 2010, 2005 and 1998. This according to Jarraud and his forecasters confirms the underlying long-term warming trend.
Highlights from the Statement:
Land surface temperatures
Average surface air temperatures over land for January to October 2014 were about 0.86°C above the 1961-1990 average, the fourth or fifth warmest for the same period on record.
Western North America, Europe, eastern Eurasia, much of Africa, large areas of South America and southern and western Australia were especially warm. Cooler-than-average conditions for the year-to-date were recorded across large areas of the United States and Canada and parts of central Russia.
Heatwaves occurred in South Africa, Australia and Argentina in January. Australia saw another prolonged warm spell in May. Record heat affected northern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and southern Brazil in October. Notable cold waves were reported in the U.S. during the winter, Australia in August and in Russia in October.
Ocean heat
Global sea-surface temperatures were the highest on record, at about 0.45°C above the 1961-1990 average.
Climate financing across the globe has hit record high to about $650 billion in the last two years, but UN climate chief Christiana Figureres says it is not enough to meet the growing financial needs to tackle global warming.
Christiana Figueres of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
A new financial assessment report presented to at the UN Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru puts the lower range of global total climate flows at $340 billion a year for the period between 2011 and 2012.
The assessment, compiled by the UNFCCC standing committee on finance, is the first to put together information and data on financial flows supporting emission reductions and adaptation within the countries and through international support.
Support from developed countries according the assessment amounted to about $35 billion dollars and $50 billion annually, within the multilateral development banks.
Flows from dedicated multilateral climate funds –including UNFCCC funds represented $0.6 billion- which was the smallest share contributed during the period. The flow according to the assessment does not figure pledges for the Green Climate Fund amount to nearly $10 billion.
Figueres, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, while launching the report said: “Finance will be crucial key for achieving the internationally-agreed goal of keeping a global temperature rise under 2 degree C and sparing people and the planet from dangerous climate change.”
She however noted that the flows were an indication of optimism that climate financing should be in the trillions of dollars if the world is to make the transformation it needs in the timely fashion. “We will get to the trillions only if we leverage private sector and private capital flows,” said Figueres while addressing journalists.
She said understanding how much is flowing from private and public sources, how much is leveraging further investments and how much is getting to vulnerable communities including for adaptation is vital for ensuring adequate financing for global transformation.
Commenting on the source of financing, Figueres said it was heartening to note that the money was coming from multiple sources through different channels all aimed at addressing climate change. “Because it is not realistic that all the climate finance we need will come from one particular source or one channel,” she said.
She hoped that financing of climate change permeates the global financial system and becomes a global component of the global finance.
One negative part of the assessment is that most of the money was flowing towards mitigation interventions and less toward adaptation. Also the assessment shows that Africa and small Island states were also receiving less share of the adaptation financing.
Seyini Nafo, a delegate from Mali, who is also a member of the Standing Committee of the UNFFCC, in the presentation indicated that only five percent of the global financing was getting to adaptation with a whopping 95 percent targeted towards mitigation.
Figueres noted: “There is no doubt that adaptation finance needs to increase. Because that is the urgency among most developing countries to cover their adaptation cost because many developing countries are putting their own money in adaptation financing because they don’t have any other source and they cannot wait for international climate flows,” she noted.
New report finds that Peruvian government is failing to address the real causes of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon while undermining indigenous peoples’ efforts to protect their forests
Amazonian indigenous people at COP20 in Lima
A new report has shown that, despite public commitments to protect Peru’s forests, the first Amazonian host of the UN COP is ignoring the real drivers of deforestation and failing to safeguard the rights of indigenous peoples. This, despite the fact that these peoples occupy approximately one third of the Peruvian Amazon and offer the best chance of defending the country’s precious forests.
The report, Revealing the Hidden: Indigenous Perspectives on Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon, was compiled by Peru’s national indigenous peoples’ organisation, AIDESEP, and an international human rights organisation, the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP). The findings are based on the analysis of Peru’s indigenous leaders and organisations, whose peoples, lands and livelihoods are threatened by deforestation on a daily basis.
Contrary to official discourses that blame migrant farmers for deforestation, the report suggests that the “invisible” drivers of current and future deforestation in Peru include road construction, oil, gas and mining projects, palm-oil plantations, illegal logging operations and mega-dam projects. The report revealed that official analyses of deforestation have placed disproportionate responsibility on migrants from the Andes, while downplaying the crucial role of decades of road construction and explicit colonisation programmes on the part of the government. These schemes actively promoted immigration and were aimed at the economic integration and agricultural development of the Amazon. As a result, according to the authors, an estimated 75% of deforestation in Peru occurs within 20km of a road.
Indigenous defense of the Amazon
Meanwhile, the contributions of indigenous peoples, who continue to protect their ancestral lands from invasion by colonists, illegal loggers and miners, are being disregarded or, at worst, undermined.
The threat to indigenous peoples and lands became all too real to Edwin Chota and other leaders of the Ashéninka community of Saweto in Ucayali when they were murdered in September 2014, allegedly by logging mafia, in reprisal for their longstanding efforts to protect their lands from illegal logging and to secure title to their territory.
“It makes me furious,” said Marcial Mudarra, the President of CORPI, an indigenous organisation in San Lorenzo, speaking about the murders. “Selling off the jungle is a business for the state, but the price is the death of our Ashéninka brothers, who had been denouncing the loggers and protecting their lands. The government closed its eyes and became deaf, blind and dumb. Only when they were dead did it start to take action.”
The consistent failure of the Peruvian government to provide protection for Chota in the face of death threats and to legally recognise Saweto’s lands despite years of determined advocacy mirrors the experience of many other indigenous communities. The report shows that the territorial demands of at least 1174 indigenous communities remain pending, part of an estimated 20 million hectares of indigenous territories with no legal guarantees. Instead, the Peruvian government continues to approve overlapping mining, timber and oil and gas concessions, and to undermine these territories with laws that violate Peru’s human rights obligations.
Despite such challenges, Peru’s indigenous peoples continue to successfully protect their forests. The report documents their diverse efforts to resist land invasions, illegal logging and poaching and the imposition of oil and gas projects. Many have embarked on small scale initiatives to produce coffee and cocoa and practise low-intensity logging in harmony with their forests.
The report reports the latest data on deforestation in Peru. As reflected in recent global studies, rates of deforestation in indigenous territories are significantly less than overall deforestation rates, and more than 75% of all deforestation in Peru takes place outside the boundaries of indigenous territories and protected areas.
Although the government has acknowledged the contributions of indigenous peoples to forest conservation, its support for further recognition of indigenous lands and community forestry remains only on paper, while indigenous efforts to protect forests continue to be undermined by weak and contradictory laws and by political persecution.
Ignoring the real drivers of deforestation
The report estimates that, in 2013, at least 20% of deforestation in Peru was attributable to illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios and to oil-palm developments in Loreto and Ucayali. These rates of deforestation are projected to increase massively, with at least 100,000 hectares of forest in Loreto requested for oil-palm development and over 50 major dams (each more than 100MW in capacity) in planning stages, and threatening to flood thousands of hectares of forest and displace its indigenous inhabitants.
“Despite this huge expansion, oil palm is not discussed much in these debates about deforestation,” said Alberto Pizango Chota, President of AIDESEP. “It is ‘invisible’, just like the massive oil spills, the multiple dams that are planned, the super highways, the gold rush and the timber mafia. This official silence shows the need for this study – the need to make visible what is not spoken and to expose what is hidden.”
For indigenous peoples, who live in and depend on these forests, the impacts of this development model are often devastating, as shown by the health and environmental disasters recently declared in the Tigre, Corrientes, Maranon and Pastaza river basins, after 40 years of oil operations.
Many of the new developments are taking place at the behest of powerful criminal organisations, often associated with corrupt government officials. For example, a senior figure at the Ministry of Energy and Mines was exposed in 2012 for his part-ownership of a major gold exporter, which was sourcing gold from Madre de Dios, where an estimated 97% of all mining is illegal.
“In the La Pampa area, 30,000 miners are controlling the military commanders, the police and the judges,” said a leader of COHARIYMA, an indigenous organization in Madre de Dios. “The police earn miserable wages, yet now they have big houses and luxury 4-by-4s. Officials pretend they’re intervening, but in reality they do nothing.”
The report identifies systematic bias in Peru’s land-use planning, which consistently favours large-scale extractive developments, particularly oil, gas and mining projects over environmental considerations and the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples. This is exemplified by the reduction of the Ichigkat-Mujat National Park in favour of mining interests in 2007.
“MINAM [the Ministry of Environment] was created with the objective of protecting the forest but instead it is bargaining with these resources,” said Teobaldo Chamik, a Wampis leader from the Santiago River. “Our territory and its resources have become a business to hand over to investors and capitalists. The government creates the protected areas … but the same government then overlaps these areas with mining and oil concessions.”
A genuine commitment?
The 20th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is holding in Lima and Peru is hoping to establish itself as a leading player in the fight to protect tropical forests and indigenous peoples’ rights as part of a broader commitment to mitigating climate change. Indeed, the country has made unprecedented public commitments in recent years to protect its forests, including a pledge in 2010 to cut net deforestation to zero by 2020.
President Humala reiterated this pledge in September 2014 and announced a major agreement with Germany and Norway to finance and support this vision. Nevertheless, the announcement came hot on the heels of a law (Ley 30230) passed in July to promote investment, while significantly weakening Peru’s already feeble environmental laws. More seriously, the new measure seems to allow the seizure of indigenous lands in order to facilitate large-scale development projects.
The report outlines key steps that could be taken to address deforestation and the violation of indigenous peoples’ rights. These include:
Resolve indigenous peoples’ territorial demands, alongside respecting their right to determine their own development paths,
Provide legal, financial and technical support to implement this vision.
Close legal loopholes that continue to permit forest destruction, controlling illegal practices, and
Implement robust and independent planning mechanisms to ensure economic interests do not trump all other considerations.
“Peru is at a cross roads,” said lead author Michael Valqui from the University of Cayetano Heredia’s Centre for Sustainability. “The pledges have been made, the solutions exist, and the funds are available, but the will appears to be missing, as long as the government continues to ignore the real causes of forest destruction”.
Sadly, Peru is by no means a unique example. A detailed assessment of nine countries reveals a growing crisis in the world’s forests, and a spike in violations of the rights of indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities. The findings suggest that climate change mitigation and conservation policies must place community land rights and human rights centre stage if they are to achieve the goal of effectively and sustainably reducing deforestation. A review of the findings will be launched in Lima on the 8th December, at a hearing in the presence of the UN rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.
The African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change has urged developed countries to ratify an extension of the second phase of Kyoto Protocol (KP). They say the developed nations must show leadership in tackling climate change effects by ratifying the binding treaty.
Chair of the African Group of Negotiators, Nagmeldin G. Elhassan
Nagmeldin G. Elhassan, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators, says ratifying the second commitment period is the only way Africa and developing nations can take the developed countries seriously on commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Elhassan says by ratifying the agreement, the developed countries will build confidence among African countries suffering the brunt of climate change that they are committed to reducing the suffering of the people due to climate change.
“We would like to encourage all parties to speedily ratify the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol to show progress under the new legal agreement under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP). That will be amicable to all parties. But what we have observed is annex 1 party is reneging, abandoning and weakening the commitment of the Kyoto protocol.”
Ratifying the agreement legally binds rich nations responsible for industrial pollutions to cut their emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases under specified targets of 15 to 30 per cent by 2020 and 60 to 80 per cent by 2050.
They can either do this obligation directly or indirectly by helping developing countries with the required finance for capacity building, adaptation, mitigation and technology transfer among others.
Though the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol – an international treaty that is binding on industrialised countries to reduce GHG emissions – began in 2013, it is not yet ratified by many developed countries. So far, only 14 countries from developing and developed nations have signed and ratified the treaty.
In Doha (Qatar) in 2012, the following countries agreed to a further commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol: Australia, the EU, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway and Switzerland.
Major emitters such as China, USA, Russia, India, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and South Africa announced politically binding reduction targets to be achieved by 2020 under the Convention.
Elhassan says failure to ratify the treaty by the developed nations is frustrating progress already achieved in combating climate change effects.
Samual Samson Ogallah of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) says the non-committal stance of annex 1 countries to the treaty and other historical obligations accounts for the frustrations African group and the civil society keep experiencing in various COP meetings.
Ogallah says such frustrations and shifting of goal posts led to the civil society walkout from the 2013 COP Meting in Warsaw, Poland. He encouraged the African negotiators to press forward without relenting.
The appeal comes at a time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is warning of the worst climate ahead. Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, the IPCC chair, told delegates in Lima that the case for prioritising action on climate change was clearer than ever before but not much is being done to reduce global temperature.
He said the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) uncovered the fact that mankind was responsible for the increase in air and sea temperatures, now responsible for adverse impacts across all continents.
The report says the oceans have absorbed most of the extra heat that has been observed over the last 10 years, leading to a general rise in water temperatures.
Elena Bardram, head of the EU’s international carbon market unit, says the developed nations will continue complying with earlier commitments to addressing challenges of climate change. She says Finance will continue being consolidated as required to tackle some of the challenges in additions to implementing carbon emission cuts.
