An iceberg floats near Two Hummock Island, Antarctica, February 2, 2020. Picture taken February 2, 2020.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Nearly 1,500 academics, researchers and scientists specialising in Antarctica gathered in southern Chile for the 11th Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research conference this week to share the most cutting-edge research from the vast white continent.

Nearly every aspect of science, from geology to biology and glaciology to arts, was covered but a major undercurrent ran through the conference. Antarctica is changing, faster than expected.

Extreme weather events in the ice-covered continent were no longer hypothetical presentations, but first-hand accounts from researchers about heavy rainfall, intense heat waves and sudden Foehn (strong dry winds) events at research stations that led to mass melting, giant glacier break-offs and dangerous weather conditions with global implications.

With detailed weather station and satellite data dating back only about 40 years, scientists wondered whether these events meant Antarctica had reached a tipping point, or a point of accelerated and irreversible sea ice loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet.

“There’s uncertainty about whether the current observations indicate a temporary dip or a downward plunge (of sea ice),” said Liz Keller, a paleoclimate specialist from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand that led a session about predicting and detecting tipping points in Antarctica.

NASA estimates show the Antarctic ice sheet has enough ice to raise the global mean sea level by up to 58 meters. Studies have shown that about a third of the world’s population lives below 100 vertical meters of sea level.

While it’s tough to determine whether we’ve hit a “point of no return,” Keller says that it’s clear the rate of change is unprecedented.

“You might see the same rise in CO2 over thousands of years, and now it’s happened in 100 years,” Keller said.

Mike Weber, a paleooceanographer from Germany’s University of Bonn, who specialises in Antarctic ice sheet stability, says sediment records dating back 21,000 years show similar periods of accelerated ice melt.

The ice sheet has experienced similar accelerated ice mass loss at least eight times, Weber said, with acceleration beginning over a few decades that kick off a phase of ice loss that can last centuries, leading to dramatically higher sea levels around the world.

Weber says ice loss has picked up over the last decade, and the question is whether it’s already kicked off a centuries-long phase or not.

“Maybe we’re entering such a phase right now,” Weber said. “If we are, at least for now, there will be no stopping it.”

Keeping emissions low

While some say the climate changes are already locked in, scientists agreed that the worst case scenarios can still be avoided by dramatically reducing fossil fuel emissions.

Weber says the earth’s crust rebounds in response to retreating glaciers and their diminishing weight could balance out sea level rise, and new research published weeks ago shows that a balance is still possible if the rate of change is slow enough. “If we keep emissions low, we can stop this eventually,” said Weber. “If we keep them high, we have a runaway situation and we cannot do anything.”

Mathieu Casado, a paleoclimate and polar meteorologist at France’s Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory, specialises in studying water isotopes to reconstruct historical temperatures.

Casado said data from dozens of ice cores collected throughout the ice sheet has allowed him to reconstruct temperature patterns in Antarctica dating back 800,000 years.

Casado’s research showed that the current temperature rise in the last fifty years was clearly outside natural variability, highlighting the role of industry in producing carbon emissions that drive climate change.

He added that the last time the Earth was this warm was 125,000 years ago and sea levels were 6 to 9 meters higher “with quite a bit of contribution for West Antarctica.”

Temperature and carbon dioxide were historically at equilibrium and balanced each other out, Casado said, but we currently have much higher levels of CO2 and are far from equilibrium.

Casado and other scientists noted the speed and quantity at which carbon is being pumped into the atmosphere is unprecedented.

Gino Casassa, a glaciologist and head of Chilean Antarctic Institute, said that current estimates show sea levels rising by 4 meters by 2100 and more if emissions continue to grow.

“What happens in Antarctica doesn’t stay in Antarctica,” said Casassa, adding that global atmospheric, ocean and weather patterns are linked to the continent.

“Antarctica isn’t just an ice refrigerator isolated from the rest of the planet that has no impact.”

An activist from Youth 4 Climate Action Yoon Hyeonjeong looks on during an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, August 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Yoon Hyeonjeong, a 19-year-old South Korean activist, says the fate of her years-long fight for more action to tackle climate change hinges on what could be a landmark ruling by the country’s top court on Thursday.

Yoon is among about 200 plaintiffs, including young environmentalists like herself and even infants, in petitions filed to the Constitutional Court since 2020, which argue the government is violating its citizens’ human rights by not effectively tackling climate change.

Climate advocacy groups say it will be the first high court ruling on a government’s climate action in Asia, potentially setting a precedent in a region where similar lawsuits have been filed in Taiwan and Japan. In April, Europe’s top human rights court ruled the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change.

“Picketing on streets, policy proposals, these campaigns weren’t enough to bring about real changes,” said Yoon, who is hoping the court ruling will help tear down bureaucratic hurdles on climate policy.

Lawyers for the government say authorities are doing everything possible to cut carbon emissions.

Han Wha-jin, who was environment minister, said in May the government’s emission reduction targets did not infringe on people’s rights, though the constitutional petition provided a public forum about the severity of the climate crisis.

In 2019, Yoon was in her third year of middle school when she watched a climate crisis documentary that she said shocked her into action.

Despite not being particularly outgoing, she decided to try and follow in the footsteps of the likes of Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist who has inspired a global youth movement demanding stronger action against climate change.

Yoon wrote slogans with crayons to picket at schools, telling her elders to stop destroying the planet. She later dropped out of high-school and left her hometown to focus on the climate movement in the capital Seoul.

South Korea’s constitutional court does not award damages or order law enforcement measures but can rule existing laws are unconstitutional and request parliament to revise them.

Germany‘s constitutional court ruled in 2021 the country must update its climate law to set out how it will bring carbon emissions down to almost zero by 2050.

Scientists say a global temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average will trigger catastrophic and irreversible impact on the planet, from melting ice sheets to the collapse of ocean currents.

South Korea is seeking to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, but remains the second-highest coal polluter among G20 countries after Australia, data showed, with slow adoption of renewables.

The country last year revised down its 2030 targets for greenhouse gas reductions in the industrial sector but kept its national goal of cutting emissions by 40% of 2018 levels.

Calling for an end to the use of fossil fuel, Yoon said flooding and rising temperatures caused by climate change were having immediate effects on people’s lives.

“We already have tools to cut carbon emissions. That is, stop using fossil fuels,” she said.

Algae floats on the surface of Lake Erie’s Maumee Bay in Oregon, Ohio, on Friday, September 15, 2017. Scientists found prokaryotes are remarkably resilient to climate change – and as a result, could increasingly dominate marine environments.
| Photo Credit: AP

The world’s oceans are home to microscopic organisms invisible to the human eye. The tiny creatures, known as “prokaryotes”, comprise 30% of life in the world’s oceans.

These organisms play an important role in keeping the oceans in balance. But new research by myself and colleagues shows this balance is at risk.

We found prokaryotes are remarkably resilient to climate change – and as a result, could increasingly dominate marine environments.

This could reduce the availability of fish humans rely on for food, and hamper the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon emissions.

A fine balance

Prokaryotes include both bacteria and “archaea”, another type of single-celled organism.

These organisms are thought to be the oldest cell-based lifeforms on Earth. They thrive across the entire planet – on land and in water, from the tropics to the poles.

What prokaryotes lack in size they make up in sheer abundance. Globally, about two tonnes of marine prokaryotes exist for every human on the planet.

They play a crucial role in the world’s food chains, helping support the nutrient needs of fish humans catch and eat.

Marine prokaryotes grow extremely fast – a process that emits a lot of carbon. In fact, prokaryotes to an ocean depth of 200 metres produce about 20 billion tonnes of carbon a year: double that of humans.

This massive carbon output is balanced by phytoplankton – another type of microscopic organism which turns sunlight and carbon dioxide into energy, through photosynthesis.

Phytoplankton and other ocean processes also absorb up to one-third of the carbon humans release into the atmosphere each year. This helps limit the pace of global warming.

How prokaryotes respond to warming is key to understanding how the fine balance of the world’s oceans may change in a warmer world. This was the focus of our research.

What we found

We wanted to predict how climate change would affect the “biomass”, or total global weight, of marine prokaryotes. We also wanted to examine how it would affect their carbon output.

To do this, we built computer models that integrated decades of observations from dozens of scientific surveys across the world’s oceans.

So what did we find? Prokaryotes are likely to be climate change winners, relative to other marine life.

For each degree of ocean warming, their biomass will decline by about 1.5%. This is less than half the projected 3–5% decline we predicted for larger plankton, fish and mammals.

It means future marine ecosystems will have lower overall biomass, and will increasingly be dominated by prokaryotes. This could divert a greater share of available nutrients and energy toward prokaryotes and away from fish, reducing the supply of fish humans eat.

We discovered another important change. For every degree of warming, we predict prokaryotes in the top 200 metres of the world’s oceans would produce an additional 800 million tonnes of carbon per year.

This is equivalent to the present-day emissions of the entire European Union (after converting CO₂ to carbon).

What does all this mean?

Due to human-caused climate change, Earth’s oceans are expected to warm by between 1°C and 3°C by the end of this century, unless humanity changes course.

If the amount of carbon produced by prokaryotes does increase as predicted, it could reduce the potential of oceans to absorb human emissions. This means achieving global net-zero emissions will become even more difficult.

What’s more, present projections of declines in global fish stocks under climate change generally do not consider how warming may restructure marine food webs by favouring prokaryotes. This means the predicted declines are likely to be underestimated.

Declines in fish populations present a major problem for global food supply, because the oceans are a major source of protein for about 3 billion people.

What should happen now

Our analysis is an important step in uncovering the changing role of marine prokaryotes. But significant uncertainties remain.

Our analysis is built with existing observations. Climate change is already changing conditions in marine ecosystems in ways our models may not have captured.

We also don’t know how quickly prokaryotes will adapt and evolve to new environments. But existing research shows that in a matter of weeks, bacteria can develop new traits that make it easier for them to survive.

Clearly, scientists must continue to improve their understanding of prokaryotes, and how they may be affected by climate change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Supporters of environmental group Friends of the Earth hold signs outside the Royal Courts of Justice, during their legal challenge at the High Court, in London, Britain July 23, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Britain failed to set proper objectives in its climate adaptation strategy, environmental campaigners argued on Tuesday in a case which relies on a landmark recent ruling by Europe’s top human rights court.

Friends of the Earth is taking legal action over Britain’s national adaptation programme, which was published last year and sets out what the government and others will do to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The programme is designed to protect citizens from the risks posed by high temperatures, coastal flooding and extreme weather.

Friends of the Earth’s lawyer David Wolfe argued in court filings that ministers had to set outcomes to address specific risks, rather than “a generic aim simply to reduce risks”.

The government’s lawyer Mark Westmoreland Smith said the environmental group’s arguments misunderstood what ministers must do and are essentially a challenge to how the government approached its duties under climate change legislation.

“The nature, ambition and framing of the objectives within the programme are matters for the judgment of the (minister), who is politically accountable for them,” he said in court documents.

Friends of the Earth’s case relies in part on the European Court of Human Rights’ April ruling that Switzerland violated its citizens’ human rights by failing to do enough to combat climate change.

But Westmoreland Smith argued the Swiss case concerned measures to mitigate the effects of climate change through a regulatory framework and was of limited relevance.

Climate campaigners have increasingly turned to the law to force governments to move more quickly on tackling emissions.

Friends of the Earth was one of three groups which successfully challenged Britain’s latest climate action plan earlier this year.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed into law a broad climate change act that will set caps for large emitters and require every town and city to publish an adaptation plan. Image for Representation.
| Photo Credit: AP

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed into law a broad climate change act that will set caps for large emitters and require every town and city to publish an adaptation plan.

The Climate Change Bill aims to enable South Africa to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement, the presidency said in a statement on Tuesday.

South Africa, which is the world’s most carbon-intensive major economy and among the top 15 greenhouse gas emitters, is on track to miss those targets because of to its heavy reliance on coal for electricity.

“This is very significant in that it’s the first time that our climate change response is directly brought into domestic law,” said Brandon Abdinor, a lawyer at South Africa’s Centre for Environmental Rights, a non-profit organisation.

“A lot of work needs to be done, but this act puts the basic architecture in place for that to happen.”

The presidency statement did not say when Ramaphosa had signed the law, which requires every province and municipality to assess climate change risks and develop a response plan.

Emissions targets will be set for each high-emitting government sector such as agriculture, transport and industry, and each relevant minister must adopt measures to achieve them.

The law also says the environment minister must allocate a carbon budget to large greenhouse gas-emitting companies, setting a limit on their emissions over a specified time.

The allocations have not yet been set, and the law does not make it an offence to exceed the limit although climate advocates had wanted this, said Abdinor. But emitters that exceed their budget are likely to have to pay a higher rate of carbon tax.

“With mandatory carbon budgets now in place, we expect to see significant emissions reductions from large companies,” Harald Winkler, an expert on climate policy at the University of Cape Town, said on X.

“Transparency in annual reporting will be key,” he added.

The bill is the latest sign that South Africa’s new government might be more aggressive on climate change and renewable energy than its predecessors.

The new energy minister has vowed to speed up the transition to renewables, but few specific plans have emerged. Funding plans to support the new bill are also unclear.

Western donors are offering billions of dollars in loans to fund the transition, but South African officials say they barely scratch the surface of the finance needed.

An offshore oil rig platform is photographed in Huntington Beach, California, U.S. July 4, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

From forest fires to hurricanes and other natural disasters: climate change risk is increasingly influencing oil prices, just as the world is struggling to shift away from high-polluting fossil fuels.

Hurricane Beryl became the latest weather phenomenon to jangle market nerves, boosting crude prices as it passed through Texas earlier this month.

Texas accounts for some 42% of total US crude oil production, according to Energy Information Administration data. It also possesses the largest number of crude oil refineries among US states.

“Almost half of the total US petroleum refining capacity is located along the Gulf, with Texas accounting for one-third of total US refining capacity,” Exinity analyst Han Tan told AFP.

And industry experts fear Beryl could herald a “super charged” hurricane season this year, according to Tan.

The World Meteorological Organization has warned that Beryl’s early formation and swift intensification could foreshadow similarly severe storms in the future.

Earlier this year meanwhile, oil market sentiment was jarred in May as forest fires broke out in Canada.

Traders took flight as out-of-control wildfires threatened to spread to the crude-producing hub of Fort McMurray, the nation’s largest oil sands mining facility.

‘More visible and more extreme’

Traders, more used to pricing in geopolitical turmoil, are now also weighing up the risks arising from the climate crisis.

“Climate change and its effect is a major source of risk in the oil markets, and I expect that that risk will only increase in the coming years as the effects of climate change become more visible and extreme,” Rystad Energy analyst Jorge Leon told AFP.

“Geopolitical risk is — at least partly — manageable by different actors. For example, international diplomacy could prevent a war.

“However, climate risk is less manageable in the short and medium run. In the long run, you can manage it by trying to reduce emissions,” he added.

At the same time, climate disruption is also having an increasingly visible impact on the operations of oil and gas companies, which are frequently slammed by environmentalists over their role in global warming.

“Climate change has been and will be affecting production,” summarised Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates.

He added that it also impacted refinery utilisation rates because “hot weather leads to malfunctioning” of the facilities.

Many European refineries were designed in the 1960s and 1970s to withstand colder rather than warmer temperatures, according to Tan.

Fossil fuels — coal, gas and oil — are responsible for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to estimates from the United Nations.

At the COP28 UN climate conference in Dubai last December, almost 200 countries agreed to a call for a transition away from fossil fuels and a tripling of renewable energy capacity this decade.

However, the text crucially stopped short of a direct call for phasing out fossil fuels, while there were major concessions to the oil and gas industry and producer countries.

‘Economics can’t find solution’

Analysts argue that the oil market participants are simply focused on generating profit rather than saving the environment.

That throws the onus onto the world’s politicians and regulators, they add.

“Investors can’t be rationally expected to reverse the phenomenon when they try to maximise profits,” SwissQuote analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya told AFP.

“Unless financial costs of climate damages outweigh the financial benefits, the economics can’t find the solution to the climate problem.”

“So, the ball is in politicians’ hands. Only concrete, sharp and worldwide regulatory changes with meaningful financial impact/incentives… could shift capital toward clean and sustainable energies.”

A driver sleeps inside his auto rickshaw parked in the the shade of a tree as the city continues to be gripped by a heat wave, in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. A monthslong heat wave across swathes of India has killed more than 100 people and led to over 40,000 suspected cases of heat stroke in the last three and a half months, a Health Ministry official said Thursday.
| Photo Credit: AP

Months of scorching temperatures sometimes over 50 degrees C in parts of India this year — its worst heat wave in over a decade — left hundreds dead or ill. But the official number of deaths listed in government reports barely scratches the surface of the true toll and that’s affecting future preparations for similar swelters, according to public health experts.

India now has a bit of respite from the intense heat, and a different set of extreme weather problems as monsoon rain lashes the northeast, but for months the extreme heat took a toll on large swaths of the country, particularly in northern India, where government officials reported at least 110 heat-related deaths.

Public health experts say the true number of heat-related deaths is likely in the thousands but because heat is often not listed as a reason on a death certificate many heat deaths don’t get counted in official figures. The worry, they say, is that undercounting the deaths means the heat wave problem isn’t as prioritized as it should be, and officials are missing out on ways to prepare their residents for the scorching temperatures.

All of India’s warmest years on record have been in the last decade. Studies by public health experts found that up to 1,116 people have died every year between 2008 and 2019 due to heat.

As part of his work in public health, Srinath Reddy, the founder of the Public Health Foundation of India, has advised state governments on how to factor in heat when recording deaths.

He found that as a result of “incomplete reporting, delayed reporting and misclassification of deaths,” heat-related deaths are significantly undercounted around the country. Despite national guidelines for recording deaths, many doctors — especially those in overcrowded public hospitals where resources are already strained — don’t follow it, he said.

“Most doctors just record the immediate cause of death and attribution to environmental triggers like heat are not recorded,” Reddy said. That’s because heat deaths can be classified as exertional or non-exertional: Exertional is when a person dies due to direct exposure to high temperatures and non-exertional is when young children, older people or people with pre-existing health conditions become seriously ill or sometimes die from the heat, even if indoors.

“The heatwave is the final straw for the second category of people,” said Dileep Mavalankar, former head of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar. “Most people dying during heat waves belong to this category but their deaths are not recorded as connected to the heat.”

Mavalankar agreed the official number of heat deaths this year is an undercount. He said there were 40,000 recorded case of heat stroke, but only 110 deaths. “This is just 0.3% of the total number of heatstroke cases recorded, but usually heat deaths should be 20 to 30% of heatstroke cases,” he said.

“We need to be counting deaths better,” Mavalankar said. “That is the only way we will know how severe the consequences of extreme heat are.”

In his former role at the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, Mavalankar was instrumental in developing India’s first-ever heat action plan for the city of Ahmedabad in 2013, three years after more than 1,300 people died there during a heat wave.

The heat plan included measures like increasing access to shaded areas for outdoor workers, converting relatively cool public buildings to temporary shelters for people without homes or access to electricity and ensuring hospitals have adequate medical supplies and staff during heat waves.

In the years that followed, Mavalankar and his team studied the impact of the heat plan by counting death tolls in subsequent hot summers. Because of a lack of data on heat deaths specifically, the team looked at deaths from all causes, which spikes during heat waves, and used the number of excess deaths to determine how many deaths were likely caused by heat.

They estimate that the heat action plan had helped reduce the number of fatalities during heat waves by up to 40%.

Having that data, while imperfect, Mavalankar said, allowed the city to adequately prepare itself for extreme heat, and do more of what worked in the future.

But he said the lack of data elsewhere makes it difficult to replicate the results in Ahmedabad on a national level.

“Not reporting these deaths, sharing data, is like the Indian Meteorological Department not sharing weather data,” he said. “We can easily do this across the country but we’ve not decided that we should do it.”

The Indian government collects data on heat-related deaths through the health ministry’s National Centre for Disease Control which is then shared with the National Disaster Management Agency. The agency then shares the data as a total nationwide figure for the year, but a state by state breakdown is not publicly available.

The National Crime Records Bureau also collects heat-related death data as part of their accounting of deaths due to “forces of nature” and publishes those figures.

But there are huge discrepancies. In 2020, the last year with publicly available data on heat deaths from both official sources, the crime records bureau recorded 530 deaths from heatstroke, but the disaster agency reported just four heat-related deaths.

The Associated Press contacted India’s health ministry spokesperson, the NCDC and the NDMA to comment on the discrepancy but did not receive a response.

Getting better data can answer a whole host of questions about who is most vulnerable and how best to help them, said Bharghav Krishna, a public health expert and a fellow at the Sustainable Futures Collaborative thinktank, “especially with respect to identifying who is dying, where they’re dying, what are they doing when they’re dying.”

Krishna thinks that the data currently collected, while inadequate, can at least provide some insight for policymakers and researchers and force at least some action if its shared with the right people.

But Malavankar said the issues of data collection are more systemic, and that needs to be urgently addressed.

“We have not done a national census since 2011, not having numbers is our national weakness,” he said.

A general view of installed solar panels at the Khavda Renewable Energy Park of Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL), in Khavda, India, April 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

With just five months to go before this year’s U.N. climate summit, countries cannot agree on the size of a global funding bill to help the developing world fight climate change – let alone how to split it.

The decision is set to dominate the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan in November, where nearly 200 countries need to agree on a new annual financing target for helping poorer countries cut their emissions and protect their societies in a harsher, hotter world.

The new target will replace the yearly $100 billion that rich countries had pledged in climate finance from 2020. That goal was met two years late.

But preliminary talks this week in Bonn, Germany, have yielded no major breakthroughs. Instead, the talks ending on Thursday have again exposed the unyielding rifts among the world’s biggest economies over who should be paying most to fight climate change – and how much.

Representatives from climate-vulnerable nations said it was hard watching wealthy nations fall late with past payments of climate finance while quickly approving new funds for military responses to war or spending billions subsidising CO2-emitting energy sources.

“It seems like money is always there when it’s a more ‘real’ national priority for the country,” Michai Robertson, negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters.

“It’s really tough to see that,” he said.

Getting the number right

The new financing target is the core tool that global climate talks can deliver to fund projects that reduce planet-warming emissions – such as renewable energy or low-carbon transport.

With all countries due to update their national climate targets next year, negotiators fear failure could lead to weaker efforts.

“How are you going to move forward if there’s no financing?” said South African climate negotiator Pemy Gasela. Her country is among many developing nations warning they cannot afford to cut emissions faster without more financial support – in South Africa’s case, to swap a heavy reliance on CO2-emitting coal for clean energy.

Yet wealthy countries are wary of setting a target too high and risking it going unmet. The missed $100 billion target became politically symbolic in recent U.N. climate talks, stoking mistrust between nations as developing countries argued the world’s economic powers were abandoning them.

Diplomats in Bonn have circled the issue of how much money to put on the table.

While countries agree $100 billion is too low, there is little chance they would agree to summon the $2.4 trillion per year that the U.N. climate chief in February said was needed to keep the world’s climate goals within reach.

Neither the European Union or the U.S. have suggested a number for the goal, although both acknowledged this week that it must exceed $100 billion. The 27-country EU is currently the biggest provider of climate finance.

The elephant in the negotiation rooms, some diplomats told Reuters, was the upcoming U.S. presidential election, in which Donald Trump is seeking to return to office.

The previous Trump administration pulled the world’s biggest economy out of the Paris climate agreement. Negotiators said they worry a future Trump administration could halt U.S. climate finance payments, leaving it to other wealthy nations to meet the annual pledge.

But some countries in Bonn have made suggestions.

India, and a group of Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, have said the overall financing target should exceed $1 trillion per year, to reflect the spiralling needs of poorer countries as climate change worsens.

The Arab countries propose that rich nations provide $441 billion in public funding per year in grants, to leverage a total $1.1 trillion per year from broader sources.

Small island countries vulnerable to climate change have also pushed for stricter rules on what counts toward the target, suggesting preventing loans with interest rates above 1%, to avoid adding to poor nations’ already-high debts.

Most public climate funds provided by developed nations are loans, according to the OECD.

Deciding who should pay

Countries are also at odds over who should contribute.

There are about two dozen, long-industrialized countries currently obliged to contribute to U.N. climate finance. That list was decided during U.N. climate talks in 1992, when China’s economy was still smaller than Italy’s.

The EU wants China – now the world’s biggest CO2 emitter and second biggest economy – and high wealth-per-capita Middle Eastern countries to contribute for the new goal. The U.S. has also argued for adding more countries in the donor base.

However, the Arab countries and China firmly opposed this idea, with Beijing reiterating China’s status as a “developing country” under the U.N. climate convention.

“We, the developing countries, have no intention to make your number look good or be part of your responsibility, as we are doing all we can do to save the world,” China’s negotiator told other diplomats during negotiations on the finance target in Bonn on Tuesday.

Neither camp of countries has compromised on who should pay, said Joe Thwaites, who tracks climate finance negotiations for the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Negotiations were difficult and things are moving slowly,” he said.

As talks continue beyond Bonn, some negotiators said government ministers could raise the issue at higher level meetings such as G20 ministers’ gatherings in Brazil ahead of COP29.

Bleached coral is visible at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of Galveston, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico, September 16, 2023. Ocean temperatures that have gone “crazy haywire” hot, especially in the Atlantic, are close to making the current global coral bleaching event the worst in history. It’s so bad that scientists are hoping for a few hurricanes to cool things off.
| Photo Credit: AP

Nearly two-thirds of the world’s coral reefs have been subjected to heat stress bad enough to trigger bleaching over the past year, the leading agency monitoring coral reefs said on Thursday.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that the world’s coral reefs were in the throes of a fourth mass bleaching event, as climate change combined with an El Nino climate pattern has pushed ocean temperatures to record highs.

Now, the agency reports some 60.5% of the world’s reef area has been affected and that number is still rising.

“I am very worried about the state of the world’s coral reefs,” NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello said in a monthly briefing. “We are seeing (ocean temperatures) play out right now that are very extreme in nature”.

Triggered by heat stress, coral bleaching occurs when corals expel the colourful algae living in their tissues. Without these helpful algae, the corals become pale and are vulnerable to starvation and disease.

Scientists have documented mass bleaching in at least 62 countries and territories, with India and Sri Lanka recently reporting impacts.

The last global event, which ran from 2014 to 2017, saw 56.1% of reef areas subjected to bleaching-level heat stress. Previous events in 1998 and 2010 hit 20% and 35% of reef area, respectively.

While the current event has affected a greater swath, Manzello said the 2014-17 event is still considered the worst on record due its severity and persistence. But 2023-24 could soon surpass it, he added.

Caribbean corals at risk

Corals in the Atlantic Ocean have been hit hardest by soaring ocean temperatures, with 99.7% of the basin’s reefs subjected to bleaching-level heat stress in the past year, NOAA said.

“The Atlantic Ocean has been off the charts,” Manzello said.

One assessment published in April 2024 found there had so far been between 50% and 93% coral mortality at Huatulco, Oaxaca, in the Mexican Pacific.

The situation is likely to worsen this summer, as heat stress is once again accumulating in the Southern Caribbean. In some areas, the heat stress threshold for bleaching to occur has already been passed.

“This is alarming because this has never happened so early in the year before,” Manzello said.

Scientists are expecting further bleaching in the Southern Caribbean, around Florida, and at the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef – the world’s second largest reef – this summer.

“El Nino is dissipating, but the ocean is still anomalously hot. It won’t take much additional warming to push temperatures past the bleaching threshold,” he said.

Representational image of man standing on top of a skyscraper view of the Bangkok city skyline.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Thailand may have to consider relocating its capital Bangkok because of rising sea levels, a senior official in the country’s climate change office said on May 15.

Projections consistently show that low-lying Bangkok risks being inundated by the ocean before the end of the century.

Pavich Kesavawong, Deputy Director-general of the Government’s department of climate change and environment, warned that the city might not be able to adapt with the world on its current warming pathway.

“I think we are beyond the 1.5 (C) already,” he said, referring to the increase in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels.

“I imagine Bangkok will be under water already, if we stay in our (current) circumstance.”

Bangkok’s city Government is exploring measures that include building dikes, along the lines of those used in the Netherlands, he said.

But “we have been thinking about moving”, Mr. Pavich said, noting that the discussions were still hypothetical and the issue was “very complex”.

“Personally I think it’s a good choice, so we can separate the capital, the Government areas, and business areas,” he said.

“Bangkok (would) still be the Government capital, but move the business.”

While a move is still a long way from being adopted as policy, it would not be unprecedented in the region.

Indonesia will inaugurate this year its new capital Nusantara, which will replace sinking and polluted Jakarta as the country’s political centre.