Climate Change: Losses and Damages, a critical look at the UK, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27), Cairo, Egypt, 6 November
The Egyptian hosts of the COP 27 conference warned the leaders of the wealthy nations that there can be no backsliding on pledges made in Glasgow, UK, last year.
The 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties starts on 6 November. In a letter to world leaders this week, conference president Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, reiterated concerns that extra climate finance for the most vulnerable countries — promised in Glasgow — has not materialized. Industrialized countries had pledged to start to double funding for climate-adaptation projects, aiming to reach US$40 billion per year from 2025.
There is a huge gap in climate research in the Middle East and North Africa. Most of the studies focus on Europe, or the Mediterranean region. You wouldn’t find research specifically on Egypt, for example; the work that exists is like a by-product of research on the Mediterranean region or the African continent.
In 2015, Egypt estimated that it needs to set aside $73 billion for projects to help the country mitigate climate change and adapt its infrastructure. The environment minister says that the number has now more than tripled. Most climate actions have been done out of the national budget which adds more burden and competes with our basic needs that have to be fulfilled.
The concept of reimbursement for such loss and damage is not aid, but based on the “polluter pays” principle, the basis of environmental laws around the world, says Sunita Narain, editor of science magazine Down to Earth, based in New Delhi. This financing “must be on the table — not to be pushed away with another puny promise of a fund that never materializes”, Narain writes in the 1–15 November issue.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report in February entitled Losses and damages, which featured the phrase “losses and damages”. Christopher Trisos, an environmental scientist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a lead author of the report’s chapter on climate impacts in Africa, says: “There is stronger evidence than ever that Africa has already experienced loss and damage that is attributable to human-induced climate change.”
Ian Mitchell, a researcher with think tank the Center for Global Development in London, warned of possible unintended consequences if agreement on loss and damage becomes a deal-breaker at the meeting. High-income countries could agree to the principle and then absorb loss-and-damage finance as part of their humanitarian-aid spending — meaning it would not be new money.
Adil Najam, who studies international climate diplomacy at Boston University in Massachusetts, thinks it is unlikely that these issues will be resolved in Egypt, and says that the politics will probably get messy. He adds that loss-and-damage finance can no longer be avoided by the high-income countries, especially given that climate impacts in vulnerable countries are becoming much more visible and severe.
Fouad says that organizing this year’s COP in Africa has been transformative. We expect more attention to food security, desertification, natural disasters and water scarcity, as well as other important issues, which are relevant to most developing countries. More groups such as youth, non-governmental and civil society can be heard during this COP.
As the conference enters its second week, Nature spoke to four climate scientists from the host country about their research, the challenges they encounter and their hopes for COP27.
At my research institute, we work on projects to mitigate the sea-level rise in the Nile Delta, and study its impact on farmers and people living in the surrounding area.
Even though something can be done to prevent economic and agricultural losses, nothing can be done instantly. Applying the outcomes of climate studies is a long and exhausting process, and funding and potential profits are key factors.
My colleagues are attending COP27 and delivering a presentation on the Water Day, 14 November. We can change policies, but only through research. We wish to hear about an agreement to reduce emissions by the end of COP27, and to see actions not just words. There have been many promises made at previous COP meetings.
Climate Change in the Nile Valley: From IPBES to the IPC: a Critical Look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
My research focuses on finding strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change and sea-level rise in the Nile Valley. I work with plant-breeding scientists at the University of Florida to find new plant strains that can tolerate both high and low levels of precipitation.
Even though our research proposes solutions, I feel that it is not up to the scientists to translate the output of their studies into effective adaptation projects. I hope that soon we can see immediate action to initiate such projects in order to get them done before the deadlines.
I did a talk about my start-up during a session on adaptation to climate change at the COP 27’s Youth and Future Generations Day.
The company I co-founded, called “recyclizer”, collects plastic from the streets and recycles it into mulch that can be used to protect the soil from damage and reduce water usage.
In my academic research, I focused on how the decision-making process in the public and private sectors affects the implementation of sustainability and development goals and tackling climate change in Egypt.
Poor access to data and lack of data was the greatest challenge for me. Others include access to research papers in science journals — as a researcher in a developing country, paying fees to access multiple international journals is an issue.
It’s taken three decades to get to this point, at least in part because of arguments between richer and poorer countries on a whole raft of issues. There are differing definitions on climate finance and the fear that richer countries might be liable for trillions of dollars in loss-and-damage payments.
There are arguments over money at every COP. They will return at the 28th conference of the UN Convention on Climate Change (COP28), which is due to be held in the United Arab Emirates in a year’s time. The size of the loss-and-damage fund, who will contribute and which countries will benefit are all yet to be discussed.
A new book that takes an in-depth look at the IPCC helps to explain why the climate panel and IPBES remain two of a kind — and why we might not see their like again. A critical assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was edited by human geographer Mike Hulme at the University of Cambridge, and was written by 33 other social scientists. Chapter on formation and governance, who participates in it and what its future might be are two parts of it. The authors describe an organization that was a product of a particular set of circumstances, some of which cannot be recreated easily — if at all.
Money that has been pledged may be counted for investment in flood defences or wind energy. The LMICs prefer to only count the money received by the projects on the ground. Donors also count loans — which account for the lion’s share of climate finance — whereas LMICs would prefer to count only grants or other money that does not have to be repaid. What is the question of scope? Some people would like to count the whole development as climate finance, if it is fitted with special cool roofs, while some people wouldn’t want to count only the roof part.
The way the IPCC is set up means that if governments want its advice, they must make a formal request. That request is no longer forthcoming. Blutus Mbambi, co-founder of the Centre for Climate Change Action and Advocacy in Lusaka, Zambia, tells Nature that it was shocking to see how long negotiators in Sharm El-Sheikh spent in debates over the text, and how little evidence they had before them to make their decisions. Research needs to get match fit before the next round.
The fossil fuel industry has built a network to challenge the science of Climate change, which is part of the reason why politicians don’t act on it. 4,556 individuals with ties to 164 different organizations have been included in the industry’s efforts. The investment in climate change denial—at least $9.77 billion from 2003 to 2018—bought the companies a half-century to continue the extraction of fossil fuels and delay the transition to clean energy.
Agnotologists will teach how big data, graphs and figures, and digital communication technologies can be used to challenge scientific research findings. Students will learn how various tools (such as academic experts, public relations firms, and lawyers) and arguments (such as “the problem is too complex” or “there are bigger contributors to the problem”) are used across industries (including by pharmaceutical, tobacco, and fossil fuel companies) and understand how to recognize common patterns of denial. These students may recall how pesticide and herbicide manufacturers have paid public relations firms to create these groups, and what appears to be grassroots might actually be astroturf, as the world’s most popular climate activist is.
Students of agnotology will look at the pros and cons of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that is still in Effect, as well as other examples of government secrecy. They will look into the history of the Evangelical church’s opposition to evolution being taught in schools. They will examine the current use of misinformation including a claim that smoking could prevent Covid-19, as well as the portrayal of cows in a new advertisement by the dairy industry, and how they downplays their contributions to climate change.
In order to save our planet and ourselves, we need to understand what the powerful don’t want us to know.
In the past scientists have been hesitant to voice their opinion in case activism made them feel uncomfortable and could affect their work’s legitimacy. But climate scientists can no longer be impartial observers, he adds.
In response to the protest, the AGU removed the scientists’ abstracts from the meeting programme, expelled them from the meeting and opened cases of professional misconduct against them. The cases are still being worked on. In January, Abramoff was fired from Oak Ridge as a result of the incident. Kalmus still works at JPL, but declined to tell Nature whether officials there had reprimanded him.
Kalmus and Abramoff’s activism against climate change, the IPC, and the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework
The society allows people to reserve spaces for public engagement at all its meetings in the year round and is proactive in addressing the seriousness of climate change.
Kalmus and Abramoff had protested before, demanding action on climate change. Both had even been arrested for civil disobedience. They were taken away after chaining themselves to the fence of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina to protest against emissions from private jets.
According to a 10 January opinion piece that Abramoff wrote for The New York Times, Oak Ridge fired her because, it said, she had misused government resources by engaging in a personal activity on a work trip, and she hadn’t adhered to its code of business ethics and conduct.
This is not a small achievement for what is, at the core, a network of hundreds of researchers who work for free in the early or late hours. They read and summarize thousands of research papers to answer questions such as how much the planet has warmed; what the future projections are for Earth’s climate; what the impacts of warming are; how to mitigate climate change; and how the world can better prepare for a warmer future.
A similar but less well-known IPCC-style network of researchers is the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Established in 2012, its studies helped to underpin the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to stem our destruction of nature and was signed in December last year. There is no advisory research body on a similar scale or with the same impact that the UN Sustainable Development Goals can provide for other great global challenges. And this is not for want of trying. The model is so hard to recreate that it has proved difficult to do.
The seeds for the IPC were sown several decades earlier when researchers became concerned about the effects of putting vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The World Meteorological Organization and the International Council of Scientific Unions co-organized a number of climate research programmes. By the late 1970s, studies were starting to accumulate describing projected warming due to atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Many of these government scientists also had strong links to departments for defence — for which accurate weather forecasting is a must — and, through that, had access to some of the most senior people in government. The first assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change was presented to Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom.
Other scientific networks do not have the same degree of access. Even if they did, such involvement would be more complicated to navigate now than in the 1980s. Government representatives, mostly from oil-rich states, interfered in the scientists’ discussions over time through the book’s authors.