Climate
Poor climate cash flow hampering adaptation: Hasina
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday said global actions for adaptation to climate change have virtually remained ineffective due to the lack of finance and strong political will.
“To address this, developed countries must fulfill their commitment of annual 100-billion-dollar climate finance with 50:50 allocation for adaptation and mitigation,” she said.
The Prime Minister said this while delivering her speech in the Leaders’ Meeting on “Action and Solidarity–The Critical Decade” at the COP26 venue here.
READ: Bangladesh cancelled 10 coal-based power plants for climate’s sake: Hasina
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi convened the event.
Sheikh Hasina said as the President of the CVF and the host to the South Asian office of Global Centre on Adaptation, Bangladesh is promoting locally-led adaptation in different countries of the world. “But global adaptation actions are not being effective due to lack of finance and strong political will.”
Bangladesh cancelled 10 coal-based power plants for climate’s sake: Hasina
Glasgow (Scotland), Nov 1 (UNB) - Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday said Bangladesh has cancelled 10 coal-based power plants involving 12 billion dollars of foreign investment, just to supplement its efforts against the adverse impacts of climate change.
“We’ve cancelled 10 coal-based power plants worth 12 billion dollars of foreign investment,” she said while addressing the 26th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
READ: Electricity for all: Hasina inaugurates five power plants
She also put forward four points to the world leaders to fight climate change.
In the first point, Hasina said, the major emitters must submit ambitious NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions), and implement those.
“Second,” she said, “The developed countries should fulfill their commitments of providing 100 billion dollars annually with a 50:50 balance between adaptation and mitigation.”
Third, the Prime Minister said, the developed countries should disseminate clean and green technology at affordable costs to the most vulnerable countries. “The development needs of the CVF countries also need to be considered.”
In her fourth point, Hasina said the issue of loss and damage must be addressed, including global sharing of responsibility for climate migrants displaced by sea-level rise, salinity increase, river erosion, floods, and draughts.
The Prime Minister said the government has recently submitted an ambitious and updated NDC to UNFCCC. “Bangladesh has one of the world’s most extensive domestic solar energy programs. We hope to have 40 percent of the country’s energy from renewable sources by 2041.”
She said, “We’re going to implement the ‘Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan’- a journey from climate vulnerability to resilience to climate prosperity.”
Hasina said Bangladesh is trying to address the challenge of climate impacts because of 1.1 million forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals or Rohingyas.
READ: Hasina inaugurates five power plants
She said Bangladesh is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries, though it contributes less than 0.47 percent of global emissions.
Hasina mentioned that the government has established the “Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund” in 2009 to address this challenge. “We’ve doubled climate-related expenses in the last seven years. Currently, we’re preparing the National Adaptation Plan.”
As the Chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and V20, Bangladesh is promoting the interests of the 48 climate-vulnerable countries, she said.
“We’re also sharing best practices and adaptation knowledge regionally through the South Asia Office of the Global Center of Adaptation’s Dhaka,” she added.
On behalf of the CVF, Hasina said, Bangladesh is pursuing to establish a Climate Emergency Pact.
G20 make commitments on climate neutrality, coal financing
Leaders of the world’s biggest economies made a compromise commitment Sunday to reach carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century” as they wrapped up a two-day summit that was laying the groundwork for the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
According to the final communique, the Group of 20 leaders also agreed to end public financing for coal-fired power generation abroad, but set no target for phasing out coal domestically — a clear nod to coal-dependent countries including China and India and a blow to Britain which had hoped for more solid commitments ahead of the Glasgow meeting.
The Group of 20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and summit host Italy had been looking for solid targets on how to reduce emissions while helping poor countries deal with the impact of rising temperatures.
Without them, momentum could be lost for the larger annual talks that officially opened Sunday in Glasgow and where countries from around the globe will be represented, including poor ones most vulnerable to rising seas, desertification and other effects.
Italian Premier Mario Draghi told the leaders going into the final working session Sunday that they needed both to set long-term goals and make short-term changes to reach them.
Read: G20 leaders to tackle energy prices, other economic woes
“We must accelerate the phasing-out of coal and invest more in renewable energy,” he said. “We also need to make sure that we use available resources wisely, which means that we should become able to adapt our technologies and also our lifestyles to this new world.”
According to the communique, the G-20 reaffirmed past commitments by rich countries to mobilize $100 billion annually to help poorer countries cope with climate change, and committed to scaling up financing for helping them adapt.
The sticking point remained the deadline to reach carbon neutrality or “net zero” emissions, meaning a balance between greenhouse gases added to and removed from the atmosphere. Going into the summit Italy had all-but conceded it would only be able to secure commitments to reach net-zero emissions “by mid-century,” rather than a specific year.
According to the final communique, the G-20 leaders said they will “accelerate our actions across mitigation, adaptation and finance, acknowledging the key relevance of achieving global net zero greenhouse gas emissions or carbon neutrality by or around mid-century.”
A French official said “mid-century” meant 2050 in the strict sense “but given the diversity of the G-20 countries ... it means everyone agrees to a common goal while providing a bit of flexibility to take into account national diversity.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, the French official cited top carbon polluters China and India, as well as Indonesia.
Some countries have set 2050 as their deadline for net zero emissions, while China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are aiming for 2060.
The future of coal, a key source of greenhouse gas emissions, has been one of the hardest things for the G-20 to agree on.
At the Rome summit, leaders agreed to “put an end to the provision of international public finance for new unabated coal power generation abroad by the end of 2021.”
That refers to financial support for building coal plants abroad, something Western countries have been moving away from and major Asian economies are now doing the same: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the U.N. General Assembly last month that Beijing would stop funding such projects, and Japan and South Korea made similar commitments earlier in the year.
The failure of the G-20 to set a target for phasing out domestic coal use was a blow to Britain, which had hoping there would be progress on the issue at COP26. The spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Max Blain, said the G-20 communique “was never meant to be the main lever in order to secure commitments on climate change,” which would be hammered out at the Glasgow summit.
He said the U.K. would continue to push for “ambitious commitments” on coal.
Youth climate activists Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate issued an open letter to the media as the G-20 was wrapping up, stressing three fundamental aspects of the climate crisis that often are downplayed: that time is running out, that any solution must provide justice to the people most affected by climate change, and that the biggest polluters often hide behind incomplete statistics about their true emissions.
Read: No pathway to reach the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C goal without the G20: UN chief
“The climate crisis is only going to become more urgent. We can still avoid the worst consequences, we can still turn this around. But not if we continue like today,” they wrote, just weeks after Thunberg shamed global leaders for their “blah blah blah” rhetoric during a youth climate summit in Milan.
Britain’s Prince Charles addressed the G-20 Sunday morning and urged leaders to listen to young people who are inheriting the warming Earth, warning that “it is quite literally the last-chance saloon.”
Charles, a longtime environmental activist, said public-private partnerships were the only way to achieve the trillions of dollars in annual investment needed to transition to clean, sustainable energy sources that will mitigate the warming of global temperatures.
“It is impossible not to hear the despairing voices of young people who see you as the stewards of the planet, holding the viability of their future in your hands,” Charles said.
Earth gets hotter, deadlier during decades of climate talks
World leaders have been meeting for 29 years to try to curb global warming, and in that time Earth has become a much hotter and deadlier planet.
Trillions of tons of ice have disappeared over that period, the burning of fossil fuels has spewed billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the air, and hundreds of thousands of people have died from heat and other weather disasters stoked by climate change, statistics show.
When more than 100 world leaders descended on Rio de Janeiro in 1992 for an Earth Summit to discuss global warming and other environmental issues, there was “a huge feeling of well-being, of being able to do something. There was hope really,” said Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, one of the representatives for Native Americans at the summit.
Now, the 91-year-old activist said, that hope has been smothered: “The ice is melting. ... Everything is bad. ... Thirty years of degradation.”
Data analyzed by The Associated Press from government figures and scientific reports shows “how much we did lose Earth,” said former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief William K. Reilly, who headed the American delegation three decades ago.
That Earth Summit set up the process of international climate negotiations that culminated in the 2015 Paris accord and resumes Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland, where leaders will try to ramp up efforts to cut carbon pollution.
Back in 1992, it was clear climate change was a problem “with major implications for lives and livelihoods in the future,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the AP this month. “That future is here and we are out of time.”
Read: ‘Everything is at stake’ as world gathers for climate talks
World leaders have hammered out two agreements to curb climate change. In Kyoto in 1997, a protocol set carbon pollution cuts for developed countries but not poorer nations. That did not go into effect until 2005 because of ratification requirements. In 2015, the Paris agreement made every nation set its own emission goals.
In both cases, the United States, a top-polluting country, helped negotiate the deals but later pulled out of the process when a Republican president took office. The U.S. has since rejoined the Paris agreement.
New air travel, shipping taxes to help climate vulnerables with funds: UN
New taxes on air travel and maritime shipping could raise the billions of dollars needed to help the countries suffering most from climate change, a UN expert said Friday.
"Such levies, based on the well-established polluter-pays principle, could raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually to assist small island developing states (SIDS) and least developed countries (LDCs) recover and rebuild from the damage caused by climate change," said David Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment.
The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis, he said in a message directed at world leaders gathering in the UK's Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) that starts Sunday.
"People living on these small islands and at least developed countries are already suffering devastating losses and damage from climate change – more frequent extreme weather events, floods, droughts, rising sea levels, and saltwater contamination of their water supplies and agricultural lands."
Read: EU lauds Bangladesh’s leadership on climate front
‘Everything is at stake’ as world gathers for climate talks
More than one world leader says humanity’s future, even survival, hangs in the balance when international officials meet in Scotland to try to accelerate efforts to curb climate change. Temperatures, tempers and hyperbole have all ratcheted up ahead of the United Nations summit.
And the risk of failure looms large for all participants at the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP26.
Six years ago, nearly 200 countries agreed to individualized plans to fight global warming in the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement. Now leaders will converge in Glasgow for two weeks starting Sunday to take the next step dictated by that pact: Do more and do it faster.
It’s not easy. Except for a slight drop because of the pandemic, carbon pollution from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is increasing, not falling.
Between now and 2030, the world will spew up to 28 billion metric tons (31 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gases beyond the amount that would keep the planet at or below the most stringent limit set in Paris, the United Nations calculated this week.
“Everything is at stake if the leaders do not take climate action,” young Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said. “We cannot eat coal. We cannot drink oil, and we cannot breathe so-called natural gas.”
Read: Oil giants deny spreading disinformation on climate change
Her words were echoed by a man tasked with steering one of the world’s richest economic blocs through the climate transition.
“We are fighting for the survival of humanity,” European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said. “Climate change and the threatening ecocide are the biggest threats humanity faces.”
Climate change is fueling heat waves, flooding, drought and nastier tropical cyclones. Extreme weather also costs the globe about $320 billion a year in economic losses, according to risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide. And people die.
“The unhealthy choices that are killing our planet are killing our people as well,” said Dr. Maria Neira, director of public health and environment at the World Health Organization.
Humanity and the Earth won’t quite go off a cliff because of global warming, scientists say. But what happens in Glasgow will either steer the world away from the most catastrophic scenarios or send it careening down a dirt road with tight curves and peril at every turn. It’s a situation where degrees, even tenths of a degree, translate into added risk.
“We are still on track for climate catastrophe,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday, even after some countries’ recent emission pledges.
For months, United Nations officials have touted three concrete goals for these negotiations to succeed:
— Countries must promise to reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010.
— Rich countries should contribute $100 billion a year in aid to poor countries.
— Half of that amount must be aimed at adapting to climate change’s worst effects.
World leaders have recently softened those targets a bit, and they say the goals may not quite be finished by mid-November, when negotiations end. U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry told The Associated Press: “There will be a gap” on emission targets.
Under the Paris pact, nations must revisit their previous pledges to curb carbon pollution every five years and then announce plans to cut even more and do it faster. Delayed a year by the pandemic, this year’s meeting is the first to include the required ratcheting up of ambitions.
The hope is that world leaders will cajole each other into doing more, while ensuring that poorer nations struggling to tackle climate change get the financial support they need.
The headline goal set in Paris was to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since then.
Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this month that the 1.5-degree mark “is the threshold for our survival, humanity, our planet Earth.”
Read: The Glasgow Climate Test
But every analysis of current climate-change pledges shows that they are not nearly enough to stop warming at that point but will instead lead to at least another degree or a degree and a half Celsius of warming (about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit).
All five emissions scenarios studied in a massive UN scientific assessment in August suggest that the world will cross that 1.5-degree-Celsius threshold in the 2030s, though several researchers told the AP that it is still technically possible to stay within that limit or at least temporarily go over it and come back down.
Small island nations and other poor, vulnerable communities said in 2015 that 2 degrees would wipe them out, and insisted on the 1.5-degree threshold.
“Our way of life is at stake,” said Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. “Our ability to provide our children with a safe and secure future is at stake. Atoll nations like the Marshall Islands do not have higher ground to retreat to.”
In Glasgow, divisions between nations are big, and trust is a problem, say several United Nations officials and outside analysts.
Rich countries like the United States and European nations developed carbon-belching energy and caused most of the problem historically, but now they ask poor nations to cut or eliminate the use of fossil fuels. In return, they’ve promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries switch to clean energy.
So far, the funding has fallen far short of that amount.
“Failure to fulfill this pledge is a major source of the erosion of trust between developed and developing nations,” Guterres said.
The key to success may lie in the middle, with major emerging economies.
Three days before the meeting starts, China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, submitted a new national target that is only marginally stronger than what was previously proposed.
China is so important that if every other nation cuts back in line with the 45% global emission reduction and China doesn’t, the world’s total will drop only by 30%, according to Claire Fyson, a top analyst at Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists that monitor and analyze emission pledges.
In the end, every country, will be asked to do more in Glasgow, said United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen. But much of the effort, she said, comes back to China and the U.S.
“We need these two powers to put aside whatever else and to show true climate leadership because this is what it will take,” Andersen told the AP.
But realistically, she added, leaders in Glasgow, will take anything “in terms of real, meaningful commitments that are backed by action — action that starts in 2022.”
Extinct dinosaur lectures world leaders about climate change
World leaders at the UN headquarters got a discourse from a talking dinosaur -- an extinct species -- in a creative video launched by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help create awareness about climate change.
The short film, launched as the centerpiece of the UN agency's new ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’ campaign, has also been tweeted by the United Nations.
Bursting into the iconic General Assembly Hall, famous for history-making speeches by leaders from around the world, the imposing dinosaur tells an audience of shocked and bewildered diplomats and dignitaries that “it’s time humans stopped making excuses and started making changes” to address the climate crisis.
“At least we had an asteroid,” the dinosaur warns, referring to the popular theory explaining dinosaurs’ extinction 70 million years ago. “What’s your excuse?”
Read: EU lauds Bangladesh’s leadership on climate front
This first-ever film to be made inside the UN General Assembly using computer-generated imagery (CGI) features global celebrities voicing the dinosaur in numerous languages, including actors Eiza González (Spanish), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish), and Aïssa Maïga (French).
The dinosaur goes on to highlight how financial support for fossil fuels through subsidies -- taxpayers’ money that helps keep the cost of coal, oil and gas low for consumers -- is irrational and illogical in the face of a changing climate.
“Think of all the other things you could do with that money. Around the world people are living in poverty. Don’t you think that helping them would make more sense than… paying for the demise of your entire species?” the dinosaur says.
"The film is fun and engaging, but the issues it speaks to could not be more serious,” said Ulrika Modéer, Head of UNDP’s Bureau for External Relations and Advocacy.
“The UN Secretary-General has called the climate crisis a ‘code red for humanity'. We want the film to entertain, but we also want to raise awareness of just how critical the situation is. The world must step up on climate action if we are to succeed in keeping our planet safe for future generations.”
Read: Australia to keep supporting Bangladesh in combating climate change: Envoy
UNDP’s ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’ campaign and film aim to shine a spotlight on fossil fuel subsidies and how they are cancelling out significant progress towards ending climate change and are driving inequality by benefitting the rich, the agency said in a statement released Thursday.
UNDP research released as part of the campaign shows that the world spends an astounding USD 423 billion annually to subsidise fossil fuels for consumers -- oil, electricity generated by the burning of other fossil fuels, gas, and coal.
This could cover the cost of Covid-19 vaccinations for every person in the world, or pay for three times the annual amount needed to eradicate global extreme poverty.
The ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’ film was created in partnership with Activista Los Angeles (a multiple award-winning creative agency), David Litt (US President Barack Obama’s speechwriter) and Framestore (the creative studio behind James Bond, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers End Game).
India among world's top 10 for climate tech investment: Report
India ranks ninth in the list of top 10 countries for climate technology investment over the past five years and Indian climate tech firms received USD 1 billion in venture capital (VC) funding from 2016 to 2021, according to a new report released in London on Tuesday.
'Five Years On: Global climate tech investment trends since the Paris Agreement', by London & Partners and Dealroom.Co, analysed the trends in the sector since the last United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) in Paris and ahead of the COP26 summit in Glasgow next week.
It found that venture capital investment into climate tech companies globally has skyrocketed since the Paris Agreement, with the US and China leading the global top 10 with USD 48 billion and USD 18.6 billion investment between 2016 and 2021 respectively. The UK comes in at No. 4 with USD 4.3 billion after Sweden at USD 5.8 billion.
"Countries around the world need to work together so that we can collectively change business practices and commit to net zero emissions," said Hemin Bharucha, Country Director India, London & Partners - London's business growth agency.
"The global tech industry plays a pivotal role in accelerating this global transformation and this is demonstrated in the rapid growth of VC investment into global climate tech companies. It is fantastic to see the UK and India among the top 10 countries for climate tech investment globally, with London leading the way in Europe for the number of climate tech companies and dedicated VC funds," he said.
Read: EU lauds Bangladesh’s leadership on climate front
The global top 10 is completed by France at No. 5 (USD 3.7bn), Germany at No. 6 (USD 2.7bn), Canada at No. 7 (USD 1.4bn), the Netherlands at No. 8 (USD 1.3bn) and Singapore tenth (USD 700m), after India.
Overall, global climate tech VC investment soared from USD 6.6 billion in 2016 to USD 32.3 billion in 2021, an increase in funding by almost five times.
According to the report, which analyses technology companies working to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions or addressing the impacts of climate change, 2021 investment levels have already exceeded the whole of 2020 for global climate tech investment, demonstrating the importance of the global tech industry in the fight against climate change.
Europe is found to be the fastest-growing region globally for climate tech, with European VC investment into climate tech firms seven times higher this year than in 2016 (up from USD 1.1 bn to USD 8bn).
In Europe, London is described as one of the world's most advanced ecosystems for climate tech, with its start-ups raising USD 3.3 billion since 2016, accounting for 16 per cent of Europe's total. London is also home to 416 climate tech companies, the biggest cluster in Europe.
"The UK is well on its way to becoming a climate tech powerhouse thanks to its combination of world-leading research, thriving ecosystem and creative entrepreneurs that are using technology to solve the most pressing issue in our lifetime," said Remus Brett, Partner at VC firm LocalGlobe.
Read: COP26 president-designate visited Bangladesh to see climate crisis firsthand
"It's no wonder then that investors across Europe and the world are taking note of the startups and scaleups being created in London and the rest of the country. With sustained investment and the right support, these companies will have the tools they need to successfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight the climate crisis," he said.
Growth in climate tech is being driven by significant investment into transportation and energy solutions, accounting for a combined total of 78 per cent of global climate tech investment in 2021. A similar trend is reflected in London, with 60 per cent of VC investment into climate tech going into energy companies, while enterprise software, circular economy and food start-ups are also attracting an increasing share of investment.
London ranks second globally behind the San Francisco Bay Area for number of funding rounds raised by climate tech start-ups, demonstrating an active early-stage ecosystem in London, according to London & Partners.
The city's promotional agency added that climate tech start-ups in London also have access to deep pools of dedicated climate tech capital, with the city home to 18 dedicated climate tech VC firms, more than anywhere else in Europe.
'COP26 outcomes crucial for climate-vulnerable countries like Bangladesh'
The outcome of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is crucial for climate-vulnerable countries like Bangladesh, said Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).
In less than two weeks, world leaders, government officials, negotiators, and representatives of the private sector and civil society organisations are going to attend the COP26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
CPD and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) jointly organised the virtual dialogue "Bangladesh's Expectations from COP26" Sunday to shed light on the expectations from the Conference.
Dr Fahmida Khatun, executive director of CPD, and Professor Mizanur Rahman Khan, deputy director of ICCCAD, made presentations at the dialogue.
The study pointed out that the least developed countries (LDCs) are the worst victims of climate change vulnerability. Moreover, the ongoing pandemic has put enormous pressure on climate-vulnerable countries.
In Bangladesh, annual average temperatures increased by 0.64 per cent in 2018, which was 10.20 times faster than the annual average temperature increase of 0.06 per cent in 1961.
Due to floods, Bangladesh is expected to incur losses equivalent to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Given these critical consequences, Bangladesh has an active interest in the outcome of COP26.
Five specific agendas are critically important for Bangladesh.
First, ensuring the commitments of major carbon-emitting countries to limit carbon emission; second, scaling up climate funds urgently to support climate-vulnerable countries; third, ensuring the bigger share of climate fund towards adaptation; fourth, finalising the Paris Rulebook to ensure accountability; and fifth, establishing the mechanism for loss and damage.
Read: Hasina’s climate leadership lauded at CVF-COP26 dialogue
Bangladesh can significantly expand renewable energy: COP26 Envoy
COP26 Regional Ambassador Ken O'Flaherty has said it is possible for countries like Bangladesh to significantly expand its renewable energy sector as it has been the cheapest option for new energy in Asian countries.
“It’s clear that over the next decade the cost of renewable energy will continue to fall. So countries which don’t invest in renewable energy risk losing competitive advantage,” he told UNB in an interview at the British High Commissioner’s residence here.
Across the region, the envoy said, he is seeing governments recognize the opportunities offered by renewable energy and said countries like Bangladesh can also look into potential cooperation at regional level on hydropower.
Also read: Bangladesh knows how to address climate change challenges: EU envoy
He thinks the countries which want to grow faster over the next decade will need to be harnessing renewable energy.
Ambassador Ken said there is lot of interest in investing renewable energy and hydropower but what the investors need is a clear signal from the government.