By Hisham Allam
Cairo, Dec 1 2022 – As Europe braces for an unusual winter due to a global energy crisis, Greece is embarking on one of Europe’s most ambitious energy projects by connecting its electricity grid to Egypt’s.

An underwater cable will transport 3,000 MW of electricity to power up to 450,000 households from northern Egypt to Attica in Greece.

In October, the two countries agreed to construct the Mediterranean’s first undersea cable to transport electricity generated by solar and wind energy in North Africa to Europe. The project’s total length is 1373 kilometres.

The Copelouzos Group is in charge of the project, and its executives met with Egyptian leaders in October to speed up the process.

The agreement comes at a time when Greece, Cyprus, and Israel want to invest $900 million in constructing a line connecting Europe and Asia that will be the longest and deepest energy cable across the Mediterranean.

At a ceremony in Athens, Greek Energy Minister Costas Skrickas and his Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Shaker signed a memorandum of understanding on the project.

“This connection benefits Greece, Egypt, and the European Union,” Skrickas said.

He explained that the project would help to build an energy hub in the eastern Mediterranean and improve the region’s energy security.

Besides boosting the share of renewable energy sources in the energy mix and lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector, the project is anticipated to enable the export of renewable energy from Egypt to Greece in periods of high renewable energy generation and vice versa.

According to Dr Ayman Hamza, spokesman for the Ministry of Electricity, the Egyptian-Greek electrical connectivity project has significant technical, economic, environmental, and social benefits. The project aims to establish a robust interconnection network in the Eastern Mediterranean to increase the security and dependability of energy supplies, as well as to assist in the event of transmission network breakdowns, interruptions, and emergencies, and to raise the level of security of electrical supplies.

The project, scheduled to start in 2028, is a significant component of the two nations’ ongoing strategic relations and cooperation. It will speed up the development of the energy corridor by increasing the supply of electricity to Egypt and Greece while balancing energy demand, encouraging responses to the challenges of climate change, and reducing emissions, all of which will contribute to the corridor’s continued growth, Hamza told IPS.

“We have 16 memorandums of understanding related to green hydrogen,” he explained, adding that “there is a great demand from investors to invest in renewable energy, whether the sun or wind.”

“On the margins of the COP27 climate conference, it is expected that extremely major agreements on the level of green hydrogen and others, with great experience, will be signed,” Hamza elaborated.

The possibility of Egypt increasing its reliance on renewable energy, he continued, is made possible by a large number of investors pouring money into solar and wind energy. He stated that Egypt would become a regional renewable energy hub.

Egypt has electrical interconnection lines with Libya and Sudan, and we are collaborating with other African organizations to take significant steps to connect Africa and Europe through electrical interconnection. Because Africa is a major energy source, this will benefit both continents, the spokesperson continued.

According to Dr Farouk Al-Hakim, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Society of Electrical Engineers, Egypt’s export of electricity indicates a surplus, which generates a significant economic return, strengthens Egypt’s political position, and transforms Egypt into a regional energy hub, in addition to the numerous job opportunities created in operation and maintenance.

Al-Hakim told IPS that Egypt has a significant surplus due to the installation of three enormous power stations in the past several years in the administrative capital, Burullus, and Beni Suef, as well as solar plants, including the Benban facility, which is the biggest in Africa and the Middle East.

The electrical connection currently offers many benefits, he continued, particularly given that Europe, like most other nations worldwide, is experiencing an energy crisis due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Therefore, it is a good idea to start with two nations that have shared a history with Egypt, such as Greece and Cyprus, he added.

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By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Dec 1 2022 – Illegal immigration has evolved into a mounting crisis for a growing number of countries worldwide and governments appear to be at a loss on how to deal with the crisis.

Migrant destination countries are facing record high numbers of unlawful border crossings and unauthorized arrivals at their shores, thousands of visa overstayers, and millions of men, women and children residing unlawfully within their countries.

In many of those countries illegal migration is viewed as a threat to national sovereignty. It is seen as undermining cultural integrity. Illegal migration is also creating financial drains on public funds.

Some officials as well as much of the public in those countries have described the continuing illegal immigration to their borders and shores as an “invasion”, a “battle situation” and a “security threat”. And some have called on their governments to “send’em straight back”.

In addition, illegal immigration is also undermining the rule of law, threatening regional cooperation, challenging law enforcement agencies, eroding public support for legal migration, altering political equilibrium and adding to nativism and xenophobia. In addition, the public’s concerns about immigration are reflected in the growing influence of far-right political parties in such countries as Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Sweden and the United States.

Multinational migrant-smuggling networks are also contributing to the mounting illegal immigration crisis as well as generating substantial profits for criminal organizations. Those networks exploit migrants seeking to leave their countries, offering various services, including transportation, accommodations and critical information.

Government programs and plans to counter migrant smuggling networks have achieved limited success. Also, international attempts to address illegal immigration, such as the Global Compact on International Migration of 2018, have not diminished illegal immigration nor the activities of smuggling networks.

A major factor behind the rise of illegal immigration is the large and growing supply of men, women and children in sending countries who want to migrate to another country and by any means possible, including illegal immigration. The number of people in the world wanting to migrate to another country is estimated at nearly 1.2 billion.

The billion plus people wanting to migrate represents about 15 percent of the world’s population. That number of people wanting to migrate is also more than four times the size of the estimated total number immigrants worldwide in 2020, which was 281 million (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations and Gallup Polls.

The country with the largest number of immigrants is the United States with almost 48 million foreign-born residents in 2022, or approximately 14 percent of its population. About one quarter of those immigrants, or approximately 11.4 million, are estimated to be illegal immigrants.

While an estimate of the total number of immigrants in the world is readily available, the number of illegal immigrants is a very different matter with few reliable estimates available on a global scale.

Nearly two decades ago it was estimated that perhaps 20 percent of the immigrants were unauthorized migrants. Applying that proportion to the current total number of immigrants of 281 million yields an estimate of about 56 million unauthorized migrants. If the U.S. proportion of illegal immigrants is applied to the total global immigrant population, the resulting estimated number of illegal immigrants in the world is approximately 70 million.

The public’s concerns about immigration are reflected in the growing influence of far-right political parties in such countries as Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Sweden and the United States

The widely recognized human rights regarding international migration are relatively straightforward. Articles 13 and 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights respectively state, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”, and “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”.

Importantly, however, everyone does not have the right to enter nor remain in another country. The unlawful entry into a country and overstaying a temporary visit are clearly not recognized human rights. Moreover, to be granted asylum, an individual needs to meet the internationally recognized definition of a refugee.

According to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, a refugee is a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Difficult living conditions, such as unemployment, poverty, inadequate housing, lack of health care, marital discord and political unrest, do not qualify an individual for the internationally recognized refugee status nor to a legitimate claim for asylum.

Nevertheless, in the absence of a right to migrate to another country, people wanting to do so are increasingly turning to illegal immigration. And upon arriving at the destination country, many are claiming the right to seek asylum.

Once inside the country, the legal determination of an asylum claim often takes years, permitting claimants time to establish households, find employment and integrate into accepting communities, such as sanctuary cities. Also, many of the unauthorized migrants believe, based on the experiences of millions before them, that government authorities will not repatriate them even if their asylum claim is rejected, which is typically the case.

The mounting illegal immigration crisis is complicated by 103 million people who are estimated to have been forcibly displaced worldwide by mid-2022. That number is a record high for forcibly displaced people and is expected to grow in the coming years.

Approximately 50 percent of those forcibly displaced were displaced internally and 5 percent were people in need of international protection. In addition, the number of refugees has reached a record high of nearly 33 million worldwide and the estimate for asylum seekers is close to 5 million (Figure 2).

Source: UNHCR.

The worldwide numbers of forcibly displaced people, internally displaced people and refugees have increased substantially since the start of the 21st century. For example, over the past two decades the numbers of displaced people increased from 38 million to nearly 86 million (Figure 3).

Source: UNHCR.

Many of those people have been displaced by weather-related events. UNHCR estimates that an annual average of nearly 22 million people have been forcibly displaced by events related to weather, such as wildfires, floods, and extreme heat temperatures.

Moreover, the numbers of displaced people are expected to increase substantially over the coming decades. Some estimate that by midcentury more than one billion people, largely from less developed countries, could be displaced due to climate and environmental changes and civil unrest.

By third decade of the 21st century, the following major trends contributing to the mounting global illegal migration crisis have become abundantly clear:

1. Powerful forces worldwide are fueling illegal immigration, including demographics, poverty, smuggling networks, civil unrest and increasingly climate change, which is creating “climate refugees”.
2. Those potent forces are resulting in large and increasing numbers of men, women and even unaccompanied children arriving at borders and landing on shores of destination countries without authorization.
3. Unauthorized migrants, as well as visa overstayers, seek to settle in those destination countries by any means available and are not prepared to return to their countries of origin.
4. Most of the large and growing numbers of unauthorized migrants now residing unlawfully within countries are not likely to be repatriated.

Finally, it is also clear that neither governments nor international agencies have yet been able to come up with effective policies and programs to address the mounting global illegal immigration crisis.

Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”

By Robert Sandford
HAMILTON, Canada, Dec 1 2022 – Last year’s climate COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, was billed as the most important conference in the history of humanity. But it failed to deliver. If anything, that failure added urgency for global climate action at COP 27 in Egypt last month.

Now that it this year’s COP is over, it is useful to reflect on a few excerpts from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s opening day remarks:

• “These climate conferences remind us that the answer is in our hands and the clock is ticking.”
• “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing.”
• “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising…and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.”
• “We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return. And to avoid that dire fate all countries must accelerate their transition now, in this decade.”
• “Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish.”
• “It is either a climate solidarity pact, or it is a collective suicide pact.”

Credit: UN Photo/Albert González Farran

Sadly, COP27’s outcomes make very clear that the world signed on to the one the global fossil fuel sector wanted: the suicide pact.

COP 27 did not deliver. In fact, it has been labelled by many as the worst COP ever.

What happened in Egypt puts a whole new spin on the term COP-out. But how could it have been otherwise?

COP 27 was held in a country aligned with surrounding petrostates ruled by a ruthless dictatorship and was sponsored by one of the world’s largest plastic polluters: Coca-Cola.

It did not seem to register with organizers that the company’s relentless bottled water production is widely held in the global water science and policy community as a triumph of marketing over common sense.

Did the organizers not see that Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of COP 27 was an open invitation to blatant global greenwashing?

The obvious should not be missed here: Capitalism is not out of control, capitalism is in control – and COP 27 offers clear proof of that truth.

As society’s reliance on petroleum grew and our energy demands expanded, the global fossil fuel cartel quietly evolved into a superpower unto itself. There were more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP 27. What, one might reasonably ask, could possibly go wrong? Lots, evidently.

The oil and gas lobby completely corrupted the COP process. The proceedings and outcomes of COP 27 make it clear that the fossil fuel sector now owns the COP agenda. The sole aim of their presence there was to prevent, not promote, progress on dealing with the global climate threat. And they succeeded.

None of the agreements negotiated in Egypt are binding. Like the national emissions reductions target put forward by UN Member States under the Paris Climate Accord, the commitments made at COP 27 are all merely aspirational.

There is no penalty for failing to achieve them. There have been 27 COPs since 1995 and still no formal binding agreement on cutting fossil fuel burning.

Except for a small blip during the pandemic, fossil fuel burning globally continues to rise, not fall.

As one participant pointed out, the aspirational scheme agreed upon in Sharm el Sheikh is a down payment on disaster. No one expects anyone to actually compensate developing countries that contribute little to the climate threat for the catastrophic impacts climate breakdown is now having on them.

With COP 28 scheduled to be held next year in the United Arab Emirates – one of the most notorious petrostates of them all – the only thing COP 27 accomplished was to expose what the COP summit process has become – a pointless travelling circus set up once a year out of which little but platitudes emerge.

The entire COP process is no longer fit for purpose. It is a bloated, corrupted process too moribund to come up with any measures effective enough, and binding enough, to bring about the changes we need to make to avoid climate catastrophe.

Voices calling for change get louder and louder. The COP process must be replaced with something more efficient that does its work largely hidden from the glare of the media.

It can no longer be allowed to be contaminated by corporate sponsorship. The process can no longer be allowed to be owned and corrupted by the global fossil fuel cartel and oil and gas sector lobbyists.

One suggested way of doing this is to establish an IPCC-like structure of smaller bodies, each addressing key issues, notably energy transition, restorative agriculture, transportation and issues related to damage and loss.

Each such body would be made up of representatives of majority-world countries empowered to negotiate legally binding agreements that are workable and achievable, whether it be halting and reversing deforestation, cutting carbon dioxide and methane emissions, drawing down coal use and addressing other threats to our future such as ocean acidification and deoxygenation.

These agreements can then be signed off by world leaders without the need for the hype, grandstanding and false hope now associated with COP process pronouncements.

We are witnessing a great bonfire of our heritage. Things are being lost that have not yet been found. We need to find them before they, and we, are gone.

Robert Sandford holds the Global Water Futures Chair in Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

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By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 1 2022 – Drought is one of the ‘most destructive’ natural disasters in terms of the loss of life, arising from impacts, such as wide-scale crop failure, wildfires and water stress.

In other words, droughts are one of the “most feared natural phenomena in the world;” they devastate farmland, destroy livelihoods and cause untold suffering, as reported by the world’s top specialised bodies: the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

They occur when an area experiences a shortage of water supply due to a lack of rainfall or lack of surface or groundwater. And they can last for weeks, months or years.

Exacerbated by land degradation and climate change, droughts are increasing in frequency and severity, up 29% since 2000, with 55 million people affected every year.

The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives,

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General

By 2050, droughts may affect an estimated three-quarters of the world’s population. This means that agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050.

This means that about 71% of the world’s irrigated area and 47% of major cities are to experience at least periodic water shortages. If this trend continues, the scarcity and associated water quality problems will lead to competition and conflicts among water users, adds the Convention.

Most of the world already impacted

The alert is loud and strong and it comes from a number of the world’s most knowledgeable organisations.

To begin with, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 29 November 2022 reported that most of the globe was drier than normal in 2021, with “cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and our daily lives.”

Water

Between 2001 and 2018, UN-Water reported that a staggering 74% of all-natural disasters were water-related.

Currently, over 3.6 billion people have inadequate access to water at least one month per year and this is expected to increase to more than five billion by 2050.

Moreover, areas that were unusually dry included South America’s Rio de la Plata area, where a persistent drought has affected the region since 2019, according to WMO’s The State of Global Water Resources report.

Drying rivers, lakes

In Africa, major rivers such as the Niger, Volta, Nile and Congo had below-average water flow in 2021.

The same trend was observed in rivers in parts of Russia, West Siberia and in Central Asia.

On the other hand, there were above-normal river volumes in some North American basins, the North Amazon and South Africa, as well as in China’s Amur river basin, and northern India.

Cascading effects

The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“Changes to Cryosphere water resources affect food security, human health, ecosystem integrity and maintenance, and lead to significant impacts on economic and social development”, said WMO, sometimes causing river flooding and flash floods due to glacier lake outbursts.

The cryosphere – namely glaciers, snow cover, ice caps and, where present, permafrost – is the world’s biggest natural reservoir of freshwater.

Soils

Being water –or rather the lack of it– a major cause-effect of the fast-growing deterioration of natural resources, and the consequent damage to the world’s food production, the theme of World Soil Day 2022, marked 5 December, is “Soils: Where food begins.”

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):

• 95% of our food comes from soils.
• 18 naturally occurring chemical elements are essential to plants. Soils supply 15.
• Agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050.
• 33% of soils are degraded.

Dangerously poisoned

In addition to the life of humans, animals, and plants, one of the sectors that most depend on water–crops is now highly endangered.

Indeed, since the 1950s, reminds the United Nations, innovations like synthetic fertilisers, chemical pesticides and high-yield cereals have helped humanity dramatically increase the amount of food it grows.

“But those inventions would be moot without agriculture’s most precious commodity: fresh water. And it, say researchers, is now under threat.”

Moreover, pollution, climate change and over-abstraction are beginning to compromise the lakes, rivers, and aquifers that underpin farming globally, reports the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Salinised and plastified

Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world’s soils.

In fact, currently, it is estimated that there are more than 833 million hectares of salt-affected soils around the globe (8.7% of the planet). This implies the loss of soil’s capacity to grow food and also increasing impacts on water and the ability to filter pollution.

Soil salinisation and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystems and are recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions, said the UN on occasion of the 2021 World Soil Day.

Wastewater

Among the major causes that this international body highlights is that in some arid areas, there has been an increase in the amount of wastewater used to grow crops.

“The problem can be exacerbated by flooding, which can inundate sewage systems or stores of fertiliser, polluting both surface water and groundwater.” Fertiliser run-off can cause algal blooms in lakes.

Meanwhile, the amount of freshwater per capita has fallen by 20% over the last two decades and nearly 60% of irrigated cropland is water-stressed.

The implications of those shortages are far-reaching: irrigated agriculture contributes 40% of total food produced worldwide.

Soils are highly living organisms

“Did you know that there are more living organisms in a tablespoon of soil than people on Earth?”

Soil is a world made up of organisms, minerals, and organic components that provide food for humans and animals through plant growth, explains this year’s World Soils Day.

Agricultural systems lose nutrients with each harvest, and if soils are not managed sustainably, fertility is progressively lost, and soils will produce nutrient-deficient plants.

Soil nutrient loss is a major soil degradation process threatening nutrition. It is recognised as being among the most critical problems at a global level for food security and sustainability all around the globe.

‘Hidden’ hunger

Over the last 70 years, the level of vitamins and nutrients in food has drastically decreased, and it is estimated that 2 billion people worldwide suffer from a lack of micronutrients, known as hidden hunger because it is difficult to detect.

“Soil degradation induces some soils to be nutrient depleted, losing their capacity to support crops, while others have such a high nutrient concentration that represents a toxic environment to plants and animals, pollutes the environment and causes climate change.”