By External Source
Jun 28 2024 (IPS-Partners)

 
In Zambia, over 6.5 million people need humanitarian assistance because of the drought. 3.5 million of them are children.

The impacts of El Niño and climate change have been devastating for children.

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By Mary Church
BONN, Germany, Jun 28 2024 – Despite the evident and increasing urgency of the climate crisis, the June intersessional meeting of the UNFCCC closed with little to show for two full weeks of negotiation.

With COP29 being cited as ‘the Finance COP’, much of the focus across various agenda items was on ever contested questions of who owes what to whom. Crucially, the meeting was supposed to advance negotiations on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance for the post 2025 period, due to be agreed in Baku.

However, despite ‘quantified’ being in the very name of the goal, developed countries refused to be drawn on the critical matter of how much is owed and needed.

The 2020 goal of $100bn per year (stretched to 2025) remains unfilled, with the vast majority of what the Global North claims to have contributed in the form of loans, or money redirected from other overseas budgets.

Likewise, despite the long fought battle which secured a new loss and damage finance mechanism at COP27, that pot too remains as good as empty, with current pledges equating to less than 0.2% of the climate change related losses faced by Global South countries each year.

Climate finance is key. Intimately related to the core UNFCCC principles of equity and Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR), it is central to unlocking the stalemate that has plagued negotiations since they began.

But instead of concrete finance commitments and delivery, carbon markets are increasingly being spun as climate finance, with some increasingly desperate nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis grasping wishfully at the idea that a 5% share of proceeds from markets under the Paris Agreement will plug the longstanding gap on adaptation funding, and others preparing to sell off their rich ecosystems as some form or other of carbon credits.

As the practical limitations, to say nothing of the social and environmental harms, of novel land based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) schemes are increasingly exposed at a scale to impact the climate, Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), one of the most widely touted CDR technologies, would require twice the entire global land area currently under cultivation, oceans are being sized up as the next frontier for such exploitation.

Oceans cover over 70% of the Earth’s surface, and are already our greatest ally in the fight against climate change. Alarmingly, however, highly speculative and risky theories about engineering them at will to sequester and store ever more carbon are increasingly being incorporated into the climate policy landscape.

We see this in the opaque language that invites parties to scale up ‘ocean-based mitigation action’ that found its way into the Global Stocktake decision text last year in Dubai, and more clearly in the explicit inclusion of dangerous ocean CDR methods in the ongoing wrangling over Article 6 guidelines, which in various iterations identify ocean fertilisation, ocean alkalinity enhancement and algae cultivation / biomass sinking for potential inclusion.

And concerningly, we also saw it in this year’s Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue held in Bonn. Pitched as a “[recognition of] the need to strengthen the understanding of, and action on, ocean and climate change”, the Dialogue, now in its 4th year, saw a push for research and development of marine CDR under its theme on ‘Technology Needs for Ocean Climate Action, including Finance Links’.

The problem for those who would financialise and plunder the oceans under the guise of climate mitigation is that there are of course other UN Conventions of equal importance to the UNFCCC that have for good reason imposed restrictive regulations on these activities.

The Convention on Biological Diversity has had a de facto moratorium in place on all geoengineering since 2010, while the London Convention / London Protocol, which regulates pollution at sea, has made clear its intention to add potentially a further four categories of marine geoengineering to its 2008 prohibition on ocean fertilisation.

Crucially, a commercial factor is a key element under both regimes in restricting outdoor experiments – which of course is inherent in any ocean-based CDR envisaged under carbon markets, voluntary or otherwise.

The fact is, however, that none of the marine geoengineering approaches increasingly referred to as CDR do anything to tackle the root causes of climate change, and none have been able to demonstrate that they can effectively capture or store carbon with any permanence.

They are an extremely dangerous distraction from the real action we know is needed to rapidly bring down greenhouse gasses, starting with an urgent and just phase out of fossil fuels. Furthermore they are likely to cause great harm to the delicate equilibrium of the oceans – already severely stressed by over-exploitation, pollution and global heating – with potentially grave consequences for ocean biodiversity, food chains, fisheries, and even the oceans’ natural capacity to sequester carbon.

At least 40 open-water marine geoengineering experiments are currently underway or in planning, across a variety of theories and technologies, many of which have a clear commercial element and are likely in violation of international agreements. Some of these are already running into very practical challenges, such as the postponement of Planetary Technologies’ planned ocean alkalinity enhancement trial in Cornwall, where community resistance led to an independent assessment which exposed serious flaws in the plan, while biomass cultivation and sinking start-up Running Tide announced the closure of its fairly advanced operations only this last week, citing lack of demand for carbon credits from the voluntary market.

Ultimately however, as a broad spectrum of civil society organisations made clear in several interventions at the Ocean and Climate Dialogue, and in a statement endorsed by over 100 organisations as of last month, Paris Agreement carbon markets, which are so very clearly legitimising these highly speculative and risky approaches, cannot ignore international agreements restricting them and must uphold the precautionary principle.

As we head to COP29 in Baku and as IPCC kicks off its work on the 7th Assessment Cycle later this year, the voices of civil society across the globe, Indigenous Peoples, coastal communities and fisherfolk must be heard as they reiterate the risk of undermining the vital role oceans play in sustaining life on earth. It is unquestionably clear that our oceans cannot be for sale.

Mary Church is Geoengineering Campaign Manager, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and member of Hands-Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Andrew Lichterman, Alyn Ware and Yosuke Watanabe
OAKLAND, California / PRAGUE, Czech Republic / YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 28 2024 – Our three organizations– Western States Legal Foundation, Peace Depot, and Basel Peace Office– all dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons, have consistently expressed our concern about the risk of nuclear war escalating during armed conflicts and times of high tension, when nuclear-armed states often make veiled or even explicit threats to use nuclear weapons and prepare for such use.

This has happened, for example, with the governments of India and Pakistan trading nuclear threats during their 2001 stand-off, the U.S. government making veiled nuclear threats against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the U.S. and North Korean leaders threatening to strike each other with nuclear weapons in 2017.

We speak out now against the series of coercive nuclear threats that have been made by the Russian government since 2022 in conjunction with its invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Ukrainian territory.

From the start of the full-scale invasion and war in 2022, the government of the Russian Federation has made a series of threats to use nuclear weapons against countries that provide Ukraine with weapons and other military assistance.

Russian officials also have claimed the right to use nuclear weapons to defend territories they have occupied and illegally annexed in the course of the war. These threats have been accompanied by such posturing as the announced deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus and the highlighting of exercises of Russian nuclear forces in a military district on Ukraine’s borders.

These threats make clear once more a key role of the nuclear weapons possessed by the world’s most powerful states: to make it easier for their governments to pursue aggressive wars and to coerce countries to accept this aggression by exponentially increasing the danger to all who might oppose them.

In 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal, but did not reach a conclusion, one way or the other, regarding an extreme circumstance of self-defense when the very survival of a state is at stake.

This approach was controversial at the time in the international legal community, with considerable opinion that the threat or use of nuclear arms is illegal in all circumstances. That view has only strengthened in the nearly three decades since then.

Among other developments, the UN Human Rights Committee found in 2018 that threat or use of nuclear weapons is contrary to the human right to life; the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons declared in its preamble that use of nuclear weapons is contrary to international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the conduct of warfare; and a 2011 International Red Cross and Red Cross Movement resolution stated that it is “difficult to envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with” IHL.

Regardless of one’s view of the current state of the law, the population of the Russian Federation faces no threat to its “very survival”. Their government could end its war on Ukraine tomorrow and the Russian Federation would remain a large and powerful state with an immense resource and industrial base, its internationally recognized borders intact.

There is no rationale for the brandishing of nuclear weapons by the government of the Russian Federation other than to leverage their terrible destructive power to advance its war of aggression and conquest in Ukraine.

In January 2022, less than two months before the government of the Russian Federation launched its invasion, that government, together with those of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and China issued a statement affirming that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Then in November 2022, at the G20 Summit in Bali, and again at the September 2023 G20 Summit in Delhi, the leaders and/or foreign ministers of China, France, India, Russia, UK, and USA declared that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.” Yet, the nuclear threats continue.

Amidst a war already involving extensive air bombardment and missile warfare, together with the use of new kinds of electronic warfare that intensifies the fog of war, a nuclear crisis would pose extraordinary dangers. No one should have any illusions that such a crisis could be easily controlled.

The government of the Russian Federation should cease its threats of nuclear use, and issue assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, and NATO should issue such assurances as well.

Andrew Lichterman is Senior Research Analyst, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, USA; Alyn Ware is Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Director, Basel Peace Office, Prague, Czech Republic; Yosuke Watanabe is Research Fellow, Peace Depot, Japan Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Yokohama, Japan.

The Western States Legal Foundation, based in Oakland, California, seeks to abolish nuclear weapons as an essential step in making possible a more secure, just, and environmentally sustainable world; Peace Depot is a non-profit, independent think tank based in Yokohama, Japan. It supports civil society’s peace movements, particularly in the area of nuclear disarmament and military base issues; Basel Peace Office is a coalition of four Swiss organizations and three international organizations advancing effective policies and proposals to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world.

IPS UN Bureau

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Smelling the toxic smoke coming from burned powder kegs and helplessly watching fields turn into smoke and ash is traumatic. Rushing to the government’s safe houses and leaving your homes, belongings and cattle behind whenever the armies of India and Pakistan trade fire is inexplicable. Then came climate-change-induced weather unpredictability.  But the inhabitants of this […]

By Kris Janssens
PHNOM PENH, Jun 28 2024 – Modernity is arriving rapidly in Cambodia, observes journalist Kris Janssens (48), who has lived and worked in the country since 2016. The predominantly young population is eager to move forward, embracing technology over traditional agriculture or fishing. Can Cambodians unite their country’s authentic soul with their aspirations for progress?

Enormous changes throughout the years

I arrived in Cambodia in the winter of 2015, on January 7 to be precise. At the time, I was unaware of the significance of this date in Cambodian history, marking the official end of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. To be honest, I knew very little about Cambodia.

Today, half of the Cambodians are under 25 years old. This is the first generation of twenty-year-olds to grow up without war or violence. These youngsters want to move forward with their lives. And that usually means moving away from the countryside

I planned to stay here briefly before returning to India, where I had just finished a series of radio reports. The unique Cambodian spirit changed my decision and my life course. This country immediately felt so familiar to me that I decided to move here permanently, about eighteen months later, in the fall of 2016. I’m still very happy that I can live in this magical kingdom.

But throughout the years, Cambodia has changed enormously. In the capital city of Phnom Penh, small shops and cozy coffee bars make way for tall bank buildings. And the picturesque airport will soon be replaced by a huge terminal, further away from the city center, and out of proportion compared to the human-scaled city that I love so much.

I have the feeling that the country is losing a part of its soul, and I want to try to capture and document this authentic spirit before it is too late.

Very young population

The fact that Cambodia is at a tipping point is primarily due to demography and history. More than one and a half million Cambodians died during the brutal Khmer Rouge era in the 1970s. The Pol Pot era was followed by a power vacuum and it took until the 1990s before peace and stability could return.

Today, half of the Cambodians are under 25 years old. This is the first generation of twenty-year-olds to grow up without war or violence. These youngsters want to move forward with their lives. And that usually means moving away from the countryside. The population of Phnom Penh has increased from 1.7 to 2.4 million people in the past ten years.

According to demographic forecasts, Phnom Penh will have more than 3 million inhabitants by 2035. More and more young Cambodians want to study in the city and switch from agriculture or fishing to technology or tourism.

Harsh economic reality

This shift is clearly visible in Kampong Khleang, a stilt village on the shore of the great Tonle Sap Lake, close to Siem Reap and the famous temples of Angkor Wat. Early in the morning, a rickety canoe takes me out to the open water, heading towards the rising sun. But what appears idyllic to me represents a harsh economic reality for the fishermen here. The catch is meager, and life is difficult.

“My son is going to work in the city, away from the water,” says Borei. It is the end of a tradition because his ancestors have lived as fishermen for generations. “But living along the water has become difficult, there are too many fishermen.” His shy ten-year-old son gazes ahead quietly. I ask him where he would like to work. After some hesitation, he responds “with the police”.

“That is a typical answer,” says Chhay Doeb. He is the Executive director of Cambodia Rural Students Trust, an NGO that provides scholarships to students from impoverished rural families.

“When young people arrive in the city, they want to become police officers, soldiers, doctors or teachers,” he says. “But they gradually discover that they can also work in the real estate sector or as a lawyer, for example.”

Noticeable distrust among parents

Doeb believes that the Cambodian economy will evolve and diversify even further. “But the economic level of neighboring countries like Thailand or Vietnam is not yet within reach,” he says.

At its founding in 2011, the organization had to go to villages and convince students of the NGO’s good intentions. Today, there are almost a thousand applications for twenty new places every year. The money for the scholarships comes from Australia.

Doeb still notices distrust among parents, wondering what their offspring is doing in the city.

I also experience this suspicion in Kratie, a small town on the bank of the Mekong River in the rural interior of Cambodia. The typical rural villagers look like characters sculpted from clay, with heads weathered by the sun and bodies wrinkled from hard work.

I meet Proum Veasna, who is about to take his cows back to the stable at dusk. During our conversation, his close neighbor passes by on his moped. He teasingly squeezes Veasna’s bare stomach. “We are friends, we all know each other here,” he says. His son works as a construction worker in Phnom Penh, but he has never been there himself. “It’s polluted, I would immediately get sick.”

Veasna has always worked as a farmer. “I had no choice because I have no education.” He wants a different future for his four children. “My daughter is learning English and Chinese.” The girl cycles by as we talk about her. “She can grow up to be whatever she wants, she is so smart,” says the proud dad.

Boosting economy

Upstream the Mekong River, in the neighboring province of Stung Treng, I meet Teap Chueng and Kom Leang, a retired couple living in a lonely house in a vast wooded landscape. “Covid never happened here”, they tell me with a big smile, “because we are never in touch with city dwellers”.

They do not need to go to the nearby town, as they are completely self-sufficient. “We have four hectares of land”, says Teap Chueng, while his wife proudly shows home-grown winter melon, a mild-tasting fruit related to the cucumber.

The region is also known for cashew nuts. “As we speak, new factories are being built, so the farmers will be able to scale up the production”. Although they realize that industrialization will change the landscape of their beloved home, the couple can’t wait for this development to happen. “It will boost our economy, which will benefit our children and grandchildren”.

A country with a lot of energy

Seayeen Aum is a typical example of someone who managed to work his way up. As a child, he learned how to survive in nature. “We didn’t always have enough money”, he says. “But if you know and understand the forest, you will always find something to eat.”

Today he promotes ecotourism in the remote province of Ratanakiri, in Cambodia’s northeast. And with success. During our trek through the jungle, he constantly receives calls and orders on one of his two mobile phones. “We are a country with a lot of energy,” he says, laughing.

This entrepreneur succeeded in marketing this region, with traditional ethnic minority groups, in a respectful manner to a Western audience. Authenticity and progress do go hand in hand here for the time being.

This is a country with a lot of challenges, providing all these graduating students with satisfying employment, to say the least. The drive for stability is important to Cambodians, but I also see ambitious people like Seayeen, who have a plan and are progressively working towards the result. In another five to eight years from now, this country will look completely different.