Action continues to fall far short of pledges, even as temperature and greenhouse gas records are repeatedly broken

Catherine Early

( China Dialogue ) – Countries must make far greater efforts to implement their climate strategies this decade to stand a chance of keeping global temperature rise within 1.5C (2.7F) of the pre-industrial average.

Continued delays will only increase the world’s reliance on uncertain carbon dioxide removal technologies (CDR), according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

In the most recent annual assessment of progress on global climate action, the Emissions Gap Report 2023, UNEP pointed to progress since the Paris Agreement. When it was adopted in 2015, greenhouse gas emissions were projected to rise 16% by 2030. Today, that increase is projected to be 3%.

But from now emissions must fall 28% by 2030 to keep temperature rise to 3.6F (2C), or 42% to stay within 2.7F (1.5C), and countries are failing to match this need with action, UNEP found.

Photo by Andreas Felske on Unsplash

Current climate policies will result in a rise of 3C this century. The increase will be limited to 5.2F (2.9C) if countries fully implement their national climate plans (known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs).

This could be kept to 4.5F (2.5C) if plans by developing countries, which are currently conditional on obtaining financial support, are carried out – since that would result in a 9% fall in emissions.  

In UNEP’s most optimistic scenario, where all conditional NDCs and net zero pledges are met, limiting temperature rise to 3.6F (2C) could be achieved, UNEP says. This scenario is considered to give at best a 14% chance of limiting warming to 2.7F (1.5C).

Now, 97 countries have pledged to meet net zero emissions, up from 88 last year. Pledges cover 81% of the world’s greenhouse gases (GHGs). However, the authors do not consider these pledges to be credible, pointing out that none of the G20 countries are reducing emissions at a pace consistent with their net-zero targets.

National net zero plans have several flaws, according to Anne Olhoff, chief scientific editor of the report. Many are not legally binding, or fail to have clear implementation plans, and there is a lack of targets between now and the dates when governments claim to be aiming for net zero, she says.

“But most importantly, emissions are still going up in countries that have put forward zero emission pledges. There are many ways to net zero, but at some point you need to peak and reduce. And the longer you wait until you peak, the more difficult it’s likely to be to actually get to net zero,” she says.

Under the Paris Agreement, ambition in the NDCs is designed to be ramped up over time. At COP28, which begins in Dubai at the end of November, countries will debate how to build new ambition under the first Global Stocktake. This will inform the next round of NDCs that countries should submit in 2025, which will have targets for 2035.

Countries should focus on implementing existing policies this decade, rather than pledging higher targets for 2030, says Olhoff.

“Whether or not the ambition of the 2030 targets is raised or not is less important than achieving those targets. If countries find that they can also strengthen ambition for 2030, that’s an added benefit,” she says.

The more action taken this decade, the more ambitious countries can be in their new targets for 2035, and the easier it will be to achieve those targets, she points out.

The report states that high-income and high-emitting countries among the G20 should take the most ambitious and rapid action, and provide financial and technical support to developing nations.

However, it adds that low- and middle-income countries already account for more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions. Development needs in these countries need to be met with economic growth that produces low emissions, such as by reducing energy demand and prioritising clean energy, it says.

“This is an extremely large and diverse group of countries, and the opportunities for low-emissions growth depend a lot on national circumstances,” Ohloff says. Proposed reforms to international finance through multilateral development banks should improve access to finance and the ability of developing countries to attract investment. Borrowing often costs a lot more in these countries than in developed ones, she says. 

But some countries who suffer from corruption need to “get their own house in order” and improve governance to avoid this, she adds.

The role of carbon removal

The report points out that the world will also need to use carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which the authors see as having a role on three timescales.

It can already contribute to lowering net emissions, today.

In the medium term, it can contribute to tackling residual emissions from so-called hard-to-abate sectors, such as aviation and heavy industry.

And in the longer term, CDR could potentially be deployed at a large enough scale to bring about a decline in the global mean temperature. They stress that its use should be in addition to rapid decarbonisation of industry, transport, heat and power systems.

CDR refers to the direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and its durable storage in geological, terrestrial or ocean reservoirs, or in products. It is different to carbon capture and storage (CSS), which captures CO2 from emissions at their sources, such as a power station, and transfers it into permanent storage. While some CCS methods share features with CDR, they can never result in CO2 removal from the atmosphere.

Some CDR is already being deployed, mainly through reforestation, afforestation and forest management. However, this is very small scale, with removals estimated at 2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) annually. Research and development into more novel technologies is increasing, with methods including sequestering carbon in soil; enhanced weathering, which speeds up the natural weathering of rocks to store CO2; and direct air capture and storage (DACC), where CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere.

There are multiple risks associated with scaling up CDR. These include competition with land for food, protection of tenure and rights, as well as public perception. In addition, the technical, economic and political requirements for large-scale deployment may not materialise in time, UNEP says. Some methods are very expensive, particularly DACC, which UNEP estimates at US$800 per tonne of CO2 removed.

Governments have tended not to specify the extent to which they plan to use CDR to achieve their emission-reduction targets, nor the residual emissions they plan to allow annually when achieving net-zero CO2 and greenhouse gas emission targets, UNEP found. Estimates of the implied levels of land-based removals in long-term strategies and net-zero pledges are 2.1-2.9 GtCO2 of removals per year by 2050, though this is based on an incomplete sample of 53 countries, the report notes.

Politicians need to coordinate the development of CDR, the report states. Dr Oliver Geden, lead author of the chapter on CDR, explains that governments need to clarify their role in national and global climate policy, and develop standards for measuring, reporting and verifying emissions reductions that can eventually be included in national GHG inventories under the UN climate change process.

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist. You can find her on X @Cat_Early76.

Via China Dialogue

Republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY NC ND) licence

( China Dialogue ) – Around the world, tech and finance companies have been laying staff off. In 2022, tech firms’ payrolls fell by 164,000 employees, with a further 166,000 jobs cut in the first quarter of 2023, according to tracking platform Layoffs.fyi. In China, youth unemployment is also rising, hitting 20% this April.

Yet for green employment, spring has come. The US, worst hit by the layoffs, saw over 100,000 green jobs advertised in the six months from last August. The share of green employment in the global total rose from 9.6% in 2015 to 13.3% in 2021, according to LinkedIn’s Green Skills Report.

In China, government plans to peak and neutralise national carbon emissions, and for a wholesale green transition, have caused a boom in “green employment”. The sector is expected to employ 1 million people by 2025. The word online is that these jobs can pay as much as 150,000 yuan (US$20,900) per month.

According to the 2023 update of the government’s Green Industry Guidance Catalogue, such industries include: energy-saving and carbon-reduction (a service mainly provided by tech companies to big corporations); environmental protection; recycling and reuse of resources; clean energy; ecological protection, restoration and utilisation; green upgrading of infrastructure; and green services (like environmental monitoring and impact assessing). Many of these are emerging sectors, steadily creating jobs.

Meanwhile, regulatory changes since last decade have prompted companies and institutional investors to set up sustainability or ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) departments, which require staff. Partly driven by such trends, other entities such as academic institutions and media also require more green talent.

Together these form “green employment” – jobs directly in green industries, or in other industries but with a green focus.

So, what do we know about green employment in China?

Policy drivers: decarbonisation targets lead the way

The increase in green jobs is mostly down to policy changes. According to figures from the LinkedIn report, in 2021 there was a big jump in the number of job listings requiring green skills, with those ads accounting for half of the total, far more than the global average. And this came after the share of green jobs in all China’s recruitment had actually been falling since 2017.  

The bump may be linked to China’s commitment, made in September 2020, to reach carbon neutrality before 2060. Previously, the environmental sector was focused on air and water pollution, and wildlife conservation. The decarbonisation target prompted a shift towards climate change.

A 2022 report on “decarbonisation employment” from the China-based Climate Action Youth Alliance (CAYA) found that while the emissions-related industry had come into being in 2005 with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, its size remained small. Even the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement had only a small impact on employment. Things finally changed with the 2060 target, as well as the “1+N” policy framework to guide China’s transition for the next four decades. (The “1” stands for a top-level Guiding Opinion issued in 2021, while the “N” refers to a set of more than 30 sector-specific decarbonisation plans). The number of people whose work is directly associated with the decarbonisation target has now risen from 10,000 to 100,000, according to Caijing Magazine. By 2025, that figure is expected to be somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million.

Zhi Hanzhen, one of the authors of the CAYA report, now works on carbon neutrality and ESG issues for a leading internet company. She graduated with a degree in environmental economics in 2018, unsure of where to work. “Once carbon neutrality became a hot topic, a lot of former classmates came to me for job-hunting advice,” she told China Dialogue. “It’s a relatively new sector and it took me a while to find suitable work. That made me want to use the report to explain carbon employment issues.”

The report splits decarbonisation employment into four main fields: emissions management, emissions auditing, carbon trading, and carbon neutrality tech. Jobs are found in a range of sectors, including energy, industry, buildings, transportation and finance. The biggest employer among these is emissions management consulting, followed by emissions auditing. Most of the 121 survey respondents were working in consultancies or the ESG/sustainability department of companies that outsource their environmental reporting. Zhi Hanzhen also explained that other services are being developed, such as carbon-neutrality communications and training.

The market heats up: ESG and green finance take off

As policy and regulation improved, the green job market heated up and ESG became a hot topic within businesses. ESG covers environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity, as well as companies’ social impact and governance mechanisms. With regulation and public awareness of environmental issues on the rise, more and more companies set up ESG departments, bolstering their knowledge of social and environmental issues in their day-to-day operations, supply chain management, and disclosures. This helps firms avoid risks and protect brands – and so increase long-term profits. ESG jobs in big businesses or financial firms have become some of the best paid green work available, making them popular with jobseekers.

Du Bowen, who recently started working for a UN body, told China Dialogue he has been lucky enough to find opportunities straddling the internet and ESG. Du became interested in public interest work as a student, and did a master’s degree in humanitarian aid. He graduated in 2015 and spent four years working for two major charities, gaining experience in environmental protection, and poverty and hunger reduction. He then joined Bytedance’s marketing department managing cooperation with international organisations for video-sharing app TikTok. “TikTok set up a Corporate Social Responsibility department around 2020, and employed staff in Europe and the US. The background to this was oversight of internet platforms around the world,” Du explained.

For years, companies outside of directly green sectors like renewable energy saw ESG roles as non-profit-generating, and those employees were put in compliance or marketing departments. The rise of ESG is changing that. According to a 2021 report from Syntao, 1,092 A-listed firms in China (25.3% of the total) published ESG reports in 2020. Regulators and the public read those reports carefully, and the skills and time required to write them has increased, meaning more demand for staff with green skills.

Investors are also putting the pressure on. Data shows that China already has over 130 institutional investors signed up to the UN Supported Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI), the bulk of which signed up after 2017. Calculations show that managers of publicly offered funds signed up to the UN PRI account for over half of all China’s publicly offered fund assets. They have committed to taking ESG factors into account when making investment decisions, and to work to improve ESG performance in their investments both by communicating with the firms and using their votes as shareholders.

Zhi Hanzhen said of her time as an ESG manager: “ESG covers a lot of topics. Alongside climate issues such as carbon neutrality we also look at human capital, corporate governance, and other matters investors are concerned about.” She explained that employment in ESG is continuing to increase, and this will be the focus of the next green employment report by CAYA (Climate Action Youth Alliance).

“What I’ve found during my work is that you can’t solve environmental and social issues by relying on people’s goodwill. So I think getting capital involved is a positive trend,” Du Bowen said, referring to investments in green companies as well as investor pressure on all kinds of companies to report and improve upon their ESG performance. “In the past, government oversight was more relaxed, which meant even less motivation. With policy gradually improving and investors providing encouragement, companies are showing more vigour.”

The rise of green finance and the ESG field led to rumours online that an ESG manager could earn 150,000 yuan (US$20,000) a month. Industry insiders told China Dialogue that even if that is achievable, it’s extremely rare. Actual earnings for ESG roles depend on the company. The finance sector, naturally, tends to pay more. But in most sectors, businesses will pay in line with their usual salaries. Once you are out of the finance sector, the CAYA decarbonisation report says, most decarbonisation-related roles pay 10,000-20,000 yuan (US$1,385­–2,770) a month. And those jobs tend to be in first-tier cities, mainly Beijing.

Are women the backbone of green employment?

“I’ve got one observation, though I’m not sure if it’s accurate,” Du Bowen said. “A lot of ESG workers are women. If you go to an ESG conference, you’ll see a lot of companies’ ESG officials are women. I think that’s true for the entire Asia-Pacific region.”

Chinese–English bilingual environmental podcast Environment China has also pointed out that the sustainability field tends to be female-dominated. This prompted it to start a series of episodes focused on young workers in the field. Guests have included many successful young women such as an embassy official working on green finance, a sustainability manager for a consumer products firm, and an environmental NGO founder. Yuan Xiaodan, creator of the podcast and former executive director of the Beijing Energy Network, told China Dialogue: “The green sector is a very broad category. Overall, I think the number of women isn’t small and they are usually very active.”

That perception can be backed up. An RBC Global Assets Management study once found women clients were twice as likely as their male counterparts to promote ESG issues. Du Bowen commented this may be because ESG includes gender equality issues and inclusiveness.

But analysis based on wider datasets is more conservative. LinkedIn’s Green Skills Report found that between 2015 and 2021, for every 100 men considered “green talent”, there were only 62 women. The proportion of green jobs in overall employment is increasing, though men are moving into the sector faster. But the report also pointed out that in half of the surveyed countries, the gender gap had shrunk somewhat, with growth in women as green talent increasing faster than in men. These countries were mostly European.

“Green industry is a very broad field. You may find more women in research industries, such as climate change think-tanks and academic institutions, ESG and decarbonisation reporting. You may also find more of them in lifestyle-related industries, such as sustainable catering, second-hand markets and vegetarian food,” said Yuan Xiaodan. “But from what I’ve seen, there’s no shortage of men in the new departments being set up in traditional firms. For example, where car makers are setting up electric vehicle departments or energy firms are setting up renewable energy operations.”

Emerging industries uneven

The “sustainability fever” triggered by policy and market drivers has made the employment market more complicated.

First, the jobs available are a mixed bag. “Once the 2060 carbon neutrality target was announced there was a rush to cut carbon emissions,” said Yang Yifan, sustainable development manager for the China office of dairy alternatives producer Oatly, speaking on the Environment China podcast. “But a problem I’ve noticed is that, despite that rush, there’s still a lack of accumulated knowledge and talent backing it up. So we see cases of greenwashing, such as the sudden appearance of lots of ‘zero carbon’ products on the market.”

China Dialogue explored the problem of corporate greenwashing in some detail in 2021.

Yang also pointed out that this makes achieving zero carbon seem easier than it is. “Those in the field need to do their work and help consumers realise what impact their choices have on carbon emissions and what that means for the planet.”

The CAYA decarbonisation report found many jobseekers in the field are new arrivals who think the policy changes provide an opportunity for career advancement. These often unsuitable applicants are looking more at the prospects of the employer or the sector, than opportunities for personal growth and learning. Zhi Hanzhen told China Dialogue: “They might not have the necessary resources to understand what the work really involves, leading to a mismatch between their expectations and reality.”

Companies struggle to recruit staff who have the skills and knowledge they need, with mid- and high-level talent particularly hard to find. For jobseekers, meanwhile, it can be hard to find and understand information about the jobs, and then they may discover the work is not what they expected. Posts are also concentrated in first-tier cities.

A major reason for this might be problems with the education system. According to CAYA’s report, almost half of jobseekers in the carbon field graduated with a degree related to the environment. But there are few degrees in China specifically covering climate change and decarbonisation, nor is there a system in place for training in these fields. Degrees which might look relevant – environmental engineering or environmental science, for example – still focus on handling air and water pollution, with few if any classes on carbon topics.

During the latest Two Sessions – the annual meeting of China’s top legislature – a proposal on training “carbon talent” was submitted by a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. It noted the lack of high-level technical talent in the carbon sector, and suggested training should include time spent in the workplace.

It can be anticipated that jobs in green sectors such as environmental protection, energy and even sustainable consumption will further increase in the future. And the lack of green talent serves as an indicator of what the transition requires from the Chinese education and labour markets.

Jiang Mengnan

Jiang Mengnan is the strategic communications officer at China Dialogue. She has previously worked on sustainable finance consulting and ESG communications in both the private and non-profit sectors.

Via China Dialogue

Published under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

The European Union is scrambling to respond to the United States’ $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act without sacrificing its “crown jewel”: internal market.

By Anna Gumbau

( China Dialogue ) – Delegates at the COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference have approved a deal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, hoping to put nature on a path to recovery for the benefit of all the world’s people.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was agreed after two weeks of tense negotiations in Montreal.

Its significance has been compared by many to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and comes as biodiversity declines at the fastest rate since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientists estimated in 2019 that a million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction, with changes in land and sea use, climate change and pollution among the main drivers.

The chair of COP15, Huang Runqiu, China’s environment minister, declared the framework adopted at a late-night plenary session on 19 December. Despite being hosted in Canada, China was president, as the conference had been scheduled to take place there in 2020. However, after delays due to Covid-19, the final session was eventually moved to Montreal.

In a last-minute twist, the Democratic Republic of the Congo refused to agree to the framework, telling the plenary it couldn’t support it as it didn’t guarantee sufficient funding. However, moments later, Huang Runqiu said the framework was finished and agreed, triggering a round of applause from most of the delegates.

“It’s a historic step in the history of nature conservation,” said Peng Kui of the Global Environment Institute (GEI), a Chinese non-profit. “These key targets reached a subtle balance and created the conditions for the passing of the framework.” He added they could be started immediately.

Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, said that while most countries wanted more things in the text, they had managed to create an “ambitious” package.

“We have an agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, to work on restoration, to reduce the use of pesticides. This is tremendous progress,” he added.

The 30 by 30 target

Overall, the global biodiversity framework includes 23 environmental targets to be delivered by 2030 and four less-specific goals to be met by 2050. The most prominent target – known as 30×30 – is for 30% of land and ocean to be protected. About 17% of the planet’s land and 8% of its ocean is currently protected, meaning activities such as farming and fishing are restricted. The agreement is not legally binding.

This target had been pushed by two main groups long ahead of COP15. The High-Ambition Coalition (HAC), launched in 2021 and now with 116 signatories, has sought to preserve both 30% of the land and the ocean, while the UK-led Global Ocean Alliance (GOA), with 73 members and over 130 supporting nations, has focussed on the 30% ocean target.

Orangutan. Via Pixabay.

Franz Tattenbach Capra, Costa Rica’s environment minister, said: “We have protected our land, grown our forests and still become a productive country. We haven’t sacrificed nature for our productivity in agriculture as we are using new techniques and friendly agriculture methods. You can do it without sacrificing nature.” 

The framework‘s target specifies the conservation of at least 30% of coastal and marine areas, alongside 30% of land. Countries that have high ocean protection ambitions demanded the change be made to an earlier draft, which only pledged to protect 30% of land and ocean together.  

Steve Widdicombe, director of science for Plymouth marine laboratory in the UK, said he is delighted to see the target has reflected the distinctive needs of ocean and land, and how both “equally needed to be protected.”

The inclusion of ocean acidification as a driver of biodiversity loss in the framework is also seen as a win for the ocean community, which has started to promote synergies between ocean health and biodiversity. The text calls for measures to increase the resilience of the ocean, including climate change mitigation, adaptation and disaster-risk reduction.

Countries also agreed to identify by 2025 and “eliminate, phase out or reform” subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity, while “substantially and progressively reducing them” by at least US$500 billion per year by 2030. Each year, the world spends at least US$1.8 trillion on harmful subsidies, according to a report by Business for Nature.

Indigenous communities and human rights

Indigenous groups praised the global biodiversity framework, especially the 30×30 target, for recognising the rights of indigenous people and local communities in strong language and at an unprecedented scale for a conservation plan. It upholds the rights to sustainable use of nature where that use “is fully consistent with conservation outcomes.”

Jennifer Corpuz, a representative of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, said: “It’s historic. It’s a moment to celebrate.”

Via Pixabay.

A member of the Kankanaey-Igorot people of the northern Philippines, Corpuz said the recognition of indigenous rights under the 30×30 target has addressed “the experience that indigenous people have in relation to forestry conservation”. It offers them “enough basis” to work with government and to influence national policies, she added. 

Some conservation models, including “fortress conservation”, have a record of denying indigenous people rights to practise their traditional ways of life – such as hunting, fishing and gathering herbs for medicine – and of displacing them from ancestral lands. 

Over the past four years of the negotiations on the framework, representatives of indigenous communities have campaigned strongly for a rights-based approach, which means ensuring conservation is not in conflict with human rights, but improves their realisation. 

Indigenous groups had a huge presence at the side events and panels of the conference. Dallas Smith, the president of Nanwakolas Council, which comprised six First Nations communities in the province of British Columbia, said he had witnessed a significant improvement in indigenous representation since he first spoke at the UN millennium ecosystem assessment in 2005. 

Gender and health

The agreement includes several mentions of the role of women in protecting biodiversity. A successful implementation will depend on ensuring gender equality and empowering women and girls, the text reads. It also calls for gender-responsive representation and participation in the decisions taken following the agreement. 

“It’s a significant step forward towards rights-based, gender-just and socially equitable biodiversity conservation,” a statement from the Global Forest Coalition reads. 

Women in various parts of the global south rely on biodiversity for their livelihoods, and to contribute to the overall wellbeing of their families and wider communities. In Africa, rural women are the main food producers and caregivers, accounting for 70% of the continent’s agricultural workforce, according to a report by Oxfam.

There are also several references in the text to the interlinkages between biodiversity and health. The agreement will have to be implemented with consideration of the World Health Organization’s One Health Approach, which seeks to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals and ecosystems.

At the same time, countries will have to ensure that the use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal, preventing overexploitation and reducing the risk of pathogen spillover – one of the possible reasons behind the Covid-19 pandemic.

Financing biodiversity conservation

The agreement calls for the raising of US$200 billion by 2030 for biodiversity, from a wide range of sources. It calls for an increase to at least US$20 billion annually by 2025 of the money that goes to developing countries, which should then increase to US$30 billion by 2030. 

During COP15, individual countries also committed to increase levels of funding, including France, which will double its international finance for biodiversity, reaching over US$1 billion per year by 2025, and Canada, committing C$350 million (US$257 million). 

A recent assessment by the UN Environment Programme estimated that investments into protecting and better managing nature need to double from current levels, reaching US$384 billion per year by 2025. Early draft versions of the framework called for closing a $700 billion annual gap in financing by 2030. 

African countries wanted to create a new fund for biodiversity but finally agreed to create one under the UN’s pre-existing Global Environment Facility (GEF). This is the best way to get something “immediate and efficient” said Christophe Béchu, France’s minister for ecological transition, claiming a new fund would delay allocating the funds. 

The global south has most of the planet’s biodiversity but lacks the financial resources to restore ecosystems, reform agriculture, fisheries and forestry practices, and conserve threatened species. Latin America has experienced the greatest regional decline in average wildlife population abundance, at 94% between 1970 and 2018, according to a WWF report.  

The agreement also calls for the “fundamental transformation” of the global financial system and for the reform of multilateral development banks and international finance institutions, as the COP27 climate agreement did. But there’s no mention to debt-for-nature swaps despite requests from some countries such as Colombia.

“Just with 10% of what we pay in debt per year we could meet our climate and biodiversity targets,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, told the summit’s plenary session.

Black Crowned Crane via Pixabay.

Loopholes in the text

While largely celebrating the agreement, some environmental groups such as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said they were concerned that the deal puts off until 2050 a goal of preventing the extinction of species, maintaining the genetic diversity within populations and preserving the integrity of ecosystems. 

“The global biodiversity framework is a compromise, and although it has several good and hard-fought elements, it could have gone further to truly transform our relationship with nature and stop our destruction of ecosystems, habitats and species,” said Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy at the WCS.

NGOs also wanted stronger language around subsidies and questioned the lack of a numerical target on reducing human consumption and production, key drivers of biodiversity loss. Greenpeace was especially critical, claiming that the agreed funding isn’t enough and that the 30×30 target fails to ban certain damaging activities from protected areas. 

“Taken altogether, COP15 failed to deliver the ambition, tools or finance necessary to stop mass extinction,” An Lambrechts, head of the Greenpeace delegation, said. 

Campaign group Avaaz said 50% of land and ocean should have been protected in the framework if parties want to reverse, and not simply halt, biodiversity loss. Adding up the existing protected areas and the indigenous people’s territories where biodiversity is protected would put the current global proportion above 30%, the NGO said. 

The agreement includes the concept of nature-based solutions, widely used in the climate world but seen as controversial in biodiversity. A group of green finance experts signed a document before COP15 criticising the concept for promoting biodiversity offsetting, which could create environmental and social problems. 

The way forward

None of the 20 objectives for protecting biodiversity at the global level were fully achieved under the previous 10-year biodiversity agreement, known as the Aichi targets, according to a UN report in 2020. But negotiators said they have learnt their lesson, and the new agreement includes provisions to make the targets measurable and to track countries’ progress. 

“While Leo Messi and teammates now get to hang up their boots and luxuriate in a hard-fought victory, for the global biodiversity community, the next phase of hard work already beckons: mainstreaming the framework’s architecture into country-level policy,” said Andrew Deutz, director of global policy at the Nature Conservancy.

The new agreement is not legally binding but governments will have to show progress towards meeting the targets via national biodiversity plans. These are akin to the national climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which countries already use to demonstrate progress towards meeting the Paris Agreement.

“The framework is balanced and solid: it has a clear public funding mobilization target and this target is the fruit of the hard work of many countries,” said Li Shuo, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace China.

He added: “All the prominent targets, such as 30×30, controlling pesticides and pollution, and reversing the tendency of extinction have been dealt with properly.” 

Avaaz acting CEO Bert Wanders said the promises made at COP15 to deliver money for biodiversity, put a third of the planet under protection and protect the right of indigenous people are a significant step forward to protecting life on Earth. 

“But on its own it won’t be enough. Governments should listen to what science is saying and rapidly scale up ambition to protect half the Earth by 2030,” he added.

China Dialogue

( China Dialogue) – The Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum of 19 countries and the European Union. These include most of the world’s largest economies, including those of many developing nations, and together account for over 80% of world GDP.

Subsidies to the sector had fallen to $147bn in 2020 as the impacts of travel restrictions due to Covid-19 weakened demand, but they rebounded in 2021, rising by 29% to $190bn. Though full data is not yet available for 2022, financial support to both producers and consumers of fossil fuels is projected to have risen, partly due to spiralling energy prices in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In total, 63% of the G20’s public finance for energy went to fossil fuels in 2019–2020. The countries with the highest total subsidies for fossil fuels were China, Indonesia and the UK.

Market distortion

The stocktake of G20 climate action is outlined in the latest annual report from Climate Transparency, an international partnership of organisations including Climate Analytics, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and the Berlin Governance Platform. 

The report points to the G20’s 2009 commitment to “phase out and rationalise, over the medium term, inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, which it reaffirmed last year.  

“I think we can safely say we are now in that ‘medium term’ and it’s clear the G20 has failed to deliver, instead continuing to use public funds to distort the market in favour of fossil fuels,” said Ipek Gençsü, senior research fellow at ODI, and finance lead of the report.

She cautioned that the figures were likely an underestimate since they are based on self-reporting by G20 governments to the OECD. Independent analysis carried out by Climate Transparency members had found unreported subsidy data, she said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that emissions must be halved by 2030, and that the extraction of fossil fuels needs to stop to keep the 1.5C warming limit of the Paris Agreement within reach, the report notes.

Despite this, energy-related CO2 emissions rebounded 5.9% across G20 countries in 2021, to above pre-pandemic levels. The G20 is responsible for three-quarters of the world’s emissions, said Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics.

“These are the world’s biggest economies, many of them home to the finance and technologies needed to tackle the climate crisis. We are now in a moment where geopolitics and energy security issues are combining to really hammer home the benefits of cheap renewables, yet we are still seeing many of these governments turning to fossil fuels as the solution,” he added.

Renewables rising

More positively, the share of renewables in the power generation mix increased in all G20 countries between 2016 and 2020. The strongest increases were in the UK (+67%), Japan (+48%) and Mexico (+40%).

The lowest increases, all well below the five-year G20 average of +22.5%, were observed in Russia (+16%) and Italy (+14%). Despite this longer-term growth, the G20’s share of renewables fell slightly between 2020–21.

Fossil fuels still dominate the energy mix, with the transition to renewables too slow, Hare said.  

“The energy crisis really reinforces the need to get on with renewables,” said Hare. “What stands in the way of progress is the need for governments in the G20 to take the political decisions to get the transformation under way,” he said.

Loss and damage

The developed nations of the G20 are still failing to provide the $100 billion per year in climate finance to the world’s developing nations that they promised to by 2020. The Climate Transparency assessment calculated how much each country should contribute as its fair share, based on historical emissions. Only three of eight countries have met the mark. The US contributed just 5% of what it owes, while the UK, Italy, Canada and Australia also fell short.

More finance needs to be targeted at adapting to the impacts of climate change, Hare said. In addition, finance for loss and damage caused by irreversible impacts, such as sea-level rise and salination of ground water, is going to be a big theme going forward. So far, it has not really been on the agenda of the G20, he added.

The debate could be complicated by the fact that China and India are now large emitters, and much wealthier than they were, so should start thinking about how they could contribute finance for loss and damage, Hare said.

“There’s a wide variety of views within the G20 on loss and damage. There’s been a conflict between the rich developed countries and the poor developing countries on this issue,” he said. “But there are signs behind the scenes of progress being made. I would hope the countries like India and China would join what I’m hoping is an emerging consensus on how to set up a loss and damage mechanism.”

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist. You can find her on Twitter @Cat_Early76.

Via China Dialogue

The Poyang and Dongting lakes, the two largest lakes in the Yangtze basin, as well as part of the river itself, are experiencing water levels 4.7 to 5.7 metres lower than the historical average and the lowest since records began. In Chongqing, 51 rivers are cut off and 24 reservoirs have dried up. Where the Yangtze reaches the sea in Shanghai, the river is experiencing saltwater intrusion, which is usually a winter phenomenon, due to a lack of freshwater running against it. This is threatening the municipal water supply.

An expert told the press that there has been a tendency toward more frequent and intense drought in the Yangtze basin in recent years, with the current drought caused by an atmospheric circulation anomaly.

Power shortages are particularly severe in Sichuan, where hydropower accounts for nearly 80% of the energy mix. On Monday, the provincial government announced the suspension of power to a wide range of industrial users for 6 days, including those once listed as priority users. On Tuesday, Chongqing also announced power restrictions for business users until next Wednesday. In addition, Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces are reportedly running on tight electricity supplies with rationing schemes activated.

This is having a major impact on several strategic industries with global supply chains. Sichuan, in particular, is a major production hub for lithium salts, lithium batteries, silicon materials for solar PV, and semiconductors. Chongqing is also a key hub for electronics manufacturing.

Via China Dialogue

( China Dialogue) – The next two United Nations climate negotiations will take place in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). COP27 will be in Egypt this November, followed by COP28 in the United Arab Emirates next year. Climate change has only recently gained mainstream attention in MENA, where news cycles have tended to be dominated by political security, oil and gas economics, and sectarian tensions.

Extreme weather – including unprecedented heatwaves and flash floods – in MENA countries over the last few years has made the severity of the situation impossible to ignore. Climate projections indicate that such phenomena will intensify. Environmental change will increasingly interact with political and economic dynamics, affecting the region’s people, trading partners and investors. As the Egyptian COP presidency emphasises adaptation needs, it is worth considering what these are in the region and how international cooperation can help mitigate cascading risks.

A uniquely exposed region

The geography of MENA is varied, from occasionally snow-covered pine forests in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the lush monsoon-fed climate in Dhofar, south Oman. But as a whole, MENA is the most water-scarce of the world’s major regions. A combination of petroleum rents and foreign aid have over the last half century enabled rapid population growth, urban expansion and increasing food imports. This wealth, together with low levels of accountability, has tended to gloss over environmental fragility. Unsustainable water use, damming for hydropower and unregulated urban build-up has for example brought prosperity to some, yet weakened long-term resilience.

Today, critical levels of resource degradation, overlaid by climate change, are revealing the cracks. Perhaps surprisingly, flooding has emerged as one of the most frequent environmental hazards in the MENA region. Increasing instances of heavy rainfall events in towns and cities ill prepared to deal with flood waters, such as Sana’a in Yemen, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Shiraz in Iran, have caused loss of life and significant damage. More such events are expected.

Demolishing a building damaged by heavy rainfall in the old city of Sana’a, Yemen, a UNESCO world heritage site, 2020 (Image: Khaled Abdullah / Alamy)

Low-lying and densely populated areas of coastal north Africa and the Gulf are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rises as our planet warms. Even small rises could have a big impact due to the geographic profile of these areas and the potential for storm surges. The Egyptian city of Alexandria is particularly at risk because it is sinking.

Agriculture has suffered from disjointed policies in MENA countries. Benefitting from cheap fuel and unregulated groundwater extraction, the sector is often dominated by agribusinesses deploying unsustainable irrigation and land use practices. The World Bank estimates that around 45% of the total agricultural area in the region is exposed to salinity, soil nutrient depletion and erosion. Drought-related livelihood losses in Iraq and Syria have driven hundreds of thousands of rural families into cities over the last decade, putting additional pressure on municipal services while rendering small farmers vulnerable to extremist recruitment tactics.

Caused by and causing conflict

Armed conflict has ravaged parts of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Gaza over the last decade. From the destruction of water facilities, housing and schools to soil, water and air pollution generated by makeshift oil refineries, conflict is negatively affecting the environment, increasing vulnerability to a host of health and climate impacts. This is evident in land contaminated with toxic remnants of war, or purposely deforested as a tactic of war. In Syria for example, such land cannot be used for food growing, thereby worsening food and livelihood security. Climate change adds an extra layer of instability to this potentially vicious cycle.

Salmiya, Kuwait. Pixabay.

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Access to and affordability of vital services such as water and electricity are politically sensitive in all countries. But in those under authoritarian rule or where elite groups capture resources, failure of these services undermines government legitimacy, often unleashing public anger at other injustices. For example, the October 2019 uprisings in Iraq and Lebanon were aggravated by gross environmental and public safety failings, namely poor drinking water provision in Iraq, an inadequate response to forest fires in Lebanon, and insufficient power in both countries.

In Khuzestan, southwestern Iran, public anger sparked by the collapse of a building killing over 40 people (blamed on the illegal addition of three storeys) was compounded by long-running water shortages caused by damming, water-inefficient and chemically intensive farming practices, rising food prices, and harsh dust storms in May 2022. As with its neighbouring province of Basra, Iraq, which saw violent clashes with the government following mass water poisonings in 2018, Khuzestan is oil rich. Public frustrations in both provinces are linked to perceptions of inequality and unfairness in wealth distribution.

How climate risks in the Middle East and North Africa can cascade across borders • Graphic adapted from Chatham House

Cascading impacts

As these examples show, climate change is an additional pressure amidst a complex set of socio-economic and global dynamics. The diagram above illustrates how its effects can compound and cascade depending on the situation on the ground. Primary impacts of climate change – both slow and sudden – are shown in purple at the top. These will have initial impacts on the ground, shaped by the social and economic characteristics of a given region (the red triangle). Further effects will cascade through system components such as infrastructure and economy resulting in electricity and water desalination plant outages and job losses (the blue rectangles). These will potentially have cross-border impacts (green triangles).

Vulnerability to climatic events is not only about physical exposure, but also the ways they will interact with societal and governance components (the yellow lozenges) which also include the prior management of resources, demographic trends and political responses.

Climate impacts will affect food supplies, migration patterns, investments, humanitarian operations and politics in societies far from the original flashpoint

As we learned from the experience with Covid-19, and the current war in Ukraine, the effects of a crisis can quickly spread through global systems and networks. In this way, climate impacts will not be limited within national borders or regions, but will cascade, affecting food supplies, migration patterns, investments, humanitarian operations and politics in societies far from the original flashpoint.

Cooperation for resilience at COP27 and 28

As host nation of this year’s COP, Egypt will dedicate special attention to climate-resilient agriculture, sustainable cities, finance for adaptation and equitable transfers for loss and damage. For the UAE, host of COP28 in 2023, climate’s impacts on human security are likely to be high on the agenda. Food and water sustainability as well as energy transition pathways for oil and gas producers should feature strongly through both COPs. This provides ample opportunity for international partners to support resilience in the region.

The context for access to finance and assistance for adaptation is marked on the one hand by strong developing country pressure for faster and larger transfers of climate finance, and on the other, the global infrastructure competition taking off as major powers – the G7 and China – compete for political influence. Both open up resilience opportunities for the MENA region. But an investment rush also risks conflicting objectives that could jeopardise project sustainability for vulnerable societies by widening wealth inequalities, locking in fossil fuel dependence and leaving countries heavily indebted.

To avoid this, climate finance and country development priorities must align. Other forms of finance to the region, such as the billions promised through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Gateway and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment, must coordinate to enhance socially equitable climate resilience. Learning from experience to date in the region, complementing other climate- and just-transition-related initiatives, and enhancing accountability will reap the highest dividends.

Finally, conversations at the next two COPs will take place against a seismic economic shift driven by a combination of climate and energy security policies and new technology uptake. Together, these stamp a certain, albeit undefined, time limit on fossil fuel profitability. This means that the MENA oil and gas exporting nations, including the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as well as Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Libya and the Sudans, have entered a race against time to diversify their economies. Partnerships on resilience to changing environmental realities must therefore also foster green, regenerative economic diversification.

Glada Lahn is Senior Research Fellow at London’s Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs). She co-authored a report on Cascading Climate Risks and Options for Resilience in the Middle East and North Africa Region as part of the multipartner EU-funded CASCADES project.

Via China Dialogue

Featured Image: Baghdad sunset, courtesy Pixabay.

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( China Dialogue ) – What happens in China’s steel plants matters for the global climate. After power generation, the steel sector is the second largest contributor to China’s emissions, accounting for roughly 17% annually. China produces more than half of all global steel, and over 60% of carbon emissions from steel.

Recent Chinese policy has set out a series of quantitative targets for steel’s decarbonisation, supported by several emissions-saving measures. But these will not be enough to put the sector on a pathway consistent with limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5C.

The scale of the challenge facing Chinese and global steelmakers is considerable. A recent report by climate change think tank E3G and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has unpacked the global and regional implications of a 1.5C-compatible transformation pathway for steel decarbonisation, showing that Chinese steel emissions need to be cut in half by 2030 to keep this goal alive. However, Chinese authorities have recently pushed back the sector’s emissions target, now aiming to peak emissions from steel production “by 2030”, rather than 2025, as its industry association had originally indicated in March 2021.

A faster transition is vital, and efforts from the Chinese steel sector to explore demand-side approaches, accelerate the shift to cleaner technologies and engage in international initiatives will need to be intensified. This would also offer China the opportunity to remain competitive in future green steel markets, engage in global efforts to shape standards for industrial decarbonisation, and become a leader in greening the global steel sector.

Current policy goes in the right direction, but too slowly

For a 1.5C-consistent pathway, China’s steel sector needs to peak emissions as soon as possible, cutting emissions by about half by 2030, and by 99% in 2050, according to our report’s findings.

The latest guidance for the sector to peak emissions before 2030 therefore falls far short. In contrast, key steel-producing companies Baowu Steel, HBIS and Baotou Steel, which together account for 17% of China’s total production, have put forward more ambitious targets. They aim to peak emissions well before 2025, to significantly reduce emissions by 2030, and become net-zero by 2050. The China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) also backed a leaked draft earlier last year that proposed a peaking target by 2025 and emissions reductions of 30% by 2030.

These signals from the industry show that a faster transition is possible. The government should make full use of all policy tools available to promote a sectoral pathway with more ambitious targets, including demand-side levers such as steel recycling and improvements in the efficiency of raw material usage. It should also pursue measures to ramp up the replacement of existing steel capacity with “net zero ready” technologies for production.

Capturing the full potential of demand-side levers

Demand-side levers could play a major role in China’s steel transition. Our report finds that the adoption of a suite of material-efficiency measures, alongside a scaling up of steel recycling, has the potential to halve emissions from the steel sector in 2050, compared to 2020 levels.

Instead of producing primary steel, steel scrap can be recycled to produce new steel in electric arc furnaces (EAF), which do not require any coking coal or iron ore as inputs. Our modelling found that scrap-based steel production in EAFs results in around 85% less emissions than traditional primary production in blast furnaces. By increasing scrap-based EAF production to 56%, China could reduce steel emissions by 39% on 2020 levels come 2050.

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Meanwhile, material efficiency improvements could reduce global steel emissions by 21% in 2050. These include measures such as lifetime extension, optimised design and post-use recycling of steel-intensive products and buildings. In China, we find that material efficiency improvements alone can bring production levels down, requiring 19% less steel to be produced in 2050.

Capturing the full potential of demand-side levers will require concerted policy efforts to curb primary steel production, to incentivise recycling, improve collection and sorting of steel scrap, and to extend the lifetime of steel-intensive assets. The recent government “guiding opinion” for the sector showed progress in promoting increases in recycling, setting a target for steel scrap use to increase to 300 million tonnes, up from 260 million tonnes in 2020.

Building out infrastructure with low-emission technologies

To move the steel asset base towards cleaner production, new and low-carbon technologies will be needed. Ninety-two percent of steel in China is currently produced via blast and basic oxygen furnaces (BF-BOF) – coal-based units in which metallurgical coal acts as both a source of heat and of carbon in the ironmaking process. As a result, the steel sector is responsible for more than 30% of total coal use in China and has been the main source of growth in demand for coal.

Under a 1.5C scenario, only 10% of China’s steel can be produced using BF-BOF units by 2050, and these furnaces would also need to be equipped with carbon capture and storage technologies. By 2050, most blast furnace production should be replaced by scrap-based electric arc furnaces in combination with green hydrogen-based production of direct reduced iron (DRI).

Scrap-based EAFs increase secondary production and recycling, lowering emissions from primary steel production and increasing the flexibility to meet fluctuating demand. In hydrogen-based DRI production, conventional fossil fuels are replaced by hydrogen derived from renewable energy sources, producing close to no emissions. A number of hydrogen DRI pilots have been announced over the last year in China, and companies project that hydrogen-based net-zero steel could be commercially available as early as 2025. To achieve the necessary level of emissions reductions, it is crucial that both the electricity and hydrogen used come from renewable sources, to facilitate a phase-out of unabated coal in the steel sector before 2050.

China’s target to increase the share of EAF steel output to more than 15% by 2025, as set out in the recent guiding opinion document, is broadly in line with a 1.5C scenario, but there are currently no targets for the sector’s long-term trajectory. While hydrogen-based DRI production is still in its infancy in most of the world, the first industrial-scale hydrogen-based DRI plant, built by Chinese steel producer HBIS, is expected to start operating in the city of Zhangjiakou this year.

The recent guidance also aims to expand the long-standing steel capacity swap policy to encourage the elimination of plants with low efficiency and high energy consumption. As part of the swap policy, for every new furnace approved by local governments, an equivalent or additional amount of old and inefficient blast furnaces need to be phased out.

To achieve the long-term targets above, China will have to significantly accelerate its capacity shift towards scrap-based EAF and hydrogen DRI, which will require increased policy support and incentives. In particular, the government needs to issue clear policy guidance on a decarbonisation pathway that increases recycling and material efficiency in steel production, and accelerates the upgrading of China’s current production fleet to low-emission technologies.

International engagement as the needed impetus

The varying pace of industrial decarbonisation across different countries is likely to drive the development of trade measures to tackle “carbon leakage”. China will soon have to contend with the impacts of carbon levies such as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). Chinese officials consider CBAM to be a protectionist measure and have repeatedly spoken out against it. But these measures can also offer China incentives to accelerate its domestic transition. For example, steel producers in China using lower carbon technologies such as hydrogen-based DRI could potentially profit from the CBAM . . .

Read the whole article at China Dialogue .

Belinda Schäpe works as a climate diplomacy researcher on EU–China relations in E3G’s London office.

Byford Tsang is a senior policy advisor on E3G’s climate diplomacy team, based in London. Tweets @byfordt

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( China Dialogue ) – A “crisis footing” is needed to conserve, restore and use land sustainably, according to a major report that warns of food supply disruptions, forced migration and rapid biodiversity loss. Unless countries scale up action, there will also be a higher risk of zoonotic diseases like Covid-19, declining human health and land resource conflicts.

In the second edition of its “Global Land Outlook” report on land degradation, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification points to global food systems as the primary cause of the problem, being responsible for 80% of deforestation, 70% of freshwater use, and the single greatest cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss.

In a press conference to launch the report on 27 April, UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said that global food systems – and non-food crops such as cotton – were no longer tenable. “We thought that we had more reserves and therefore we could deplete the land and then shift to the next area. Now we realise that is not possible. We have already eaten our reserves.”

He added that consumption was not sustainable either, with wasted food, water and clothing exacerbating the problem.

Call to transform land management

Land degradation occurs when land cover is lost or removed, causing soil and organic matter to be washed or blown away. Salinisation of soil can produce similar effects and reduce land productivity. It can cause expansion and movement of sand dunes, diminished rainfall, depletion of pastureland and erosion from wind and rain.