01/08/2019

Australian Climate Change Policies Face Growing Criticism From Pacific Leaders

ABC News - Melissa Clarke

Australia is under growing pressure to take action against climate change. (AAP: Dan Himbrechts)
Key points
  • Pacific leaders rebuff Australia's approach to tackling climate change
  • They want Australia to ditch its use of carry-over credits to meet climate targets
  • Foreign Minister Marise Payne last week said the Pacific "should be pleased" with Australia
Pacific nations have formally called on Australia to stop using carry-over credits to meet climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement.
In a clear rebuff to recent Australian comments, Pacific leaders meeting in Fiji yesterday signed the Nadi Bay Declaration, which calls on countries to "refrain from using carry-over credits as an abatement for the additional Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets".
It came after Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Pacific states "should be pleased" with Australia's actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia controversially counts some emissions reductions achieved during the past decade under the Kyoto Protocol towards reduction targets set out in the Paris Agreement.
The carry-over does not breach the Paris Agreement because there has been no international consensus on the rules, but Australia's decision to count past emissions towards new targets has been widely condemned.
Pacific states have long demanded Australia does more domestically to tackle climate change, given the threat it poses to the future viability of small islands and atolls.
Australia not on track
But Senator Payne brushed off the criticisms last week, telling the ABC "I think that they [Pacific states] should be pleased that Australia is meeting our Paris commitments, that is something we are absolutely locked in to doing".
As well as a halt to using carryover credits, the Nadi Bay Declaration, signed at the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF), calls for a halt to new coal mining projects and the phasing out of coal-fired power generation over the next decade.
An earlier draft of the Nadi Bay Declaration seen by the ABC was even stronger in its condemnation, describing the use of carry-over credits as "underhanded" — a reference that was ultimately left out of the final document.
The leaders of Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Timor Leste and Tonga signed the declaration along with non-government organisations and private sector representatives.
As chair of the PIDF, Fiji's Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama put his voice to the demands, asking developed economies to make their Paris emissions reduction commitments more ambitious "including and most especially our larger neighbours in the Pacific".
It sets the stage for a tense meeting in two weeks' time, when Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison sits down with regional leaders at the Pacific Islands.
"As we look ahead to the Pacific Islands Forum … we should not accept anything less than concrete commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions in line with the most ambitious aspirations of the Paris Agreement," Mr Bainimarama said.
"We cannot allow climate commitments to be watered down in the meeting hosted by the nation whose very existence is threatened by the rising waters lapping at its shores."


Fijian Prime Minister delivers statement at PIDF 2019

Speaking last week, Senator Payne pointed to the support Australia was providing for climate change abatement and mitigation.
"We are investing $300 million across the region in climate resilience-focused support with Pacific island countries … we also have a $1 billion commitment to developing nations across five years," she said.
The Australia Institute's climate and energy program director Richie Merzian described the Nadi Bay Declaration as "a powerful message to Australia … to lift their game on climate action."
"Prime Minister Morrison will be in Tuvalu in a fortnight to meet regional leaders, and they have made it crystal clear they will advocate for their largest neighbour to step on climate change, including moving away from coal," he said.
"The Prime Minister will struggle to sell a sensible and balanced approach to climate change when the Pacific have just declared a regional climate emergency."

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Students Want International Court Of Justice To Rule On Climate Change

ABC Pacific Beat -  Evan Wasuka

Image: ABC TV
A group of Pacific law students are campaigning to take the issue of climate change and human rights to the International Court of Justice to determine if states have a duty of care to protect its citizens.
The Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change are lobbying Pacific leaders and the public to raise the matter at the UN General Assembly, so it can be heard by the International Court of Justice.
The group's president, Solomon Yeo, said they want the court to issue an "advisory opinion".
Dr Matthew Scott of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden said the timing for the campaign was good, given the international focus on climate change.
"It offers a unique opportunity to obtain definitive guidance from an internationally recognised authority on the international legal obligations of states," Dr Scott said.
Law student Belinda Rikimani said Pacific governments must act with urgency, and support the campaign.
An online petition has gathered several thousand signatures and the group is lobbying Pacific Island countries.
They'll be participating at a regional meeting this week and Mr Yeo plans to be at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Tuvalu in August.
Dr Scott said the while the International Court of Justice can deliver an authoritative legal judgement it can't compel states to act.
"So its power doesn't lie in its enforce ability but in its legal weight as the opinion of the highest court in the international community," said Dr Scott.
PACIFIC BEAT AUDIO: Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change 4m 24secs
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Ethiopia Says It Planted Over 350 Million Trees In A Day, A Record

New York Times - Palko Karasz
Credit Office of the Ethiopian Prime Minister
LONDON — Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has been getting his hands dirty this summer, and this week he got much of the nation to join him.
Students, farmers, urban professionals, foreign dignitaries, environmentalists and government officials planted millions of seedlings on Monday, in what the government said was the largest one-day tree-planting effort in history.
It was part of Mr. Ahmed’s campaign to plant four billion trees in Ethiopia before the fall to combat deforestation and global warming.
Many schools and government offices were closed for the day, as students and civil servants were urged to take part in the program, which was supported by several international aid groups.
The aim was to put at least 200 million seedlings in the ground a day, and by day’s end, government officials said that more than 350 million had been planted.
The figures could not be verified, but they far exceed the previous record. That is held by the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which in 2016 planted more than 50 million trees in one day, according to Guinness World Records.
On balance, the planet’s forests continue to shrink at an alarming rate, but reforestation campaigns have picked up momentum around the world, recognized as a powerful tool to fight climate change, habitat loss and erosion.
After losing much of its forest cover, China has set out to be the world leader in expanding it, and most countries have signed onto an array of ambitious tree-planting campaigns.
The Earth Day Network has called for planting 7.8 billion trees on Earth Day next year — one for every living person.
Worldwide, about 900 million hectares of land — almost 3.5 million square miles, nearly the area of the United States — is not being used by people and could support forests, according to a recent study by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, ETH Zurich, that drew intense interest from environmentalists worldwide.
If trees were planted on all of that land, the study said, when they matured they could store about two-thirds of all the carbon that human activity has pumped into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
In the early 20th century, about one-third of Ethiopia was covered in forests, according to historical estimates, but that had dropped to just 4 percent by 2000, according to the United Nations.
The country’s population has soared to more than 100 million people, about five times as many as it had in 1960 — growth that has increased demand for farmland and timber, contributing to deforestation.
From 1990 to 2015, Ethiopia lost 2.6 million hectares of forest, or more than 10,000 square miles, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Agency.
Ethiopia is among the nations taking part in the United Nations’ decade-old campaign against deforestation.
Organizations like Farm Africa have been working on management of forests with people in Ethiopia and other countries who depend on them for their livelihoods.
Farm Africa has supported farmers in Bale Province in developing forest-compatible trades like beekeeping, producing essential oils and making bamboo furniture, and using fuel-efficient stoves to reduce their dependence on firewood.

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A Brief Introduction To Climate Change And National Security

Yale Climate Connections - 

Extreme weather, rising seas, and a melting Arctic could worsen global tensions.


A series of punishing droughts set the stage for the Syrian civil war in 2011. A drying East Africa fuels ongoing conflicts over natural resources in Somalia and Kenya. Rising seas threaten future refugee crises in Southeast Asia. Melting sea ice in the Arctic is opening new shipping lanes, creating new potential for tensions among competing powers at the top of the world.
These are among the many worries – some already realized and some forecast in the near future – that concern experts studying the convergence of climate change and national security.
The idea that a warming planet threatens stability around the globe is not a new one. The U.S. Naval War College began studying the topic as early as the late 1980s, and over the past three decades a steady stream of analyses from the U.S. Defense Department, private think tanks, and other organizations have pointed to threats that climate change poses to peace and stability. Climate change is rarely viewed as a direct cause of instability and conflict, but experts generally regard it as a “threat multiplier” – a phenomenon that can worsen or exacerbate other sources of instability and conflict, such as competition for natural resources and ethnic tensions.
Discussions generally fall into two areas: the impacts of warming on conflicts between nations and among ethnic groups within nations, and the impacts of warming on U.S. military infrastructure and operations.

Threats to global security
The Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, an annual report on security threats to U.S. interests, concludes that “global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond.”
“Climate hazards such as extreme weather, higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea-level rise, soil degradation, and acidifying oceans are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security,” the authors of the January 2019 report wrote.
Extreme weather events, worsened by accelerated sea-level rise, will hit some areas particularly hard – including South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Water and food insecurity made worse by heat waves, droughts, and floods are already increasing the risk of conflict in Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan, according to the report.
The Worldwide Threat Assessment also highlighted the risk of tensions between Russia and China as sea routes open up in the Arctic and the rush for natural resources at the top of the world increases.

Threats to military infrastructure & operations
Responding to a Congressional order in late 2017, the Defense Department issued a report in January of 2019 that outlined impacts of climate change on Defense Department missions, operational plans, and installations. It offers an authoritative overview of past, present, and future concerns.
Among them: In the United States Africa Command, rainy season flooding and drought and desertification can complicate the execution of missions. At Naval Base Guam, flooding driven by sea-level rise can negatively affect submarine squadron operations, telecommunications, and other support activities for naval operations.
Meanwhile, a warming climate is significantly impeding military testing and training, with an increased number of suspended, delayed, or canceled outdoor events – particularly at installations in the United States’ Southeast and Southwest.
Increased maintenance and repair of installations has been required: The report cites wildfires in the Western U.S. impacting Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Point Mugu Sea Range, hurricanes causing damage and delays at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, permafrost thawing impacting operations at Fort Greely in Alaska, and rising seas contaminating freshwater supplies at atoll installations in the Pacific.
While these two key government reports summarize some of the latest thinking on climate change and national security, they are backed up by a deep well of information on the topic. Climate scientist and author Peter Gleick has compiled a list of important assessments (updated regularly) at his blog.

Links
Coverage of the 2019 release of the Worldwide Threat Assessment: Coverage of the 2019 release of the Defense Department report on climate change and military operations: Other key reports: Yale Climate Connections news stories, podcasts, and videos: Additional News stories: Select sites and journal articles:
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