Tag: Environment

Pakistan uses artificial rain for the first time to fight pollution | Environment News

Cloud seeding was used to counter the hazardous smog in the megacity of Lahore, one of the world’s most polluted cities.

Artificial rain has been used for the first time in Pakistan in a bid to combat hazardous levels of pollution in the megacity of Lahore, says the provincial government.

Planes equipped with cloud-seeding equipment flew on Saturday over the eastern city, often ranked one of the worst places globally for air pollution.

“It drizzled in at least 10 areas of Lahore,” caretaker chief minister of Punjab, Mohsin Naqvi, told reporters, adding that the authorities were monitoring the impact of artificial rain in a radius of 15km (nine miles).

Air quality in Lahore has been particularly bad in the last few weeks and the Punjab government employed several tactics including the early closure of businesses and keeping schools off for two extra days to help improve the air quality – but nothing worked.

The “gift” was provided by the United Arab Emirates, Naqvi said.

“Teams from the UAE, along with two planes, arrived here about 10 to 12 days ago. They used 48 flares to create the rain,” he said.

Commuters make their way along a street amid smog in Lahore [File: Arif Ali/AFP]

Naqvi said the team would be able to assess the effects of the experiment by Saturday night.

The UAE has increasingly used cloud seeding, sometimes referred to as artificial rain or blueskying, to create rain in the arid expanse of the country.

In the cloud-seeding process, silver iodide, a yellowish salt, is burned in clouds in a compound with acetone to encourage condensation to form as rain.

Naqvi reassured the public of the safety of the artificial rain, citing more than 1,000 annual missions by the UAE and similar technologies used in dozens of countries, including the United States, China and India.

Lahore’s toxic smog

Even very modest rain is effective in bringing down pollution, experts have said.

Levels of PM2.5 pollutants – cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs – were measured as hazardous in Lahore on Saturday at more than 66 times the World Health Organization’s danger limits.

Air pollution has worsened in Pakistan in recent years, as a mixture of low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal crop burn off and colder winter temperatures coalesce into stagnant clouds of smog.

Lahore has suffered the most from the toxic smog, choking the lungs of more than 11 million residents in Lahore during the winter season.

Breathing the poisonous air has catastrophic health consequences.

Prolonged exposure can trigger strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases, according to the WHO.

The Pakistani authorities blame industrial emissions, smoke from brick kilns and vehicles, and the burning of crop residue and general waste for causing air pollution and smog in the central Punjab province.

Naqvi said that there would be more instances of artificial rain in the city, in which smog towers – large-scale air purifiers designed to capture pollution – would also be installed in the coming weeks.

Growing industrialisation in South Asia in recent decades has driven an increase in pollutants emanating from factories, construction activity and vehicles in densely populated areas.

The problem becomes more severe in cooler autumn and winter months, as temperature inversion prevents a layer of warm air from rising and traps pollutants closer to the ground.

Rising air pollution can cut life expectancy by more than five years per person in South Asia, one of the world’s most polluted regions, according to a report published in August which flagged the growing burden of hazardous air on health.

Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions but is among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable nations.

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Is the world capable of stopping a climate apocalypse? | Climate Crisis News

It was supposed to be a matter of life or death. So the recent spectacle of COP28 delegates quibbling over the wording of a final agreement calling on countries to “transition away” from the fossil fuels causing climate chaos provoked widespread alarm.

Calling time on the status quo of using fossil fuels turned out to be the central battle within a fractious event that highlighted the might of an industry bent on survival for as long as possible. At long last, the main issue was being addressed. But was this progress?

As Doomsday predictions about the climate crisis mount and the UN chief, Antonio Guterres, warned that humanity has “opened the gates of hell” after record summer temperatures this year, the world appears stuck in an endless loop of missed targets and freak weather events.

Firefighters look on as a wildfire burns on Mount Parnitha, in Athens, Greece, August 24, 2023 [Nicolas Economou/Reuters]

The “final warning” came this year, when the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the world could surpass the point of catastrophic warming in the next decade unless it immediately stops guzzling fossil fuels.

So why all the dithering? What’s standing in the way of making real progress in the fight against climate change? And does using paper straws really make a difference?

Should we even look to COPs for progress?

No, according to climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. Back in 1988, he was one of the first climatologists to sound the alarm about climate change when he presented his research into how humans were heating the planet through the burning of fossil fuels to the US Senate.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist’s work paved the way for the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. More than three decades later, he believes we are losing the race, having already been overtaken by extreme climate events that would not have happened had action been taken earlier.

“We’re playing catch-up now,” he said.

Oppenheimer said he doesn’t look to COPs for progress on reducing emissions – “That’s simply because the big emitting countries make commitments that they’re not going to meet.” But he added that he does believe the forum is valuable, helping to shine a light on issues, such as urgently needed finance for Global South countries at the sharp end of climate change.

A farm worker holds her son in her lap next to her temporary shelter after her family evacuated the flooded banks of the Yamuna River in New Delhi, India, on August 9, 2023 [Altaf Qadri/AP]

Breakthroughs like the 2015 Paris Agreement have been rare. The scientist argued that people should adjust their expectations. Change happens at home, rather than around a negotiating table in Dubai, he added. “People who are active and interested in solving the problem should turn their attention to their domestic politics wherever they live.

“The politics in every country is different. The interest groups are different. Their power and influence are different, both on the environmental side and on the fossil fuel side.

“The change required involves the entire energy system of most countries. You have to do it in a way that satisfies or at least neutralises the interest groups who oppose change and that’s not easy.”

How do ‘interest groups’ oppose change?

George Monbiot, a British writer and environmental campaigner, has given the matter a lot of thought over nearly four decades. He has identified a phenomenon he calls “the pollution paradox”. In a nutshell, the companies that have the greatest incentive to invest in politics are also the “dirtiest”. “Because if they don’t invest in politics, they get regulated out of existence,” he said.

The influence of the biggest polluters goes beyond direct political contributions. As Monbiot pointed out, they also need a “social licence to operate”, mainly provided through greenwashing initiatives that make it seem like they are offering a solution to climate change. Their narratives are pushed to voters through a “concierge class” of think tanks – or “junk tanks”, as he referred to them – marketeers and journalists.

Monbiot said he reserves special scorn for carbon capture and storage (CCS), a nascent technology for stashing carbon dioxide underground. While the industry has hailed CCS as a “silver bullet” solution, many scientists and experts have cast doubt on its effectiveness. “It’s a dead duck,” Monbiot said, and others have described it as a distraction to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.

Climate campaigners criticised COP28 for providing a space for greenwashing, with industry using the forum to push CCS. In a sense, the event offered a glimpse into how the fossil fuels industry works. According to research conducted by Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO), a coalition of more than 450 international climate action groups, at least 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to the conference whose president was the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’s state oil company.

As COP28 appeared to demonstrate, the real decisions regarding the energy status quo are made in clusters, in side meetings or in the corridors. “Democracy is the problem capital is always trying to solve,” said Monbiot. In his view, individual states do not have the power to stand up to capital’s might. “The structures are still standing, the institutions are still there, there are still parliaments, but the power has migrated elsewhere.”

Is change possible within the current system?

plSo, how can these interest groups be, as Oppenheimer puts it, neutralised?

Companies invested in hydrocarbons don’t want the energy revolution to move fast, he said. “They’re sitting on piles of uncashed resources. They want to burn up those resources first. We can’t let that get in the way, but it’s not going to be easy.”

He said he has placed his faith in the energy revolution, which he believes is gaining traction around the world, kickstarting a slow process of transition in countries eyeing market share. China may still derive 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels, but it is also the world’s top supplier of renewable energy technologies.

Wind turbines along the coast of Pingtan in Southern China’s Fujian province, on August 6, 2022 [Ng Han Guan/AP]

Eager to get a slice of the pie, the US – which has continued to approve oil and gas drilling projects – is ploughing hundreds of billions in state subsidies over the coming decade into companies investing in renewable energy and low-carbon technologies.

Although it has been hailed as a tax credits bonanza for controversial CCS, the Inflation Reduction Act will also accelerate the development of a domestic supply chain for clean vehicles, helping the country hit its target of ensuring 50 percent of car sales are electric by 2030.

“It’s an interesting experiment,” said Oppenheimer. “What it will do is create embedded interests, make the renewable energy interest much larger,” he says. Actors come from across the country, covering a lot of political ground – “they’re not all progressives, a lot of them don’t even care about the climate, but they’re interested in making money on renewable energy and that’s fine. That’s going to engage people.”

The energy revolution will involve continued “focus and effort” from governments, moving technologies from experimentation to commercial phases faster and not being “intimidated” by the “politically powerful” forces opposing change, he said.

Is there hope?

Only if people act, said Monbiot.

“We have to directly confront power,” he said. “There’s no point in messing around at the margins of this. We have to recognise that we are facing a world-eating system and it is that system that has to change.”

He added that he believes big environmental NGOs have been institutionalised, shying away from radical change and opting instead for an ethos of “incrementalism”, pushing what he calls “micro-consumerist b*****ks”. “Incrementalism is a symptom of cowardice,” he said.

“They know in their heart of hearts that they’re not going to change things by getting consumers to change plastic straws for paper ones. But they don’t have the guts to say it.”

While he was more optimistic about market-based solutions, Oppenheimer remained downbeat on the prospects of playing catch-up while enduring threatening climate conditions. “We missed an opportunity decades ago to avoid seeing large-scale impacts of climate change that are hurting people and countries,” he said.

“We in the Global North have a moral obligation to help those much poorer countries in the Global South, who have contributed almost nothing to their problem – not only to recover from climate-related disasters, but to do better in the future by building resilience and adapting,” he said.

“It’s going to be a bit of a mess for some decades.”

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Finding a fix: Nigerian women lead drive to upcycle plastics | Environment

Lagos, Nigeria — For years, Maryam Lawani was really pained when it rained. She lived in the Oshodi Isolo area of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, where canals often overflow messily into the streets during downpours.

Additionally, she was always struck by the huge amount of plastic waste on the streets after the rains receded and how this in turn affected mobility or even made the roads deteriorate. After even a little rain in Lagos, the streets get muddy and potholes brimming by the side with broken plastics, gin sachets, pure water nylons, used diapers and other items.

“I felt a strong need to prevent climate crises as a response to a personal pain point,” she told Al Jazeera. So she began to research the recurring problem and then discovered that plastic pollution was a global issue.

According to the United Nations, on average, the world produces 430 million tonnes of plastic every year; wrappers for chocolate bars, packets and plastic utensils. And there are consequences; every day, the equivalent of over 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into water bodies. As a result, plastic pollution is set to triple by 2060 if no action is taken.

UN reports also say that Nigeria generates about 2.5 million metric tonnes of plastic waste annually. Of that, over 130,000 tonnes of plastic make their way into water bodies, putting the country among the top 20 contributors to marine debris globally.

And while Nigeria has several dumping sites for waste, those in the environmental sector like Olumide Idowu, executive director for International Climate Change Initiative, say there is no exact data on their number or capacity to handle large volumes of waste sufficiently.

So waste has visibly caused blocked drainages and pollution, even as climate shocks like floods hit parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This is most obvious in Lagos, the country’s most populated city, with an estimated 24 million people.

Challenges

Compared to other developing countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, which have banned single-use plastics or are gradually eliminating them, Nigeria hasn’t done much to combat plastic pollution, experts say.

In 2020, the Ministry of Environment launched the Nigeria Circular Economy Policy to help transition the country to a circular economy and promote sustainable waste management. But Idowu says proper waste collection and recycling facilities are still needed for Nigeria to tackle plastic pollution effectively.

“Nigeria may also need to strengthen existing regulations or introduce new ones to address plastic pollution,” he says, adding that the country’s large population could also be a challenge in enforcing them. ”[But] economic constraints and lack of alternative packaging options may hinder the transition away from single-use plastics.”

“As more individuals, businesses, and the government recognize the value of upcycling, it is likely that the sector will grow and contribute to a more sustainable and circular economy in Nigeria,” Idowu says.

Climate Lead’s Oladosu says there is a need to involve as many people as possible in the movement for a cleaner, greener Nigeria.

“We need to make people understand that climate change is real, and it will affect everyone regardless of where they live, Ajegunle or Lekki,” she said. “We can all feel the heat of the sun, the impact of flooding, etc. There are different angles to mitigating climate change and recycling is just one. Another is responsible consumption. There is a need for everyone to be climate and environmentally conscious.”

The recycling mission

During her research, Lawani discovered she could recycle plastics to help clean up the neighbourhood mess. So in 2015, she founded Greenhill Recycling which now recovers an average of 100-200 tonnes of waste monthly, she says.

Her business also provides a means of supplemental income for people around her, by paying them around 100-150 naira ($0.1265) for every kilogramme of trash collected.

“We encourage and sensitise people not to thrash waste but to bag them neatly in their homes,” she told Al Jazeera. “We pick up from their doorstep, their homes and not in dump sites.”

“Waste is a currency to address other issues around poverty, unemployment and the environment. People are able to exchange waste for profitable things like school fees, clothes and even food,” Lawani added.

Like Lawani’s Greenhill Recycling, several other women-led upcycling and recycling companies have sprung up in Africa’s largest economy, in addition to the well-known Wecyclers social enterprise.

In coastal Lagos, RESWAYE (Recycling Scheme for Women and Youth Empowerment) works in communities with women and young girls who are trained to go into schools and estates to retrieve plastics. Their collections go to a sorting hub and from there to upscalers.

Doyinsola Ogunye, founder of RESWAYE told Al Jazeera that it has reached 4000 women in 41 coastal communities in Lagos, while also giving personal hygiene kits to them and providing scholarships for children.

There is also the nonprofit Foundation for A Better Nigeria (FABE) founded by Temitope Okunnu in 2006 to create awareness about climate change in schools. It operates across three states.

“We visit primary, secondary schools and universities to sensitise young children about climate issues,” she said. “Behavioural change is still a big issue in this part of the country which is why we are focused on young children.”

Through an initiative called EcoSchoolsNg, it teaches students skills such as sustainable waste management – by recycling, upcycling or composting – and sustainable gardening.

FABE says it promotes plastic upscaling because according to Okunnu, “plastic is money but only a few people know this”, she told Al Jazeera.

The increasing awareness about recycling plastic into usable products can also be great for keeping youth engaged, says Adenike Titilope Oladosu, founder of ILead Climate, a climate justice advocacy.

A police officer stands next to boxes of expired AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines at the Gosa dump site in Abuja, Nigeria, December 22, 2021 [Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters]

The need for more work

Despite the work of these women and numerous non-profits to educate Nigerians on the adverse effects of climate change, ignorance is still widespread.

Passengers in moving vehicles still casually fling sachets and bottles onto the streets just like others sweep household waste into canals.

For Lawani and Okunnu, this is more evidence of the need to ingrain awareness of the environment and related consequences in their fellow Nigerians at all income cadres, from a young age.

“Exposed and enlightened young children are well aware but less privileged children whose concern is how to get the next meal may not be concerned about this so we need to direct our attention to them, sensitise people, help people find a link,” Lawani said. “People can easily relate to blocked drainages so teach people at their level. Help them see these links and connections and how it affects them too.”

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‘We are the living dead’: Drought-hit Tunisian villages battle isolation | Climate Crisis

Tunisian villager Ounissa Mazhoud ties two empty jerry cans to a donkey and cautiously descends a stony hill towards the last local source of water.

The North African country, in its fourth year of drought, is grappling with its worst water scarcity in years.

Mazhoud – like other women in the remote village of Ouled Omar, 180km (110 miles) southwest of the capital, Tunis – wakes up every morning with one thing on her mind: finding water.

“We are the living dead … forgotten by everyone,” said Mazhoud, 57, whose region was once one of Tunisia’s most fertile, known for its wheat fields and Aleppo pines.

“We have no roads, no water, no aid, no decent housing, and we own nothing,” she said, adding that the closest source of water is a river about an hour’s arduous walk away.

Providing water for their families, she said, means that “our backs, heads and knees hurt, because we labour from dawn to dusk”.

Some villagers have felt pushed to move to urban areas or abroad.

Ounissa’s cousin, Djamila Mazhoud, 60, said her son and two daughters had all left in search of better lives.

“We educated our children so that when we grow old, they take care of us, but they couldn’t,” she said.

“People are either unemployed or eaten by the fish in the sea,” she added, using a common phrase for migrants who attempt the dangerous sea voyages for Europe.

Entire families have already left the village, said Djamila.

“Their houses remain empty,” she said, explaining that elderly people feel they have no choice but to follow their sons and daughters.

“Can an 80-year-old go to the river to get water?”

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Iraq’s marshes are dying, and so is a civilization | Climate Crisis

Mohammed Hamid Nour is only 23 but is already nostalgic for how Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes once were before drought dried them up, decimating his herd of water buffaloes.

Even at their centre in Chibayish, only a few expanses of the ancient waterways – home to a Marsh Arab culture that goes back millennia – survive, linked by channels that snake through the reeds.

Pull back further and the water gives way to bare, cracked earth.

Mohammed has lost three-quarters of his herd to the drought that is now ravaging the marshes for a fourth consecutive year. The United Nations said it is the worst in 40 years, describing the situation as “alarming”, with “70 percent of the marshes devoid of water”.

“I beg you, Allah, have mercy!” Mohammed implored, keffiyeh on his head as he contemplated the disaster under the unforgiving blue of a cloudless sky.

As the marshes dry out, the water gets salty until it starts killing the buffaloes. Many of Mohammed’s herd died like this, others he was forced to sell before they too perished.

“If the drought continues and the government doesn’t help us, the others will also die,” said the young herder, who has no other income.

In the 1990s, Iraq’s former strongman President Saddam Hussein drained the marshes – which were 20,000sq km (7,700sq miles) – to punish the Marsh Arabs, diverting the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers away from the land.

It was only after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that people began to dismantle the Saddam-era infrastructure, allowing the marshes to refill slightly, but they are still only 4,000sq km (1,500sq miles) by the latest estimates – also choked by dams on the Tigris and Euphrates upstream in Turkey and Syria and soaring temperatures of climate change.

Iconic culture

Marsh buffalo milk is an iconic part of Iraqi cuisine, as is the thick, clotted “geymar” cream Iraqis love to have with honey for breakfast.

The buffaloes are tricky to raise and their milk cannot be mass-produced, and their rearing is tied to the marshes

Both the Mesopotamian marshes and the culture of the Ma’dan – Marsh Arabs – who live in them, have UNESCO World Heritage status. The Ma’dan have hunted and fished there for 5,000 years, building houses from woven reeds on floating reed islands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together before pouring into the Gulf.

Even their beautifully intricate mosques were made of reeds.

Today, only a few thousand of the quarter million Ma’dan who lived in the marshes in the early 1990s remain.

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‘We are resilient’: Mauritius slowly consolidates ecotourism gains | Environment

Île d’Ambre, Mauritius – It is said to be the place where the last dodo was sighted. Yet, today, Île d’Ambre, an islet off the northeastern coast of Mauritius fringed by bright green mangroves, stands as a symbol, not of extinction, but of survival.

As guide Patrick Haberland explains, vast swaths of mangroves were destroyed right up to the mid-90s, ripped up for firewood or to clear the way for boat routes and hotel construction projects.

Cutting down mangroves is now forbidden by law. Following a national conservation drive, sites like Île d’Ambre have since been restored. Now it’s a national park, protected by the government’s forestry department.

Having escaped extinction, the trees are now vital to the very survival of the nation. Their dense, tenacious roots are among the island’s main lines of defence, along with the coral reef and seagrass beds, against rising tides that are eroding its silvery beaches, gobbling up 20 metres of coastline over the past decade.

It’s a predicament that weighs heavily upon Haberland, who runs Yemaya Adventures, a small company taking tourists on canoeing trips through the mangroves. He is one of a growing number of locals advocating a back-to-nature approach to tourism. “The environment provides us with our livelihood. If we don’t respect it, we won’t have work,” he says.

People kayaking among the mangroves at Île d’Ambre, an islet off the northeastern coast of Mauritius [Lorraine Mallinder/Al Jazeera]

‘Killing the golden goose’

As tourists flock here in ever greater numbers – up by nearly 60 percent during the first half of this year – the island finds itself in a quandary. How can it sustain an industry that has not only strained its fragile ecosystems but also contributed to global climate change that is in turn bleaching its reefs and causing sea levels to rise by an alarming 5.6mm a year?

“It’s killing the golden goose, destroying the environment,” says activist Yan Hookoomsing, of the nonprofit Mru2025. As Hookoomsing points out, the hotel industry is still expanding. Back in 1997, the government’s “Vision 2020” plan for the industry set a “green ceiling” of 9,000 hotel rooms for the entire country. Recently, tourism minister Steven Obeegadoo announced 19 new hotel builds that will bring that total close to 16,000.

With tourism numbers on the rise, Hookoomsing and his partner, Carina Gounden, are campaigning to fence off the country’s southern coast, proposing a geopark on the stunning stretch of coastline, which features sand dunes, sea cliffs, lava caves, pools, waterfalls, estuaries, lagoons and open ocean.

Currently awaiting government approval, the “green lung” project would be a logical move for a country trying to offset its dependence on tourism with sustainable land use policies – only four percent of native forest is left, the result of extensive cane cultivation going back to the mid-19th century.

Hookoomsing and Gounden fell in love while campaigning to kick hotel developers off Pomponette, a public beach in the south – a battle they finally won in 2020. Like so many other hotel projects, it would have seen locals excluded from their shores. “We need to think about how we share these spaces,” says Gounden. “You can’t just tell the public to move away.”

“Mauritians feel like second-class citizens,” she adds. “There’s a feeling of losing something that made them happy, the beauty of their country. This affects the way we welcome tourists.”

No more greenwashing

“The baseline of what is acceptable is changing,” says Vikash Tatayah, conservation director at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.

He’s banking on tourists helping to drive the move towards sustainability. Right now, the foundation is developing niche ecotourism activities that will allow visitors to spend time with local researchers. Eco-volunteerism is another potential growth area, enabling tourists to participate in conservation.

Nature is one of the island’s main draws, he says. “People come from the four corners of the globe to see the kestrels and the pink pigeons. Some come to see rare reptiles. Others come for the rare plants like the tambalacoque (dodo tree) or the mandrinette hibiscus.”

German tourists prepare for their kayaking expedition to Île d’Ambre [Lorraine Mallinder/Al Jazeera]

“One thing hotels and companies won’t be able to do in the future is greenwashing – we got rid of all our plastic cups, so we’re ecological,” he adds. “Tourists will want to know the environmental policy of the countries they visit. They will want to know hotels are working on conservation and that staff are locally employed.”

Aware of the changing mood, the luxury market is also getting in on the act. Local group Rogers has repurposed the former sugar estate Bel-Ombre, relaunching the area as a kind of ecotourism mecca. Its three hotels offer carbon-neutral packages integrating solar power and water repurposing initiatives, offsetting emissions through the African carbon credits scheme Aera.

The hotels are located in a buffer zone on the UNESCO-recognised Black River Gorges National Park-Bel Ombre Biosphere Reserve. Covering more than 8,500 hectares (32.8sq miles), the reserve is viewed as a model for eco-friendly development, bringing back endemic trees such as the black ebony and providing a home for rare native species like the Mauritian flying fox and the pink pigeon.

Equitable change

Change seems inevitable, but it will have to be equitable if it is to be truly sustainable, analysts say.

“We need to change sea, sand and sun to restoration, recycling and respect,” says oceanographer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo. “The environment can be used as a transformative tool for tourism. If eco-tourism is presented as an opportunity where people can participate, giving them back confidence, then we can have this spark.”

To a certain extent, he thinks this transformation will require a long, hard think about the nation’s identity, reversing recent trends that have seen it copying glitzy destinations like Dubai and Singapore. Failure to do this properly could see the sector, which represents a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP), going the way of the dodo, he says.

But if there’s anything this small nation excels at, it’s survival. Back in 1968, when Mauritius took its first steps as an independent nation, with only sugarcane mono-crops to its name, it was predicted to fail. By the 90s, it was being hailed as a model for the African continent.

“At the end of the day, we are resilient,” says Kauppaymuthoo. “We’re used to radical change.”

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Is Israel’s Gaza bombing also a war on the climate? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Many of the world’s leaders are gathered in Dubai for COP28, the annual United Nations summit on climate change. Some 2,400km (1,500 miles) to the West, meanwhile, Israel’s war on Gaza is raging.

Sixty days into the war, Israel’s bombs have killed about 16,000 people, including more than 6,600 children. But increasingly, experts are also worried about its effect on the environment and on Gaza’s ability to combat climate change.

From polluted water supplies to toxic smoke-filled air from burning buildings and bodies, every aspect of life in Gaza is now filled with some form of pollution.

“On the ground, this war has destroyed every aspect of Gaza’s environment,” Nada Majdalani, the Ramallah-based Palestine director for EcoPeace Middle East, told Al Jazeera.

Here’s a look at how the unstoppable bombardment of the enclave could further affect climate change in a region that has already seen temperatures increase, with projections of a 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) rise by the end of the century.

How has the Israeli bombing affected Gaza’s climate change measures?

Gaza has been under an Israeli siege for 16 years, with Israeli authorities holding the switch to — among other things — dependable access to fuel and power in the enclave.

As a result, the people of Gaza turned significantly to solar energy to power their homes.

“Gazans have been climate adaptive, and some 60 percent of their energy would come from solar power,” Majdalani said.

But Israeli bombing has damaged or destroyed thousands of buildings, many of which were roofed with solar panels.

“Destroying the solar panels is not only targeting the wellbeing of people, it’s diminishing the efforts of the Gazans in taking climate adaptation and measures to secure clean energy,” she said.

“These solar installations now lay in the rubble with the buildings destroyed, setting back Gaza’s climate change efforts.”

What are the main environmental concerns on the ground?

Amid the war, “getting figures and measurements of the extent of the damage” to Gaza’s environment is difficult, said Majdalani.

But some things are clear. Decaying bodies and contaminated water supplies are a “ticking time bomb” that will lead to the spread of diseases, she said.

“Right now this is the greatest concern, and everyone should be worried, including Israel. Having military might on the ground cannot protect them against the spread of cholera which is predicted.”

Impending rains are another concern. Majdalani’s team estimates 44 percent of gas, water and sanitation facilities have either been completely or partially damaged in Gaza since the war began. This includes water wells and wastewater treatment. Sewage water has already flooded Gaza streets, but if rain mixes with the filth, the risks of cholera and other gastrointestinal diseases increase further.

“The war damage to Gaza’s water sanitation and hygiene infrastructure makes flooding more likely with the winter rains,” Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, an independent research body based in the United Kingdom, said.

Even before the current war, inadequate sanitation infrastructure and electricity shortages meant that untreated sewage water was dumped into the sea and was responsible for more than one-quarter of illnesses. It was the primary cause of child morbidity in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, the total shutdown of wastewater treatment plants in October, after Israel imposed a complete blockade on any fuel entering the strip, led to the release of more than 130,000 cubic metres of untreated sewage into the Mediterranean Sea daily, posing a grave environmental hazard.

With the destruction amid the current war, huge volumes of debris and waste are blocking sewers, warned Weir. This, he said, “will allow more standing water, with associated risks to human health from transmissible diseases from wastewater mixing with rainwater.”

Could there also be a rise in carbon emissions adding to global warming?

This war, like others before it, requires vast quantities of fossil fuel, leading to excessive carbon emissions and pollutants in the environment.

Earlier reports suggest 25,000 tonnes of munitions were dropped on Gaza in the first few weeks of the war. The carbon emissions from this would equate with the annual energy use of approximately 2,300 homes, or the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from approximately 4,600 passenger vehicles.

The world’s military forces also use fossil fuels to operate aircraft, tanks and weapons, accounting for approximately 5.5 percent of global emissions. The figure could be higher as defence forces are not bound to report their carbon emissions as it may undermine national security.

“Methodologies to count emissions from conflicts are in their infancy,” Weir told Al Jazeera.

But things are slowly changing.

Last week, the UN Environment Programme’s flagship Emissions Gap report, which is released before each COP meeting, made mention of conflict and military emissions for the first time, calling for more research into the topic.

What effects do the weapons used in Gaza have on the environment?

Groups like Human Rights Watch have also accused Israel of using white phosphorous munitions in Gaza, which added further to the pollution in the atmosphere, said Majdalani. “As Gaza enters the rainy season, we expect the rain to fall as acid rain, contaminated with white phosphorus.”

People who use plastic sheets to collect rainwater to drink directly, amid a shortage of drinking water, could be particularly at risk, she said.

In the first weeks of the war, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA reported Israel dropped 42 bombs every hour on Gaza.

In addition to the emissions from weapons, their manufacture also contributes to pollution, Weir explained. “Far more emissions come from them during production, for example in creating the metal for their casings.”

Reports from Ukraine suggested the fighting there released some 100 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in the first seven months of the war.

So what about Gaza?

“We anticipate that the bulk of the emissions in this war will be from military fuel use – Israeli jet fuel and diesel, from urban and landscape fires caused either by the destruction of buildings or targeted attacks, and from the carbon costs of reconstructing Gaza.”

How will destroyed buildings and reconstruction add to climate change?

Other risks include fires, pulverised building materials that can include harmful substances like asbestos, and pollutants released from facilities containing hazardous materials.

Even rebuilding war-torn areas that have turned to rubble causes significant emissions. “Producing concrete and cement to rebuild generates a large quantity of carbon dioxide, which contributes to the climate crisis,” said Weir.

Lennard de Klerk, from the Initiative in GHG Accounting of War, did a rough calculation on how much GHG emission would result from rebuilding just residential and non-residential buildings that were destroyed or damaged after the first six weeks of the war.

He told Al Jazeera, “5.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions would be released to produce construction materials and the emissions of the construction activities itself”.

That is already a fifth of the projected emissions for the reconstruction of Ukraine from its war, which has been going on for 21 months as opposed to two months in Gaza.

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Death toll rises to 13 after Mount Marapi eruption, climbers still missing | Volcanoes News

Two more bodies were found late on Monday, an Indonesian official says, as volcanic activity hampers rescue mission.

Thirteen climbers have been declared dead since the Mount Marapi volcano erupted in Indonesia on Sunday, with the head of the local rescue service saying two more bodies were found.

“The total number of people who have died is currently 13,” Abdul Malik, head of Padang Search and Rescue Agency, told AFP news agency on Tuesday, adding that 10 hikers were still missing, while 52 have been evacuated.

The bodies of the two hikers were found late on Monday, he said.

The rescue mission is being hampered by further volcanic activity and bad weather.

“The volcanic ash has reached the foot of the hill, which is a challenge for the team. Both routes will be steep and slippery,” Malik said.

Eleven bodies were found on Monday near the crater of Mount Marapi on the island of Sumatra, while several others were found alive and carried down the mountain.

The volcano spewed an ash tower 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) – taller than the volcano itself – into the sky on Sunday. It was the deadliest eruption since 1979, when another one killed 60 people.

‘Mountain of Fire’

Mount Marapi, which means “Mountain of Fire”, is the most active volcano on Sumatra island. Between Sunday and Monday, 46 eruptions had occurred, besides one on Tuesday morning, state-run Antara News reported.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide. The archipelago nation has nearly 130 active volcanoes.

For more than a decade, Indonesia’s volcanology agency had sent monthly letters warning the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and local conservation agency that climbers should keep a safe distance from the volcano’s peak, agency head Hendra Gunawan told Reuters news agency.

“The recommendation was to not climb up to the peak, that no one should go within 3km of the crater,” he told Reuters.

Officials from the volcanology body said it could only issue safety warnings and that it was up to the environment ministry and local authorities to enforce them.

The conservation agency, which is under the ministry, said permits to climb were given after getting the green light from several local agencies, including the West Sumatra provincial government and national disaster agency, as well as the Padang search and rescue agency.

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Death toll rises as Tanzania reels from flooding, landslides | Floods News

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa says at least 63 people have been killed in flooding unleashed by heavy rainfall over the weekend.

The death toll from floods in northern Tanzania following torrential rains this weekend has risen to 63, officials have said.

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said in comments broadcast on television on Monday that the number of injured stood at 116 people. Landslides had destroyed half of one village he visited, he said.

“We are here in front of bodies of our fellows. We have lost 63 loved ones. Of the total fellows we lost, 23 are men and 40 are women,” he said during an event to bid farewell to the bodies of those who had died in Hanang district, northern Tanzania.

“My fellow Tanzanians, this is a tragedy,” he said.

Queen Sendiga, commissioner for the Northern Manyara region, said the death toll had reached 68, the AFP news agency reported.

Earlier on Monday Zuhura Yunus, a spokesperson for the president’s office, said the flooding has affected at least 1,150 households and 5,600 people, with 750 acres [300 hectares] of farmland also destroyed.

“Despite all the challenges rescue work is facing from damaged roads and mud and logs filling the roads, the government is doing its best to deal with that,” Yunus said.

Residents stand beside a car damaged by flooding in the town of Katesh, Tanzania, on Sunday, December 3 [AP Photo]

The flooding is the latest example of extreme weather that has devastated East African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, with hundreds of people killed since the region’s rainy season began in October.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who was attending a United Nations climate summit in Dubai, has said that she will return from the trip early to attend to the crisis.

“I send my sincere condolences to the affected families and have directed all our security forces to deploy to the area and help those affected,” Hassan said in a video message.

The flooding follows a period of severe drought that has left soil in the region drier and less capable of holding water, heightening the risk of flash flooding.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Sendiga said that about 100 homes were swallowed up in the village of Katesh, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) north of the capital, Dodoma, and that rescue workers continue to search for people buried in the mud.

At the COP 28 UN climate summit in Dubai, Hassan highlighted the fact that poor countries face disproportionate risks from climate change, despite the fact that wealthy countries in the West bear responsibility for a large share of the cumulative emissions that drive climate change.

“It must be said, unfulfilled commitments erode solidarity and trust, and have detrimental and costly consequences for developing countries,” said Hassan. “My own country is losing 2 to 3 percent of its GDP due to climate change.”

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COP28: Israel should not be allowed to greenwash its war on Gaza | Environment

As its war on Gaza continues with no end in sight, Israel will be participating in the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) which started on Thursday in Dubai. For the Israeli government, this will be an invaluable opportunity to engage in “green diplomacy”, promote its climate technologies, and divert the international community’s attention from its illegal occupation, apartheid and ongoing war crimes against the Palestinians.

Indeed, participating in the world’s top climate event while continuing to indiscriminately bomb an unlawfully besieged territory will allow Israel, which has long been trying to conceal its theft of Palestinian land and resources under a cloak of pseudo “environmentalism”, to push its extensive “greenwashing” agenda to dangerous new extremes.

Given the scale of atrocities Israel has committed in Gaza in the past few weeks, the presence of an Israeli delegation – no matter its size or the relative seniority of its members – will cast a shadow over COP28.

The Israeli government has said its delegation to the conference has been significantly “scaled down” due to “current events”, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top ministers will not be in attendance. Nevertheless, it said Israel will still have a pavilion at the conference which will be used to promote its environmental start-ups and initiatives, especially those from the southern regions affected by the war.

Regardless of who in the Israeli government ends up attending the summit this year, however, they will struggle more than ever to sell the image of Israel as an environmental leader. The dissonance caused by Israel’s representatives suddenly switching from genocidal threats to eco-friendly jargon will be mind-breaking for global audiences.

Can anyone take seriously, for example, any recommendations on clean and sustainable energy from Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz, who at the start of the war stated: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home”? Or can anyone with any self-respect take ecological advice from Israel’s Agriculture Minister Avi Ditcher, who declared that Israel is “rolling out Nakba 2023” in Gaza?

Saying the genocide part out loud, the Israeli government cannot expect its rhetoric to not have long-term diplomatic, economic, and potentially legal consequences, or to not damage the country’s standing as a climate leader. Jordan, for example, has already pulled out of an energy and water deal with Israel which was hatched in COP27 due to what Jordanian Foreign Minister called “Israel’s barbarism in Gaza”.

The public relations fallout caused by Israel’s war will also make it difficult for it to sell its climate tech solutions as global audiences will find it hard to reconcile Israel’s supposed concern for the environment with its current actions in Gaza.

Israel’s air raids and total blockade of Gaza have left civilians on the verge of dehydration and starvation. The UN had to pressure Israel to allow clean water into the territory and refrain from using water as a “weapon of war”. More than 15,000 people in Gaza have been killed in indiscriminate attacks on residential areas, schools, and hospitals, including thousands of children. Those who survive are without adequate shelter, food, and medical care.

The Gaza Strip was barely habitable before Israel’s latest assault due to a years-long, relentless blockade. Now, Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment and total siege – its ongoing genocide – has also triggered an ecocide in Gaza. Even if the war ended today, it would take years for Gaza’s natural ecosystems to recover.

Of course Israel’s greenwashing efforts also did not start with this war. Israel has been trying to greenwash its occupation of Palestine and oppression of the Palestinian people since its inception.

Indeed, since the founding of Israel in 1948, the Jewish National Fund, Israel’s largest green NGO that controls 13 percent of state land, has been evicting Palestinians from their lands and destroying their villages under the pretence of protecting forests and preserving natural reserves. It has also uprooted hundreds of thousands of olive trees to destroy Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

Meanwhile, Israel’s national water company Mekorot created a “water apartheid” in the occupied West Bank, where Jewish settlers consume six times more water than 2.9 million Palestinians living there.

Despite its apartheid policies in the West Bank, in the international arena, Mekorot has managed to position itself as a leading contributor to the quest to achieve UN sustainability goals. It led a special session on water at COP27 and has been publishing annual environmental, social and governance (ESG) and corporate responsibility reports with little consideration or even mention of its practice of water apartheid against the Palestinians.

At last year’s COP27, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who recently supported the collective punishment of civilians in Gaza, promised that Israel would be “net zero” by 2050. Since he failed to mention Palestine and Palestinians in his speech, however, it is unclear whether the environmental consequences of the occupation, the apartheid, or the 40,000 tonnes of explosives dropped on Gaza (which amounts to more than two nuclear bombs) would be included as part of Israel’s carbon footprint this year.

Writer and analyst Zena Agha has described Israel’s environmental policy as “Janus-faced”, on the one hand promoting “environmental reform and technological development” and on the other, depriving “Palestinians of their land, water, and other natural resources”.

Amid the ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza, at COP28, this two-sidedness will reach new extremes.

COP28 is already under fire for maintaining strong connections to big oil companies while purporting a technical and diplomatic agenda to transition away from fossil fuels. The optics of an Israeli delegation at COP28 amid an ongoing offensive that inflicted unprecedented humanitarian and environmental damage on Gaza will undoubtedly damage the reputation of the conference further.

Indeed, the scale of the humanitarian crisis Israel created in Gaza has not only exposed Israel’s decades-old greenwashing strategies and tarnished its image as a climate solution leader, but also called into question the credibility of a state-centred approach to global warming that ignores human rights.

By allowing itself to become a venue for Israel to greenwash its increasingly more brutal attacks on Palestinian people, land and essential infrastructure, as well as its disregard for UN resolutions, institutions and staff (more than 100 UN employees have been killed in the Gaza war so far), COP28 threatens to undermine critical features of the global climate agenda, namely state compliance, accountability, and respect for international law and institutions.

While Israel’s attendance at COP28 exposes one of the many existing problems with our current approach to tackling global warming, it is not too late to change course.

Those committed to achieving climate justice should treat this conference as an opportunity to call out greenwashing and state the obvious connection between human rights and the climate emergency. As Greta Thunberg rightly said, there can be “no climate justice on occupied land”, and occupiers should not be allowed to use climate conferences to greenwash their wars.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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