Hurricane-hit Caribbean states target future safe from from climate harm

TEPIC, Mexico, Dec 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A group of Caribbean nations, many devastated by recent hurricanes, will work with companies, development banks and other organisations to curb damage from climate change and grow cleanly, under an action plan launched this week.

The countries aim to restructure up to $1 billion in debt to free up cash for coastal defences, switch from costly imported fuels to cheaper green energy, and buffer their communities and economies against the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels and heavier storms and floods.

Angus Friday, Grenada's ambassador to the United States, said the idea was to "inject a new DNA", breaking away from business-as-usual and bureaucratic measures so as to be able to act faster.

"Given the next hurricane season is just seven months around the corner, it's really important we move with the speed of climate change now," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Hurricanes Maria and Irma left a trail of destruction as they crashed through the Caribbean earlier this year, and many low-lying nations fear their infrastructure and economies will be devastated by more powerful storms and encroaching seas.

With many economies in the region plagued by high levels of debt, Caribbean nations have been pushing for rich countries to help bolster their defences and in turn, protect livelihoods.

Eleven nations, including Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica and the British Virgin Islands, signed up to the plan to create a "climate-smart zone", unveiled at the "One Planet" summit in Paris on Tuesday.

The plan's backers include the World Bank, the Nature Conservancy, the Green Climate Fund, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and British businessman Richard Branson, whose Caribbean island Necker was hit by Hurricane Irma.

Branson has pushed for a scheme to help vulnerable islands, centred on replacing outdated fossil-fuel power grids with renewable energy systems that can better withstand extreme weather and boost economic development.

The Caribbean region needs $8 billion to roll out national plans to tackle climate change under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Around $1.3 billion has been pledged to help islands rebuild in the wake of the recent hurricanes, while a further $2.8 billion has been committed through longer-term investment and debt restructuring plans.

The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based environmental charity, wants to work with lenders and governments to find ways to restructure $1 billion in sovereign debt and free up funds to invest in the "blue economy", a statement said. More

Doha summit launches climate damage aid

THINGS took an interesting twist at the latest UN climate summit held in Doha, Qatar, over the past two weeks when nations began talks over paying for the damage caused by climate change.

Who Pays

Delegates were split over a deal under which rich nations would pay when poor ones suffered the consequences of global warming. Developing countries demanded future compensation and developed ones - particularly the US - were unsurprisingly reluctant to agree.

The talks ended with yet another agreement to agree, but many are calling this small victory a significant step forward. The deal offers a distant promise of climate aid. But first, science will have to catch up with politics.

All countries will suffer as a result of climate change, even if humanity slashes its emissions and stops temperatures rising more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels - the stated goal of the UN negotiations. At current rates, a 3 or 4 °C rise is likely this century.

As a consequence, deserts will spread and lethal heatwaves will become more frequent. Changes in rainfall will bring droughts, floods and storms, andrising seas will swamp low-lying areas, obliterating valuable territory.

So far, climate negotiations have taken a two-pronged approach to the problem. On the one hand, they have sought to create incentives or imperatives to cut emissions. On the other, they have established funds to help poor nations pay for "adaptation" measures, such as sea walls and irrigation systems, to help fend off the unavoidable consequences.

That, according to some, leaves a third element missing. Some consequences cannot easily be kept at bay. Countries will suffer food shortages and more frequent and more severe storm surges. On 28 November, the charities ActionAid, CARE International and WWF released a report arguing that rich countries should compensate poor ones for such damages. Doing so is a moral obligation and must be part of any treaty on climate change, says Niklas Höhne of renewable energy consultancy Ecofys in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

In Doha, a coalition including China, the Alliance of Small Island States and the G77 group of developing countries proposed a scheme that would decide when countries had suffered climate damages, and compensate them for their loss. The idea gained momentum after typhoon Bopha struck the Philippines last week. That country's negotiator Naderev Saño broke down in tears during a speech. "As we sit here, every single hour, even as we vacillate and procrastinate here, we are suffering."

Developed nations balked at the prospect of being held accountable for the consequences of emissions. Early versions of the text included the word "compensation" but they objected that it implied blame. In the end, they agreed to create "arrangements [...] to address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change".

The deal poses a fundamental challenge to climate science, because it is difficult to work out whether trends and events are caused by greenhouse gases or would have happened anyway. "We can't say that an individual event was caused by climate change," says Nigel Arnell of the University of Reading, UK. "What we can do is say that the chance of it happening was greater."

Computer models can be made to replicate the decades preceding a natural disaster with and without humanity's impact. If the odds turn out to be different with and without greenhouse gas emissions, it suggests that emissions were at least partially to blame. In this way, studies led by Myles Allen at the University of Oxford have shown that the 2003 European heatwave and 2011 Texas drought were both made more likely by human emissions.

The costs of such extreme events is relatively straightforward to calculate. But "attribution" science is in its infancy. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, speculates that superstorm Sandy would not have flooded the New York subways without climate change, but says it is not possible to prove that.

On the other hand, we can link slow processes like rising global temperatures or sea level rise to emissions. For this reason, many people think we should focus first on compensating people harmed by these processes - Pacific islands whose shorelines are gradually disappearing underwater for instance - and worry about extreme weather events once the science has caught up. The trouble is, unlike the damage caused by a hurricane, it is difficult to work out how much these slow processes cost. According to Arnell, the problem may prove unworkable. More

 

We Need Your Help to End the Era of Ecocide

We need your help to End the Era of Ecocide Dear friend I have something I would like to share with you. Today myself and my team have reached zero. The pot is now bare and our funding resources are in urgent need of replenishing. In the past year your donations of over £200,000 funded my and my team's work; we planted some incredible seeds in the run up to the Rio Earth Summit. Out of that we have had some wonderful successes; in the past year alone we have held a mock Ecocide Trial in the UK Supreme Court, the University of London launched their Ecocide Project, I have travelled to countries and spoken on many platforms,I launched my second bookEarth is our Business, I have been awarded Overall Champion by the PEA awards, I have started a training programme for others to learn how to become a Voice for the Earth and I have submitted a concept paper, Closing the door to dangerous industrial activity to all government’s around the world. All this has been done with the help of your money and without it none of this would have been at all possible. Yesterday we held an emergency meeting; despite the enormous efforts of our fundraiser over the past few months we have been unable to raise more than a few thousand pounds. We are looking squarely at the future and we see enormous opportunity to take forward all that I have already achieved; just think how close we are to making this law a reality. Everything we do is governed by permaculture ethics; people care, earth care and fair share. Ecocides occur when we take far more than our fair share, which affects both our people and our Earth. To ensure we live within our planetary limits, a law of Ecocide creates a legal framework that can ensure we all live in peaceful enjoyment. Please help me to continue to build upon all of this good work; now more than ever people care, earth care and fair share matters. Together we can end the era of Ecocide. With love for the Earth, Polly How you can help Set up a direct debit. Give a one off donation. Do a direct bank transfer. Send a cheque to us at 6 Highbury Corner, Highbury Crescent, London N5 1RD. Please write your cheque out to our charity, The Earth Community Trust. In the US you can donate via the Iris Arts and Education Group 1856 San Antonio Ave, Berkeley, California 94707. Please write your cheque out to our charity, The Earth Community Trust. Please become one of our funding volunteers. We are seeking a team of people to help us fundraise. This can be done in a number of ways. If you think you can help, please email our intern Nina. We are seeking a volunteer for 2 weeks full time to come into our London office: please emailLouise with your CV. Ground Zero Speaking about the law of Ecocide for the Earth sometimes brings me in to contact with people and places that have suffered the consequences of some of the worst ecocides. When will our world bring to an end once and for all mass damage and destruction, I find myself wondering. The answer is when civilisation is ready. There are indications that we are moving closer to that point every day. Last week I joined Parliamentarians, mayors and disarmament experts at an international interparliamentarian conference "From a Nuclear Test Ban to a Nuclear Weapons Free World" in Astana, Kazakhstan. The conference was opened on the UN International Day Against Nuclear Tests 29 August 2012, and the outcome was an appeal to parliaments and governments around the world: Legislators and governments have a responsibility to protect the security of citizens living within their jurisdictions and to protect their respective localities and the global commons for future generations. We were taken to visit Semey, a town at the centre of the nuclear testing zone which took place over 60 years ago. In 1949 the first nuclear test took place; what previously flourished came to a halt. You could say this was their ground zero. Hundred of thousands died and today third-generation children are still born malformed and riddled with cancers. 30,000 square kilometers of land is deemed dead land and the impact is still felt very strongly today. We met with young doctors who are trained to deal with the consequences, which part of their every-day life. We saw babies that had died in birth, such were their grotesque and insurmountable malformities. What I saw will remain indelibly etched in my mind forever. How can humanity justify this? Nuclear testing and the use of nuclear weapons is not a crime at an international level. The business of making nuclear weapons continues to this day and many countries profit from such proliferation despite there being treaties and conventions in place. The reason for this is that treaties and conventions rarely have the enforcement of criminal law to prohibit, prevent and pre-empt. Nuclear testing and the use of nuclear weapons is one particular type of dangerous activity that a crime of Ecocide will prevent. Kazakhstan has banned nuclear testing and weapons; they are one of ten countries which have added to their Criminal Penal Code a crime of Ecocide. This is a country that has suffered the consequences and has now opened its doors to the rest of the world to say 'look and learn from us.' I have now been asked to meet and speak with other Ambassadors, governments and NGO's to discuss how a law of Ecocide can comprehensively close the door to the threat of a nuclear winter. My work as an ambassador for the law of Ecocide seems now, more than ever to be needed. What I see, what I hear and who I meet triggers more and more engagement on the law of Ecocide, especially when it becomes known that Ecocide was going to be included as the fifth Crime Against Peace, and was examined for decades within the UN. Just think what our world could have become by now had a law of Ecocide been included as the 5th Crime Against Peace. Today the stakes are ever higher; today now more than ever there needs to be a champion for a law of Ecocide; today we need not just one lawyer speaking out - what we need are many many voices for the Earth. Read the full Parliamentary Appeal for Nuclear Abolition. Read the sad legacy of nuclear testing by Xanthe Hall, Disarmament expert, IPPNW Germany. The Atom Project: how you can help stop nuclear weapons testing. Read about PPND here In the News:'Disarmament policy is a peace policy' says Germany. Polly speaking on Sunday 9th September at the Green Party Autumn Conference 2012 Polly speaking on Friday 14th of September at Friends of the Earth Annual Conference Polly Speaking on Saturday 15th September at theFestival of Wellbeing

EU May Give Up To EUR15B For Climate Change Fight

BRUSSELS, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009, (Dow Jones) --The European Commission said Thursday that the European Union may give up to EUR15 billion a year by 2020 to finance the fight to climate change in developing countries, setting out a blueprint for negotiations on a global deal to fight climate change later this year.

"This initiative aims to maximize the chances of concluding an ambitious global climate change agreement" at a Copenhagen global meeting in December, the commission said in a statement.
Developing countries are likely to need EUR100 billion a year by 2020 to limit their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change, the commission said. If an ambitious agreement is reached in December, the E.U. could contribute between EUR2 billion and EUR15 billion a year by 2020, it added.
The E.U. wants to lead negotiations at the Copenhagen summit to reach an international agreement to fight climate change and keep global warming under two degrees Celsius. The deal would be the successor of the Kyoto protocol, negotiated more than a decade ago.
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