Iraq remains utterly dependent on oil exports, despite suffering the consequences of climate change. Bold political action is required to secure Iraq’s future. 

At a climate conference in March, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani pledged to tackle the deepening impact of climate change on the country even as he failed to recognise the contribution of Iraq’s financial addiction to oil exports to rising global temperatures.

Oil revenues account for 95% of the Iraqi federal budget, with government after government announcing plans for diversification only to fail to implement them. Aside from the massive fiscal vulnerability that this dependence represents, Iraq is already facing the ravaging impacts of climate change and should be at the forefront of global efforts to stall its onward march.

Soaring temperatures have compounded drastic water scarcity in a country reliant on rivers that are being dammed by upstream neighbours Turkey and Iran. The reduced flow of water in its rivers combined with falling levels of rainfall caused by rising temperatures means that an estimated 92% of Iraq’s land is at risk of desertification. The paucity of water resources is driving farmers to abandon lands that they can no longer irrigate, and growing rural to urban migration is causing social unrest in cities unable to adequately resource existing residents. 

The death of vegetation is reducing groundcover that is crucial for protecting cities from frequent sandstorms whose impact is growing more severe. In 2022, Iraq experience ten sandstorms during a period of just two months, causing respiratory illnesses and millions of dollars of loss to the economy as flights were grounded and peopled shielded indoors instead of going to work. Soaring summer temperatures are also stifling economic activity, and contributing to ill health.  

Although the government claims to be committed to combatting the impact of climate change, it is far from the priority that it needs to be. Iraq needs to urgently modernise its inefficient irrigation systems, invest in building renewable energy plants, reduce its own carbon emissions and provide support to urban areas trying to absorb climate IDPs.  To achieve these daunting goals, the Iraqi government needs to put its money where its mouth is, and invest a substantial portion of its resources to making progress here instead of diverting endless funds to the systemic corruption that greases the entire political system.

Iraq could achieve more if was able to access international financial capital, but it must first take radical steps to reform its appalling investment environment. Currently, foreign investors face arbitrary, contradictory and inconsistently applied regulations, a surfeit of red tape, serious issues receiving payments from government contracts, lack of access to dispute resolution mechanisms, and confusing visa and residency rules.

International donors have been providing funding to Iraq to support efforts to combat climate change, for example in 2022 the UK and Canada announced a three-year project entitled Catalytic Climate Action in Iraq. There is limited appetite, however, from tax-payers in the West to provide ongoing funding to this middle-income country. In 2022 the Iraqi economy grew by 7% because of rising oil prices, even as Western economies struggled under the weight of rapidly rising inflation. Iraq must do more to demonstrate its commitment to tackling the climate change, including by deploying its own financial resources, in order to persuade global donors countries to provide ongoing support.

Iraq has the world’s fifth-largest proven crude oil reserves, representing 8% of total global reserves, and most of Iraq’s substantial oil fields are either in production or development. It has an estimated production capacity of 4.6 million barrels of oil per day, an amount that is forecasted to rise by an additional 1.3 million barrels of oil per day by 2030. If this escalation of oil exploitation is improperly managed, it could lead to further environment degradation, and may heighten grievances of local populations who are often excluded from the financial benefits derived from their lands. The anger that local communities direct towards international oil companies is already palpable, and causes frequent outbreaks of tribally-led conflict in areas that believe they are denied a fair share of profits.

The Iraqi government has announced the goal of eliminating gas-flaring in the next four years, and it is critical that this is achieved. The practice of gas-flaring, which is the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction, was responsible for Iraq releasing 33.46 million tonnes of CO2 in 2021. The practice had also been linked to a substantial rise in cancer cases in affected areas.

It is crucial that Iraq takes serious steps to address climate change in the coming years, not least in order to secure its own future. Key focus areas should include: implementation of sustainable water management practices, the end of gas-flaring, diversification of the economy away from reliance on oil, investment in renewable energy production, promotion of energy efficient practices and participation in international climate agreements.

As its own oil production capacity grows, Iraq should take steps to ensure that this expansion is implemented responsibly and that its benefits are equitably distributed among local communities. By strengthening its governance and investment frameworks, Iraq could also benefit from far more significant infusions of global capital.    

To create a resilient future, Iraq must simultaneously reduce its contribution to climate change, whilst counteracting its most deleterious impacts, and managing the exploration and exploitation of its natural resources in a responsible and inclusive manner.

L'articolo The devastating thirst for oil proviene da InsideOver.

It has been said, repeatedly, that Italy represents ‘a laboratory’ which has the ability to produce new political forms in an astonishing way. Aside of the infamous workshop of the twenty-year fascist period, it should be noted that from Tangentopoli, to the imaginary digital party of the Movimento Cinque Stelle, from Berlusconi’s trajectory to Giorgia Meloni’s ‘techno-sovreignism’, over the last decades the Italian political system has produced formulas anticipating some of the major global trends.

For some years now, however, one exception has found our country strangely lagging behind: while green parties are experiencing a phase of electoral growth throughout Europe positioning themselves at the centre of institutional plots, in Italy there is a noticeable absence of a large-scale structured ecological movement. There are a variety of underlying causes to the phenomenon, however one effect is clear: the debate regarding the energy transition and climate risks is not always approached carefully – with the attention that the actuality requires when attempting to think about structured political affairs.

By dismissing ecology as a matter of custom, a utopian movement or a second-rate phenomenon to be ironised about, we risk losing sight of the very profound debate that articulates the climate transition in conjunction with economic policies and the explosion of geopolitical rivalries in this new phase of globalisation: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promoted by the Biden administration in the summer of 2022 and the 14th Five-Year Plan delineated by Xi Jinping in October 2021 are just two pillars of this founding process. Both teach us that, ultimately, one of the defining elements in the 2020s is not so much that ecology reconfigures the political space, but that all the elements in the political space are politically structured by ecology.

The war in Ukraine is a very concrete example providing a clear view of this shift. Putin’s war is provoking an earthquake in the planet’s ongoing geopolitical reconfiguration. To understand the transformations it is producing in Italy and Europe, it is worth starting not only from an energetic  point of view, but also from an interpretation which is fundamentally ecological.

The concept of “war ecology” was developed by the brilliant French philosopher Pierre Charbonnier in the pages of the Le Grand Continent a few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, and was then the subject of a scholarly publication (War Ecology: A New Paradigm). His reasoning can be summarised as follows: “On the one hand, political ecology is redefined by geopolitics to the extent that the shift towards sustainability be based on the need to fight a strategic rival — in this case Russia, an aggressive petro-state” ; geopolitics is reciprocally influenced by the climate imperative, which is reshaping the landscape of assets and obstacles in the transition.”

This viewpoint has an infrastructural dimension and has triggered important effects, defining the Commission’s and European states’ reaction to the war in Ukraine. As of 24 February 2022, fossil energy – causing more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the International Energy Agency’s estimates – is at the heart of Putin’s war. In 2021, Russia supplied 40 per cent of Europe’s total natural gas imports. Today, the urgency to make the Union independent of Russian hydrocarbon imports is linked both to the desire to weaken Moscow’s war capacity and to the need to accelerate the fight against climate change in order to support the Paris Agreement’s goal.

Several indicators allow us to grasp the transformations taking place: firstly, the Member States’ massive support to protect consumers from rising energy prices is the most visible sign of state intervention in the energy sector, which is set to continue and produce a change in market logic. In total, European countries have spent over 700 billion Euros since autumn 2021.

Then, there is the diversification of supply sources: although Europeans are continuing to import Russian hydrocarbons, including LNG, these now account for only 8% of total natural gas imports: of the four pipelines connecting the continent to Russia, two have been shutdown (Nord Stream 1 and Yamal), one has seen its flow increase (Turksteam) and yet another one, crossing through Ukraine, continues to transport gas, but in a much smaller quantities. With the Chinese economy being crippled by the zero Covid policy, the  decline was offset by LNG and gas imports from Norway. Bilateral agreements – in the case of Italy, which is very active in this field, with Angola, Congo, Egypt and Algeria – are expected to offset Russian imports in the coming years.

Thirdly, the reduction of energy consumption has become a geopolitical factor: the 27 have agreed on a 15% reduction of gas demand between August 2022 and March 2023 and a 10% reduction of gross electricity consumption – the data available already shows a significant consumption reduction in Germany, France and the Netherlands, which however is based on individual responsibility and sobriety. As Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans explained “Putin has already lost the ecology war”.

With the energy crisis, the rapid development of renewable energy has become synonymous with supply security for European leaders: Germany aims for 100 per cent renewables in its energy mix by 2035 (80 per cent by 2030). The Commission has suggested to increase the target of 40% renewables by 2030 to 45% and the energy efficiency target from 9% to 13%. In all this we can see how the grammar of war ecology also acts on a symbolic level, providing a new narrative framework for political action. A few weeks after the invasion, a campaign by the European Greens expressed, with a détournement of war propaganda aesthetics, the necessary acts of sobriety in support of the war efforts: “Isolate Putin. Insulate homes”, said a poster with the colours of the Ukrainian flag in the background.

The war in Ukraine has in this sense continued the process of consolidating the role of the Green Deal – which aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and a 55 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2023 – by helping to give it a status as a European policy configuration. As the PNRR – which already called for Member States to spend at least 37% on measures to combat climate change – had already shown, it is not just a policy, but a dynamic framework for most fundamental and long-term policy actions.

Is the war ecology the key to a new realism?

L'articolo Europe in the era of “War Ecology” proviene da InsideOver.

In a political twist in the summer of 2022, President Joe Biden secured one of the most important successes of his presidency, a prelude to holding the midterm elections. This is the agreement with the “rebel” Democratic Senator Joe Manchin for the approval of an important law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The reader who does not know the law in detail could guess that it is a provision aimed, precisely, to reduce inflation, but the issue of the law is another: the competition between China and the United States in the sphere of energy transition. To understand its rationale, we must start from its premise, from an inconspicuous but concrete movement in the last twenty years: the Chinese rise in the industrial supply chains that today we identify, in a broad sense, with clean energy.

Also in the summer of 2022, in the report on the global supply chain of the photovoltaic industry, the International Energy Agency describes the situation with an effective synthesis: “The world will almost completely rely on China for the supply of the key elements for the production of panels to 2025. Based on the production capacity under construction, China’s share of global polysilicon, rod and wafer production will soon reach nearly 95%. Today, the Chinese province of Xinjiang accounts for 40% of the world’s polysilicon production.”

This highlights a relevant element of Chinese development: competitiveness on elements that all the other players need to achieve ambitious green plans. The Europeans, for example, literally paid for Chinese industrial development with their subsidies, because their plans for years did not set goals for autonomous technological production. And measures to counter China’s industrial policy, for example through trade disputes, have always lagged behind economic reality. The photovoltaic supply chain, rather than by great technological discontinuities, has been characterized by the reduction in prices, and scale also weighs on Chinese competitiveness. The capability of the People’s Republic has also been repeated, with remarkable results, even in more complex supply chains, such as that of electric mobility.

In this context, on the one hand, the People’s Republic has leveraged its market strength, as in other sectors: its consumers and the growth of the middle class have made it, in this century, an increasingly important automotive market, capable of attracting foreign investors, even in places of special political interest to the Chinese government, including Xinjiang. On the other hand, Beijing has failed in the past to significantly narrow the gap with other automotive powers in terms of traditional systems. This has justified a large and ambitious investment in the electricity supply chain, with a crucial prerequisite: understanding the “material” structure of the transition.

If we consider lithium, cobalt and other raw materials useful for the energy transition, China has therefore acted on several levels. First step: Chinese companies, also through development banks, have secured capacity in the main mining powers, from Australia to South America. Contrary to what is commonly believed, it is not the internal availability of raw materials that generates the Chinese advantage. Second step: the crucial Chinese investment has been on technology and capacity in terms of refining and treatment. This is the step that must take place at home, also to accompany a chemical supply chain in which China has climbed international positions, both for the construction of the “chemical leviathan” Sinochem Holdings and for its presence in numerous niches. Third step: the large-scale industrialization of technologies developed by other Asian players (such as lithium-ion batteries) and the experimentation of some policies, for example relating to the adoption of electric cars, on a local scale, according to a classic mechanism Chinese “market of policies”, in which the various local governments also compete through the incentives for the creation of the best innovative ecosystems.

The success of companies such as BYD (present in both the battery supply chain and in the electric car) and Catl (world leader in batteries that has surpassed the Korean and Japanese masters) testifies to the strength of the Chinese position. China has no intention of stopping. Even in an age of economic slowdown, it will continue to leverage the strength of its market, which involves Tesla itself. In 2022, most of Elon Musk’s company cars were produced in Shanghai. In the near future, China will invest in research and development on new technologies, so as not to be surprised by the change. For example, the former minister of science and technology, Wan Gang, who also due to his technical experience in Germany was fundamental for the construction and implementation of the Chinese strategy, has often stressed the importance of investing in hydrogen.

Now, if the situation is the one photographed by companies such as Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, with Chinese dominance in the production of cathodes, anodes and batteries, what are the prospects? We must not forget that a legacy of the Chinese strategy is also the competitiveness of car companies, which will be able to flood the main markets, starting with Europe, with electric cars at very low prices. Are we therefore facing an endgame, with the inevitable Chinese victory?

The Inflation Reduction Act, from which we started, fits here. It represents an example of the phenomena that I have defined in my books as political capitalism and sanctions, to read the close relationship between the economy, national security and technology that characterizes our era. In order for companies and consumers to receive the generous subsidies from the US government, the law imposes a threshold of “local content”, with a very ambitious effect: the relocation of supply chains, for extraction, treatment and production, on US soil, American or countries with which the United States has a free trade agreement. Objective, clearly inserted in an anti-Chinese perspective but which also has repercussions on Europeans, given that the EU does not have such a treaty, and which has led to protests from the main leaders, starting with Macron. What will be the future of the competition triggered by the Inflation Reduction Act, after the long-term Chinese “spark” that we have described? A global race for subsidies? The creation of structured alliances on production? Different scenarios are possible, but the competition on the energy transition will remain between us. And it will remind us of the centrality of chemistry and the end of the illusions of a costless transition. To exist, one must extract, build, transform.

L'articolo How United States and China compete to dominate energy transition proviene da InsideOver.

The news from China is bad. The lifting of strict COVID-19 regulations in early December -regulations that had been sternly enforced for almost three years, under the country’s so-called “Zero-COVID” policy- has been followed by a great surge of infections. The existence of such a surge was suspected for weeks but denied by Chinese officialdom, who withheld data. Then, on January 14, a spokeswoman from the National Health Commission admitted that the country had suffered almost 60,000 Covid-related deaths since December 8. The virus is belatedly tormenting China the way it tormented northern Italy, New York City, and parts of Brazil back in spring of 2020.

The China surge hit first in urban areas, including Beijing and Shanghai, but also far-flung cities such as Dongguan in the South and Yulin in the North. Hospitals were overwhelmed, medicines (including simple fever reducers such as ibuprofen) became scarce, and many healthcare professionals continued to work despite being infected themselves. Since early January, the disease has begun piling up victims in rural areas well. Small clinics and community health centers are filling with patients to whom they can offer only basic care. The Chinese population remains especially vulnerable because immunity from past infections is very low and full vaccination of elderly people is low also. The three years of “Zero-COVID” were evidently wasted by Chinese authorities, who might have used that delay period to prepare better for the inevitable. But they did not.

So the pandemic is not over. The Covid coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, is not gone. It’s as busy as ever, replicating, mutating, evolving. It will almost certainly remain in the human population forever. And there is no guarantee (despite what some people believe they have heard) that it will evolve into a less harmless form, such as the viruses that cause common colds. That misunderstanding is sometimes supported by an ill-informed adage that passes for wisdom: “A successful parasite does not kill its host.” Wrong. The correct statement would be: “A successful parasite does not kill its host until it has had time to infect another host.” If the coronavirus infects person A, transmits to person B and person C, and from person C onward to others, then it has achieved evolutionary success, whether or not person A dies. Darwinian natural selection, the main mechanism of evolution, does not “see” and does not “care” what happens to infected individuals after they have transmitted a virus.

Amid the continuing turmoil, we need to appreciate that SARS-CoV-2 may remain not just present but deadly, and that we may need to continue vaccinating against it, and fighting it in other ways, for decades.

Where did this virus come from? How did it get into humans? Those questions are also important, because the answers will help guide our efforts to prevent similar viral pandemics in the future. The mystery of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has been hotly discussed, with mostly scientific experts on one side of the matter and mostly amateur sleuths plus a few journalists on the other. That discussion has been muddled by misinformation, speculation, and accusation, all offered to suggest that the virus somehow leaked from a laboratory. A lab leak is theoretically possible, but there is no positive evidence that it happened. There is much empirical evidence and expert analysis by molecular evolutionary virologists and epidemiologists, on the other hand, suggesting that the virus probably reached humans by natural spillover from a wild animal. That seems to have occurred in or around a certain “wet market” in the city of Wuhan. The animal carrying the virus may have been a raccoon dog or a palm civet or a bamboo rat or one of the other wild creatures, captured live and transported to Wuhan, that were on sale for food in the market. Some evidence even suggests that two distinct chains of human infection began in the market, which might reflect viral transmission from two different animals. The carrier animal (or animals) likely acquired the virus, either in the wild or during transport, from a horseshoe bat. Viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 have been detected in horseshoe bats in southern China, and also in Thailand and Laos, just across the southern Chinese border.

More evidence is needed, but the process of gathering such evidence and sharing it among scientists has been severely constrained by two factors: the pandemic itself and mutual distrust between the Chinese government and its critics in the West, much exacerbated by this origins controversy.

One more thing is important for everyone to remember: that the trafficking of wild animals for food-bats or raccoon dogs in China, bats or pangolins in Africa, other creatures elsewhere- is not the only disruptive activity that exposes humans to wildlife viruses. The extraction of timber and fossil fuels from richly diverse tropical ecosystems is another. The mining of strategic minerals such as coltan—a material essential for the manufacture of high-tech electronic devices—is still another. Therefore, anyone who owns a smart phone or a laptop computer or a fancy camera, or even a new car, also owns a share of responsibility for the continuing threat of viral spillover.

Eight billion humans presently inhabit this planet, all of us hungry, all of us thirsty, all of us consuming energy and wood and other material resources, in various quantities, as our appetites dictate and our levels of affluence allow. At the other end of the spectrum of sentience lie viruses, these relatively simple creatures, of which Earth harbors many millions of different forms. Among the millions, maybe one or two million kinds of virus reside in nonhuman mammals and birds. I highlight mammals and birds because they are generally the sources of the new viruses that infect people—not just SARS-CoV-2 and the original SARS virus of 2003, but also Ebola virus and Marburg and Lassa and Hendra and Nipah and HIV and many others.

With our voracious consumption, our disruption of diverse ecosystems, our devastation of natural landscapes all over the globe, we humans continue driving the most vulnerable of our fellow creatures toward extinction: the western chimpanzee, the eastern lowland gorilla, the tiger, the slender-billed curlew, the sociable lapwing, Hill’s horseshoe bat, and too many others to name, each serving as host to its own viruses. Many of those viruses are malleable opportunists. Evolution allows them to change, rather quickly, and compels them to survive. As the planet gets smaller and emptier, their best remaining opportunity will be to infect us.

That’s a grim and ironic sort of justice, and we should do all possible not to earn it.

L'articolo Ecological disruption and pandemic threats proviene da InsideOver.

Reportage / Environment 23.01.2023

Bearing the Brunt of Climate Change

This reportage was funded by InsideOver as the winning project of the Newsroom Academy photojournalism course held by Marco Gualazzini The wind blows forcefully along the rocky bed of the river Khali Gandaki, a desolate channel nestled in the mountains…

Daniele Cagnazzo

The ghost village of Samdzong has been hard hit by the climate crisis and the lack of water resources due to the severe drought which has transformed the region in recent decades. Many of the villagers who lived here have moved to the new settlement of Namashung on the other side of the valley, closer to the river and above all with easier access to the village of Lo Mathang.

5 people live in Sandzong, including adults and children who, despite everything, have decided to stay. Among them is a 38-year-old proud looking man, his face weather-beaten by the sun. He lives here with his wife Sangmo and their young son, Tsering. He invites us to his house for some tea as we are the first foreigners visiting the small village since the start of the pandemic: “Despite the drought and the lack of water we have decided to stay. Even though we know it will not be for long,” says Wangdi and goes on to explain: “On this side of the valley close to the border with Tibet, the climate is less rigid, and the gusts of wind are less intense than t the new settlement of Namashung where, thanks to the concession of about 11 hectares of land by the royal family of Lo Manthang, it is now possible to receive a new home. We could move there, but as long as there is one last drop of water in this land, we prefer to stay here: this is our home.”

The inhabitants have divided themselves between the old the new village which was built starting from 2013. However, to this day there is still no convenient road reaching it, making it even more difficult to travel to the different areas of the valley. The few remaining villagers struggle every day to safeguard the small streams and divert them to the fields used for cultivating.  The land surrounding Samdzong is arid, requiring considerable amounts of water. This puts harvests at risk and consequently the community’s livelihood. Carefully defining the arable areas and not wasting a single drop of water has now become essential for the small community. As Wangdi continues his story, his wife Sangmo proudly shows us the work done using wool from the few yaks grazing in the fields outside the village. Over the years they  have been decimated over the years due to climate change and the shortage of water. 

Naya Dhey (or Thangchung) on the banks of the river Kali Gandaki. The new community farm with its apple trees surrounds the new settlement

Wangdi recalls how in the past there was an abundance of food, and the excess harvest was sometimes sold to nearby villages. Today, due to climate change the force of the wind has significantly increased and the dust and sand it carries have greatly accelerated the melting process of snow and ice at high altitudes, thereby limiting the presence of water in the villages. It is estimated that within the next fifty years the glaciers in the Upper Mustang region will disappear, making it impossible to survive in this territory. Despite this, Wangdi and the other inhabitants of Samdzong have decided to stay for now, while adapting their habits to the new climate flow.  To survive in the short term some of them, including Sangmo, have turned to cattle breeding, selling them or harvesting wool. However, it is a vicious circle, and the lack of water makes these activities difficult as well.

 

Dhye, a ghost village

Unfortunately, Samdzong is not the only village facing the climate crisis. In the eastern area of the Upper Mustang, beyond the Dhi La pass, between breathtaking paths along steep ridges we arrive at Naya Dhey, a new settlement founded on the banks of the river Kali Gandaki. There is almost no water despite it being late spring. We enter the new village under the quiet and curious gaze of the silent inhabitants who in these areas rarely meet foreigners. The inhabitants of Dhey live in a new complex of houses in this village located in the mountains in eastern Upper Mustang and which over the years has suffered the same fate as Samdzong. Tashi  Gyatso Gurung moved to the new village where he coordinates the development project of the new settlement. “Living in the new village is easier. New houses have been built and thanks to the support of international associations such as the French Du Bassin au Nepal, we can guarantee a sustainable development in the new areas and the inhabitants will not be forced to emigrate again.”

Many inhabitants of the old Dhey village have started a new life and appear happy in the new settlement, as stated by Tashi Gurung: “In the old village water started to become scarce at the start of the new millennium. The heavy snowfalls of thirty years ago were slowly replaced by strong torrential rains which actually destroyed the crops, flooded the village and did not allow the collection of water to be used the fields which became less and less fertile. Over time these phenomena have become much more frequent which is why we have been forced to make the decision to abandon our old homes.”

Daily life in the new settlement after villagers left the old village due to the lack of water.

But just like in Samdzong, not all the inhabitants of the old village decided to move. About a two-hour drive from the new village, on a dirt road overlooking the rocky mountains, old Dhey is a village suspended in time. The grey sky frames an almost apocalyptic atmosphere with the last inhabitants committed to saving all that is possible from a land that no longer has much to offer. There are now only 12 people in Dhye who, despite everything, still haven’t decided to move to the new settlement. Women, men and children work every day to fertilize the land surrounding the village and drain the little water available to irrigate crops. 

In Upper Mustang many men spend time making woodwork, fundamental for the construction of beams for the structure of houses.

“The problems started around 2008 when, due to the drought, the land became arid and infertile. Rains were very rare and even the snow sticking to the mountains, was not enough to allow a supply of water in spring,” Topri Gurung tells. At 67 years of age he is the historic memory of the village. His gaze appears lost in the memories of years gone by as he sips a cup of tea in his new home in Thangchung. “The climate had become so unpredictable that long periods of drought were alternating with heavy sudden rains making survival in the village extremely hostile. In 2007, Dhey counted some 300 inhabitants, and it was then that all together they decided to migrate to a new area by the river, where it was possible to gather water for agriculture and guarantee the livelihood of the entire community through new rural initiatives.

 

The melting of the Langtang glaciers

Global warming is only a spark triggering a series of complications putting the very survival of humanity’s future at risk. Climate change in Nepal can really be seen first-hand, and its tragic consequences can also be witnessed in other regions. In Langtang for example, the national park north of Kathmandu, rich in biodiversity and forests, where the glaciers are slowly disappearing, altering the entire ecosystem. 

The village of Kyanjin Gompa is the last frontier in the trek through the picturesque Nepalese villages before climbing up a steep path leading to an altitude of 5200 m above sea level, just next to the Yala glacier. The landscape is populated only by yaks, guarding the route and sometimes blocking the road as if unappreciative of man’s presence in this extremely wild nature.

Our breath becomes increasingly short, and we feel the fatigue of the previous days as we climb all the way up to the top.  However, we are rewarded by an overwhelming almost unreal beauty, leaving us speechless: Before us are the Himalayas, with Shishapangma towering over the Chinese border at 8027 metres under a blue sky. Here we meet the group of international researchers and scientists with whom we have been in contact with throughout our expedition. The research team travels to the Yala glacier twice a year to measure its mass and monitor the volume of ice over time. 

“The heavy snowfalls of the past have turned into heavy rains which does not allow an increase in the volume of ice over time. Unfortunately, the Yala glacier is now clinically dead ,” states Sharad Joshi, a glaciologist at the international Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).Miriam Jackson, head of ICIMOD’s research program in Langtang, shares the same opinion. “In recent years, the loss of mass has accelerated considerably, especially in the summer season, with temperatures increasing greatly compared to 20-30 years ago, while in winter the mass growth is almost zero,” she says. Therefore, the glacier is literally retreating, and it could well disappear altogether within the next fifty years.“

Outside his tent at base camp Jacob Steiner, a glaciologist and researcher carrying out fieldwork on the glacier explains the consequences of a natural disaster of this kind. “The melting of glaciers in the Himalayan Hindu Kush region due to rising temperatures is causing profound changes to the entire ecosystem. It is altering the balance in the valley, exposing the local population to the risk of increasingly frequent avalanches due to the fresh snow not freezing. What’s more, the glaciers melting could cause the return of parasites and bacteria of the past, causing serious damage to agriculture and new forms of epidemics.” What is happening in Nepal is therefore a photograph in real time of the tangible consequences of climate change on Earth. It is very likely that the repercussions of these effects will occur in other regions of the globe with extreme events that are difficult to predict. According to UN forecasts, by 2051 billion people will be forced to leave their land due to unpredictable climatic events such as floods, storms, fires and extreme temperatures. And the Yala glacier , which has stood for thousands of years, will disappear within a few decades to be replaced by a large glacial lake.

 

L'articolo Bearing the Brunt of Climate Change proviene da InsideOver.

In a bid to create irritants in the construction of Kishenganga and Ratle dams by India, Islamabad in its typical style had taken up misconceived complaint on the basis of breach of design specifications delineated under the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) to the World Bank’s Court of Arbitration (CoA). The World Bank in response recently appointed Prof. Sean Murphy as Chairman of the CoA and Michel Lino as the Neutral Expert (NE) in line with its responsibilities under the IWT.

Notwithstanding, the treaty’s most generous and unequal sharing of waters favouring Pakistan vis-a-vis India, Pakistan continuously resorts to complaint against India whenever the latter tries to develop any project on its side. This despite the fact that it is the only water-sharing pact in the world that compels the upper riparian state, i.e. India to defer its rights and interests to the downstream country, i.e. Pakistan.

Under IWT, Pakistan gets maximum share of water resources. Waters of Western rivers – Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab – amounting to around 135 Million Acre-Feet (MAF) annually – have been assigned largely to Pakistan, giving more than 78% of water share of the Indus River system. Of all the waters of the eastern rivers – Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi, India gets only 33 MAF annually for unrestricted use.

Ironically, the Pak objections on India’s Kishenganga (330 MW) and Ratle (850 MW) hydroelectric power plants on the tributaries of Jhelum and Chenab Rivers are on technical grounds rather than construction of dam in principle, despite India’s full compliance to the technicalities stipulated under the IWT. Notably, Islamabad sought World Bank intervention seeking specifically appointment of CoA. It is driven by the intent to disrupt development of water resource on the Indian side rather than any genuine apprehension.

As per the treaty, India is permitted to construct hydroelectric power facilities on the tributaries of Jhelum and Chenab Rivers. India as per IWT can create water capacity storage upto 3.6 MAF on Western rivers but no storage capacity has been created so far which largely flow into Pakistan. India has also been given the right to generate hydroelectricity through run of the river (RoR) projects on the Western Rivers in IWT, like freeboard, intake, spillway, bondage and low-level outlet.

Since India has never breached technical specifications of IWT, the Pak effort to seek World Bank’s arbitration is pointless. Islamabad’s only intention appears to impede the development of water projects on Indian side and distort India’s image on the false pretexts.

Seeking arbitration from the World Bank on water sharing with India is part of Islamabad’s blame game. As it has been lax and inefficient in addressing its economic woes and meeting the priorities of development, Islamabad, as part of its strategy to obfuscate, blames India for its own failures. The fact is that Islamabad’s concerns are overlaid by its changing demographics, increased urbanisation and rising demands on the agricultural and industrial sectors while it has failed to develop and manage water resources available to it. Pakistan is fast emerging as one of the most water stressed countries in the world due to its failure in capacity building despite IWT guaranteeing it sufficient water.

One reason is that Islamabad lacks resources for maintenance and development of its water resources to ensure adequate supply for catering to increased demand and ensure environment and people friendly flow. While India is developing projects to exploit allotted water resources, Pakistan is trying to stall or delay these projects so as to blame India for its failure.

Along with the crisis posed by rivers and streams running dry, Pakistan’s dangerously depleted groundwater levels have left most parts of the country parched. If present trends persist, the entire country may face “water scarcity” by 2025, according to a report by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

IWT is the only international treaty that has survived for more than 6 decades, despite three wars fought by the two neighbouring countries. The treaty remained unaffected and hence is considered one of the most successful water-sharing endeavours in the world.

Analysts point out that there are loopholes in the treaty that are extensively of technical nature which Pakistan exploits to stall legitimate Indian projects. This is hampering the scientific utilisation of the water with the latest technology which are now available.

Islamabad had objected to Indian dam construction earlier also. The World Bank had appointed Raymond Lafitte as the NE in the dispute relating to Baglihar dam by India on the Chenab River as a run-of-the-river plant. In its ruling in 2007, the NE upheld India’s right to utilise the waters of the western rivers more effectively calling them within the ambit of the treaty for power generation.

The canals in Punjab and Rajasthan – Rajasthan Feeder and the Sirhind Feeder – had become old and were not maintained properly. This had resulted in the lowering of their water carrying capacity. The infrastructure to utilize the waters has remained under-developed in Indian Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Thus, the water from the Harike Barrage on the confluence of the Beas and Sutlej in Punjab was usually released downstream into Pakistan. Pakistan is getting more waters than its entitlement in the Eastern rivers also. Islamabad is also looking at Kishenganga and Ratle projects with similar intention.

Pakistan had also raised objections on the construction and technical designs of the Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai hydropower plants located on Marusudar River, a tributary of the Chenab in Kishtwar district of J&K. Pakistan wants to engage India in unwarranted objections for capturing Indian water resources by referring technical specifications of these dams.

India has been transparent and cooperative on the water sharing issue with Pakistan. Rather than focussing on developing and managing water resources available to it, Islamabad is using false pretexts to derail and delay development on the Indian side. Earlier on several occasions India and Pakistan had discussed the exchange of hydrological and flood data. Every time India underscored that all its projects are fully compliant with the provisions of the IWT.

The time has come now for Pakistan to resolve its own funds crisis and policy paralysis on development and management of its water resources rather than blaming it on India. There is also need for revisiting the IWT’s technical specifications in the wake of climatic change that has taken place in the last six decades since IWT was signed in 1960. The basin’s size and volume is getting altered by climate change and it is going to intensify in future. Experts predict that there could be instances of more high-intensity rainfall as well as long stretches of scanty rainfall. There would be a high influx of water due to glacial melt.

The contribution of glaciers in the Indus basin is higher than in the Ganges or Brahmaputra basins. Indian plans would actually benefit Pakistan in managing and averting climate related future disasters. If Pakistan cooperates and calibrates its efforts for water resources development and management with that of India, it would go a long way to prepare a robust system against natural disasters caused by climate change. Pragmatism also entails that there is a need to update certain technical specifications and expand the scope of the IWT to address these issues as well as climate change concerns. But Pak authorities always see conspiracy rather than possibility of peaceful coexistence with India. Would they change for the people of both the countries? Has it learnt from recent floods?

L'articolo Indus Water Treaty: Pak Intention to Stall Indian Dam Construction proviene da InsideOver.

What makes Estonia unique worldwide? Estonia has become the leading producer of bituminous shale. Partly out of curiosity, and partly to understand how Estonia is coming to terms with a Europe increasingly determined to head the race against time to curb global warming, we flew up there. We drove to the Ida-Viruma region, the last strip of land before Russia. Here the bituminous shale energy industry developed, and here its announced banning risks creating tensions that are not just social but ethnic, given the disproportion between the 80% of Russian-speaking citizens, widely employed in the sector, and the remaining Estonian minority.

L'articolo Estonia: Burning Stones proviene da InsideOver.

Riddu Riddu is a Norwegian festival celebrating Sami culture, whose soul also lies in a strong and deep bond with nature

Click HERE for the full report

L'articolo Akhat – Chapter II proviene da InsideOver.

The story of the Sami, the inhabitants of the Norwegian ice. Who they are, what they do and how they defend their identity. Valentina Tamborra’s report leads us to discover an ancient world that does not want to disappear in the face of modernity and a State that, for centuries, has tried to impose itself.

Fujifilm Technical Sponsor

L'articolo ÁkhÁt mother Earth proviene da InsideOver.

Reportage / Environment 10.02.2022

Sami: Defending their land

Riddu Riddu is a Norwegian festival celebrating Sami culture, whose soul also lies in a strong and deep bond with nature

Daniele Cagnazzo

Valentina Tamborra

L'articolo Sami: Defending their land proviene da InsideOver.