Cropped 22 November 2023: COP28 curtain-raiser; Food security fear; Dust, bugs and ice

Carbon Brief Staff

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

§ Key developments

Climate and conflict imperilling food security

HUNGER CRISIS: More than four million people in Somalia – one-quarter of the country’s population – are at risk of experiencing “crisis-level hunger” by the end of the year, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The east African country is facing “floods that have uprooted hundreds of thousands of people” after a “historic drought” earlier in the year killed livestock and ruined crops and pastureland, Reuters reported. A WFP spokesperson told the newswire: “This bombardment of climate shocks, from drought to floods, will prolong the hunger crisis in Somalia.” Meanwhile, Palestine is facing an “agricultural crisis”, with “farmlands being burned, farmers/fishermen being attacked and inaccessibility to food and water infrastructure” amidst the ongoing war with Israel, the Times of India wrote. 

WHEAT WORRIES: Imports of wheat are “on track to hit record levels” in China this year following heavy rains damaging the country’s domestic supply, Bloomberg reported. Wheat prices on the international market hit a three-year low at the end of September. The outlet noted that China’s spending spree “adds an element of uncertainty to supply chains that have become increasingly vulnerable to war and protectionist trade policies”. In a separate piece, Bloomberg explored India’s food systems, writing that “farm plots are shrinking, infrastructure remains rickety and climate change is only bringing more disruption”. Governmental policies are “rapidly becoming a threat to food security in the world’s most populous country, upping the stakes for [Narendra] Modi’s ruling party”, Bloomberg added.

TECHNO-FIXES: The UK, Somalia and COP28 hosts UAE convened a one-day Global Food Security Summit in London on Monday. Ahead of the summit, aid organisations and other groups “raised the alarm” about the meeting’s technology-focused agenda, which they alleged was “potentially sidelining key issues, such as early action to stamp out hunger, fair trade, and local control of food systems”, according to Devex. “No new financial commitments” were expected to be made at the summit, the outlet continued. During the meeting, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced an initiative to “bring together work on developing climate-resilient crops”, Reuters reported. The initiative will fall under the auspices of CGIAR. The UK government also released a white paper on international development, laying out its intention to “work in partnership with countries to tackle extreme poverty and climate change, rather than just providing aid money”, Reuters said.

Dust, ice, extinctions and inequality

LAND LOSS: The world is losing nearly one million square kilometres of productive agricultural lands each year due to sand and dust storms amplified by human activities, Reuters reported. According to a report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), at least one-quarter of these storms are a result of human activities, such as mining and overgrazing. Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, told Reuters that topsoil losses are affecting food supplies, migration and navigation, and creating security risks. 

ICE MELT: Carbon Brief covered the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative’s 2023 “state of the crysophere” report. The report revealed that, if the planet were to reach 2C of warming, ice sheets and glaciers would experience “extensive, long-term [and] essentially irreversible” losses. Sustained warming of 2C could produce “potentially rapid, irreversible sea level rise from the Earth’s ice sheets” and lead polar oceans to thaw and undergo “essentially permanent corrosive ocean acidification”, Carbon Brief wrote.

SPECIES DECLINE: Nearly 2m species around the world are at risk of extinction, doubling the number previously estimated by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, according to a study reported on by the Guardian. The increased estimate is largely a result of better data availability about insect populations, the newspaper added. The study also revealed that almost one-quarter of invertebrates, which play a vital role in pollination, are at risk of extinction. Insects also provide other services to human populations, such as healthier soils and pest control, the Guardian said. A different study found that in the UK and Ireland, almost half of seabirds species have declined over the past 20 years, Discover Wildlife wrote. Some of the species that have undergone declines are the common gull and the puffins, the Irish Times added.

UNEQUAL FARMING: Women who work in the agricultural sector in Africa and Asia are more affected than men by climate risks, including droughts, floods and the reduction of crop-growing season, wrote the Indian environmental website DownToEarth. The article cited a study published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, which analysed the climate risk for women farmers from 87 countries across those two continents and Latin America. The study pointed out that women are less likely to adapt to climate change than men because of gender inequalities and unequal access to resources. Dr Els Lecoutere, the first author of the study, told Down To Earth that their research may encourage discussions over the need to finance a loss-and-damage fund at COP28 and to invest in regions where women face the most risk.

§ Spotlight

COP28 curtain-raiser

For many years, carbon sinks, carbon markets and land-use emissions were often the only way to talk about food and nature at UN climate COPs. 

COP27 in Egypt last year changed that – and political momentum has been growing ever since.

Food – as was the case for health and other subjects without a dedicated negotiations track – got a specific reference for the first time in the COP27 cover decision, along with rivers and nature-based solutions. This political acknowledgement was reinforced by a formal decision to renew work on agriculture, food security and climate for another four years.

The United Arab Emirates presidency of COP28, which starts next week, has promised that food will be at the heart of the negotiations and, specifically, within the Global Goal on Adaptation, mandated for adoption in Dubai.

At the Global Food Security Summit in London this week, UAE’s climate minister and COP28 food systems lead Mariam Almheiri urged world leaders to sign on to the “Emirates declaration on resilient food systems, sustainable agriculture and climate action”, which rallies states to “align their food systems” with their climate pledges. The declaration, as Politico reported, “barely acknowledges that food production and consumption patterns are a major driver of climate change”. Two-thirds of what the UAE is calling a “1.5C aligned menu” for COP28 delegates will be vegan and vegetarian for the first time in COP history, according to ProVeg. 

But in an El Niño year with skyrocketing food prices, burning forests, choked supply chains, farmers grappling with the costs of war and green trade measures with no climate finance forthcoming, countries are keen that agriculture and ecosystems are recognised in COP outcomes in a more significant, lasting way than just workshops or a token thematic day.

One of the highlights of COP28 is the global stocktake, a five-yearly Paris Agreement “report card” on how the world has done so far, what actions have worked and what is needed to address the many yawning gaps. 

Developing countries are keen that the stocktake also serves as a record of what has not worked: a recognition of mounting losses, risks and the costs of climate inaction. 

For instance, Latin American countries and Nepal have called for recognising ecosystems – specifically, rainforests and mountains – at “tipping-point risk”. For developed countries such as New Zealand and Canada, phasing out agricultural subsidies, halting deforestation by 2030, and developing “innovative” finance for nature-based solutions are vital concerns. Meanwhile, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), US and Canada want to see international carbon markets operationalised, as nations are set to approve rules.

But the stocktake is not just a wishlist. It has to inform the next round of climate pledges, with current pledges both inadequate and, some say, over-reliant on land.

For instance, a new Land Gap report, produced by a range of NGOs and academics, estimates that countries have proposed about 1bn hectares of land for land-based carbon removal in their climate mitigation pledges, with large emitters such as the US and Saudi Arabia relying the most on land to reach net-zero. 

Meanwhile, Indigenous leaders have called for Europe’s lawmakers to vote to protect 80% of the Amazon by 202​​5 as part of their official COP28 position, pointing to a “cascade” of tipping points. “How much more do we have to wait until the global north prioritises the protection of the largest forest on Earth?” said Fany Kuiru, general coordinator of the Coordinating Body of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). “Today, it is our home burning, but yours will be next.”

To Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead at Action Aid, it remains to be seen if the COP28 presidency’s menu of food systems initiatives is more than just a “random buffet of high-tech nothingburgers with a climate dressing, possibly sitting queasily alongside a couple of agroecological tidbits.” She told Carbon Brief:

“At best, this could help put industrial agriculture in the climate hotseat. At worst, it could act as a cynical effort to distract from the urgently-needed conversations about fossil fuels.”

§ News and views

GLIMMER OF HOPE: The Colombian government announced a new biodiversity fund to finance initiatives for climate action, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and protection of vulnerable populations. According to the government, the resources will come from a national carbon tax, Colombia’s general budget and donations, among other sources of funding. The minister of environment, Susana Muhammad, said the country foresees the fund reaching nearly $1bn by 2026, Reuters reported. Muhammad described the fund as “a fundamental tool for environmental management and change throughout the country” and said the government expects to start off the delivery of resources by the end of this year. A trust will monitor the effective distribution of resources, the newswire wrote, adding that environmental initiatives can be funded more than once.

NATURE VOTE: EU negotiators “finally clinched a political deal” on an embattled nature restoration law proposal, edging one step closer to the finish line, Politico reported. The adapted proposal agreed on 9 November gave “major concessions to the centre-right European People’s Party” which has “led a tough campaign” against the bill, the outlet said. The proposed law, covered in previous editions of Cropped, aims to restore and recover damaged ecosystems in the EU. It was “very painful” to see some key targets weakened, said Jutta Paulus, a green European politician, but she added: “I think we can be content with what we got.” The bill must still be formally adopted by the European parliament and council over the coming months before it can take effect. 

MARINE PROSPECTING AREAS? :The UK government “has been accused of putting its quest for new North Sea oil and gas ahead of safeguarding Britain’s wildlife”, after one-quarter of new exploration licenses were found to overlap with Marine Protected Areas, the i newspaper reported. The story was based on analysis by Unearthed which found that 17 of 64 blocks “sit wholly or partly within” a protected area. Environmental groups described the Rishi Sunak government’s trade-off as “morally obscene” and pointed to impacts on species from whales to corals to fish spawning grounds. A Shell spokesperson quoted by the i newspaper said that “many oil and gas platforms already producing in the North Sea are in Marine Protected Areas”.

FORCED FISHING: The UK National Health Service and supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are sourcing seafood from “companies exploiting forced labour by minority Uyghurs”, DeSmog reported, with calls for the UK to “impose import controls on China”. The four-year-long Outlaw Ocean investigation has “sparked a wave of responses”, including “prompt[ing] a congressional hearing” in the US. A Canadian seafood company cut ties with tainted suppliers, the Globe and Mail reported. Separately, a Guardian investigation found that BP, Spotify and WWF were among companies that bought carbon credits from a South Pole biomass power project in Xinjiang “at risk of being implicated in potential Uyghur forced labour”. While South Pole told the paper it halted credit sales from the project in 2021, companies that bought the credits said “they were not alerted”.

EVICTED COMMUNITIES: The Kenyan government is evicting members of the Indigenous Ogiek community from their ancestral lands in order to make room for carbon-offsetting projects, BBC News reported. Members of the Ogiek community are hunter-gatherers in the country’s biggest forest, the Mau Forest. One of the community’s leaders told the outlet that the government had destroyed their houses and properties. The evictions were conducted even though the Ogiek community gained legal recognition to own and keep their lands in 2017, reported Mongabay. Kenya’s forest service said that the government is fighting illegal farming and housing in the forest.

ARGENTINIAN ELECTION: Although the newly elected far-right Argentinian president, Javier Milei, raised “general ideas” around renewable energy during the campaign, he is a climate sceptic and has brought forth few environmental proposals, Chequeado wrote. In fact, Milei has said that he wants to eliminate the country’s main science agency and the ministries of health, science and the environment, a situation considered by Argentinian researchers as “extremely worrying”, Nature reported. Milei and vice-president-elect Victoria Villarruel propose to call off withholding taxes on wheat, corn and soybeans, Agrofy News reported. The news website added that the government plans to work on a biofuel law, eliminate import and export regulations and advance measures focused on the traceability of commodities’ environmental footprints.

§ Watch, read, listen

‘NITROGEN WARS’: A Guardian long-read looked at the rise of the Dutch farmers’ revolt, which, it wrote, “may well determine the outcome of [this week’s] general election”.

SHORT STRAW: The Atlantic spoke to scientists who said that even if all plastic pollution were to stop tomorrow, “it would be at least a quarter of a millennium” before the world could see a plastic-free sea turtle.

WOOD FOR TREES: A new investigation by the Mekong Eye examined how Vietnam is clearing native forests for wood pellets to help Japan and South Korea reach their net-zero targets.

OLIVE BRANCH: An essay in Atmos looked at olive trees, which are “vital to life in Palestine”, and argued that the roots of the conflict need peace to be addressed.

§ New science

Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential
Nature

A new study found that the amount of carbon being stored in forests is “markedly under the natural potential” of those ecosystems. Researchers used field and satellite data to analyse the gap between current and potential carbon storage, finding that forests could hold more than 200bn tonnes of carbon more than they currently do. More than 60% of this potential occurs in still-standing forests, they found, meaning that restoration could increase carbon storage in those areas. The authors concluded: “Although forests cannot be a substitute for emissions reductions, our results support the idea that the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of diverse forests offer valuable contributions to meeting global climate and biodiversity targets.”

Increased extreme humid heat hazard faced by agricultural workers
Environmental Research Communications

Labourers on rice and maize croplands are the agricultural workers most exposed to dangerous humid heat, new research found. Researchers quantified the number of extreme humid heat days that took place throughout the planting and harvesting seasons of 12 crops, by using temperature data, agricultural calendars and cropland areas data. They found that south-east Asia, equatorial South America, the Indo-Gangetic Basin, coastal Mexico and the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea faced the most frequent humid heat extremes, with certain areas exceeding 60 extreme humid heat days per year. The authors suggested that their results could encourage the creation of policies and efforts to protect vulnerable populations.

Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California’s forests
Science Advances

A new study found that low-intensity wildfires “substantially reduce the risk” of future, higher-intensity ones in California. Researchers analysed 20 years of satellite data related to fire activity across 124,000 hectares of California’s forests. They found that some forests’ fire risks were reduced by nearly two-thirds and these protective effects lasted for at least six years. They concluded that their findings “support a policy transition from fire suppression to restoration, through increased use of prescribed fire, cultural burning and managed wildfire”, adding that the state should aim to return to a “pre-suppression and precolonial fire regime”.

§ In the diary

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to [email protected]

🗂️ back to the index