DeBriefed 12 July 2024: 12 consecutive months above 1.5C; Labour sets UK climate agenda; West Africa’s fishing crisis

Solomon Elusoji

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

§ This week

Sweltering Earth 

RECORD YEAR?: Global temperatures “breached the threshold of 1.5C for each of the past 12 months and seas reached their warmest for 15 months in a row”, the Financial Times reported, setting the scene for 2024 to be the hottest year on record. Reuters, also quoting the EU’s climate change monitoring service, said last month was the hottest June on record, the 13th month in a row to be the warmest recorded. 

SCORCHING SUMMER: Japan issued a heat stroke alert for 26 of the country’s 47 prefectures, urging people to stay indoors, use air conditioners and drink lots of water, the Guardian reported. Covering Pakistan’s heatwave, the New York Times said “hundreds of patients suffering from heat-related illnesses pour into the hospitals every day, pushing them far past their capacity.” About 36 million people in the US are under excessive heat warnings, Reuters reported.

STORMY TIMES: Hurricane Beryl reached Texas after causing destruction in the Caribbean last week and knocked out power to nearly three million homes and businesses, the Associated Press reported. According to the Indian Express, record rains descended on Mumbai, leading to traffic chaos and train cancellations across the city. In Cape Town, South Africa, nearly 1,000 homes were destroyed by gale-force winds, the Associated Press reported.

Labour makes early moves

WIND POWER: Days after its historic election win, the new Labour government in the UK lifted a “de-facto ban” on building new onshore wind turbines in England, the Guardian reported. According to the Daily Mail, chancellor Rachel Reeves described the ban as “absurd” and said it would hold back progress towards Labour’s ambition to make the UK a “clean-energy superpower”.

GREEN INDUSTRY: Labour also announced that a new £7.3bn national wealth fund, aimed at cutting emissions from the UK’s heavy industry, will begin investing in areas such as green steel and gigafactories “immediately”, the Financial Times reported. Reeves said the funds are to be spent over five years and disbursed by the state-run UK Infrastructure Bank, the newspaper added. And Chris Stark was appointed to head a “Covid vaccine-style taskforce aimed at delivering clean and cheaper power by 2030”, said the Guardian.

FOSSIL BUSINESS: The new government said that a proposed coal mine in Cumbria had been approved unlawfully, reported the Guardian, as the carbon emissions of coal from the mine should have been taken into account in the planning decision. Meanwhile, a Daily Telegraph article on North Sea oil and gas licensing was described by the government as a “complete fabrication”, noted City AM.

§ Around the world

  • NO TURNING BACK: The EU has resisted calls from industries and countries to delay its flagship deforestation law, which is set to take effect from 30 December, Reuters reported.
  • MORE TREES: The amount of forest lost in Colombia fell by 36% between 2022 and 2023, its lowest level in 23 years, the Guardian reported.
  • CLEAN POWER: South Africa’s new energy minister vowed to be “ultra-aggressive” on renewable energy as the country celebrated more than 100 days with no power cuts – a record following years of crippling blackouts, Reuters reported.
  • ELECTION ANXIETY: Scientists in France said they were relieved that the right-wing party National Rally was defeated in the country’s parliamentary elections, over fears of budget cuts to research and the introduction of climate scepticism into government, Nature reported.
  • END TIMES: Fossil-fuel company BP said oil demand is expected to peak in 2025 under current climate policies and fossil fuels will decline to about two-thirds of the global energy mix by 2050, as more renewable capacity is installed, said the Times.
  • RECORD PENALTY: Petroleum company Marathon Oil must pay a record $64.5m penalty to resolve ​​alleged violations of the Clean Air Act, the Washington Post reported.

§ 760,000

The number of hectares (1.8m acres) that have already burned across the Brazilian Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland and one of the most biodiverse places on Earth – in 2024, reported the Guardian.

§ Latest climate research

  • As the world reduces emissions and approaches net-zero, it will be “difficult” to identify specifically when warming has “stopped”, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters, potentially creating confusion among policymakers and the general public.
  • New research in Scientific Reports found that climate change-driven desertification in the Gobi Desert could threaten several species of dung beetle.
  • Methane emissions from livestock in China are projected to rise 13% by 2030, but there is the “technical potential” to cut them by 36%, a new study in Nature Food suggested.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Image - Share of China’s electricity generation, %, 2016-2024. (note)

Clean energy generated a record-high 44% of China’s electricity in May 2024, pushing coal’s share down to a record low of 53%, despite continued growth in demand, according to new analysis published by Carbon Brief. Coal lost seven percentage points compared with May 2023, when it accounted for 60% of generation in China. Generation from clean energy sources grew by a record 78 terawatt hours (TWh), including a record rise from solar of 41TWh (78%), a recovery from earlier drought-driven lows for hydro of 34TWh (39%) and a modest rise for wind of 4TWh (5%). If current rapid wind and solar deployment continues, then China’s CO2 output is likely to continue falling, making 2023 the peak year for the country’s emissions, the analysis said.

§ Spotlight

Solutions to West Africa’s fishing crisis

Carbon Brief examines the link between climate change and the declining fortunes of fishing communities in West Africa.

In June, a new paper in Scientific Reports suggested that global warming was contributing to changes in the distribution of small pelagic (open ocean) fish species in a marine ecosystem that stretches from Morocco to Senegal.

“These changes serve as an early indicator of potential future challenges regarding availability, holding profound implications for the food security of millions of citizens across West Africa,” the authors wrote.

The study was one of the latest in an ongoing effort by scientists to improve the understanding of climate change’s impact on marine ecosystems in West Africa.

Nearly seven million people directly derive their livelihoods from small-scale fisheries in West Africa, but the fatal combination of overfishing and ocean warming has resulted in reduced productivity in marine resources, threatening to further impoverish coastal communities in the region.

For example, the coastal catch dropped by nearly 40% in Côte d’Ivoire between 2003 and 2020. And, in Ghana, annual landings of round sardinella, an economically important fish in the country, fell by 90% between 1992 and 2019. 

Maximum catch potential is expected to continue to decline as ocean warming – which accounts for about 90% of global warming – accelerates, according to Robert Paarlberg, an emeritus professor at Wellesley College in Massachuchets, who has spent the past three decades researching food and agricultural policy in several African countries.

Coastal adaptation

In 2023, Paarlberg, a co-investigator at a Harvard research cluster focused on climate adaptation in the Gulf of Guinea, spent three weeks visiting coastal communities in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. He returned to Ghana in May 2024. His goal was to study adaptation strategies for fishing communities in the region.

“Finding alternative income for traditional fishing communities is essential, since the stocks of small pelagic fish will continue to decline, at least in the Gulf of Guinea where I have focused my research,” Paarlberg tells Carbon Brief.

In a recent article, Paarlberg advocated for conditional cash transfer policies at the national level to help fishing communities stay in school longer, arguing that more education could empower them to find non-fishing jobs.

But he believes the international community can also play a role. He tells Carbon Brief:

“US AID [Agency for International Development] has been scaling up a vocational training program for fishers in Ghana, to help them transition to alternative livelihoods, but the US AID budget is not big enough to scale up such programmes for all those in need. The UN Green Climate Fund has started to provide this kind of assistance in West Africa and, together with the World Bank, could be doing even more.”

One way to slow down the impact of climate change is to significantly curb the overfishing practices of local and foreign trawlers. According to Paarlberg, regional cooperation can help, due to the transnational nature of the coast:

“Countries such as Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire have been imposing ‘closed seasons’ to combat overfishing in July and August. But if Togo does not follow suit too, many canoes will simply go down the coast and fish in Togolese waters.”

§ Watch, read, listen

FEEDING THE PLANET: For the first guest on her new podcast, Prof Sarah Bridle, interviewed Prof Rosie Green about plant-based alternative foods, their environmental impact and what to look for when choosing plant milk.

CLIMATE THEATRE: For Nature, Prof Peter Stott reviewed the premiere of a new UK play, Kyoto, which depicts the drama behind the scenes at the 1997 Kyoto Protocol negotiations.

ROAD TO COP29: In an opinion piece for African Arguments, chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) at the climate talks in Bonn in June 2024, Ali Mohamed, said a pan-African stance is the only path to climate justice.

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

  • The African Climate Foundation, programme manager, sustainable finance | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote, preference will be given to candidates based in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa
  • International Institute for Sustainable Development-Experimental Lakes Area, programme manager | Salary: CAD$80,000-CAD$100,000. Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba (hybrid)
  • US South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, New Mexico tribal liaison | Salary: $48,000-$52,000. Location: Oklahoma
  • The India Climate Collaborative, senior manager – capacity building | Salary: Unknown. Location: Mumbai (preferred) or remote

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].
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