DeBriefed 6 September 2024: China and Africa discuss ‘green growth engines’; Hottest summer; How extreme heat threatens education

Alice Vernat-Davies

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

§ This week

China and Africa climate cooperation

FOCAC: Leaders from several African countries have been in Beijing this week for the 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), where Xi Jinping said “China and Africa will announce a new positioning of China-Africa relations”, reported the Global Times. FOCAC is held every three years and has seen Beijing “making huge financial pledges to support big-ticket infrastructure projects”, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) wrote.

BILLIONS INVESTED: On Thursday, Xi pledged $51bn over three years and promised the creation of at least 1 million jobs, Reuters reported. People’s Daily published Xi’s speech in full, in which he promised the funding would be used to “help Africa build ‘green growth engines’ [and] narrow the gap in energy accessibility”, as well as develop 30 “clean-energy” projects. 

‘MUTUAL BENEFITS’: Meanwhile, a separate SCMP article said more than 60% of China’s cobalt is supplied by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a key mineral used in electric vehicle batteries. Elsewhere, South Africa’s Mail & Guardian reported that China’s mining presence in Africa is “concentrated in five countries: Guinea, Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the DRC”, adding that the “race for green energy [is] shaping relations between China and Africa”.

Hottest summer on record

SUMMER HEAT: CNN reported the summer of 2024 was the hottest on record for the second year in a row, adding that this year is “firmly on track to be the hottest year in recorded history”, echoing Carbon Brief analysis from last month. The news outlet explains that the period between June and August, which defines northern-hemisphere summer, was the warmest since at least 1940, according to new data published by European climate service Copernicus.

FUELLING DISASTERS: Rising global temperatures “continued to fuel disasters this summer”, reported Reuters, adding that “climate change is driving a severe ongoing drought on the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and it intensified Typhoon Gaemi, which tore through the Philippines, Taiwan and China in July, leaving more than 100 people dead.” Carbon Brief’s recent explainer unpacked why climate change is causing “record-shattering” extreme heat across the world and what this could mean for Earth’s future.

§ Around the world

  • ‘WINTER HEAT’: Australia has recorded its hottest August on record, reported the Guardian, with the “national temperature 3C above average”. 
  • GDP LOSSES: A new report from the World Meteorological Organization found that African countries are already losing up to 5% of their GDP every year as a result of climate change, the Associated Press reported. 
  • CLIMATE TALKS: US climate envoy John Podesta visited China for three days this week to “bridge gaps on issues such as [climate] finance” with his counterpart Liu Zhenmin, Reuters reported. 
  • RENEWABLE ENERGY: The UK’s latest auction for new renewable capacity has secured funding for more than 130 renewable energy projects, the Guardian reported. (See Carbon Brief’s detailed analysis and Captured below.)
  • EXTREME RAINFALL: The Associated Press said heavy monsoon rains and flooding have killed at least 33 people in southern India and five children in Pakistan this week. The Wire wrote that the state of Andhra Pradesh “bore the brunt of the downpour, receiving 27% more rainfall than its annual average in just 48 hours”.

§ 15

The number of countries responsible for 98% of current coal-power development, according to a Carbon Brief guest post.

§ Latest climate research

  • Greenhouse gas emissions from beef production in the US could be reduced by 20m tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year and a further 58m tonnes could be drawn down from the atmosphere each year, according to a new study in Nature Food. 
  • Climate change could cause a “consistent shrinking of wetlands” in the Mediterranean, Central America and parts of South America, a new study in Earth’s Future suggested. 
  • A Communications Earth & Environment study found that around 2.5 billion more people lived in areas with a “high climate suitability” for dengue fever in 2022, compared to 1979.

(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 - UK renewable auction secures nearly three times as much capacity as last year (note)

A new analysis from Carbon Brief showed how more than 130 wind, solar and tidal energy projects secured funding in the latest round of the UK’s “contracts for difference” (CfD) scheme, amounting to 9.6 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. This is three times higher than the amount secured last year. It is also a new capacity record, if wind power projects from 2022 that were subsequently cancelled or scaled back are excluded, according to the analysis.

§ Spotlight

How warming threatens children’s education

This week, Carbon Brief looks at the growing impacts of climate change on global education. 

In August, a new UNICEF analysis found that half a billion children are now experiencing twice as many days above 35C as children from the 1960s. 

Millions of children have been impacted by school closures due to record-breaking heatwaves this year, notably in South Sudan, India, Bangladesh and the Philippines. 

Schools in the global north are also not immune to the effects of climate change. 

Earlier this year, Carbon Brief covered a study finding that schools in England could exceed an “overheating” threshold of 26C for one-third of the academic year, if global warming reaches 2C above pre-industrial temperatures. 

“Every school needs to be thinking about this and every school should have a climate response plan,” Christina Kwauk, research director at Unbounded Associates, a consultancy aimed at improving outcomes for children, told Carbon Brief. 

Climate impacts on learning

A World Bank report published this year said that higher classroom temperatures have an impact on student’s learning outcomes and can “compromise reaction time, processing speed and accuracy through changes in heart rate and respiratory rates”. 

Sarah Beardmore at Global Partnership for Education, a collaboration hosted by the World Bank aimed at improving education in developing countries, told Carbon Brief:

“We see that months of schooling are lost, in terms of the outcomes on exams, when students are being tested in high temperatures. So, heat has a direct impact on both the physical and cognitive development of young people.”

High temperatures can also affect children more severely because they have more trouble regulating their body temperature and do not sweat as much as adults, which makes them more vulnerable to developing heat-related illnesses. 

In circumstances where schools have had to close, some children are less likely to go back to school once it has reopened. This is especially prevalent for girls in developing countries, Kwauk told Carbon Brief: 

“When we’re thinking about education – and especially education for girls in contexts where gender inequality in education is quite rampant – climate change just exacerbates those existing gender-specific barriers to their access to education and to their completion of education.” 

Reduced education attainment has a direct impact on the economy. In a report, the World Bank said that “school attainment is linked with higher earnings, with estimates suggesting a return of 9-10% for each additional year of schooling [for individuals].”

The same report also said that “the education impacts of climate change are an economic time-bomb”. 

International priorities

As the impact of extreme heat on schools intensifies, there is also a need for children to be educated about the causes and solutions for climate change, Beardmore said:

“We can’t power the [green] transition without education.” 

Yet, as of October 2022, out of the 140 national climate plans – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – that were submitted to the UN ahead of the COP27 climate summit, less than a third mention climate change education. 

In 2023, at COP28, a “groundbreaking” declaration on the common agenda for education and climate change was adopted.

This declaration aimed to create a “clear path for nations to incorporate education into their national climate strategies, develop climate-smart education policies and bolster financing to build climate-resilient education systems”.

While the declaration was a step forward, climate education still receives relatively little attention at international climate talks, Beardmore said: 

“Although there is a strong commitment to the ‘action for climate empowerment’ agenda, we are not seeing a discussion of education at the level that there needs to be in terms of the climate negotiations. It’s really an afterthought.  It’s not seen as a key part of the climate solution.” 

§ Watch, read, listen

RISING TIDES: An India Today feature detailed how sea level rise will significantly impact coastal communities and “reshape our planet”.

‘SMARTPHONES ON WHEELS’: A Rest of the World article explored what happens when electric vehicle startups in China shut down. 

CALLING OUT: Joseph Zane Sikulu – Pacific director for climate campaign group 350.org – wrote an open letter in Climate Home News to Mukhtar Babayev, president-designate of the COP29 climate summit, calling out Azerbaijan’s “business-as-usual” tactics for addressing climate change. 

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

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