DeBriefed 23 June 2023: Climate finance talks; UK marine heatwave; Deadly heat in India

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

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

Money talks in Paris

CLIMATE FINANCE: Dozens of world leaders met in Paris this week to discuss climate finance, green growth, the debt crisis and how to tap private sector sources of investment, BBC News reported. The overall ambition of the meeting was to “give poorer countries access to hundreds of billions of dollars to tackle climate change”, according to BBC News. The two-day summit was co-chaired by prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, and French president, Emmanuel Macron. 

FUNDS FOR 1.5C: Ahead of the summit, the climate change ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the Guardian called for an international financial system that can help the world stay as close as possible to 1.5C of warming. In a comment piece in Reuters, Dr Rachel Kyte, a climate policy expert, predicted that a challenge for the summit would be how to bolster investment in emerging markets and developing economies in a way that does not incur debt. “Those gathering in Paris this week agree that the current system is no longer fit for purpose,” Kyte wrote.

DEBT PAYMENT PAUSE: The summit’s first day saw the World Bank unveil several new measures to help countries affected by extreme weather, including a “pause” in debt repayments to the lender, Reuters reported. On the second day, the summit’s final statement, seen by Reuters, announced that “multilateral development banks are expected to unlock $200bn in extra firepower for emerging economies by running their balance sheets more tightly and taking on more risk”.

‘Unheard of’ marine heatwave

OCEAN HEAT: A marine heatwave off the coasts of the UK and Ireland could pose a serious threat to species and fisheries, the Guardian reported. “While marine heatwaves are found in warmer seas like the Mediterranean, such anomalous temperatures in this part of the north Atlantic are unheard of,” Prof Daniela Schmidt, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Bristol, told the newspaper.

EL NIÑO: Weaker trade winds limiting the amount of Saharan dust blowing over the ocean this year and a global transition to El Niño, a natural weather phenomenon causing hotter conditions in many parts of the world, could have contributed to the heatwave, New Scientist reported. It added that climate change is also likely to be contributing, although no formal assessment of its role has yet been carried out. Carbon Brief has reported on how climate change could make marine heatwaves longer and more intense. 

India, Mexico, China swelter

HIGH FATALITIES: At least 96 people have died from heat-related conditions during an intense heatwave across two of India’s most populous states, the Guardian reported. Although the Indian federal government has resisted directly connecting high humidity and temperatures to the rise in fatalities, it has sent teams to assist and advise heat-affected states, according to Bloomberg. 

POWER DEMAND: In Mexico, soaring temperatures are driving record electricity consumption, prompting the country’s energy authority to issue a rare alert over grid capacity, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, yesterday, Beijing experienced its hottest June day on record, noted Caixin, when temperatures peaked at 41.4C.

• SAVE THE GLACIERS: In a referendum, 59.1% of voters in Switzerland backed a new climate bill designed to cut fossil-fuel use and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, according to BBC News. 
• OCEAN TALKS WIN: The United Nations has adopted the world’s first treaty to protect the high seas and preserve marine biodiversity in international waters after nearly 20 years of negotiations, Reuters reported. Read Carbon Brief’s in-depth coverage of the final negotiations and what they mean for climate change and biodiversity.
• AMAZON LOSS SLOWS: Almost six months into his second spell as president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has begun to rein in the rampant destruction of the Amazon rainforest, according to New Scientist. 
• US CLEAN ENERGY: For the first time ever, solar and wind together generated more electricity in the US than coal power during the first five months of the year, CBS news reported.
• RELENTLESS CROP: A heat-tolerant coffee strain, lost to commercial production for half a century, has been successfully revived in a pilot project in Sierra Leone, Bloomberg reported.

The recommended value of annual investments in clean energy across developing nations by the early 2030s, if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, according to the International Energy Agency. The value of such investments in 2022 was $770bn.

• Population growth drove a 30% rise in emissions from global food supply chains over 2000-19, according to new research published in Nature Food.
• New research in Nature Climate Change suggested that endangered southwestern willow flycatchers in southern California have adapted their DNA to meet changing climate conditions.
• The indirect effects of climate change, such as wildfires, have a greater impact on soil organic carbon than direct effects such as rising temperatures, according to new research in Nature Communications.

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

Military spending dwarfs climate

Developed countries spend over 10 times more on their militaries than on climate finance for developing countries, according to Carbon Brief analysis. In 2022, developed countries spent $1,242bn on their militaries, compared to $97bn on climate finance for developing countries, the analysis reveals. Back in 2020, developed nations broke a long-held promise to provide developing countries with $100bn in climate finance annually.

Can carbon offsets help to deliver climate finance for Africa?

With climate finance flows to Africa still limited, Carbon Brief explores whether funds could be raised through the continent’s burgeoning carbon offsets industry.

In May, Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank Group, said Africa will need $2.7tn in finance for tackling and adapting to climate change by 2030. A bulk of this money is expected to come from developed countries, who are largely responsible for climate change due to their historical high emissions – and who have failed to meet a pledge to provide $100bn per year in climate finance by 2020.

But carbon markets are also being touted as a market-driven approach to help close Africa’s climate financing gap. At last year’s COP27 climate summit in Egypt, several UN bodies collaborated with African leaders and western donors to launch the Africa Carbon Market Initiative (ACMI). The ACMI aims to mobilise $6bn of African carbon credits per annum by 2030 and $100bn per annum by 2050 via voluntary carbon markets. (Voluntary carbon markets are where companies and organisations can buy and sell “carbon credits”, with the aim of polluting companies “offsetting” their emissions by funding projects that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.) 

The challenges before the ACMI are numerous. Developers for new carbon offset projects are relatively few on the continent and government regulation is a huge barrier. The ACMI also needs to help scale the continent’s capacity to validate and verify credit-worth projects. But perhaps the greatest obstacle it faces is the lack of integrity associated with many carbon offset projects. Although scientists say that carbon offsetting can play a role in meeting global climate goals, the way that industry currently operates has raised concerns about exaggerated climate benefits and potential side-effects for people and nature. 

Larry Lohmann, a researcher and campaigner with the UK organisation the Corner House, told Carbon Brief that “carbon markets might trickle a bit of money to certain isolated groups”, but that there is a risk they can be misused by “big, exploitative extractive and manufacturing industries”, such as fossil fuel companies.

The ACMI, in its roadmap report, acknowledged the concerns of environmental groups and noted that they “must be accounted for and addressed to ensure that African carbon markets develop with high integrity”. But it remains to be seen whether the initiative can operate “with integrity, equity and transparency”, as demanded by a member of the ACMI’s inaugural committee, Bogolo Kenewendo.

SEE THE BURN: Watch these NASA visualisations showing CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Australia and Asia. (And watch out for a Carbon Brief article about these Nasa videos coming next week.)

INDIA’S ENERGY RECKONING: For Foreign Affairs, Arunabha Ghosh examined whether one of the most populated countries on Earth can become a green superpower.

PALM OIL EMISSIONS: Chih-Ching Lan and Josie Phillips argued in China Dialogue that ending deforestation – and enhancing transparency and cooperation – will be key to balancing palm oil emissions and removals.

• Tree Aid is hiring a director of fundraising and communications | Salary: £65,000. Location: Bristol, UK.
• Newsday is seeking an environment reporter that will develop enterprise stories and cover breaking news by cultivating diverse sources to help build a diverse audience | Salary: $52.32 per hour. Location: New York.
• Reuters is seeking an energy correspondent to join its team in Nigeria | Salary: Unspecified. Location: Lagos, Nigeria.

DeBriefed is written in rotation by Carbon Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected]