Disquiet on the global front

🌐 Environmental action struggles with a world in flux.

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

WorldWise reader—

Following from the UN biodiversity summit, which we recapped last time, I’ve been following this quarter’s key global meetings on environmental issues that have a bearing on life pretty much everywhere. The last one concluded in Namibia yesterday, and this post is coming to you a little later than usual to cover what’s come to pass across everything that’s been on my radar.

So after all’s said and done, we take stock of what’s moved and what’s stalled—or inched ever so slightly forward.

If I may channel Meryl Streep for this one: it’s no exaggeration to say that global negotiations on environmental issues old and new tend to move at a glacial pace. But the currents underneath are moving with ever-greater energy. The curated news that follow our stocktake reflect ongoing, fundamental shifts in geopolitics and risks. They don’t signal much change in how the world does business.

We need work that engages with tough realities *and* stands for what a sustainable life looks like. Journalism is one way to do that. The final post of this year, coming in a few days, will bring you the latest opportunities to get involved.

Anita

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INSIGHT | views & analysis

Eyes on the global stage.

In early November, the COP16 biodiversity summit held in Colombia ended abruptly and with mixed results. Although countries agreed a new mechanism to share the benefits from use of genetic resources, most observers were disappointed with the lack of progress on flagship decisions.

There’s been lots more on the global environmental agenda since then, and not just with UN Summits—let’s take a look at the key outcomes (more context and resources are available for paid subscribers here):

Biodiversity science in Windhoek

Following the biodiversity summit, representatives from nearly 150 countries discussed the topic once again, this time with scientists. The Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was held from 10-16 December in Namibia, with a focus on two agenda items: approving an assessment on the biodiversity-water-food-health nexus, and an assessment of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss and determinants of transformative change. Both were completed successfully. The meeting also approved a scoping report for a second global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services due in 2028. These are assessment reports that inform decision making.

The desertification COP in Riyadh

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) concluded last week in Saudi Arabia—see our previous post for key points on the agenda. Despite small steps forward on some agenda items, negotiators failed to agree on how to respond to drought. Some countries are pushing for a legally binding protocol which would lay out responsibilities to prepare and respond, while others prefer a ‘framework’. The next round of negotiations is due to take place in two year’s time, at COP17 in Mongolia.

In the lead-up, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin published an explainer of why land degradation matters. For one, the global losses from drought cost an estimated $307 billion a year. Once seen as a problem confined to Africa, degradation is now affecting almost 40% of the world's land, with impacts on some three billion people through reduced productivity. This is all down to a mix of factors that include intensive agriculture, housing developments and climate change.

Plastics treaty negotiations in Busan

A two-year build-up to international negotiations that were intended to finalise a global treaty to curb plastic pollution ended in failure on December 1st. Among the 200 countries which met in South Korea, a coalition of more than 100 pushed for caps in the production of plastics. But—as nearly all plastic material is produced from oil—they were blocked by oil-producing states, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, which were only prepared to agree on tackling plastic waste.

Some experts saw this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tackle plastic pollution at source—this is a problem for health and the environment that we’ve known about for a long time. Negotiators will pick up the talks within a year, and analysts say good science needs to help efforts for a strong treaty—see Patrick Schröder’s analysis for the Chatham House.

Climate at the court of justice

Climate-vulnerable countries have long stopped putting all their eggs in the COP basket (about that: see next item). They’re also turning to the courts. On December 2nd, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opened two weeks of hearings on states’ legal obligations to protect the climate and the consequences for harm caused if they fail. The case—a first on climate change for the ICJ—was brought by the Pacific island of Vanuatu, which had secured unanimous agreement from the UN General Assembly. After hearing arguments by nearly 100 states and organisations, the court is expected to issue an advisory opinion in 2025. The opinion is expected to clarify countries’ obligations under existing laws. Vanuatu is also one of three Pacific states fighting to get destroying nature classed as a crime under the International Criminal Court.

The climate COP in Baku

The $300 billion deal: It came at the last minute, as it usually does—a small group of negotiators agreed that rich nations will provide at least $300 billion every year to developing countries by 2035, tripling the previous finance goal. This was the actual goal on the agenda, so reactions of deep disappointment might sound confusing unless you dig deeper. Analysts say that’s because, after adjusting for inflation, the new finance goal isn’t enough to shift the business-as-usual emissions scenario. It also fails to account for problems with the flow of funding, e.g. whether it should come in grants or from public sources—and because much of it is expected to come from grants, it is likely to pile more debt on developing countries. Plus, $1.3 trillion a year is believed to be closer to the real figure for meaningful action (this was included in the text as a target).

Carbon market: On the first day, countries agreed rules on the trade of ‘carbon credits’—a centralised, UN voluntary mechanism proposed when the Paris Agreement was agreed in 2015. Through this system, due to launch next year, countries can buy credits for removing or avoiding emissions in other parts of the world—by planting trees or saving rainforests, for example. This then counts toward their own emissions targets, allowing them to delay reducing emissions at home. There was criticism that agreement was pushed through without following proper procedures. Meanwhile, some countries have also announced bilateral carbon trading partnerships, according to Devex.

COP-29’s main agreement hands the salvation of life on the planet over to private investors, who are not the ones who signed agreements to try to stop the climate emergency. — Claudia Antunes for Sumaúma

No real action—fossil fuels, loss & damage, adaptation, nature, health: Decisions on how to transition away from fossil fuels were effectively deferred to the next COP. Ditto for adaptation goals. Formalities were completed to allow the loss & damage fund to start distributing money within the next year. There were few new commitments on food, forests, land and nature. And there wasn’t much emphasis or concrete progress on health, beyond establishing a Continuity Coalition for Climate and Health tasked with integrating health into planning for future COPs.

📌 As the summit was concluding I wrote about a key debate on climate and health: after decades in the margins, the sector is grappling with how to push for more influence at UN summits and beyond. What's the most effective way to edge health concerns closer to the negotiating table? My report for Think Global Health, a Council on Foreign Relations publication, probes this question with comments by WHO special envoy Vanessa Kerry, Spain’s health ministry advisor Héctor Tejero, LSHTM professor Sarah Whitmee, and Sunway University director Jamilah Mahmood. Free to read here.

G20 in Rio de Janeiro

At the G20 Summit, which was held just after mid-November, Brazil launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty—a platform to connect countries with proven policies such as cash transfers, healthy school meals and support for small-scale farmers. It also aims to link countries with organisations that offer money and technical expertise to tackle hunger. Other initiatives launched at the summit: a global coalition to strengthen national capacity to manufacture medicines, the global initiative to tackle disinformation on climate change, and commitments to scale up finance and reform multilateral development banks.

Intergovernmental forum on mining

The 20th Annual General Meeting of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF) also took place just after mid-November. See the final report and a summary article by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, which conveys a positive message on “efforts to redefine mining” to protect the environment and share the benefits. It’s hard to ignore how this clashes with the reality we see documented in media reports on a regular basis.

A final note: doubting the system

Some of the most trusted and well-established names in UN and climate circles, including Ban-Ki Moon and Christiana Figueres, are among the signatories of an open letter from the Club of Rome, calling for an overhaul of the climate COP. They argue that in its current form, it cannot “deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity”.

Failure at the desertification and plastics talks; a partial failure at the biodiversity talks; a disappointing finance deal at the climate talks—the picture is disconcerting, and more and more that’s being reflected in open questioning of the system through which these multilateral efforts are managed.

📌 Quotes from other voices grappling with the question of whether the COP system is fit for purpose are available for paid subscribers here.

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GLOBAL BRIEFING | around the world

Spotlight on…geopolitical shifts

China’s reach | China is extending its influence into Latin America through the opening of a huge port in the Peruvian city of Chancay, which is designed to create a direct route across the Pacific Ocean, the Washington Post reports. The $3.6 billion project is one of its largest infrastructure investments in the region for two decades, and reflects how its Belt & Road Initiative is evolving, Mie Hoejris Dahl writes in Foreign Policy. As part of that evolution China has now begun to raise funds for projects through green and sustainability bonds, Jiang Mengnan reports for Dialogue Earth. Its efforts to dominate the global clean energy economy are also paying off after decades as it takes pole position by attracting business deals across the Global South, write Zack Colman and Sara Schonhardt for Politico. Meanwhile, it’s trying to become a bigger player in how global meteorology is governed, Lauren Rosenthal and Mary Hui report for Bloomberg Green.

ICYMI

Building influence, slow and steady

The BRICS | After their October summit, which we covered in the last edition, Rachel Donald wrote about the bloc’s growing influence and moves to create parallel global infrastructures; Reuters reported on a proposal by Russia to create “a grain exchange” between member countries; C. J. Polychroniou wrote in Global Policy Journal about the significance of these countries in building momentum to escape dependence on the Western world; and signalling that President Trump is taking this seriously, the Washington Post reported on his demands that the bloc drops plans to create a new currency.

ICYMI

New BRICS—new edifice?

Development and the political right | The Devex editorial team has put together a primer on development institutions and policies that could change drastically under incoming US president Donald Trump. The UN is one of those vulnerable institutions, as the US accounts for nearly a quarter of its regular budget, Edith M. Lederer and Jamey Keaten report for AP News. And in Brazil, the extreme right continues to win elections in parts of the Amazon where deforestation is historically high, Malu Delgado and Rafael Moro Martins write in Sumaúma.

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

Highlights

🏗 On development

• Barbados has reduced some of its debt in exchange for boosting the climate resilience of its water and sanitation system, Bloomberg reports, and Côte d'Ivoire has completed debt-for-education swap, Karin Strohecker reports for Reuters. Debt swaps should be better structured to support conservation goals, Daniel Ortega-Pacheco and Jonathan Glennie argue in Mongabay.

• India’s plans for a multi-billion ‘Hong Kong-like’ development project on the Great Nicobar Island threaten some of the most isolated tribes in the world, Janhavee Moole reports for the BBC. Critics also say it was pushed through despite of environmental concerns, writes Sohel Sarkar for The Revelator.

• Although Brazil’s farmers have benefited from decades of agricultural development, this came at the cost of losing vast areas of forest—and now that deforestation is hurting farmland, according to research cited by the Economist.

• Brazil is also one of the countries where the nutritional value of daily diets has fallen, according to a FAO report on the state of global agricultural markets, which puts this down to growing consumption of ultra-processed foods. Science magazine reports on the environmental costs of the growing global food trade.

• Africa’s rural agricultural regions are being transformed, but productivity is barely rising, leaving farmers unable to make a living from the land even if they wanted to, Liam Taylor writes for World Politics Review.

🔥 On climate change

• The glaciers of Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range have shrunk by more than 40% in recent decades, exposing rocks and triggering chemical reactions that turn freshwater toxic, report Mitra Taj for The New York Times and Nicholas Vincent for One Green Planet. Corinna Daus’s film for Deutsche Welle explores what a world without glaciers could look like, shedding light on potential adaptations that would drastically reshape life on Earth.

• Recent research that found heat ‘hotspots’ outpacing global temperature trends is prompting concerns that some climate risks are being underestimated, Andrew Freedman reports for Axios and Bill McKibben writes for The New Yorker. Separate research suggests that global carbon accounting may be getting net-zero calculations wrong by relying too much on trees and oceans to absorb new carbon emissions, Eric Roston reports for Bloomberg.

• In Malawi, which ranks among the five countries most affected by extreme weather events, people are struggling to secure food after years of erratic rainfall, drought and five cyclones, Cyrielle Cabot writes for France24.

• First the Amazon rainforest, and now the Arctic tundra has become a net source of carbon emissions—rather than a ‘sink’—for the first time in thousands of years, Yereth Rosen reports in the Alaska Beacon.

🪫 On the energy transition

• Outgoing US President Biden used his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa to back the planned upgrade of a railway in Angola, which is set to facilitate the transport of green energy minerals out of Central Africa and on to the United States, Vivian Chime reports for Climate Home News.

• In Indonesia, houses are being demolished against residents’ objections under plans to turn Batam island into a solar hub under a deal to export clean power to Singapore, Gabrielle See reports for Eco-Business.

• A collaboration led by the Environmental Reporting Collective has published an investigation into the human and environmental costs of extracting three critical energy transition minerals: cobalt, nickel, and lithium.

• A new report has linked the rush to mine critical minerals for green energy to displacement, environmental damage and rights abuses across the world, with Southeast Asia a hotspot for unrest, Rebecca L. Root reports for Dialogue Earth. In the Philippines, Indigenous communities and biodiversity hotspots are bearing the brunt of mineral exploitation, according to Global Witness.

• Just a fraction of e-waste is mined for critical metals, but doing more of this can help supply the critical metals needed for the green transition with less environmental harm, Vince Beiser writes in Mother Jones.

• A government-owned company in India has managed to put 12,000 of e-buses on city streets on the cheap using innovative financing, reports Lou del Bello for Bloomberg.

🌱 On environmental protection

• Brazil is planing to convert public lands around controversial highways into protected areas in the Amazon, Fernanda Wenzel reports for Mongabay. Also for Mongabay, Rhett Butler reports that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped by 30% over the past year, and is now at its lowest level since 2015.

• When farmers in India decided to delay the annual sowing of rice to preserve dwindling groundwater supplies, few could predict the knock-on effect: worsening air pollution in New Delhi and the surrounding region, Karishma Mehrotra reports for The Washington Post.

• In Colombia, women have been at the forefront of organised efforts to push back on extractive activities that harm the environment—and they need protection, Mie Hoejris Dahl writes for World Politics Review. It’s the same story in other parts of Latin America, and their efforts need better funding, Anastasia Moloney and Andre Cabette Fabio write for Context.

🦠 On global health

• This year, dengue fever cases have nearly tripled to their highest levels since records began some 40 years ago in Central and South America, Euronews and AP report; a rise in cases and deaths has also been reported in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Globally, this was a record year for dengue, which the Guardian reports is down to a mix of factors including the climate crisis, higher migration and urbanisation.

• Cases of malaria have risen globally for the 5th year in a row, Kat Lay reports for The Guardian; in East Africa, a surge of the disease is tied to the emergence of a mosquito that appears immune to insecticides, reports Voice of America/AFP.

• Measles cases also rose by 20% globally last year, a trend fuelled by vaccine hesitancy, according to Reuters.

• An unknown disease that has killed dozens of people in south-western DRC is being investigated, according to reports in The Guardian and Reuters.

• In Brazil’s Pará state, experts suspect that contamination caused by illegal gold mining is behind a surge in cases of crippling physical and neurological symptoms in children, Dan Collyns reports for The Guardian.

🆘 On humanitarian need

• The number of people in need of humanitarian support globally has fallen for the second year in a row, David Ainsworth reports for Devex—but the sector is still overstretched by too many crises and funding shortfalls, according to Al Jazeera and AP News.

• The world’s conflict zones have grown by 65% in the past three years, Kaamil Ahmed reports for the Guardian. As a result of conflict, violence and disasters, the number of people displaced across Africa has tripled to 35 million from 2009 to 2023, Mohammed Yusuf writes for Voice of America.

• Away from the global spotlight, Sudan is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with half of its population—some 26 million people—in need of food aid, writes Ishaan Tharoor in The Washington Post.

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PLUS | in other editions

Media powerhouses failing Africa (ranked)

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PS. (trust me)

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Thank you.

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Created and edited by Anita Makri—journalist/writer, producer and editorial adviser covering global development and science in society. I also help selected organisations with compatible values to strengthen their media work. LinkedIn | Instagram | Email

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