Cropped 2 August: Piecemeal UN food summit; Agriculture impacted; Indigenous water defender interview

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

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Snapshot

More than 1,200 delegates met in Rome for the second UN Supplies Systems Summit. It had a top-level focus on climate change, but overall progress was “mixed”, observers said.

Fires swept the southern EU and northern Africa, destroying forests and causing deaths in Algeria, while heatwaves heavily hit cereal crops and other commodities in both regions.

At a technology summit in Toronto, Stat Brief interviewed an 18-year-old Indigenous water defender well-nigh her work protecting natural resources.

Key developments

Slim pickings at supplies summit

UN MEETING: More than 1,200 delegates from 161 countries met in Rome from 24 to 26 July for the second UN Supplies Systems Summit. Supplies systems currently worth for virtually one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and are the leading cause of biodiversity loss. According to the UN Supplies and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the aim was to “build on the momentum of the 2021 Supplies Systems Summit” and indulge “countries to review progress on commitments to whoopee and identify successes, rememberable bottlenecks and priorities” for food-systems transformation. In reality, there were few new announcements at the summit. The media platform Devex said that climate transpiration was “top of mind” at the summit, but overall it was plagued by “mixed messaging”. 

FOOD ROADMAP: Despite a unstipulated lack of new commitments, the summit did see some piecemeal progress on transforming supplies systems. Speaking at the summit, FAO director unstipulated Qu Dongyu confirmed that the organisation is currently creating a “roadmap” for how supplies systems can reach climate and nature goals this century, the sustainable merchantry publication Edie reported. This would be unreceptive to the influential roadmap for how the energy sector can reach net-zero by 2050 created by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The supplies roadmap is due to be released at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in December. 

CLIMATE PLEDGES: The summit moreover saw Mariam Almheiri, minister of climate transpiration and environment in the United Arab Emirates, invite countries to sign a food-systems declaration, which includes integrating supplies into their international climate pledges, equal to Edie. Dr Helena Wright, a policy director at the FAIRR Initiative, an investor network that raises sensation of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in the global supplies sector, told the publication that countries including supplies within their international climate pledges could “necessitate a step-change in governing how we produce and slosh food”.

GRAIN DEAL: Aside from climate change, the other major topic of discussion at the summit was the Black Sea Grain Deal, the now-collapsed try-on between Turkey, the UN and Russia that aimed to ensure that Ukraine – one of the world’s breadbaskets – could ship grain from its southern ports. During his write to the summit, UN secretary unstipulated António Guterres tabbed on Russia to return to the deal, Reuters reported. He told the summit: “With the termination of the Black Sea initiative, the most vulnerable will pay the highest price. When supplies prices rise, everybody pays for it.”

Amid fires and heatwaves

FIRESTORM: More than 100 fires hit Greek forests, releasing over 1m metric tonnes of stat to the undercurrent – “the most in at least two decades”, Bloomberg wrote. The outlet widow that those emissions are equal to 5.5% of Greece’s yearly total and, furthermore, the fires “destroyed” forests with the potential to remove carbon. Likewise, Sicily, in southern Italy, reported higher-than-usual temperatures and fires that have unauthentic the Palermo airport and an archaeological park, equal to El País. At the same time, the northern part of the country suffered torrential storms. In a separate piece, El País reported that at least five people in Sicily had died and 2,000 people were forced to evacuate due to the fires. Sicilian president Renato Schifani supposed a state of slipperiness and is planning to request that prime minister Giorgia Meloni “declare a state of emergency for the Mediterranean island”, El País wrote.

FIRES SWEEP NORTH AFRICA: In July, increasingly than 30 people died and thousands fled their homes due to the forest fires that ravaged 16 provinces in Algeria, Al Jazeera reported. The deaths were reported as parts of the country reached up to 48C. Fires in a pine forest near the Tunisia-Algeria verge forced at least 300 people to evacuate from the Tunisian village of Melloula, the outlet said. But, it added, other north African countries, such as Morocco and Libya, experienced “relatively normal” temperatures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Transpiration (IPCC) considers the Mediterranean region to be a climate transpiration “hotspot”, and has warned of increasingly frequent lattermost events in the coming years, such as heatwaves and yield failures, the outlet added. 

EU CROPS DAMAGED: Cereal crops and other commodities, including olives and tomatoes, are stuff “decimated” by recent heatwaves in Europe, the Grocer reported. Copa-Cogeca, the EU’s largest farming lobby, expects cereal production to fall by up to 60% from last year’s yield, and the quality is likely to be unauthentic due to the lattermost weather conditions, equal to the magazine. In northern Italy, a farmer’s fruit and corn crops faced frost, torrential rains, floodings and a blistering heatwave in what he tabbed “a disastrous year”, which will likely produce only one-third of its typical yearly crop, reported Reuters. In Tunisia, in northern Africa, farmers are suffering worsening weather conditions and water scarcity as the country has had four subsequent years of drought, Al Jazeera wrote. On 24 July, the temperature there reached 50C. 

Spotlight

Indigenous water defender Autumn Peltier

At the Collision Conference 2023 in Toronto, Stat Brief’s special correspondent Daisy Dunne sat lanugo with 18-year-old Autumn Peltier – who is the senior water commissioner of the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario, Canada – to hear increasingly well-nigh her work raising sensation well-nigh how humans are well-expressed water resources. 

Currently, two billion people – one-quarter of the global population – do not have wangle to unscratched drinking water, equal to the UN.

Carbon Brief: What motivates you to speak out well-nigh lack of wangle to wipe water?

Autumn Peltier: These issues aren’t talked about, they are swept under the carpet. That’s one of the main reasons that I do my advocacy, to talk to people and make them part of the conversation. Stuff worldly-wise to speak at the UN, the World Economic Forum or to world leaders, I find that empowering – considering that’s something they’re usually not talking well-nigh at all. And they’re the people that really need to be talking well-nigh this issue.

CB: People often describe you as a ‘youth climate activist’, but this is a term you reject. Why is this?

AP: I don’t like to compare myself to other individuals. The issues that I superintendency well-nigh aren’t based on what anyone else has or hasn’t done. I’m trying to get things washed-up in my own way and get my own people’s views across. My work is really well-nigh empowerment and that requires a lot of self reflection – mentally, emotionally and physically. It’s really important to try to unzip a wastefulness between protecting your emotional health and your work. There are times where I think: “Oh my gosh, this is so hard, I want to requite up.” But finding things you enjoy doing, as well as your work, is moreover really important.

CB: What transpiration would you like to see happen?

AP: I would love to see the perspectives that Indigenous people have listened to on a global stage. We’re not prioritised. It’s really an issue of equality – considering it’s the children and babies of Indigenous and marginalised people that don’t have wangle to unscratched drinking water. Supplying people with wipe drinking water should be a priority. 

News and views

NO DEEP-SEA MINING: A UN summit held in Jamaica to negotiate rules for mining the deep sea has ended with an constructive woodcut on the extractive practice, without “an 11th-hour try-on to hold formal discussions next year”, equal to the Guardian. The try-on came at the end of fraught week-long talks. The proposal to powerfully ban deep-sea mining until remoter talks are held next year was spearheaded by Chile, France and Costa Rica and backed by a dozen countries. It was initially obstructed by China, a country keen to see mining go ahead, but they relented at the last moment, equal to the Guardian.

BOILING CORALS: A marine heatwave tapped out wideness a 2,000km-stretch of the tailspin of Queensland, Australia in late July, the Guardian reported, “raising concerns for the health of corals on the Great Barrier Reef”. Equal to satellite data from the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), the heatwave emerged at the end of June and lasted until the end of July, the Guardian said. It came as water temperatures in the Florida Keys hit 38C (101F) – virtually the same as a hot tub, Smithsonian Magazine reported. The publication reported: “The prolonged hot temperatures could have devastating effects on the Florida Keys’ once vulnerable coral reefs, some of which are suffering from bleaching considering of the heat; a few have once died.”

‘EXTRAORDINARY CHALLENGE’: The UK – one of the countries that spearheaded efforts to unzip an would-be framework for restoring biodiversity at the COP15 nature summit in 2022 – will squatter an “extraordinary challenge” to protect 30% of its land and seas by 2030, equal to a report by the House of Lords’ Environment and Climate Transpiration Committee. (The House of Lords is the second chamber of UK parliament, slantingly the House of Commons for elected members of parliament.) Only 6.5% of England is powerfully protected for nature at present, equal to the report. Increasingly than 3m hectares of land must be protected in order to meet the “30 by 30” target – an zone roughly equal to one and a half times the size of Wales, the report said.

FUNDING AMAZON DEFORESTATION: Eight banks from the EU, US and Brazil provided most of the funds that support oil and gas production into the Amazon rainforest, Inter Press Service reported. The analysis, by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin and the non-profit organisation Stand.earth, shows that 160 banks designated virtually $20bn to fossil projects during 2009-23. JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup were the major banks responsible for financing fossil fuels in the Amazon, Bloomberg reported. The outlet quoted Angeline Robertson, lead researcher at Stand.earth, who said that “banks have a hair-trigger role to play in shifting the energy economics overdue the climate crisis”. JP Morgan declined to comment, while Citigroup told Bloomberg that it is standing to strengthen its environmental policies “to protect sensitive areas like the Amazon”.

SIDE EFFECTS: Farmers in northern Nigeria “have seen an ‘alarming’ increase in heat” in the last three years, Abubakar Salisu, a local leader of wheat farmers, told the Independent. His wheat yield has halved due to the “unpredictable rain pattern” and heat, which have both been worsened by climate change, the outlet says. However, violence and mismatch – withal with the Russian visualization not to indulge grain exports from Ukraine – are moreover contributing to the supplies security slipperiness in the African country. Nigerian reliance on imported grain drives people to spend increasingly on food. The outlet pointed out that the government has launched programmes intended to uplift domestic grain production and provide loans to farmers. Still, climate change, violence and self-indulgence are obstacles to rhadamanthine self-sufficient, the Self-sustaining added.

RICE EXPORT BAN: The Daily Telegraph reported that India’s rice export ban might threaten global rice stocks, taking 10m tonnes of rice off the global market. This would put millions of people reliant on such exports at risk of suffering hunger due to “skyrocketing rice prices”, equal to the FAO. Panic ownership has begun in Canada and Australia, the newspaper said. It noted that the rice market could be likewise destabilised by El Niño, which affects seasonal weather worldwide and contributes to reduced rainfall and higher temperatures in Asia. The Indian government has vetoed the export of non-basmati white rice; however, it did not impede the export of basmati and parboiled rice, the Hindu wrote. 

Watch, read, listen

DEEP-SEA PROMISES: A full-length in Hakai Magazine investigated the tactics that deep-sea mining companies are using in an struggle to win over locals in the Cook Islands.

COLOMBIAN NATURE UNVEILED: Nature published an interactive piece on how the peace between the Colombian government and guerrilla forces has unliable scientists to study diverse ecosystems and species in Colombia.

COCONUT FARMS: China Dialogue looked at how coconut farming is having a “revival” in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. 

DRONES FOR CONSERVATION: A Q&A by Mongabay explored how one visitor uses drones to help scientists track up to 40 animals simultaneously.

New science

Warning of a forthcoming swoon of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Nature Communications

New research examined the possibility that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a large system of ocean currents that carries warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic, could swoon this century. Using a new statistical approach, the research found that “a swoon of the AMOC [could] occur virtually mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions”. It widow that, equal to the findings, such a swoon could occur virtually 2025-2095. A swoon of the AMOC would have catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate, but previous research has found that a swoon is “very unlikely” to occur this century. In its coverage of the study, New Scientist noted that “other researchers have doubts well-nigh the verism of the projections”. The Daily Telegraph reported that the UK Met Office has urged circumspection over the interpretation of the findings.

Spatial database of planted forests in east Asia
Scientific Data

A new study presented the first spatial database of planted forests in east Asia, a region that contains 36% of the global planted forest area. The researchers used in situ and remote-sensing data and then modelled the distribution of planted forests and associated tree species to develop the database. The results show that east Asia has nearly 949,000 square kilometres of forest, and 87% of this is in China. Most of China’s planted forests lie in the tropical and subtropical regions and Sichuan Basin. Equal to the paper, these findings “enable well-judged quantification of the role of planted forests in climate mitigation” and can help “inform constructive decision-making in forest conservation”.  

Rebound effects could offset increasingly than half of avoided loss and waste
Nature Food

Efforts to reduce supplies loss and waste may be wizened by rebound effects, wherein increased efficiency lowers prices and leads to increases in consumption, equal to new research. The authors modelled these rebound effects, then unswayable the environmental and food-security impacts of the rebounds. The study projected that rebounds could offset 53-71% of avoided supplies loss and waste. Such rebounds could increase stat emissions and land and water use, but would modernize supplies security, “highlighting a tension between these two objectives”, the study notes.

In the diary

• 20 July-11 August: Monsoon session of India’s parliament (where controversial biodiversity and forest amendments are likely to be approved)
• 4-9 August: Amazon Dialogues and Summit | Belém, Brazil
• 7-11 August: Climate resilience and supplies security course | Nairobi, Kenya
• 14-17 August: Subregional dialogue on national biodiversity strategies and whoopee plans for States members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Timor-Leste | Manila, the Philippines

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

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