Genetically modified soy and corn seedlings have recently received Chinese approval for production and sale, opening the door for this year’s business farming of GM crops. According to the policy, it may speed up plant research and the choice, breeding, and advertising of high-quality varieties that are desperately needed forContinue Reading
Murmurings about rampant land speculation, buying large areas cheaply with the aim to sell at a profit later when value rises, are loud in the community. Many are adamant that political figures are behind the push to purchase land around the project.
In this mostly ageing community of lifelong farmers, the prospect of selling up and moving remains a hard sell.
Further east, the terrain flattens and falls away to the straw sands of the Thai Gulf, the finish line of the land bridge, where shipping containers would be processed onto waiting ships bound for China or Japan.
For now, small resorts, seafood restaurants and aquaculture farms line the coast at Lang Suan in Chumphon.
Development has been lethargic here and life moves accordingly for those who call it home.
Little reliable information has been disseminated to the community here. The same whispers about aggressive land buying persist. But in the eyes of some, with progress comes sparks of opportunity.
Mr Perawat Thiparat, a local restaurant owner, says he thinks increased economic activity will naturally draw more people to the area, and to his family’s resort.
“When I heard about the project, I thought it might be good for the economy and there would be development, but I don’t know what impacts it will make,” he said, while fishing off a pier at sunset.
On the very same pier, Sureephon Sophonmanee thinks she might be the sole opposing voice in the area. The 57-year-old still plies the seas in a small fishing boat to make a living.
A lone helicopter waits for the few tourists who have still come, offering flights over higher peaks that have a dusting of snow. “Our guests are mainly skiers, and they have all cancelled their bookings,” said hotel manager Hamid Masoodi. “Those who come despite no snow are also disappointed.” SkiContinue Reading
Winner of the Aga Khan Award for architecture for her design of the Bait-ur-Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, and designer of the country’s Independence Monument, Tabassum developed prototype shelters to test them against flash flooding and storm winds. “It can be assembled and disassembled very easily,” she told AFP, calling itContinue Reading
MUMBAI: India is testing artificial intelligence (AI) to build climate models to improve weather forecasting as torrential rains, floods and droughts proliferate across the vast country, a top weather official said. Global warming has triggered more intense clashes of weather systems in India in recent years, increasing extreme weather events,Continue Reading
BEIJING: The cause of a wave of bitingly cold air that swept into China and rewrote seasonal records for low temperatures may lie further north – a potential weakening in the wall of fast-moving air currents that normally hold back blasts from the Arctic. With winds that triggered the highestContinue Reading
The benefits coral reefs provide are vast.
Coral reefs harbour about 25 per cent of ocean biodiversity and provide livelihoods to about one billion people, either directly or indirectly.
Their loss and damage would have major environmental and economic impacts, including in Southeast Asia, home to some of the world’s most precious reef ecosystems.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated in a major report last year that the degradation of reefs could directly affect the livelihoods of about 4.5 million people in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region alone.
Already, sea temperatures surrounding the coastal areas of the Coral Triangle, a critical ecosystem spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and Solomon Islands, are rising approximately 0.1 degree Celsius every year and could be 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century.
While the challenge to conserve or restore reefs “might seem impossible”, science and technology could “redefine the boundaries of the possible”, said Carlos Duarte, executive director of the Coral Research & Development Accelerator Platform (CORDAP) launched by the G20 to accelerate coral studies.
Professor Duarte has been involved in marine studies for more than four decades and still believes the ocean’s role in the climate discussion is underestimated and its research under-resourced. He estimates funding for ocean research is only 10 per cent of that for terrestrial studies.
“We have plenty of evidence of how we ignore the oceans in every aspect of life and investments in science, technology and conservation,” he said.
He argued that a boost in finance for coral research and technology could result in solutions for thousands of square kilometres of coral.
Instead of sophisticated methods that might work on a small scale, Prof Duarte believes in “pragmatic solutions that are science-based, that are innovative, but that can be applied in every context from developing nations to developed nations”.
The United States, the biggest carbon emitter in history, pledged US$17.5 million and insists contributions should be on a voluntary basis.
The sums pledged so far are purely “symbolic” and just a fraction of what is actually needed to make a difference to communities already facing extreme weather and suffering intangible losses of culture and heritage, according to Dr Aditi Mukherji, director of the Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Impact Action Platform at CGIAR, the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network.
“One of the fears is that it does remain a symbolic fund,” she said. “Or does it rise up to the actual challenge that there is with climate justice at the heart of it?”
Scientific research has become a powerful tool for communities to be able to prove that climate change had caused certain events and to be able to quantify many of the losses suffered, she said.
But there is still a lack of it, including for Asia, hindering communities’ ability to seek redress.
Helping developing countries most impacted by climate change is more urgent than ever. A 2022 report by the Climate Vulnerable Forum found that 20 per cent of the wealth of the most vulnerable nations in the world, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Timor-Leste and Cambodia, has been eliminated because of climate change over the last two decades.
Ms Lien Vandamme, a senior campaigner at the Center for International Environment Law (CIEL), said wealthy nations had failed for years to take the appropriate actions to prevent such harm to their poorer counterparts.
She argued that the fund, as it has been designed and agreed upon so far, will not redress climate harm. In fact, she said it is far from what impacted communities have been asking for and what developed nations are obligated to do under international law.
“There are many limitations to what was agreed. I would just consider this a small step,” she said.
“As long as there’s not hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through the fund, that affected communities aren’t in the driver’s seat and that there aren’t policies in place to ensure that the funds in all respects promote and protect human rights, we cannot really call this a major success,” she said.
Experts expect China to continue walking a fine line between the developed and developing world. It remains reluctant to take on a more intermediary role, they said.
It is a position that deflects calls for Beijing to take on a more assertive role in climate leadership, yet maintains its position of economic influence among countries calling for more financial assistance from the West.
“They are unwilling to agree to developed country obligations, such as contributing to a loss and damage fund, because they see this as a slippery slope to broader obligations. So it seems they are often selective and strategic in how they portray climate leadership,” Ms Hsu said.
This “special” role could come under more pressure from nations feeling restless about the lack of progress on loss and damage in particular.
Beijing will again likely speak in solidarity with those calling for the mobilisation of assistance funds, another possible flash point with Washington, which has been a consistent drag on the concept.
“China should leverage its ‘in-between’ position to align the (Global) South and North. Its unique status could be the source of an identity crisis, but could also be an asset for Beijing to be a trusted friend with both sides,” Mr Li said.
“The world is anxiously waiting for China to redefine itself,” he said.
China has kept up its breathtaking levels of installing solar and wind power infrastructure and remains crucial to the value chain of green technologies like solar cells, thermal heating and electric vehicles.
But its levels of international engagement have not been fully revived post COVID-19.
Overseas development spending that has been ostensibly frozen under the Belt and Road Initiative has yet to resume in any form under the country’s new project, the Global Development Initiative. A key potential plank of China’s green leadership remains unfulfilled.
For two years, no overseas energy sector lending has been recorded from China’s two development finance institutions to foreign governments, according to research by the Boston University Global Development Policy Center.
“Now is the time for China to use its scale and experience to redirect development finance towards greener goals,” Dr Cecilia Springer, a non-resident fellow with the centre’s Global China Initiative, said in a statement.
But China has remained steadfast about not bowing to outside pressures, a position unlikely to yield at the negotiating tables at COP28.Continue Reading
HONG KONG: Unlike her fellow Hong Kong urbanites toting plastic or paper cups filled with coffee, pet groomer Lucine Mo takes her caffeine hit in a thermal mug with a QR code. The coded mug can be returned to 35 coffee shops taking part in a Greenpeace pilot project aimingContinue Reading