The G7-led plan aims to rapidly provide prearranged insurance and protection funding after devastating events occur.
A G7-led plan dubbed “Global Shield” to provide funding to countries suffering climate disasters has been launched at the United Nations COP27 summit, although some questioned the effectiveness of the planned scheme.
Coordinated by Group of Seven president Germanyand the Vulnerable Twenty (V20) group of climate-vulnerable countries, the plan launched on Monday aims to rapidly provide prearranged insurance and disaster protection funding after events such as floods, droughts and hurricanes hit.
Backed by 170 million euros ($175m) in funding from Germany and 40 million euros ($41m) from other donors including Denmark and Ireland, the Global Shield will in the next few months develop support to be deployed in countries including Pakistan, Ghana, Fiji and Senegal when events occur.
Some countries and campaigners were cautious, however, concerned that the plan risked damaging efforts to secure a substantive deal on financial help for so-called “loss and damage” – the UN jargon for irreparable damage wrought by global warming.
German Development Minister Svenja Schulze said the Global Shield aimed to complement, not replace, progress on loss and damage.
“It is not a kind of tactic to avoid formal negotiation on loss and damage funding arrangements here,” Schulze said. “Global Shield isn’t the one and only solution for loss and damage. Certainly not. We need a broad range of solutions.”
Some research suggests that by 2030, vulnerable countries could face $580bn per year in climate-linked “loss and damage”.
Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, who chairs the V20 group of vulnerable countries, called the creation of the Global Shield “long overdue”.
“It has never been a question of who pays for loss and damage, because we are paying for it,” he said in recorded remarks at the summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“Our economies pay for it in lost growth prospects, our enterprises pay for it in business disruption, and our communities pay for it in lives and livelihoods lost.”
‘We are not yet persuaded’
Yet some vulnerable countries questioned the scheme’s focus on insurance, with insurance premiums adding another cost tocash-strapped countries that have low carbon emissions and contributed least to the causes of climate change.
“We are not yet persuaded, especially of the insurance elements,” Avinash Persaud, the special envoy on climate finance to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, told the Reuters news agency.
“Using insurance is a method in which the victim pays, just in installments in the beginning,” he said, adding that loss and damage finance should be grant-based.
It was not immediately clear how much of the Global Shield funding announced so far was in grant form.
Michai Robertson, a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States – which is championing calls for a new UN loss and damage fund in the talks this week – said even subsidised insurance premiums could enable insurance companies in wealthy countries to profit off poor and vulnerable nations’ suffering.
“There’s an inherent injustice about them profiting off of our loss and damage,” he said.
‘Life and death’
A formal loss and damage funding stream would likely go further, also covering longer-onset climate impacts such as sea level rise and threats to cultural heritage.
The V20 bloc, made up of 58 developing nations, released research this year that estimated countries had lost some $525bn to climate impacts since 2000.
Ninety-eight percent of the nearly 1.5 billion people in V20 countries do not have financial protection, it said.
“We’re talking about people living under the poverty line; they’re not going to be buying insurance,” Rachel Cleetus, lead economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate programme, told the AFP news agency.
“Insurance can help you up to a point but climate change is now creating conditions in many parts of the world that are beyond the bounds of what’s insurable,” she said, referring to sea level rise, desertification and the mass displacement of populations.
Teresa Anderson of ActionAid International said the scheme showed that the global community recognised the need to act on loss and damage, but said it was a “distraction” from negotiations on a dedicated funding mechanism for climate damages.
“Everyone knows that insurance companies, by their very nature, are either reluctant to provide coverage, or reluctant to payout,” she said.
“But when it comes to loss and damage, this is a matter of life and death.”
Jeff Bezos has revealed plans to give away most of his $124bn (£110bn) fortune during his lifetime.
The Amazon founder, 58, is the world’s second-richest man after Elon Musk, the Tesla boss and new owner of Twitter, according to Forbes.
This is the first time he has said he plans to give away most of his money.
Mr Bezos has been criticised in the past for not signing the Giving Pledge, a campaign founded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage the mega rich to contribute most of their wealth to charity.
Asked directly by CNN whether he planned to give most of his money away, Mr Bezos said: “Yeah, I do.”
Bezos told the US broadcaster that he and partner journalist-turned-philanthropist Lauren Sánchez were “building
the capacity to be able to give away this money”.
He said the money would go to causes that work to tackle climate change and to support people who can unify humanity.
It was announced a week ago at the start of the COP27 summit that his Bezos Earth Fund had pledged $1bn more by 2030 to help protect carbon reserves and biodiversity – building on $9bn of funds already committed to the climate cause.
Also last week it was revealed that country music star Dolly Parton had received a $100m (£85m) prize from Bezos.
The courage and civility award gives people the chance to donate cash to causes of their choice.
Parton, a long-time philanthropist herself, has already established a number of charities and put $1m towards the development of a COVID vaccine during the pandemic.
Bezos has more time on his hands to devote to his passions after stepping down as chief executive of Amazon last year.
He continues to own about 10% of the ecommerce-to-streaming giant.
His other business interests include ownership of the Washington Post and space tourism company Blue Origin.
Jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has stopped drinking water as he steps up his hunger strike to coincide with the start of the COP27 summit, his sister has said.
Calls for his release escalated after the climate summit opened in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on Sunday.
The 40-year-old has consumed just 100 calories for more than 200 days to push Egypt to allow him UK consular access.
UK PM Rishi Sunak has said he will raise the issue at the COP summit.
Abdel Fattah, a key activist in the 2011 Arab Spring, is currently serving a five-year sentence for spreading false news.
His sister, Sanaa Seif, has warned that her brother’s hunger and water strike may mean he could die before the end of the summit.
Speaking to Sky News, she urged the British government to be “responsible for getting us proof of life”.
Mr Sunak wrote to Abdel Fattah’s family and said he would raise his imprisonment with the Egyptian government and reply again by the end of the summit.
He said the activist’s case is “a priority for the British government both as a human rights defender and as a British national”.
Ms Seif, a 28-year-old human rights activist who has served three prison sentences in Egypt herself on charges that fellow activists condemned as bogus, has been protesting outside the Foreign Office in London along with family members for her brother’s release.
She expressed concerns that Downing Street’s engagement with the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi would come too late.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said Abdel Fattah “must be released” and warned that he may only have 72 hours to live.
“Let’s be very clear, we’re running out of time,” she said in Cairo on Sunday. “So if the authorities do not want to end up with a death they should have and could have prevented, they must act now.
“If they don’t, that death will be in every single discussion in this COP.”
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
Abdel Fattah’s aunt, Ahdaf Soueif, told the BBC that the summit could be his last chance to be saved and to be released.
She urged Mr Sunak to secure her nephew’s release.
“It means we really only have a few days,” she said. “None of us have any reason to believe that the regime will ever let him go.”
“He has known for a while that he’s had enough, that he cannot live like this. And this is now his opportunity and all of ours really to bring matters to a head.
“He’s betting on us and on the community inside Egypt that wants him released and on the international community that’s making a noise for him.”
She said the UK government could use its influence to have him released.
“This is all in the hands of the British government to facilitate… it would be very difficult for the UK to do business as usual with Egypt unless this case is resolved.
“And I think if the British government is serious and if Rishi Sunak says this convincingly, Alaa will be on a plane to London.”
Abdel Fattah played a key role in the protests that toppled the former Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak, from power in 2011.
He has been in jail for nine years and was sentenced to a further five years in 2021 on charges of “broadcasting false news” – a charge human rights groups condemned as spurious.
He received British citizenship in December 2021 through his London-born mother.
Human rights groups have said he is one of an estimated 60,000 Egyptian political prisoners and have accused the government in Cairo of trying to “greenwash” its repressive reputation through its hosting of the climate summit.
The Egyptian government has insisted there are no political prisoners in the country.
Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, faces such challenges due to climate change that the plan is to build a new capital city more than 1,000 kilometres away.
Jakarta is sinking.
Notorious for traffic gridlock and poor air quality, Indonesia’s sprawling capital faces such a perfect storm of climate and environmental challenges that the government has decided to move it somewhere safer.
Increasingly severe rainfall and flooding, rising sea levels, and land subsidence have conspired to make the Southeast Asian megacity a challenging place for its more than 10.5 million people to live.
A quarter of the city — located on the western tip of the densely populated island of Java — could be underwater by 2050.
So, the Indonesian government is bidding farewell to Jakarta and plans to relocate to a new capital: Nusantara — a purpose-built city more than 1,000km (620 miles) away in Borneo island’s East Kalimantan province.
As world leaders gather for the COP27 summit in Egypt and thrash out ways and timeframes to avert what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told them was the “collective suicide” of climate change, Jakarta’s fate vividly demonstrates how people in the developing world are already suffering from, and adapting to, a climatically-changed reality.
Indonesian national police rescue residents from flooding that inundated Jakarta in February 2021 [Bagus Indahono/EPA]
Relocating a capital city is a daunting task although plans appear to be advanced, according to the official ibu kota negara (the nation’s capital) website.
President Joko Widodo plans to host Indonesia’s 79th independence day celebrations in Nusantara in August 2024, where core infrastructure for an initial 500,000 residents will have been completed, according to the website.
Bambang Susantono, a former Indonesian transport minister who is leading the new capital city development project, is upbeat about the gargantuan task.
Creating a new city from “scratch” was an advantage, Susantono wrote on his LinkedIn page recently, as it allowed control over the master plan, quality of engineering work, and the application of the latest technology.
“In Nusantara, we do climate change adaptation at scale,” he wrote, pointing out that 65 percent of the city will remain tropical forest.
“Given these facts, I believe Nusantara will be a prime example of how cities and countries can respond to climate change,” he wrote.
Critics are not so sure.
Goodbye, Jakarta. Welcome to Nusantara
Indonesian President Joko Widodo gestures with Governor of East Kalimantan Isran Noor during their visit to the planned location of Indonesia’s new capital [File: Akbar Nugroho Gumay/Antara Foto via Reuters]
Climate change did not cause Jakarta to sink — that is due to unsustainable groundwater depletion that has resulted in subsidence — but the city is being swamped by rising sea levels, which have been caused by planet-warming greenhouse gases.
Whether to move or not is “a big question for many”, said Edvin Aldrian, professor of meteorology and climatology at the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology BPPT Indonesia.
Building a new capital might also amount to “only moving the problem”, said Aldrian, who also teaches at the University of Indonesia, Bogor Agricultural Institute and Udayana University in Bali.
Moving will not stop the increasingly extreme rainfall and flooding, which is “getting heavier and heavier” either in Jakarta or, in the future, in Nusantara, he adds.
“I’m afraid that there are many floods already in Kalimantan.”
Aldrian has warned that about 40 percent of Jakarta lies below sea level and the northern part of the city is sinking at a rate of 4.9cm (almost 2 inches) each year.
Subsidence is due mainly to the city’s use of groundwater sucked up through water wells. Although heavy rains should replenish underground aquifers and shore up Jakarta’s foundations, urban sprawl creates a concrete boundary that prevents the aquifers from being replenished, while the streets often flood.
And “while the capital’s land surface is sinking, the sea is rising,” he added.
Below, groundwater is being depleted, but three bodies of water above ground threaten the city, as he explains:
Torrential rain over the city has become more common, causing an increase in severe floods. Added to that, heavy rain in higher terrain nearby flows down into Jakarta, flooding the city’s canals and waterways. And then there is the sea, where rising waters threaten the city, particularly at high tide.
The New Year’s Eve storm of 2020 that turned Jakarta into a mucky swimming pool in just a few hours demonstrates for Aldrian the challenges posed by climate change.
Rain clouds were estimated to have formed for many kilometres above the city, whereas a normal height for cloud cover would be about 3 to 4km, he says. When the rain fell, it was like nothing he had ever seen.
Some areas saw rainfall at an intensity of 377mm (almost 15 inches) in a day, inflicting some of the worst flooding ever to hit Jakarta.
“You can’t do anything. You are isolated in your home…. Cars can’t move, electricity and communications are down, and drinkable water supplies have become contaminated by overflowing drains and sewers,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The problem is not during the flood it is afterwards”, he adds, explaining that all the costs are in cleaning up the mess.
Asia’s sinking megacities
What has occurred in Jakarta is also affecting other megacities in South and Southeast Asia, where, according to a recent study led by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, coastal cities are sinking faster than in other parts of the world.
Indonesian youths play in flood water in a neighbourhood in Jakarta after overnight rains caused rivers to burst their banks, inundating thousands of homes and paralysing parts of the city’s transport networks [File: Achmad Ibrahim/Reuters]
Vietnam’s economic hub Ho Chi Minh City, Myanmar’s Yangon, Bangladesh’s port city of Chittagong, China’s Tianjin, and the Indian city of Ahmedabad are among the cities most steadily subsiding under the weight of their populations and the effect of urbanisation.
Like Jakarta, they too are contending with rising sea levels.
Learning from Jakarta’s challenges, Nusantara’s city planners want to create a green city that can cope with and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Widodo announced the plan to relocate the capital from flood-prone Java to a 2,560-square-kilometre (almost 990 square miles) site on the forested island of Borneo in 2019.
Work is already underway and a completion date of 2024 has been set for the first of four phases of development: the relocation of key administrative elements, including the president’s office, according to a report on the move by scholars Anuar Nugroho and Dimas Wisnu Adrianto.
The second phase is a decade-long process, from 2025-35, to develop a foundational capital city area, followed by a third phase, from 2035-45, to develop the overall infrastructure — physical and socioeconomic.
The final phase is to establish Nusantara’s reputation globally as a “World City for All”, according to Nugroho and Adrianto, and an “economic Super Hub driving the economy of the nation” with the creation of 4.8 million jobs by 2045.
Plans for the city available on the ibu kota negara (the nation’s capital) website look and sound impressive: Eco-friendly construction of all high-rise buildings; 80 percent of travel in the city will involve public transport or “active mobility”, such as walking and cycling; and all important facilities will be located within 10 minutes of a public transport hub.
Residents will also have access to recreational green space as well as social and community services within 10 minutes of their homes. Zero poverty is to be achieved by 2035, and there will also be 100 percent digital connectivity for all residents and businesses.
A computer-generated image released in 2022 showing the design illustration for Indonesia’s future presidential palace in East Kalimantan [Nyoman Nuarta/handout via AFP]
Renewable energy will provide all energy needs, and the city will achieve net zero emissions by 2045. Ten percent of the city’s area will be devoted to food production, 60 percent of the city’s waste will be recycled by 2045, and 100 percent of wastewater will be treated by the city’s water management system by 2035.
With such a list of envy-inducing initiatives, the city also aims to be among the top 10 cities on the Global Liveability Index by 2045.
Computer-generated images depict the future city as covered in trees with water features, wide pedestrian avenues, electric vehicles on carless roads, and futuristic buildings that appear to borrow a virtual world aesthetic.
Such a green city does not come cheap.
The cost of building the new capital is estimated to be more than $34bn and three international firms — United States-based engineers AECOM, global consulting firm McKinsey and Japanese architects and engineers Nikken Sekkei — have been brought in to help design its high-tech and environmentally-friendly elements, according to news reports.
Indonesia will build the new city with state funds and is seeking investors.
But the issue of who should pay for the damage created by the climate crisis – such as the inundation of megacities like Jakarta due to rising sea levels – has emerged as a key issue at COP27.
People in the most vulnerable countries in the world have done little to contribute to the change in their climates, but are suffering the effects earlier and more severely than countries whose industries and consumption patterns are responsible for the lion’s share.
“It evokes the question,” Bethany Tietjen of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University wrote last week in The Conversation.
“Why should countries that have done little to cause global warming be responsible for the damage resulting from the emissions of wealthy countries?”
Jakarta is still sinking
Critics point out that the new city is being built on an island with vast tracts of rainforest that are a crucial carbon sink and there are fears the new capital might eventually face some of the same issues as the old capital.
Building a state-of-the-art capital on Borneo also does not solve the crises faced by the millions who will remain in Jakarta.
“It’s a very ambitious plan,” said Tiza Mafira, head of Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) Indonesia.
Mafira says while she is in favour of the country’s administrative and political centre being separated from its business hub, moving away will not solve the issues facing Jakarta, which still must be tackled.
Improved spatial planning, safeguarding groundwater, and, basically, re-thinking Jakarta as a city, is the no small task that is required, Mafira said.
“In order to solve that root of the problem, you would need to rethink, re-green Jakarta,” she told Al Jazeera.
“It is possible to re-green Jakarta,” she added.
“It would take some transition. You would not only have to re-green whatever area is left to re-green, but you would also need to reassess the function of some areas,” she adds.
“Some areas would need some hard decisions. If a mall was built that wasn’t supposed to be built, then it would have to go … and be replaced with a park, for example.”
What also might need re-thinking is the decision to build in Kalimantan.
“It’s literally a forest … you would have to cut down an existing forest in order to build this capital city,” Mafira said.
There is also the real possibility that Nusantara turns out to be more of a white elephant in Borneo than a green-city alternative to Jakarta.
Mafira speaks of capital cities that end up being “a seat of administration, but nobody really wants to live there”.
Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, comes easily to mind.
“There has to be a whole cultural and social shift that will make it actually a comfortable place to live, that people would want to move to,” Mafira said.
Otherwise, “they end up moving back and forth between their home and that capital city”, she said, noting the possible effect on climate through increased air traffic as people commute between their homes in Jakarta and their jobs in the new capital.
‘We have to be hopeful’
Chisa Umemiya, research manager at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan, emphasises community involvement as the essential ingredient in the success of decision-making around climate change.
Umemiya wonders about the extent of the Indonesian government’s consultation with local communities on the project.
“My point is that from a community inclusion point of view, it’s really essential to have such a discussion,” she told Al Jazeera, drawing parallels with earlier research she conducted on forest preservation in Thailand.
On an international level too, Umemiya says, solutions to climate change need to include the input of local communities.
Particularly communities in the developing world, she says, as the climate change debate has too often and or too long been “framed around the needs or interests of developed countries”.
“Of course, reducing emissions is the solution. But who does that? To me, responsibility lies mostly in developed country and not developing country,” she said.
“I really see a gap there, to involve more views coming from the community level and especially from developing countries, and especially from Southeast Asia, where climate impact is enormous.”
Tiza Mafira, of the CPI, echoes that sentiment, noting that climate change has long affected people in the developing world — Jakarta’s problems have been evident for years — but the crisis is just now being acknowledged because richer countries are also beginning to experience the effects.
“We’re only now starting to see a larger level of ambition because it now has begun to affect, glaringly, the industrialised and developed countries,” she said.
“I can’t remember who said it, but I’m echoing the sentiment that we’ll see accelerated ambitions at COP [the UN’s climate change Conference of the Parties] once the industrialised countries are truly suffering the consequences of the climate crisis,” she added
“And it’s unfortunate that it has to come to that, because we could have prevented this sooner.”
On Jakarta’s future and successfully mitigating the effect of climate change, Aldrian says: “Of course, we have to be hopeful.”
The fight against climate change can become “a global mission for new jobs and clean growth”, Rishi Sunak will tell world leaders at the COP27 summit.
The prime minister will also say it is essential nations stick to commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow a year ago.
The UN’s climate change chief said a key aim to limit global temperature rises is “still within reach”.
Mr Sunak is making his first outing on the international stage in Egypt after becoming UK PM last month.
He arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday night and will join other world leaders at the UN summit, including US President Joe Biden and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
Mr Sunak will unveil more than £200m funding to protect forests and for green technologies in developing nations.
He reversed a decision not to attend COP27 earlier this week after a backlash from opposition MPs and campaigners. He initially declined the invite as he said he was too busy preparing the November budget.
In his opening address on Monday, Mr Sunak will urge global leaders to “move further and faster” to avoid the worst impact of climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
He will say Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “reinforced” the importance of ending dependence on fossil fuels, but will argue the move can give a boost to new green industries.
“The world came together in Glasgow with one last chance to create a plan that would limit global temperature rises to 1.5C. The question today is: can we summon the collective will to deliver on those promises?” he will say.
“By honouring the pledges we made in Glasgow, we can turn our struggle against climate change into a global mission for new jobs and clean growth. And we can bequeath our children a greener planet and a more prosperous future.”
Mr Sunak will also meet French President Mr Macron at the conference, where the topic of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats is likely to be raised. The prime minister has said reducing the number of crossings is a “key priority”.
Downing Street said Mr Sunak will announce a further £65.5m for the clean energy innovation facility which provides grants to researchers and scientists in developing countries working on clean technologies – from biomass-powered refrigeration in India to lithium-ion batteries in Nigeria.
It said the UK will also commit £90m for conservation in the Congo Basin rainforest, and £65m to support indigenous and local communities.
But Labour’s Ed Miliband said Mr Sunak “had to be dragged kicking and screaming” to go to the summit and it was “implausible for him to claim the mantle of climate leadership”.
The shadow climate change secretary said the government should drop plans to issue more licences for North Sea exploration and end its opposition to onshore wind.
As COP27 got under way, the UN itself warned that meeting the critical target of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C would take an “extraordinary effort”.
“The science tells us that is it still within reach,” said the UN’s new climate chief, Simon Stiell. “We cannot lift the pressure.”
Speaking to the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme, Mr Stiell said just 29 states had strengthened their climate pledges since last year, which was “not enough”.
His remarks came after the UN’s weather and climate body released a report showing that the rate at which sea levels are rising has doubled since 1993.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the report as a “chronicle of climate chaos” and urged governments at COP27 to answer the planet’s “distress signal” with “ambitious, credible climate action”.
Image source, Rex Features
Image caption,
Vulnerable countries increasingly being hit by extreme storms, floods and droughts, such as Pakistan’s devastating flooding this year
Global temperatures have risen 1.1C and are heading towards 1.5C, according to the UN’s climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
If temperatures rise 1.7 to 1.8C above 1850s levels, the IPCC estimates that half the word’s population could be exposed to life-threatening heat and humidity.
Rich countries are also falling short in providing the finance needed to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate and develop cleanly, the UN has warned.
But Mr Stiell said the conference was off to a “hopeful start” after developing nations successfully lobbied to put on the agenda the thorny issue of “loss and damage”.
This debate revolves around compensation money paid by wealthy countries to the states worst affected by climate change.
Speaking to the BBC, David Panuelo, President of the Federated States of Micronesia, said bigger nations needed to “come good with their nationally-determined contributions”.
Highlighting China, India, Mexico, Indonesia and Brazil, Mr Panuelo said there are “many countries that need to come forward with… commitments to help meet this challenge that global communities are facing now”.
