A vital part of northwest Europe’s economy for centuries, the 760 miles (1,233km) of the Rhine flow from Switzerland through Germany’s industrial heartland before reaching the North Sea at the megaport of Rotterdam…reports Asian Lite News
Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production – just as supply shortages and price rises due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bite, local media reported.
Driven by climate breakdown, an unusually dry winter and spring followed by record-breaking summer temperatures and repeated heatwaves have left Europe’s essential waterways under-replenished and, increasingly, overheated, The Guardian reported.
With no significant rainfall recorded for almost two months across western, central and southern Europe and none forecast in the near future, meteorologists say the drought could become the continent’s worst in more than 500 years, The Guardian reported.
“We haven’t analysed fully this year’s event because it is still ongoing,” said Andrea Toreti of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. “There were no other events in the past 500 [years] similar to the drought of 2018. But this year, I think, is worse.”
Germany’s Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) said the level of the Rhine, whose waters are used for freight transport, irrigation, manufacturing, power generation and drinking, will continue dropping until at least the beginning of next week, The Guardian reported.
A vital part of northwest Europe’s economy for centuries, the 760 miles (1,233km) of the Rhine flow from Switzerland through Germany’s industrial heartland before reaching the North Sea at the megaport of Rotterdam.
A single map for the worst #drought in 500 years in Europe. The river discharge anomaly based on reanalysis data from June to August 12 2022, shows an average negative anomaly of -29%, even reaching less than -62% at some points. #rstats#datavizpic.twitter.com/LSGMfS52Lm
In Italy, the flow of the parched Po, Italy’s longest river, has fallen to one-tenth of its usual rate, and water levels are 2 metres below normal. With no sustained rainfall in the region since November, corn and risotto rice production have been hard hit.
The Po valley accounts for between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of Italy’s agricultural production, but rice growers in particular have warned that up to 60 per cent of their crop may be lost as paddy fields dry out and are spoiled by seawater sucked in by the low river level, The Guardian reported.
Photo taken on July 5, 2022 shows a white band of dried rocks around Lake Mead near Echo Bay in Nevada, the United States. (Photo by Zeng Hui/Xinhua/IANS)
Lots of things underneath Lake Mead have resurfaced in recent weeks, including formerly sunken boats, as the lake’s water level is continuing to decline, reports Asian Lite News
Surrounded by a white band of dried rocks, the vast drop in water levels was visible this week at Lake Mead, the biggest reservoir in the US, which has been shrinking amid a two-decade-long megadrought.
The “bathtub ring” around the drought-stricken lake, on the Arizona-Nevada border and over 40 km east of Las Vegas, is made of minerals deposited on the rock walls when the lake’s water level was higher, reports Xinhua news agency.
Some boat launching ramps along the lake were closed due to the low water levels.
Lots of things underneath Lake Mead have resurfaced in recent weeks, including formerly sunken boats, as the lake’s water level is continuing to decline.
Lake Mead’s water levels have dropped to historic lows since it was filled in the 1930s.
As of Friday, the water in the lake, formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, was around 1,042.3 feet above sea level, a decline of more than 43 feet from 1,085.95 feet by the end of January 2021, according to data from the US Bureau of Reclamation.
The highest recorded level of the lake was in 1983 when it was 1,225 feet above sea level.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month outlook released last month said it was forecasting the most probable lake level would be 1,014.86 feet by September 2023.
Lake Mead currently provides municipal water for the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, and Boulder City, as well as municipal and industrial water and irrigation water for downstream users, according to the US National Park Service.
“Altogether, about 25,000,000 people rely on water from Lake Mead, and it is unlikely that the Southwest could have developed as it has without it,” said the agency in an overview of the lake on its official website.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, two of the largest reservoirs in US, hit lowest water levels amid megadrought. (Pic credit: https://utah.com/ ; https://www.nps.gov/lake)
If the reservoir drops below 895 feet, a possibility still years away, the lake would reach dead pool status, with potentially catastrophic consequences for millions of people across Arizona, California and Nevada, and parts of Mexico.
If the lake’s surface drops another 150 feet, there will not be enough water flowing through Hoover Dam to supply large metropolitan centres downstream, including Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.
The megadrought is draining Lake Mead faster than anticipated.
Water shortages and demand on the Colorado River Basin will require reductions in water use of 2 million to 4 million acre-feet in 2023 to preserve “critical levels”.
Last August, the federal government declared a shortage on the Colorado River for the first time, triggering substantial cutbacks in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada, as well as Mexico.
Many Arizona farmers have left some fields dry and unplanted, and have turned to more groundwater pumping.
The megadrought that has gripped the southwestern US for the past 22 years is the worst in at least 1,200 years, according to a research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Jason Smerdon, one of the study’s authors and a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, was quoted as saying that global warming has made the megadrought more extreme because it creates a “thirstier” atmosphere that is better able to pull moisture out of forests, vegetation and soil.
While the Colorado River has been affected by previous droughts, a warming climate is predicted to alter the water cycle in new ways.
File photo of Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell in northern Arizona, the United States. ( Photo credit: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation official website/Xinhua/IANS)
Long range climate predictions are for warmer winter temperatures in the Southwest, less snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, and less melted snow able to find its way into the Colorado River, the National Park Service noted.
Droughts in US West have also led water levels in many other major lakes to drop dramatically.
Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in California, is reportedly at less than half of where it usually should be in early May.
Water level of the Great Salt Lake in Utah hit historic low earlier this month for the second time in less than a year.
More than 11 million people in Ethiopia affected by drought
More than 11 million people in Ethiopia alone are affected by the Horn of Africa drought, UN humanitarians said…reports Asian Lite News
“More than 7.2 million people need food assistance, and 4 million people need water assistance,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“At least 286,000 people in Ethiopia have migrated in search of water, pasture, or assistance. These are people with the means to travel. Others, often the elderly or the sick, have had to stay behind.”
The office said lack of pasture and water killed at least 1.5 million head of livestock. An additional 10 million head are at risk. Many of the remaining livestock are weak and provide little or no milk, affecting children’s nutrition, reports Xinhua news agency.
The humanitarian office said the severe drought, following three consecutive failed rainy seasons, also affected the schooling of more than 500,000 children.
OCHA said its humanitarian partners are scaling up assistance, supporting the Ethiopian government.
Humanitarians provided food to about 4.9 million people, treated or vaccinated more than 2 million head of livestock. More than 3.3 million people received water assistance.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, who heads OCHA, is visiting the drought-afflicted area, calling attention to the suffering in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
The ongoing drought in parts of Ethiopia is increasingly deteriorating the living conditions and livelihoods of affected communities
UN officials say drought is ravaging livelihoods of Ethiopians. A Special report
The ongoing drought in parts of Ethiopia is increasingly deteriorating the living conditions and livelihoods of affected communities, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said.
The ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa is affecting close to 7 million in Ethiopia and is increasingly deteriorating the living conditions and livelihoods of affected communities in Oromia, Somali, South Western Ethiopia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP) regions primarily, Xinhua news agency quoted the OCHA’s latest situation update as saying.
Some 3.5 million people are facing the consequences of the drought in Oromia region, while about 3 million people continue to suffer from the brunt of drought in the Somali region with over 900,000 reported livestock deaths, it said.
The OCHA said over 1 million people in 21 districts of East and West Hararge in Oromia region are living in dire condition where water tracking gap stands at 70 per cent, calling for an urgent need for additional 42 trucks in both zones.
The drought situation in the West Guji zone of Oromia region continues to have a severe impact and repercussions on the lives of affected communities, with over 27,000 children and 22,000 young women are facing serious protection concerns.
“An emergency response is ongoing and is further required for at least the next five months to save lives and livelihoods and prevent further deterioration of an already extremely dire humanitarian situation with increasing protection concerns for which additional funding is urgently required,” the OCHA said.
Meanwhile, the Agency said measles cases continue to be reported since December 2021 in Doloado and Bokolmayo districts in Ethiopia’s Somali region, with about 700 new cases and 12 deaths recorded as of March 3.
The measles outbreak affected 15 localities, including five refugee camps in the zone, it was noted.
It said that while the number of cases recorded has decreased since cases were diagnosed in December 2021, active cases remain.
British Ambassador to Somalia, Kate Foster, said, “The situation is extremely worrying, with millions of people in desperate need of lifesaving food and clean water…reports Asian Lite News
The UK’s Minister for Africa, Vicky Ford MP has announced a $10 million package of UK support for Somalis affected by extreme drought, during a visit to Kenya as part of a three-country East Africa visit.
The funding will provide vital assistance such as cash to buy urgent food supplies and water to help vulnerable families across Somalia that are desperately suffering from relentless drought. The support is part of the £17 million package of UK support to countries in East Africa affected by extreme drought and flooding.
The drought severity in Somalia continues to worsen, with over 90% of the country experiencing drought conditions. There are close to 5 million Somalis who are hungry, and a further 3.5 million in need of urgent humanitarian assistance this year due to successive poor rains and failed harvests. A further 2.6 million people have fled their homes due to conflict.
The funding is expected to support almost 500,000 people in Somalia to access clean water and afford food supplies. This kind of early preventative action is crucial, as was learned from the 2016/17 drought in Somalia when early action and funding led by the UK helped to narrowly avoid a famine.
Climate change is driving extreme weather events across the region, worsening pre-existing drought, while poor governance and ongoing conflicts in Somalia are displacing vulnerable communities and destroying livelihoods.
On a visit to East Africa, UK Minister for Africa, Vicky Ford MP, said, “For countries in East Africa, climate change is not a future problem – it is driving a humanitarian emergency right now. Catastrophic droughts and floods, paired with ongoing conflicts and poor governance in Somalia, South Sudan and Ethiopia, are creating a perfect storm in East Africa which risks pushing hundreds of thousands of people into famine. The UK’s commitment to supporting our partners in East Africa is unwavering and we know that early action now can prevent mass loss of life. This funding package will provide vital assistance to almost a million people across the region, helping those affected to access clean water and healthy food.”
Great to meet with the Goodwill Ambassadors this morning.
The UK 🇬🇧 is committed to supporting the rights of women and girls in Somalia 🇸🇴
Women’s empowerment and participation is essential for long-lasting peace and stability. pic.twitter.com/CZHj4VCTM8
Meanwhile, British Ambassador to Somalia, Kate Foster, said, “The situation is extremely worrying, with millions of people in desperate need of lifesaving food and clean water. The UK is moving quickly to provide support with an additional $10 million of funding, as experience has shown that early, preventative action is vital to avoiding mass loss of life.”
So far, the UK has provided £32 million in humanitarian funding this year, reaching over 1 million people with a combination of emergency and longer-term assistance.
The UK prioritised supporting communities affected by extreme weather events such as droughts as host of COP26 in Glasgow. As part of the historic agreement reached at the summit, wealthy nations committed to double the overall climate finance available for adaptation programmes.
The UK is a long-standing supporter of Africa’s adaptation to climate change, with around half of the UK’s £2.7 billion adaptation budget between 2016 and 2020 spent in Africa.
Tanzanian authorities have warned that prolonged drought in parts of the country caused by climate change has resulted in water scarcity and deterioration of pasture for livestock…reports Asian Lite News
“Three major regions in the country are now facing water rationing and we are also getting reports of animals dying for lack of pasture and water,” said Seleman Jafo, the Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office responsible for Union Affairs and the Environment.
Tanzanian authorities warns drought caused by climate change
Jafo made the grim revelations in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam at the end of a 10-kilometre bicycle ride organised by the European Union to support government efforts to protect the environment and mitigate against climate change, Xinhua news agency reported.
He said the government has started receiving reports from various regions that cattle and goats were dying for lack of pasture and water.
Jafo added that three major regions of Dar es Salaam, Dodoma and Morogoro were experiencing water rationing caused by water level decline in rivers and dams.
UAE leverages cloud seeding to tackle water scarcity
Cloud seeding plays a crucial role in reengineering the planet earth through mitigating drought, enhancing water resources and ensuring its sustainability…reports Asian Lite News
The UAE has adopted state-of-the-art technologies to ensure the sustainability of water resources that are mainly fed by precipitation, as part of the country’s leading role in tackling the most pressing global issues that demand urgent action including water security.
Cloud seeding plays a crucial role in reengineering the planet earth through mitigating drought, enhancing water resources and ensuring its sustainability. For nearly two decades, the UAE has carried out cloud seeding operations to effectively tackle water scarcity.
UAE leverages cloud seeding to tackle water scarcity
In the following report, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) reviews the UAE’s efforts in sustaining water resources. Rain enhancement helps limit global warming and its detrimental effects such as droughts and high-water evaporation rates. Cloud seeding techniques are effectively used to enhance the micro-physical processes within the cloud, helping us harvest more water from the cloud and enhance precipitation by a global average of 18 percent.
The potential future effects of climate change include prolonged drought in some regions and a surge in tropical storms in others. To prevent the long-term consequences of climate change on future generations, the UAE has adopted cloud seeding to offset the lack of natural water resources and increase the amount of rainfall. This has allowed the country to adapt to the challenges of drought in the Arabian Peninsula, and other arid and semi-arid areas across the globe.
The UAE started its cloud seeding operations in 2002 through the National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) to address water security issues. The country followed the conventional approach of igniting hygroscopic flares composed of natural salts (primarily potassium chloride) at the base of convective clouds near the updraft core.
In the early years, the operations targeted frequent summertime convection along the northeastern Hajar mountains. The country’s cloud seeding infrastructure subsequently expanded over the years until suitable cloud candidates were targeted year-round over the entire UAE from 2010 onwards.
UAE leverages cloud seeding to tackle water scarcity
The National Centre of Meteorology is the entity responsible for implementing cloud seeding operations across the UAE. The Centre boasts specialised expertise and state-of-the-art infrastructure comprising more than 100 meteorological stations, an integrated network of radars covering all parts of the country, custom-designed aircraft to carry out cloud seeding operations, and a factory to produce high-quality hygroscopic salt flares for use in cloud-seeding operations.
In 2015, the UAE established the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP) under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs.
The programme aims to promote the scientific advancement of new technology in the field. It provides managed grant assistance to projects targeting innovative research on cloud seeding and the broader field of rainfall enhancement.
Managed by the NCM, the programme supports scientific research in rain enhancement and stimulates the development and deployment of innovative rain enhancement technologies. It offers promising research proposals a grant of up to US$1.5 million distributed over three years with a maximum annual amount of $550K.
Over its three cycles, the programme offered grants to nine innovative research projects. In early 2021, the programme opened its fourth cycle for proposal submission, and the winning proposals will be announced in January 2022. Through its global outreach work, the programme built connections with 1,811 researchers and scientists from 806 institutions in 70 countries and received 451 research proposals over its four cycles.
The awardee projects contributed towards the development of new technologies in rain enhancement, such as the use of nanomaterials, UAVs, cloud simulation rooms, and a jet engine composite system to stimulate local updrafts, among others.
The awardees registered four patents, published 74 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific journals, participated in 97 international conferences, and carried out eight testing campaigns to evaluate the effectiveness of their projects in close collaboration with NCM and under its direct supervision.
Since its inception, the programme has achieved wide global recognition, helping the UAE to bolster its leading status in rain enhancement research. It has become a focal point for facilitating global research collaboration and knowledge transfer to ensure sustainable water resources for countries at risk of water scarcity.
Indian Navy join the rescue and relief mission at flood hit villages in Kerala
The report shows that every part of Asia was affected in 2020, from the Himalayan peaks to low-lying coastal areas, from densely populated cities to deserts and from the Arctic to the Arabian seas….reports Asian Lite News
Last year in Asia, tropical cyclones, floods and droughts induced an estimated average annual loss (AAL) of several hundred billion dollars, with a latest report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) estimating the losses at approximately $238 billion in China, $87 billion in India and $83 billion in Japan.
As per the UN Economic and Social Commission for the Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) estimate, the average annual loss is expected to be as high as 7.9 per cent of GDP ($7.5 billion) for Tajikistan, 5.9 per cent of GDP ($24.5 billion) for Cambodia and 5.8 per cent of GDP ($17.9 billion) for the Laos, the WMO ‘State of the Climate in Asia 2020’ report said on Tuesday.
Even when the highest AALs are associated with drought, the floods and storms affected approximately 50 million people and resulted in more than 5,000 fatalities in 2020, below the annual average of the last two decades of 158 million people affected and about 15,500 fatalities, the WMO said and added: “This is a testimony to the success of early warning systems in many countries in Asia.”
The report also said that the true impacts of Covid-19 on food security and nutrition are yet to be established.
“But compared with 2019, the number of undernourished people in 2020 increased by 6 per cent in South-East Asia and West Asia, and by 20 per cent in South Asia. Climate-related disasters compounded the problem,” it said in the report.
The report shows that every part of Asia was affected in 2020, from the Himalayan peaks to low-lying coastal areas, from densely populated cities to deserts and from the Arctic to the Arabian seas.
“Weather and climate hazards, especially floods, storms, and droughts, had significant impacts in many countries of the region, affecting agriculture and food security, contributing to increased displacement and vulnerability of migrants, refugees, and displaced people, worsening health risks, and exacerbating environmental issues and losses of natural ecosystems,” said WMO Secretary General Professor Petteri Taalas.
The report provides an overview of land and ocean temperatures, precipitation, glacier retreat, shrinking sea ice, sea level rise and severe weather. It examines socio-economic impacts in a year when the region was also struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic, which in turn complicated disaster management.
“Combined, these impacts take a significant toll on long term sustainable development, and progress toward the UN 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals in particular,” he said.
“Amidst the pandemic, countries are hit by a range of disasters and have to deal with the increasingly damaging impacts of climate change,” said ESCAP Executive Secretary, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana.
“Fewer than 10 per cent of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. The most alarming are regressing trends on climate action (Goal 13) and life below water (Goal 14): both of which are related to disaster resilience.”
The report also mentioned, in 2019, approximately three fourths of mangroves in Asia were located in Bangladesh (24 per cent), Myanmar (19 per cent), India (17 per cent) and Thailand (14 per cent) and how mangroves in Bangladesh, a low-lying state, were exposed to tropical storms and decreased by 19 per cent from 1992 to 2019.
Forests absorb carbon dioxide and are an important carbon sink. Between 1990 and 2018, Bhutan, China, India, and Vietnam increased their forest cover. But forest cover declined in Myanmar (26 per cent), Cambodia (24 per cent) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (12 per cent), it said.
A positive thing that the report pointed out was that Asia is currently well placed to respond to extreme weather events and is among the regions with the greatest capacity for Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEWS).
“But the costs of extreme events are rising, due in part to increasing exposure. A high proportion of existing critical infrastructures are in multi-hazard risk hotspots, which can lead to significant disruption in economic activity when natural disasters occur. For instance, about a third of energy power plants, fibre-optic cable networks and airports, and 42 per cent of road infrastructure, are in multi-hazard risk hotspots in the Asia-Pacific,” it said.
Also, increased heat and humidity are forecast to lead to an effective loss of outdoor working hours, with a potential cost of many billions of dollars, the report added.
Cyclone Amphan, one of the strongest ever recorded, hit the Sundarbans region between India and Bangladesh in May 2020, displacing 2.4 million people in India and 2.5 million people in Bangladesh.
“Many a weather and climate-related displacements in Asia are prolonged, with people unable to return home, integrate locally or settle elsewhere,” it said.
The report combines input from a wide range of partners including the ESCAP and other UN agencies, national meteorological and hydrological services as well as leading scientists and climate centres.
It was published by WMO ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, as one of a series of regional analyses to inform decision makers and policy makers as well as regional and national investment.
A common scientific theory opines that changing rainfall patterns as a result of climate breakdown is a key driver of drought, but the report also identifies the inefficient use of water resources and the degradation of land under intensive agriculture and poor farming practices as playing a major role, writes Asad Mirza
Drought is a hidden global crisis that risks becoming “the next pandemic” if countries do not take urgent action on their water and land management.
A recent UN report, says that at least 1.5 billion people have been directly affected by drought during the current century, and its economic cost has been estimated at $124bn (�89bn). The true cost is likely to be many times higher as estimates do not include much of the impact in developing countries.
The report entitled Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk reduction: Special Report on Drought 2021 published earlier this month will be part of discussions at the next climate talks known as COP26, which are scheduled to take place in Glasgow, UK in November.
Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction in the foreword of the report says that drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic and there is no vaccine to cure it. Most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years. Demand will outstrip supply during certain periods. Drought is a major factor in land degradation and the decline of yields for major crops.
She says many people had an image of drought as affecting desert regions in Africa, but that this was not the case. Drought is now widespread, and by the end of the century all but a handful of countries will experience it in some form.
She further says that people have been living with drought for 5,000 years, but what we are seeing now is very different. Human activities are exacerbating drought and increasing the impact, threatening to derail progress on lifting people from poverty.
Developed countries too have not been immune to drought. The US, Australia and southern Europe have experienced drought in recent years. Drought costs more than $6bn a year in direct impacts in the US, and about �9bn (�7.7bn) in the EU.
A senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a co-author of the report, Roger Pulwarty has been quoted as saying that drought also goes beyond agriculture. He gives the example of River Danube in Europe, where recurring drought has affected transport, tourism, industry and energy generation. He further opines that we need to have a look at how to manage resources such as rivers and large water basins.
A common scientific theory opines that changing rainfall patterns as a result of climate breakdown is a key driver of drought, but the report also identifies the inefficient use of water resources and the degradation of land under intensive agriculture and poor farming practices as playing a major role. Deforestation, overuse of fertilisers and pesticides, overgrazing and over-extraction of water for farming are also major problems, identified in the report.
Mizutori has called for governments to take action to help prevent drought by reforming and regulating how water is extracted, stored and used, and how land is managed. She says early warning systems could do much to help people in danger. She stressed on working with local people and techniques, as local and indigenous knowledge could help to inform where and how to store water and how to predict the impact of dry periods.
Energy Imbalance
Meanwhile, in another related alarm scientists from NASA and NOAA say that earth’s �energy imbalance’ roughly doubled from 2005 to 2019 in an �alarming’ manner. According to a new research, details of which were released earlier this month, the earth is trapping nearly twice as much heat as it did in 2005, described as an �unprecedented’ increase amid the climate crisis.
‘Energy imbalance’ refers to the difference between how much of the Sun’s ‘radiative energy’ is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere and surface, compared to how much ‘thermal infrared radiation’ bounces back into space. In a statement about this study NASA said that, “A positive energy imbalance means the Earth system is gaining energy, causing the planet to heat up, and the trends we found were quite alarming in a sense”.
Any increase in greenhouse gas emissions keeps heat in earth’s atmosphere, trapping radiation that would otherwise move into space. This warming spurs other changes, including ice and snow melt. Any increase in water vapour, and changes to clouds, could further exacerbate this warming, NASA says.
The study found that this doubling is the result, in part, by an increase in greenhouse gases and water vapour, as well as decreases in clouds and ice. Researchers also said that a �naturally occurring’ shift in the Pacific Ocean from a cool phase to a warm one probably had a significant role in amplifying this energy imbalance.
The study also determined that unless the rate of heat uptake slows, greater shifts in climate patterns should be expected.
Some cheer for activists
On the other hand, in an historical judgement, a Belgian court has ruled that Belgium’s climate failures violate human rights. In the latest legal victory against public authorities that have broken promises to tackle the climate emergency,
Belgian Judges said state’s failure to meet climate targets breaches civil law and human rights convention.
The Brussels court of first instance declared the Belgian state had committed an offence under Belgian’s civil law and breached the European convention on human rights.
By not taking all “necessary measures” to prevent the “detrimental” effects of climate change, the court said, Belgian authorities had breached the right to life (Article 2) and the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8).
The NGO, Klimaatzaak – which means climate case in Dutch, and which brought the case hailed the judgment as historic, both in the nature of the decision and the court’s recognition of 58,000 citizens as co-plaintiffs.
The legal victory in Belgium follows similar rulings in the Netherlands, Germany and France, where judges have condemned governments for inadequate responses to the climate crisis or failing to keep their promises.
According to the European Commission, Belgium the first continental European country to undergo the industrial revolution is on track to miss its emission reduction targets for 2030.
What all these three news put together means is that the Climate Change threat is really more dangerous and omnipresent. Until and unless the world’s leaders act in unison and honour their commitment to raise and spend $100 billion, to tackle the threat as per the Paris Agreement and take some coordinated and concerted measures at Glasgow, we may face a dire threat to the human race.
(Asad Mirza is a political commentator based in New Delhi. He writes on Muslims, educational, international affairs, interfaith and current affairs. The views expressed are personal)
