AFP

A group of young Black Americans and their peers from African countries on Tuesday highlighted their common anxieties over climate change, shared as members of the global African diaspora. 

They were gathered at the African and Diaspora Young Leaders Forum in Washington, held on the sidelines of the Biden administration’s US-Africa Leaders Summit, in which some 50 leaders from the continent are participating this week. 

Michael Regan, the first Black American head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, called on the people in attendance to throw themselves into humanity’s fight against a warming world. 

“Young people have always been at the forefront of movements to change, and the environmental movement is absolutely no exception,” he said. 

“Your generation is leading the charge and fighting to secure a healthier, more just tomorrow.”

For activist Wafa May Elamin, society must “allow young people to really take charge” to tackle the “massive” climate challenges ahead. 

Elamin, a 30-year-old Sudanese-American, said she had been waiting for such an event for “a really long time” — the most recent iteration of this summit was organized eight years ago, during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

Other attendees of Tuesday’s meeting, which was organized by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, included Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black, South Asian and female US vice president, and Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo.

– ‘Guardians of our planet’ –

Speaking at the convention, actress and activist Sabrina Elba — a United Nations goodwill ambassador for the International Fund for Agricultural Development — said the environmental conservation of the immense African continent is especially close to the hearts of people whose ancestors came from Africa.

Elba recalled how her mother, who immigrated from Somalia to Canada, instilled in her a remembrance of their ancestral home: “As early as I can remember, she would say ‘give back, give back, give back, give back to the continent, so we can go back.'”

It was this relationship to Africa that inspired Elba — whose husband, the British actor Idris Elba, also spoke Tuesday — to get involved with the UN.

“It only took one visit back home to see a drought or famine or people really being affected by an issue that they have very little output towards,” she said. 

For her, the priority is to support the people living in areas in need of preservation.

“These people are the custodians of our planet,” she said.

– ‘Not a monolith’ –

But according to Elamin, funding for the fight against climate change is not distributed fairly. 

Regan acknowledged the unequal realities of working for a better planet.

“Countries should be required, in some way, shape or fashion, to ensure certain resources absolutely reach those who have been disproportionately impacted,” the EPA director said.

Jamaji Nwanaji-Enwerem, a doctor and assistant public health professor of environmental health at Emory University in Atlanta, was among those in attendance.

“African is not a monolith,” the 32-year-old said.

“So being able to just hear the stories and hear about other people’s experiences goes a long way in helping to develop solutions that are meaningful for all of us,” she explained. 

As the attendees discussed such possible solutions, Regan announced the United States would allocate $4 million for Peace Corps volunteers to work on projects combatting climate change in 24 Sub-Saharan African countries. 

“Are we doing enough? No. Should we be doing more? Yes, but in a democracy, it’s slow,” he said. 

More than 120 people were killed Tuesday as the worst floods in years battered DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa following an all-night downpour, authorities said in a provisional assessment.

Major roads in the centre of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.

The death toll — which was first estimated in the late afternoon to be at least 55 — jumped to more than 120 by nightfall. 

The government has announced three days of national mourning beginning Wednesday, according to a statement from Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde’s office.

City police chief General Sylvano Kasongo told AFP that the bulk of people dead were on hillside locations where there had been landslides.

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of nine members of the same family — including young children — who had died after the collapse of their home in the Binza Delvaux district.

“We were woken up at around 4:00 am (0300 GMT) by water entering the house,” a relative said.

“We drained the water out, and thinking that there was no more danger we went back indoors to sleep — we were soaked,” he said.

The family went back to bed and “just afterwards, the wall collapsed”.

Located on the Congo River, Kinshasa has seen a huge population influx in recent years.

Many dwellings are shanty houses built on flood-prone slopes, and the city suffers from inadequate drainage and sewerage. 

A major landslide occurred in the hilly district of Mont-Ngafula, smothering National Highway 1, a key supply route linking the capital with Matadi, a port further down the Congo River and a crucial outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.

Lukonde told reporters at the scene that about 20 people there had died when “homes were swept away”.

Searches are continuing for survivors, he said.

The highway should be reopened to small vehicles within the next day, but it could take “three or four days” for trucks, the prime minister said.

The streets of the up-market Gombe district — home to government buildings and usually spared the problems affecting other areas of Kinshasa such as inadequate waste disposal and power supplies — were also inundated.

– ‘Disaster’ –

In November 2019, around 40 people in Kinshasa died in floods and landslides.

Mont-Ngafula was one of the worst-hit areas, but a local resident said the flooding this time was even worse.

“We’ve never seen a flood here on this scale,” said Blanchard Mvubu, who lives in the Mont-Ngafula neighbourhood of CPA Mushie.

“I was asleep and I could feel water in the house… it’s a disaster — we’ve lost all our possessions in the house, nothing could be saved.”

He added: “People are building big houses and that blocks up the drains. The water can’t move freely and that’s what causes the floods.”

Another man, who gave his name as Freddy, said everything in his home was underwater,

“Shoes, food stocks, clothes — everything is lost, there’s nothing to be saved,” he said.

Close by, a young man was asking for 500 Congolese francs (24 US cents) from passers-by to carry them on his back across the submerged street.

Another man, who identified himself as a teacher, was walking barefoot in the water, holding a pair of shoes in one hand and a plastic bag containing documents in the other.

“I’ve got no other choice,” he said. “I have to give schoolchildren an exam.”

Landslides  are common in Mont-Ngafula, often triggered by heavy rainfall and rampant urban development.

Female snakes have clitorises, according to the first detailed study on the subject Wednesday, in which the scientists lashed out at how little female sex organs have been researched compared to males across species.

Previous research had hypothesised that the organs on female snakes were scent glands, under-developed versions of penises, or were even there to stimulate males, rather than the other way around.

But the new study said it has “definitively” ruled out such theories, offering the first complete description of snake clitorises.

The findings suggest that clitorises may be common across squamates, the largest order of reptiles which includes snakes, and could play an essential role in how they reproduce.

However comparatively little research on the subject has been carried out, as in the case for the clitorises of pretty much all animals — including humans.

“Female genitalia are conspicuously overlooked in comparison to their male counterparts, limiting our understanding of sexual reproduction across vertebrate lineages,” wrote the authors of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Since the 1800s it has been known that male squamates have a dual sex organ called a hemipenis.

However it was not until 1995 that German herpetologist Wolfgang Boehme, who was researching monitor lizards, first described the female sexual organ, the hemiclitores.

Megan Folwell, a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the new study’s lead author, told AFP she started off by analysing the hemiclitores of a common death adder.

The team of Australian and American researchers went on to dissect 10 snakes from nine different species, including the carpet python, puff adder and Mexican moccasin. 

They found that snakes have two individual clitorises — hemiclitores — separated by tissue and hidden by skin on the underside of the tail.

For the death adder, the organ forms a triangle shape “like a heart”, Folwell said.

Some are quite thin while others take up almost all the area around the cloaca, the tiny opening for the digestive, urinary and reproductive tract. Sizes ranged from less than a millimetre to seven millimetres.

The organs have erectile tissue that likely swells with blood as well as nerve bundles which “may be indicative of tactile sensitivity, similar to the mammalian clitoris,” the study said.

– ‘Taboo subject’ –

“Snakes are very tactile animals,” Folwell said, “so there’s quite a high chance that they would get quite a lot of sensation even through the skin.”

If the snakes’ hemiclitores are stimulated during sex, it likely prompts longer and more frequent mating, resulting in a greater chance of reproductive success.

“Pleasure is such an important part of reproduction,” Folwell said.

It could lead to lubrication to prevent damage from the “very spiny hemipenis” of male snakes, she said, adding that “we don’t know”.

So why did it take so long for scientists to get here?

“It’s quite a taboo subject, female genitalia is not the easiest topic to bring up and be respected,” Folwell said.

“There’s also the fact that it is not the easiest structure to find,” she said. “Especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for or where.”

The study comes after a research abstract presented in the United States earlier this year said that the human clitoris has between 9,850-1,100 nerve fibres — around 20 percent more than the previously widely cited number of 8,000, which reportedly came from research carried out on cows.

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo joined the United States on Tuesday in blaming climate change for major floods that have claimed around 100 lives in the capital Kinshasa.

“The DRC is under pressure but unfortunately it’s not sufficiently heard or supported,” President Felix Tshisekedi told Secretary of State Antony Blinken as they met at a US-Africa summit in Washington.

The flooding is an example of “what we have been deploring for some time,” he said.

“Support must come from countries that pollute and unfortunately trigger the harmful consequences in our countries that lack the means to protect themselves,” he said.

Blinken offered condolences for the deaths, saying the flooding was “further evidence of the challenges we are facing with climate and something we need to work on together.”

Despite a series of international conferences, scientists say the planet is far off course from meeting a UN-blessed goal of checking warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Blinken was also speaking to Tshisekedi as the United States puts pressure on Rwanda to stop alleged support for M23 rebels who have made rapid advances in the eastern DRC.

“Our country is unfortunately the victim of a secret aggression by Rwanda through the M23 movement,” Tshisekedi said.

“It is causing serious destabilization in part of our country that is already in distress, with hundreds of thousands of displaced living in precarious conditions.”

Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame is also in Washington, denies support to the M23, which is mostly made of Congolese Tutsis. 

Relations between Rwanda and DR Congo have been strained since the mass arrival in the eastern DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Creating a new global fund for biodiversity — a core demand of developing countries at UN talks in Montreal — “would take years” and be less effective than reforming existing financial mechanisms, Canada’s environment minister said Tuesday.

Ottawa’s position reflects the consensus among developed nations on the thorny issue, which has emerged as a key sticking point in negotiations to hammer out a new global pact for nature at the meeting, known as COP15. 

Delegates from around the world have gathered for the December 7-19 summit aiming to secure a new deal: a 10-year framework aimed at saving Earth’s forests, oceans and species before it’s too late. 

Draft targets include a cornerstone pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and seas by 2030, eliminating harmful fishing and agriculture subsidies and tackling invasive species and reducing pesticides.

Dozens of countries, led by Brazil, India, Indonesia and African nations, are demanding financial subsidies of at least $100 billion a year until 2030, or one percent of global GDP, to protect ecosystems. The current figure is around $10 billion annually.

“The countries of the North understand that ambition must be accompanied by financial resources,” Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault said at a press conference held halfway through the talks.

But “my concern is that the creation of new funding could take years, and during those years, countries in the South wouldn’t be receiving any money from that fund,” he added.

He recalled the Global Environment Facility, currently the main multilateral mechanism for biodiversity, took seven years to create. Donors have pledged $5.3 billion to this fund for its current cycle, 2022-2026.

“So I think it would be better to use existing funds” while pursuing reforms that would make money more accessible, he said.

“On the other hand, we have to agree on the fact that it cannot only be public money,” said Guilbeault, stressing that private and philanthropic contributions must come into play, as well as multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and IMF.

“We all need to push harder this week,” he concluded, after the first week of talks ended in stalemate.

– Yawning funding gap –

The divide between developed and developing nations on the issue of creating a new biodiversity fund mirrors a similar debate during recent UN climate talks in Egypt on creating a “loss and damages” fund for the most climate-vulnerable nations — though that demand was eventually met.

Given this precedent, Basile van Havre, co-chair of one of COP15’s working groups, did not rule out a similar decision for biodiversity. 

“The landscape or the context now is a lot more favorable,” he told AFP, acknowledging growing political momentum for such a move.

Whatever the final mechanism, the gap in expectations over resource mobilization that would allow lower income nations to hold up their side of the biodiversity deal remains a sore spot.

“The EU says it hears the needs of the Global South and the Africa Group, and recognizes that current finances are not enough. So what is the hold up?” said Greenpeace policy advisory Anna Ogniewska.