AFP

The United Nations said Wednesday it has raised the $75 million necessary to salvage a stricken tanker off Yemen, an emergency operation aimed at averting a disastrous Red Sea oil spill — and a potential $20 billion cleanup.

The decaying 45-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen plunged into civil war more than seven years ago. 

UN officials last month warned that the ship — which contains four times the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 — was a ticking environmental time bomb requiring immediate action.

“We are able to announce we have now pledges and commitment sufficient to start the FSO Safer salvage operation,” said David Gressly, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen and leader of the global body’s efforts on the Safer.

“It’s a very key milestone,” he said, adding that donor pledges have now topped $77 million.

Yemen is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises due to the war between the government and Huthi rebels who control the port of Hodeida.

The ship in question contains 1.1 million barrels of oil. The United Nations has said a spill could destroy ecosystems, shut down the fishing industry and close the lifeline Hodeida port for six months.

The result would potentially be the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, with the clean-up costs alone reaching $20 billion.

The first phase of the salvage operation would stabilize the FSO Safer and transfer the oil to another vessel. 

A second phase involving long-term storage of the cargo is estimated to cost another $38 million. 

“We believe that we could meet that in a timely fashion,” Gressly said of the cost.

The flag of Tuvalu contains nine yellow stars — one for each of the islands that make up the tiny Pacific archipelago, home to some 11,000 people. 

Today, however, two of those atolls are on the verge of being swallowed by rising sea levels as a result of the global climate crisis that has already done irreversible harm and will likely leave the nation uninhabitable in the coming decades.

What happens to a country when it disappears beneath the waves, when all its people are forced to leave?

“That is exactly the idea behind the Rising Nations Initiative — to convince members of the UN to recognize our nation, even if we are submerged underwater, because that is our identity,” Prime Minister Kausea Natano told AFP on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

Vague promises and messages of sympathy from the international community have done little for Pacific atoll countries, which began a push Wednesday for a formal legal process to retain their statehood, should the worst come to pass.

The plan aims to reaffirm the international community’s commitment to Tuvalu and other island nations’ sovereignty.

It would also create a repository for the islands’ cultural heritage and designate them as UNESCO World Heritage sites, as well as increase financial support for adaptation measures. 

Already, the situation is dire. 

As so-called “floating islands” that aren’t directly connected to the ground below, atolls sit on top of “lenses” of freshwater, which are increasingly permeated by saltwater as oceans rise.

That has left them dependent on rainwater for drinking and agriculture — and Tuvalu is now into its sixth month of drought.

“We have to deploy desalination plants, but they are very expensive, they consume very high amounts of electricity,” explained Natano.

The archipelago’s islands barely break the surface of the ocean, reaching 15 feet at the highest point, but more like four or five feet in other places. 

This leaves the islands prone to exceptionally high “King Tides” that wash away root crops, including former island staples taro and cassava, and salt the earth, added Natano. 

The circumstances are deeply inequitable: Pacific island nations are among the least responsible for planetary heating, accounting for just 0.03 percent of global emissions. 

But even if the world’s polluting nations correct course and meet the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C, it could be too late to save the most vulnerable countries like the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.

– ‘We live as a community’ –

Natano recalls that more people began leaving — to New Zealand, Australia and the United States — after devastating Cyclone Pam struck in 2015, though for now, opportunities for migration remain limited by tough border policies.

“In Tuvalu we live as a community,” said Natano, visibly moved. “Even the people who leave don’t want to go, they just look at their children and grandchildren and know they have to look for a future for them.”

The country has joined calls for so-called “loss and damage” compensation from rich nations based on their historic and ongoing contribution to the climate crisis, but the issue remains contentious. 

Natano still hopes, however, to get the assistance his country needs so the people can remain on their land.

There are preliminary discussions on ways to formally apply for a separate identity within other countries, but these are a “last resort,” he said.

“When you’re in Australia, you will become Australian, same for New Zealand,” he added.

“We want to stay in our country, practice our culture and traditions and maintain our legacy.”

A US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts have arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS), NASA said Wednesday, after blasting off on a Russian-operated flight in a rare instance of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA both distributed live footage of the launch from Kazakhstan and commentators speaking over the feed said it was stable and the crew was “feeling well”.

NASA’s Frank Rubio and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin made up the crew that launched from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome at 1354 GMT.

The three will spend six months on the ISS along with three other Russian cosmonauts, three other US astronauts and one Italian.

Rubio is the first US astronaut to travel to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into pro-Western Ukraine on February 24.

In response, Western capitals including Washington have hit Moscow with unprecedented sanctions and bilateral ties have sunk to new lows.

Space is one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between the two countries.

Russia’s only active female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, is expected to travel to the orbital station in early October aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. 

She will become only the fifth professional woman cosmonaut from Russia or the Soviet Union to go into space, and the first Russian to fly aboard a spacecraft of SpaceX, the company of billionaire Elon Musk.

Russian cosmonauts and Western astronauts have sought to steer clear of the conflict that is raging back on Earth, especially when in orbit together.

A collaboration among the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Space Agency and Russia, the ISS is split into two sections: the US Orbital Segment and the Russian Orbital Segment.

– Russia leaving ISS –

At present, the ISS depends on a Russian propulsion system to maintain its orbit, about 250 miles (400 kilometres) above sea level, with the US segment responsible for electricity and life support systems.

Tensions in the space field have grown since Washington announced sanctions on Moscow’s aerospace industry — triggering warnings from Russia’s former space chief Dmitry Rogozin, an ardent supporter of the Ukraine war.

Rogozin’s recently appointed successor Yuri Borisov later confirmed Russia’s long-mooted move to leave the ISS after 2024 in favour of creating its own orbital station.

US space agency NASA called the decision an “unfortunate development” that would hinder scientific work on the ISS.

Space analysts say  construction of a new orbital station could take more than a decade, and Russia’s space industry — a point of national pride — would not be able to flourish under heavy sanctions.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.

During that era, the Soviet space programme boomed. It boasted a number of accomplishments that included sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier.

Experts say Roscosmos is now a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Russia’s years-long monopoly on manned flights to the ISS is also gone, to SpaceX, along with millions of dollars in revenue. 

Spain granted personhood status Wednesday to a large saltwater lagoon to give its threatened ecosystem better protection, the first time such a measure has been taken in Europe.

The initiative to grant the status to the Mar Menor — one of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoons — was debated in parliament after campaigners collected over 500,000 signatures backing it.

It now becomes law after Spain’s Senate, the upper house of parliament, voted in favour of the proposal, with only far-right party Vox opposing it.

This will allow the rights of the lagoon located in southeastern Spain to be defended in court, as though it were a person or business.

“The Mar Menor becomes the first European ecosystem with its own rights after the Senate approved the bill to give it a legal identity,” the president of the Senate, Ander Gil, tweeted after the vote.

The lagoon will now be legally represented by a group of caretakers made up of local officials, scientists who work in the area and local residents.

Ecologists have for years warned that the Mar Menor is slowly dying due to the runoff of fertilisers from nearby farms.

In August 2021, millions of dead fish and crustaceans began washing up on the shores of the lagoon, which experts blamed on agricultural pollution.

They argue that sealife died due to a lack of oxygen caused by hundreds of tonnes of fertiliser nitrates leaking into the waters causing a phenomenon known as eutrophication which collapses aquatic ecosystems.

Two similar catastrophic pollution events occurred in 2016 and 2019.

Ecologists in October 2021 submitted a formal complaint to the EU over what they called Spain’s “continued failure” to protect the Mar Menor, which they warned was on the brink of “ecological collapse”.

The following month the Spanish government unveiled a 382-million-euro ($377 million) plan to regenerate the lagoon.

It outlines several environmental regeneration projects to support biodiversity in and around the lagoon, including the creation of a 1.5-kilometre (one mile) buffer zone along the Mar Menor’s shores.