AFP

“There’s nothing left here,” sighs Javier Franch as he shakes the heavy rope of mussels he’s just pulled to the surface in northeastern Spain. They are all dead. 

With the country hit by a long and brutal heatwave this summer, the water temperature in the Ebro Delta, the main mussels production area of the Spanish Mediterranean, is touching 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

And any grower who hasn’t removed their molluscs in time will have lost everything. 

But that’s not the worst of it: most of next year’s crop has also died in one of the most intense marine heatwaves in the Spanish Mediterranean.

By the end of July, experts said the western Mediterranean was experiencing an “exceptional” marine heatwave, with persistently hotter-than-normal temperatures posing a threat to the entire marine ecosystem. 

“The high temperatures have cut short the season,” says Franch, 46, who has spent almost three decades working for the firm founded by his father, which has seen production fall by a quarter this year. 

The relentless sun has heated up the mix of fresh and saltwater along Catalonia’s delicate coastal wetlands where the River Ebro flows into the Mediterranean. 

On a scorching summer morning in Deltebre, one of the municipalities of the Delta, the mussel rafts — long wooden structures with ropes attached which can each grow up to 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of mussels — should be teeming with workers hurrying around during the busy season. 

But there is hardly any movement. 

“We lost the yield that was left, which wasn’t much, because we were working to get ahead so we wouldn’t go through this,” explains Carles Fernandez, who advises the Ebro Delta’s Federation of Mollusc Producers (Fepromodel). 

“But the problem is that we’ve lost the young stock for next year and we’ll have quite a high cost overrun.” 

– Millions in losses –

The heat has wiped out 150 tonnes of commercial mussels and 1,000 tonnes of young stock in the Delta, initial estimates suggest. 

And producers are calculating their losses at over one million euros ($1,000,000) given they will now have to buy young molluscs from Italy or Greece for next year. 

“When you have a week when temperatures are higher than 28C, there can be some mortality, but this summer it has lasted almost a month and a half,” with peak temperatures of almost 31C, says Fepromodel head Gerardo Bonet.

Normally, the Ebro Delta’s two bays produce around 3,500 tonnes of mussels, and 800 tonnes of oysters, making Catalonia Spain’s second-largest producer, although it remains far behind the output of Galicia, the northwestern region on the colder Atlantic coast. 

For years now, the harvest in the Delta has been brought forward, cutting short a season that once ran from April to August. 

– ‘Tropical’ Mediterranean – 

Hit by coastal erosion and a lack of sediment supply, the rich ecosystem of the Ebro Delta — a biosphere reserve and one of the most important wetlands of the western Mediterranean — is particularly vulnerable to climate change. 

And this extreme summer, when Spain endured 42 days of heatwave — a record three times the average over the past decade, the AEMET national forecaster says — has also left its mark below the surface of the water. 

“Some marine populations which are unable to cope with temperatures as high as these over a long period of time are going to suffer what we call mass mortality,” says marine biologist Emma Cebrian of the Spanish National Research Council (CISC). 

“Imagine a forest, it’s like 60 or 80 percent of the trees dying, with the resulting impact on its associated biodiversity,” she says. 

The succession of heatwaves on land has generated another at sea which — pending analysis of all the data in November — may turn out to be “the worst” in this area of the Mediterranean since records began in the 1980s. 

Although marine heatwaves are not a new phenomenon, they are becoming more extreme with increasingly dire consequences. 

“If we compare it with a wildfire, one can have an impact, but if you keep having them, it will probably mean the affected populations are not able to recuperate,” Cebrian said. 

Experts say the Mediterranean is becoming “tropicalised”, and mollusc grower Franch is struck by the mounting evidence as his boat glides between empty mussel rafts in a bay without a breath of wind. 

He is mulling an increase in his production of oysters, which are more resistant to high temperatures, but which currently represent just 10 percent of his output.

But he hopes it will help ensure his future in a sector that employs 800 people directly or indirectly in the Ebro Delta. 

“(The sector) is under threat because climate change is a reality and what we are seeing now will happen again,” he says worriedly. 

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres began a two-day visit to flood-hit Pakistan Friday that officials hope will boost global support for a humanitarian crisis affecting millions.

A third of the country is under water — an area the size of the United Kingdom — following record rains brought by what Guterres has described as “a monsoon on steroids”.

Pakistan officials say it will cost at least $10 billion to rebuild and repair damaged infrastructure — an impossible sum for the deeply indebted nation — but the priority, for now, is food and shelter for millions made homeless.

“Everything is drowned, everything washed away,” said Ayaz Ali, suffering from fever as he reluctantly took his place Thursday on a navy boat rescuing villagers from flooded rural communities in southern Sindh province.

In a tweet en route to Pakistan, Guterres said he wanted to “be with the people in their time of need, galvanize international support and bring global focus on the disastrous repercussions of climate change”.

Pakistan receives heavy — often destructive — rains during its annual monsoon season, which are crucial for agriculture and water supplies.

But a downpour as intense as this year’s not been seen for decades, and Pakistan officials blame climate change, which is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather around the world.

Pakistan is responsible for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but is eighth on a list compiled by the NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

– Tents and tarpaulins needed –

A flood relief plan scaled by the Pakistan government and UN last month called for an immediate $160 million in international funding, and aid is already arriving.

On Thursday a US Air Force C-17 landed — the first American military plane in Pakistan for years — bringing desperately needed tents and tarpaulins for temporary shelter.

While Washington is a key supplier of military hardware to Islamabad, relations have been fractious as a result of conflicting interests in neighbouring Afghanistan — especially since the Taliban returned to power there in August last year.

The meteorological office says Pakistan received five times more rain than normal in 2022 — Padidan, a small town in Sindh, has been drenched by more than 1.8 metres (70 inches) since the monsoon began in June.

The effect of the heavy rains has been twofold — flash floods in rivers in the mountainous north that washed away roads, bridges and buildings in minutes, and a slow accumulation of water in the southern plains that has submerged hundreds of thousands of square kilometres (miles) of land.

In Jaffarabad district of Balochistan Thursday, villagers were fleeing their homes on makeshift rafts made from upturned wooden “charpoy” beds.

Thousands of temporary campsites have mushroomed on slivers of dry land in the south and west — often roads and railway tracks are the only high ground in a landscape of water.

With people and livestock cramped together, the camps are ripe for outbreaks of disease, with many cases of mosquito-borne dengue reported, as well as scabies.

The floods have killed nearly 1,400 people, according to the latest National Disaster Management Authority report.

Nearly 7,000 km of roads have been damaged, some 246 bridges washed away and more than 1.7 million homes and businesses destroyed.

As Indonesia’s capital Jakarta grapples with overflowing plastic waste and pollution pours into the sea, one burgeoning business is trying to turn rubbish into revenue.

Tridi Oasis Group, which employs 120 people, has recycled more than 250 million bottles since it was founded six years ago.

“I don’t see discarded plastic as trash. For me, it is a valuable material in the wrong place,” 35-year-old founder Dian Kurniawati told AFP.

Indonesia has pledged to reduce plastic waste by 30 percent over the next three years — a mammoth task in the Southeast Asian nation of nearly 270 million people where plastic recycling is rare.

The country generates approximately 7.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, with more than half mismanaged or disposed of improperly, according to the World Bank.

Kurniawati’s company receives plastic from recycling centres across the greater Jakarta area — which has 30 million people — at its factory in Banten province outside the city.

Then the company exports recycled plastic to European countries and also distributes it locally to be processed and used as packaging or textiles. 

Kurniawati resigned from her consultant job to start the firm, tackling head-on the massive challenges faced by the world’s fourth most populous country in dealing with the plastic crisis.

As one of the initiators of the “Beach Clean Up Jakarta” movement, she saw how Jakarta is littered with plastic waste and was frustrated that little was being done to change the situation.

– ‘Our problem’ – 

Hundreds of piles of crushed clear plastic bottles sit piled neatly in the Banten factory, ready to be sorted to make sure no labels or caps are left behind. 

The bottles are then cleaned thoroughly to eliminate contamination before being cut into small flakes, ready to be transported to clients for processing and reuse as packaging or textiles. 

Fajar Sarbini, a 24-year-old employee, hopes more Indonesians will start recycling.

“People throw away their waste mindlessly, they should at least sort out sharp materials so they won’t hurt garbage collectors,” he said.

Jakarta does not have a municipal collection system for household waste and has no incineration facilities.

With green trends rising and the will of younger generations to live more sustainably growing, the country is not without hope. 

“Indonesia is catching up and the acceleration is quite fast because we got help from social media and youth campaigns,” Kurniawati said. 

But she said the waste problem facing the country is enormous and the regulation to encourage plastic to be recycled is lacking.

“Plastic waste is our problem and solving it takes a concerted effort from everybody,” she said.

“It can’t be solved by just the government or recycling companies.”