Africa Business

Thousands of Islamists gathered Saturday for the second time in two weeks to protest “interference” by the United Nations mission in Sudan, an AFP journalist reported. 

The demonstrators have objected to UN efforts to mediate between the country’s military and civilian leaders following last year’s coup staged by army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. 

Saturday’s demonstrators also expressed anger at a transitional constitution proposed by the Sudanese Bar Association, calling for a civilian government to pull the country out of its current political crisis. 

The proposed constitution would impose a ban on activity by the National Congress Party, the Islamist movement of former dictator Omar al-Bashir. 

“We protest against foreign interference in our country,” demonstrator Ahmed Abderrahman told AFP. “We will not accept the secular constitution of the Sudanese Bar Association.” 

He was surrounded by other protesters holding placards reading “No to foreign interference” and “Volker out”, in reference to the UN’s Khartoum envoy Volker Perthes. 

Recent protests have also pitted the Islamists — who had backed Bashir prior to his ouster in 2019 — against coup leader Burhan. 

The army chief last week warned the Islamists to steer clear of the military, saying: “The army does not belong to any party.”

His warning came a week after some 3,000 Islamists staged a similar march in front of the UN headquarters.

It comes despite repeated accusations from civilian factions that the army was colluding with the Islamists, pointing to the recent reappointment of Islamist figures in positions of power. 

Sudan has been mired in a political and economic crisis since last year’s coup. Security forces have cracked down on near-weekly protests, resulting in at least 119 deaths, according to pro-democracy medics. 

Civilian leaders have refused to negotiate with the military until it commits to a timetable for full withdrawal from power. 

Kneeling on the edge of a deep crater, astronaut Alexander Gerst uses a chisel to collect a sample of volcanic rock which he carefully puts inside a white plastic bag.

Gerst is not on the Moon, even if it looks like it. He is in the middle of Los Volcanes Natural Park on the island of Lanzarote in Spain’s Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa.

With its blackened lava fields, craters and volcanic tubes, Lanzarote’s geology can be uncannily similar to that of the Moon and Mars — so much so that the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have for years been sending astronauts to the island to train.

“This place has lavas that are very, very similar to the ones that we find on the Moon,” Gerst, a 46-year-old German astronaut with the ESA, told AFP.

He said the island was “a unique training ground”.

Gerst, who has completed two missions on the International Space Station, is one of about a dozen astronauts who have taken part in the ESA’s Pangaea training course in Lanzarote over the past decade.

Named after the ancient supercontinent, Pangaea seeks to give astronauts as well as space engineers and geologists the skills needed for expeditions to other planets.

Trainees learn how to identify rock samples and collect them, do on-the-spot DNA analysis of microorganisms, and communicate their findings back to mission control.

“Here, they are put into the field to experience the exploration of a terrain, which is something they will have to do on the Moon,” said Francesco Sauro, the technical director of the course. 

– Six-year eruption –

Gerst said the Pangaea training course, which he has just completed, helps prepare astronauts to work in a remote setting on their own.

“If we run into a problem, we have to solve it ourselves,” he said.

He completed the Pangaea training along with Stephanie Wilson, one of NASA’s most senior astronauts. Both are possible candidates for NASA’s next crewed Moon missions.

Named for the goddess who was Apollo’s twin sister in ancient Greek mythology, NASA’s Artemis programme aims to return astronauts to the Moon’s surface as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame might slip.

Twelve astronauts walked on the Moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface.

NASA and the ESA also regularly use Lanzarote’s landscape of twisted mounds of solidified lava to test Mars Rovers — remote controlled vehicles designed to travel on the surface of the Red Planet.

Lanzarote’s unique geography stems from a volcanic eruption that began in 1730 and lasted six years, spewing ash and lava over large swathes of land.

Considered one of the greatest volcanic cataclysms in recorded history, the eruption devastated over 200 square kilometres (77 square miles) of terrain — about a quarter of the island which is currently home to around 156,000 people.

– ‘See far away’ –

While there are other volcanic areas such as Hawaii that could also be used for astronaut training, Lanzarote has the advantage that it has little vegetation due to its desert-like climate.

“You have a lot of different types of volcanic rocks in Lanzarote. And they are exposed. You don’t have trees,” said Pangaea project leader Loredana Bessone.

“You can see far away, as if you were on the Moon,” she told AFP.

The Canary Islands is making a big contribution to space exploration in another way too. The island of La Palma is home to one of the world’s largest optical telescopes.

Located on a peak, the Great Canary Telescope is able to spot some of the faintest, most distant objects in the Universe.

La Palma was selected as the site for the telescope because of its cloud-free skies and relatively low light pollution.

Kenyan soldiers landed in the city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday, as part of a regional military operation targeting rebels in the conflict-torn region.

Their arrival comes as the M23 militia has surged across the DRC’s North Kivu province, capturing swathes of territory and inflaming tensions in central Africa. 

Leaders of the seven-nation East African Community (EAC) bloc, in which Kenya is the regional heavyweight, agreed in April to establish a joint force to help restore security in the mineral-rich DRC.

This week, Kenya’s parliament approved the deployment of just over 900 troops to the DRC as part of the joint EAC military force.

Two planes carrying about 100 Kenyan troops touched down in Goma airport on Saturday, according to AFP reporters present, where they were greeted by local dignitaries. 

Kenyan Lieutenant-Colonel Dennis Obiero told reporters that their mission is “to conduct offensive operations” alongside Congolese forces, and to assist in disarming militias. 

“Insecurity is something which breaks up the social fabric,” he added, explaining that the Kenyan contingent would also work alongside humanitarian agencies in a bid to bring stability to the eastern DRC. 

– Resurgent rebels –

Over 120 armed groups are active across eastern Congo, many of which are a legacy of regional wars that flared at the turn of the century.

Heavy fighting between the army and the M23 was ongoing in Rugari in North Kivu on Friday, and power was disrupted in Goma, an important commercial hub of about one million people. 

A mostly Congolese Tutsi group, the M23 first leapt to prominence in 2012, briefly capturing Goma before being driven out.

But after lying dormant for years, the rebels took up arms again in late 2021 claiming the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate them into the army, among other grievances. 

In June, the M23 captured the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border. 

In recent weeks the rebels have won a string of victories against the Congolese army in North Kivu, dramatically increasing the territory under their control. 

The United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA estimates that recent fighting in North Kivu has displaced 188,000 people.

The M23’s resurgence has cratered relations between the DRC and its smaller neighbour Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of backing the M23.

– Diplomatic efforts –

Kinshasa expelled Rwanda’s ambassador at the end of last month, for example, while also recalling its envoy from Kigali.

In parallel to the EAC’s military operation, diplomatic efforts are underway to reduce tensions in eastern DRC.

Angolan President Joao Lourenco visited Rwanda on Friday, and he met Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi in the DRC on Saturday.

“We are all concerned about the situation in the east of the DRC today,” Angolan Foreign Minister Tete Antonio told reporters in Kinshasa after the presidents met.

Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta is also expected in the DRC capital for talks on Sunday. 

Leaders of the seven-nation East African Community decided to create a regional military force to restore peace in the DRC in June. 

The force will be under Kenyan command. But its total size and scope remains unclear. 

Chants of “free them all” and “no climate justice without human rights” rang out between the halls of COP27 Saturday, in the largest protest since the UN climate summit began.

Jailed Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, who is at the summit campaigning for her brother’s release, marched in the front line with hundreds behind her.

Seven months into a hunger strike, Abdel Fattah began refusing water last Sunday, as world leaders arrived in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27. 

With them came Seif, who at two press conferences this week was heckled by apparently pro-regime attendees, who called her brother a “criminal,” not a “political prisoner.”

Behind her on Saturday — winding between halls inside which world leaders negotiated over the climate crisis — hundreds of protesters demanded urgent action towards climate justice and human rights, an AFP correspondent said.

Although demonstrations at COP27 must be approved by organising authorities and should take place only in a special zone, activists behind Saturday’s rally said they got UN permission for their action outside the designated area.

They marched behind a banner reading, “You have not yet been defeated” –- the title of Abdel Fattah’s book which has become a rallying cry for summit activists.

The demonstrators incorporated the words into their demands for indigenous, women’s, labour and disability rights. Multiple speakers have ended their speeches in the conference’s formal proceedings with the same sentence.

“I came here thinking I would be alone. I am sure that those in power thought that my voice would be drowned out and ignored. Instead, I found that my family was already here waiting for me,” protest organiser Asad Rehman read from a statement from Seif.

She stood silently next to him.

Abdel Fattah was a key figure in Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising more than a decade ago. He began consuming “only 100 calories a day” in April, his family said, to protest the conditions he and about 60,000 other political prisoners face in the country.

His family say they fear for his life, and have made months-long appeals to the international community, particularly the UK, where Abdel Fattah gained citizenship this year from behind bars through his British-born mother.

Some world leaders have raised his case with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in bilateral meetings during the climate talks.

The family made an official request for a presidential pardon from President Sisi Friday, Abdel Fattah’s other sister announced.

The plea has been picked up by one of Egypt’s most watched talk show hosts, the ardently pro-Sisi Amr Adib. On prime time television Friday, Adib said the pardon would be in “the interest of Egypt first and foremost.”

Wheelchair struggles, scarce drinking water, $15 sandwiches and hotel price-gouging at the COP27 climate summit have sparked anger and forced host country Egypt into damage-control mode, participants at the two-week meet said.

Organising a UN climate conference — which brings together up to 35,000 people from 195 countries each year — is a world-class logistical challenge, and veterans of the nearly 30-year process are used to minor inconvenience.   

But this year’s sprawling event in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh has been plagued with problems, participants say, the most basic perhaps being accessibility.

Pratima Gurung, who works with a disability advocacy group, said she and the Disability Rights Fund’s Krishna Gahatraj, who uses a wheelchair, have been left in the middle of the road “multiple times” while waiting for shuttle buses.

Organisers “haven’t clearly instructed the drivers” on how to accommodate people with disabilities, said Gurung, who runs the National Indigenous Disabled Women Association in Nepal.

Though ramps abound, attendees with physical impairments say they are not standard, and that the UN climate summit has been especially difficult for them to navigate.

“As a disabled person, COP is inherently inaccessible for me,” said SustainedAbility’s Jason Boberg, who has attended the past five summits organised by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC.

But playing on the acronym, he has dubbed this year’s event the “UN Framework Convention on Concrete Curbs”.

Last year’s meeting in Glasgow also saw accessibility issues, with the Israeli energy minister initially unable to enter in her wheelchair.

– ‘Most confusing COP ever’ –

Another recurrent complaint in Sharm el-Sheikh is poor and scarce signage. 

“This is the most confusing COP ever,” said Bianca, a three-time climate summit attendee who asked to be identified only by her first name.

The size of a small town, the COP27 area is a sprawling archipelago of pavilions, meeting rooms, halls connected by bitumen roads that soak up the 30 degree Celsius (86 degree Fahrenheit) heat.

Journalists in a hangar-like media centre could be seen wrapped in jackets and shawls to protect themselves against the industrial-strength air-conditioning.

Also problematic and ironic, given the topic at hand, is a chronic shortage of drinking water.

During the first week of the conference, which runs until November 18, sparse water dispensers stood empty for hours at a stretch.

Delegates took to bringing in their own supplies, and a few were said to have ignored warnings not to drink desalinated water running from bathroom taps.

“People already under stress” should not “have to look for water all the time”, said one climate COP veteran from an NGO.

Exorbitant food prices, including sandwiches going for up to $15, have been especially problematic for those on tight budgets. 

“I have never seen prices like this at a COP,” the NGO representative said, declining to be identified.

In response to the complaints, organisers on Thursday made drinks free and slashed food prices in half for the rest of the conference.

Well before COP27 kicked off on November 6, alarm bells were ringing as the tourist town’s hotels suddenly tripled or quadrupled room rates, even for those with confirmed bookings. 

Some delegates arrived to find their reservations had been cancelled.

“People are now stranded, sleeping on the road, in bus stations,” youth activist Olumide Idowu from Nigeria wrote on Twitter Monday.

At a press briefing Thursday, special representative of the COP27 presidency, Wael Aboulmagd, told reporters that the “one case where people were asked to leave” will “not happen again”, and that “government officials have intervened.”

Kneeling on the edge of a deep crater, astronaut Alexander Gerst uses a chisel to collect a sample of volcanic rock which he carefully puts inside a white plastic bag.

Gerst is not on the Moon, even if it looks like it. He is in the middle of Los Volcanes Natural Park on the island of Lanzarote in Spain’s Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa.

With its blackened lava fields, craters and volcanic tubes, Lanzarote’s geology can be uncannily similar to that of the Moon and Mars — so much so that the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have for years been sending astronauts to the island to train.

“This place has lavas that are very, very similar to the ones that we find on the Moon,” Gerst, a 46-year-old German astronaut with the ESA, told AFP.

He said the island was “a unique training ground”.

Gerst, who has completed two missions on the International Space Station, is one of about a dozen astronauts who have taken part in the ESA’s Pangaea training course in Lanzarote over the past decade.

Named after the ancient supercontinent, Pangaea seeks to give astronauts as well as space engineers and geologists the skills needed for expeditions to other planets.

Trainees learn how to identify rock samples and collect them, do on-the-spot DNA analysis of microorganisms, and communicate their findings back to mission control.

“Here, they are put into the field to experience the exploration of a terrain, which is something they will have to do on the Moon,” said Francesco Sauro, the technical director of the course. 

– Six-year eruption –

Gerst said the Pangaea training course, which he has just completed, helps prepare astronauts to work in a remote setting on their own.

“If we run into a problem, we have to solve it ourselves,” he said.

He completed the Pangaea training along with Stephanie Wilson, one of NASA’s most senior astronauts. Both are possible candidates for NASA’s next crewed Moon missions.

Named for the goddess who was Apollo’s twin sister in ancient Greek mythology, NASA’s Artemis programme aims to return astronauts to the Moon’s surface as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame might slip.

Twelve astronauts walked on the Moon during six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, the only spaceflights yet to place humans on the lunar surface.

NASA and the ESA also regularly use Lanzarote’s landscape of twisted mounds of solidified lava to test Mars Rovers — remote controlled vehicles designed to travel on the surface of the Red Planet.

Lanzarote’s unique geography stems from a volcanic eruption that began in 1730 and lasted six years, spewing ash and lava over large swathes of land.

Considered one of the greatest volcanic cataclysms in recorded history, the eruption devastated over 200 square kilometres (77 square miles) of terrain — about a quarter of the island which is currently home to around 156,000 people.

– ‘See far away’ –

While there are other volcanic areas such as Hawaii that could also be used for astronaut training, Lanzarote has the advantage that it has little vegetation due to its desert-like climate.

“You have a lot of different types of volcanic rocks in Lanzarote. And they are exposed. You don’t have trees,” said Pangaea project leader Loredana Bessone.

“You can see far away, as if you were on the Moon,” she told AFP.

The Canary Islands is making a big contribution to space exploration in another way too. The island of La Palma is home to one of the world’s largest optical telescopes.

Located on a peak, the Great Canary Telescope is able to spot some of the faintest, most distant objects in the Universe.

La Palma was selected as the site for the telescope because of its cloud-free skies and relatively low light pollution.

The family of jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah announced Friday they have requested a presidential pardon for him as concern for his health mounts after a months-long hunger strike.

“Attached is the text of the pardon request that I submitted today, confirming… my readiness to take all available legal methods that guarantee a solution to my brother’s crisis,” his sister Mona Seif wrote on Twitter.

It comes after the activist escalated a months-long hunger strike and stopped drinking water as the COP27 climate summit got underway in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last Sunday.

Egypt has granted presidential pardons to a total of 766 political prisoners since the reactivation of a pardon policy in April this year, according to data compiled by Amnesty International. 

But over the same period, close to double that number have been jailed for their activism, Amnesty says.

On Thursday, the Egyptian prosecutor said the jailed dissident’s “vital signs… are normal,” and that he “is in good health and does not need to be transferred to hospital”, amid growing concerns over his health.

His sister responded at the time calling the prosecutor’s remarks a “lie”, adding that the authorities were forcibly intervening to “deny” his hunger strike “so that he won’t die”.

Abdel Fattah’s mother Laila Soueif, who has tried to access the prison where he is being held, was informed that “medical intervention was taken… with the knowledge of judicial entities”, Seif wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

US President Joe Biden made a lightning visit to Egypt Friday for the COP27 UN climate talks and raised human rights issues in a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The White House had earlier expressed “deep concern” about Abdel Fattah, after the activist’s lawyer said he had been refused access to him, despite being authorised for such a visit by the interior ministry.

Abdel Fattah, a key figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “spreading false news” by sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.

President Joe Biden vowed at UN climate talks on Friday that the United States was on track to slash its carbon emissions, urging all nations to ramp up their own efforts to avert catastrophic global warming.

His speech came at the halfway point of a two-week COP27 conference in Egypt where rich polluters like the US are under pressure to finally provide the funding developing countries have been promised in the battle against climate change.

Biden touted the passage of a massive, $369 billion spending package to green the US economy as an achievement that would “shift the paradigm” for his country and the entire world.

“The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security and the very life of the planet,” Biden said.

In an hours-long visit to Egypt before heading to Asia for ASEAN and G20 summits, Biden said the United States “will meet” its goal of cutting emissions 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. 

He also announced plans to step up efforts to cut methane emissions — a major contributor to global warming — by plugging fossil fuel leaks and requiring companies to act on leaks reported by credible third parties.

“To permanently bend the emissions curve, every nation needs to step up. At this gathering, we must renew and raise our climate ambitions,” he said.

“The United States has acted, everyone has to act. It’s a duty and responsibility of global leadership,” said Biden, whose administration also announced plans to require federal contractors to reduce their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

– Howl of protest –

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has sent energy prices soaring, has raised concerns that tackling climate change has dropped down the priority list of many countries.

“Russia’s war only enhances the urgency of the need to transition the world off its dependence on fossil fuels,” Biden said.

His 22-minute speech was briefly interrupted by a small group of demonstrators, who howled and attempted to unfurl a banner protesting fossil fuels before they were removed by UN security.

New research shows just how dauntingly hard it will be to meet the ambitious goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — requiring emissions to be slashed nearly in half by 2030.

The new study — published on Friday in the journal Earth System Science Data — found that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are on track to rise one percent in 2022 to reach an all-time high.

Before his speech, Biden met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of COP27, where he raised human rights issues with his host amid concerns over the health of jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, who is on a months-long hunger strike.

Abdel Fattah’s family later announced that they had requested a presidential pardon for him following calls for his release from a raft of Western governments, including the United States.

– Mixed reviews –

Biden’s visit to COP27 came three days after US midterm elections that have raised questions about what the result could mean for US climate policy.

His climate speech earned mix reviews from COP27 participants.

“President Biden is advancing the boldest climate agenda of any American president by far,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.

But he said the US was “grossly underperforming” on its commitments in a $100-billion-a-year global climate funding programme to help developing nations transition to renewable energy and build resilience.

Biden has pledged to double the US contribution to $11.4 billion, but Democrats may be running out of time to honour that as control of the House of Representatives appears poised to shift to the Republicans from January in the wake of this week’s vote.

Others pointed out that the United States has previously blocked efforts to establish a “loss and damage” mechanism that would see rich polluters compensate poorer countries for the destruction from climate-induced natural disasters.

Biden did not address the “loss and damage” mechanism idea in his speech, though the United States has allowed it to be on the official COP27 agenda.

“Joe Biden comes to COP27 and makes new promises but his old promises have not even been fulfilled,” said Mohamed Dowd, founder of the Power Shift Africa think tank.

“He is like a salesman selling goods with endless small print.”

bur-lth/klm/kir

M23 rebels and DR Congo troops clashed heavily in North Kivu province on Friday as Angola’s president pursued diplomatic efforts to bring peace between neighbours Kinshasa and Kigali.

Tensions between DR Congo and Rwanda are at their highest in years, with the DRC accusing its smaller neighbour of backing the M23, charges the Rwandan government denies.

In eastern DRC, local people reported hearing heavy artillery fire around Rugari, in Rutshuru territory, from early morning as the army targeted M23 combatants.

The DRC military had this week deployed Sukhoi-25 jets and Mi-24 helicopters against the M23, a mainly Tutsi Congolese militia.

The clashes sent more people fleeing for safety, one witness told AFP by telephone from Rumangabo, 10 kilometres (six miles) from Rugari.

“We can hear the sound of the bombing,” he said.

Medical sources said at least five civilians, including two children, were killed and 11 wounded in Friday’s fighting.

The artillery fire was coming from Kibumba on a main road which runs to the regional capital Goma.

An AFP reporter on the edge of the city saw an army tank and lorry loaded with munitions heading towards the combat zone.

“Fighting continues at Rugari. We are making progress,” a security source said.

During the afternoon, power was disrupted in Goma after a transmission line from a hydroelectric plant was hit, Virunga Energies said.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) said gunmen had attacked UN-backed school canteens in the Rutshuru area, which is under M23 control.

“Six primary schools were targeted for now and food stocks taken forcibly,” a WFP statement said.

– ‘Regional efforts’ –

“Armed groups came with lorries and took the stocks that were at the schools in Kiwanja and Rutshuru,” said the WFP coordinator for the region.

“At the moment, in Rutshuru territory, it’s M23 who are active. Obviously we suspect them, because they control the two towns,” in North Kivu province, he added.

The M23 has won a string of victories against the DRC’s army in North Kivu province in recent weeks, dramatically increasing the territory under its control.

Mineral-rich DRC is struggling to contain dozens of armed militias including the M23, which rose to prominence in 2012, briefly occupying Goma.

But after laying mostly dormant for years, it resumed fighting in 2021, claiming the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate them into the army, among other grievances.

Eastern DRC has been plagued for nearly three decades by armed groups, many of them inherited from the wars that bloodied the region in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Angolan President Joao Lourenco was visiting Rwanda on Friday as part of diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute with the DRC and is due in Kinshasa Saturday.

Kinshasa expelled Rwanda’s ambassador at the end of last month, while also recalling its envoy from Kigali.

Lourenco was to hold talks with Rwandan President Paul Kagame “as part of the regional efforts to normalise relations between Rwanda and DR Congo”, the ruling party newspaper The New Times said.

The meeting comes on the heels of talks between the countries’ two foreign ministers who agreed on Saturday to accelerate efforts to resolve the diplomatic crisis.

A roadmap for ending hostilities had been reached at an Angola-brokered summit between Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Felix Tshisekedi in July. 

On Wednesday, Kenya’s parliament approved the deployment of more than 900 troops to the DRC as part of a regional force established to try to restore security in the east.

Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta, the East African Community bloc’s mediator for the situation, will visit Kinshasa on Sunday for a 48-hour working visit, the DRC’s presidency said.

burs-at-mbb/bp/cdw/gw/lcm

President Joe Biden vowed at UN climate talks on Friday that the United States was on track to slash its carbon emissions, urging all nations to ramp up their own efforts to avert catastrophic global warming.

Biden touted the passage of a massive, $369 billion spending package to green the United States economy as an example for the entire world.

While the US spending on its own renewable energy push has been praised by activists, Washington has come under criticism for falling short on its pledges to financially help developing countries with their own transitions and to cope with intensifying climate-induced impacts.

“The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security and the very life of the planet,” Biden told an audience at the COP27 in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Biden said the United States is “on track” to achieve its pledge of cutting emissions 50-52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“To permanently bend the emissions curve, every nation needs to step up. At this gathering, we must renew and raise our climate ambitions,” he said.

“The United States has acted, everyone has to act. It’s a duty and responsibility of global leadership.”

His speech, which lasted about 22 minutes, was briefly interrupted by unidentified people in the crowd making howling noises and attempting to unfurl a banner protesting fossil fuels.

New research shows just how dauntingly hard it will be to meet the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — requiring emissions to be slashed nearly in half by 2030.

The new study — published on Friday in the journal Earth System Science Data — found that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are on track to rise one percent in 2022 to reach an all-time high.

Biden’s visit to the COP, lasting only a few hours, came three days after US midterm elections that have raised questions about what the result could mean for US climate policy.

Before his speech, Biden met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the sidelines of COP27, where he raised human rights issues with his host amid concerns over the health of jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, who is on a hunger strike.

– War ‘enhances urgency’ –

The lightning visit to Egypt marks the start of a week-long trip abroad that will also take him to an ASEAN regional summit in Cambodia at the weekend, before he travels to Indonesia for G20 talks.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has sent energy prices soaring, has raised concerns that solving the climate problem has dropped on the priority list of many countries.

“Russia’s war only enhances the urgency of the need to transition the world off its dependence on fossil fuels,” Biden said.

In his speech, however, Biden did not mention another issue that has been at the forefront of the COP27 meeting: calls for the United States and other rich polluters to compensate developing countries for the damage caused by natural disasters.

Calling out the United States as “the historic polluter”, Mohamed Adow, founder of the think tank Power Shift Africa, said Washington has been an obstacle to the establishment of a “loss and damage” fund.

The issue was officially placed on the agenda of COP27, with fraught negotiations expected before the meeting ends on November 18.

– ‘Super-Emitter’ –

Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, told reporters that Biden’s attendance at COP27 was a “very good sign” that reassures other countries that “the United States at the highest level takes this issue incredibly seriously”.

US climate envoy John Kerry presented this week a public-private partnership aimed at supporting the transition to renewable energy in developing nations and based on a carbon credit system.

But the plan has been panned by activists wary of firms using these to “offset” their carbon emissions.

The White House announced Friday plans to require federal contractors to set targets to reduce their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

It also aims to step up efforts to cut methane emissions — a major contributor to global warming — with a “Super-Emitter Response Programme” that would require companies to act on leaks reported by “credible” third parties.

Biden has also pledged to contribute $11.4 billion to a $100 billion per-year-scheme through which rich countries will help developing nations transition to renewable energies and build climate resilience.

But Democrats may be running out of time to honour that as control of the House of Representatives appears poised to shift to the Republicans from January in the wake of this week’s mid-term elections.