World

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.

A new fund helping low-income countries tackle the impacts of climate change already has around $40 billion worth of commitments, but this is “nothing in comparison with the needs,” IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said Tuesday.

Several countries have won loan deals from the International Monetary Fund’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST), but global leaders are urging that more be done to aid nations grappling with the costly fallout from climate change.

“If we do nothing to move financing… by 2030, 66 percent of carbon emissions will come from the developing world,” Georgieva said in an interview with AFP.

“If we want to succeed in our fight against climate change, it is paramount to move financing to where it would make a difference,” she added, on the sidelines of a panel discussion on the RST.

For now, the three countries that have crossed the finish line with RST financing are Costa Rica, Barbados and Rwanda, while a deal with Bangladesh is headed for further approval.

“The interest is very significant from both low-income countries and vulnerable middle-income countries, especially small island states,” Georgieva said.

She added that the IMF expects more members to commit resources “so we don’t end up having to ration support for countries.”

At the panel in Washington, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said long-term capital is needed for many issues, adding that debt sustainability metrics could be revisited.

“Every dollar of debt is not equivalent. A dollar of debt to build a school does not give me the same rate of return as quickly as a dollar of debt to build a geothermal facility,” she said.

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also stressed at the event the importance of supply chains when it comes to building resilience in developing countries.

“Supply chains for certain products are highly concentrated. Eighty percent of vaccines are exported from 10 countries,” she said, adding that similar situations may apply to items like solar panels and chips.

“Why can’t we… diversify manufacturing… so we have supply chains that are global, and diversified, and more resilient?” Okonjo-Iweala said.

US researchers have finally surpassed an important milestone for nuclear fusion technology: getting more energy out than was put in.

The US Department of Energy announced on Tuesday that it had made a historic breakthrough with what some consider to be the energy of the future.

Here is an update on how nuclear fusion — which produces no greenhouse gases and leaves little waste — works, what projects are underway and estimates on when they could be completed:

– Energy of the stars –

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

In fact, fusion is the process that powers the sun.

Two light hydrogen atoms, when they collide at very high speeds, fuse together into one heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the process.

“Controlling the power source of the stars is the greatest technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken,” tweeted physicist Arthur Turrell, author of “The Star Builders.”

– Two distinct methods –

Producing fusion reactions on Earth is only possible by heating matter to extremely high temperatures — over 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit).

“So we have to find ways to isolate this extremely hot matter from anything that could cool it down. This is the problem of containment,” Erik Lefebvre, project leader at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), told AFP.

One method is to “confine” the fusion reaction with magnets.

In a huge donut-shaped reactor, light hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) are heated until they reach the state of plasma, a very low density gas.

Magnets confine the swirling plasma gas, preventing it from coming into contact with the chamber’s walls, while the atoms collide and begin fusing.

This is the type of reactor used in the major international project known as ITER, currently under construction in France, as well as the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, England.

A second method is inertial confinement fusion, in which high energy lasers are directed simultaneously into a thimble-sized cylinder containing the hydrogen.

This is the technique used by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California who were behind Tuesday’s announcement.

Inertial confinement is used to demonstrate the physical principles of fusion, while magnetic confinement seeks to mimic future industrial-scale reactors.

– State of research –

For decades, scientists had attempted to achieve what is known as “net energy gain” — in which more energy is produced by the fusion reaction than it takes to activate it.

LLNL director Kim Budil cautioned that much remains to be done before it can be commercially viable.

“There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science but in technology,” Budil said. “A few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.”

To get there, researchers must first increase the efficiency of the lasers and reproduce the experiment more frequently. 

– Fusion’s benefits –

The NIF’s success has sparked great excitement in the scientific community, which is hoping the technology could be a game-changer for global energy production.

Unlike fission, fusion carries no risk of nuclear accidents.

“If a few lasers are missing and they don’t go off at the right time, or if the confinement of the plasma by the magnetic field… is not perfect,” the reaction will simply stop, Lefebvre says.

Nuclear fusion also produces much less radioactive waste than current power plants, and above all, emits no greenhouse gases.

“It is an energy source that is totally carbon-free, generates very little waste, and is intrinsically extremely safe,” according to Lefebvre, who says fusion could be “a future solution for the world’s energy problems.”

Regardless of Tuesday’s announcement, however, the technology is still a far way off from producing energy on an industrial scale, and cannot therefore be relied on as an immediate solution to the climate crisis.

The world’s largest volcano, which has offered a spectacular weeks-long show in its first eruption for almost four decades, has gone quiet, scientists in Hawaii said Tuesday.

At the height of the flare-up, Mauna Loa spewed fountains of lava 200 feet (60 meters) into the sky, and sent rivers of molten rock gushing down its sides, wowing vulcanologists and helicopter-riding tourists.

Huge fissures on the volcano, which makes up the bulk of Hawaii’s Big Island, vented tons of gas, and sprayed slivers of volcanic glass — known as Pele’s Hair.

But on Tuesday, experts at the US Geological Survey said the show was largely over.

“Mauna Loa is no longer erupting,” an update said.

“Lava supply to the fissure 3 vent on the Northeast Rift Zone ceased on December 10 and sulfur dioxide emissions have decreased to near pre-eruption background levels.

“Volcanic tremor and earthquakes associated with the eruption are greatly diminished.”

But such is the volume — and intense heat — of the viscous rock that issued from the Earth’s belly, that hot spots could remain visible for weeks.

“Spots of incandescence may remain near the vent, along channels, and at the flow front for days or weeks as the lava flows cool,” the scientists said.

“However, eruptive activity is not expected to return based on past eruptive behavior.”

– ‘Long Mountain’ –

The biggest volcano on Earth by volume, Mauna Loa, whose name means “Long Mountain,” is larger than the rest of the Hawaiian islands combined.

The volcano’s submarine flanks stretch for miles to an ocean floor that is in turn depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass — making its summit some 11 miles above its base, according to the USGS. 

One of six active volcanoes on the Hawaiian islands, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since 1843.

Before this one, its most recent eruption, in 1984, lasted 22 days.

Kilauea, a volcano on the southeastern flank of Mauna Loa, erupted almost continuously between 1983 and 2019, and a minor eruption there has been ongoing for months.