Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard

Christopher Flavelle & Kalen Goodluck

Pierre Augare, a member of the Quinault Nation in Taholah, Wash., a community on the Olympic Peninsula that has been planning a retreat from the ocean for almost a decade.Credit...Josué Rivas for The New York Times

Many Native people were forced into the most undesirable areas of America, first by white settlers, then by the government. Now, parts of that marginal land are becoming uninhabitable.

In Chefornak, a Yu’pik village near the western coast of Alaska, the water is getting closer.

The thick ground, once frozen solid, is thawing. The village preschool, its blue paint peeling, sits precariously on wooden stilts in spongy marsh between a river and a creek. Storms are growing stronger. At high tide these days, water rises under the building, sometimes keeping out the children, ages 3 to 5. The shifting ground has warped the floor, making it hard to close the doors. Mold grows.

“I love our building,” said Eliza Tunuchuk, one of the teachers. “At the same time, I want to move.”

The village, where the median income is about $11,000 a year, sought help from the federal government to build a new school on dry land — one of dozens of buildings in Chefornak that must be relocated. But agency after agency offered variations on the same response: no.

From Alaska to Florida, Native Americans are facing severe climate challenges, the newest threat in a history marked by centuries of distress and dislocation. While other communities struggle on a warming planet, Native tribes are experiencing an environmental peril exacerbated by policies — first imposed by white settlers and later the United States government — that forced them onto the country’s least desirable lands.

And now, climate change is quickly making that marginal land uninhabitable. The first Americans face the loss of home once again.

Chefornak, Alaska, where the foundations of many buildings are failing as the permafrost thaws, in April. Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times

In the Pacific Northwest, coastal erosion and storms are eating away at tribal land, forcing native communities to try to move inland. In the Southwest, severe drought means Navajo Nation is running out of drinking water. At the edge of the Ozarks, heirloom crops are becoming harder to grow, threatening to disconnect the Cherokee from their heritage.

Compounding the damage from its past decisions, the federal government has continued to neglect Native American communities, where substandard housing and infrastructure make it harder to cope with climate shocks.

The federal government is also less likely to help Native communities recover from extreme weather or help protect them against future calamities, a New York Times review of government data shows.

Interviews with officials, members and advisers at 15 federally recognized tribes portray a gathering climate crisis and a test of the country’s renewed focus on racial equity and environmental justice.

Many tribes have been working to meet the challenges posed by the changing climate. And they have expressed hope that their concerns would be addressed by President Biden, who has committed to repairing the relationship with tribal nations and appointed Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary, to run the Interior Department. But Mr. Biden has announced few specific policies or actions to directly reduce the climate risk already facing Native communities, and Ms. Haaland’s office declined repeated requests for an interview.

“The stakes are very, very high,” said Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “We’re running out of time.”

Forced Off Their Land, Again

Fawn Sharp, former president of the Quinault Nation and president of the National Congress of American Indians. “The stakes are very, very high,” she said.Credit...Josué Rivas for The New York Times

The Quileute Nation is a collection of about 135 homes on a narrow slice of land at the edge of the Olympic Peninsula that juts into the Pacific, about 100 miles west of Seattle.

As temperatures rise, the atmosphere holds more water, producing more frequent and intense storms. High winds now regularly knock out the electricity, while homes along the main street are vulnerable to flooding. The single road that connects the community to the outside world is often rendered impassable by water.

“The village is 10 to 15 feet above sea level,” said Susan Devine, a project manager who is working with the Quileute. During major storms “those waves are bigger than you,” she said.

Hundreds of years ago, the reservation was a fishing village, among many locations used by the Quileute as they moved according to the demands of the weather.

That changed in 1855 when a treaty stripped the tribe of most of its land; President Grover Cleveland later issued an executive order confining the Quileute to a single square mile — all of it exposed to flooding.

“No one chose to be in a seasonal fishing area year-round,” Ms. Devine said.

The resulting vulnerability has pushed the tribe to pursue a solution that few non-Native towns in the United States have seriously considered: Retreating to higher ground.

A totem pole in Taholah, Wash., that was carved to commemorate the 2013 Tribal Canoe Journey, an annual event for Pacific Northwest tribes.Credit...Josué Rivas for The New York Times

Taholah is exposed to storms and flooding but the tribe has struggled to get enough federal help to relocate.Credit...Josué Rivas for The New York Times

“Climate change has forced us to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave the village,” Doug Woodruff, chairman of the Quileute Tribal Council, said in a December statement. “Without a cohesive national and international strategy to address climate change, there is little we can do to combat these impacts.”

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Woodruff and other members of the council declined repeated requests to be interviewed.

In 2012, Congress gave the tribe permission to relocate inside the adjacent Olympic National Park. But without a tax base to pay for its move, the tribe sought federal money. Progress has been slow: The Quileute received about $50 million in grants to build a new school farther from the coast, but the total cost to relocate homes and other facilities could be two or three times that much, according to Larry Burtness, who manages federal grant applications for the Quileute.

 Forty miles south, the Quinault tribe has been working on its own plan to retreat from Taholah, the reservation’s main town, for almost a decade. Tucked between a driftwood-strewn beach and a coastal rainforest, Taholah is exposed to storms, flooding and frequent power outages. That tribe has also struggled to get federal help.

“There’s no single source of revenue, at a state level or congressionally, to undertake these kinds of projects,” said Ms. Sharp, who was president of Quinault Nation until March.

A Struggle for Federal Aid

The federal government offers help to communities coping with the effects of climate change. But Native Americans have often been less able to access that help than other Americans.

“We’re the most disproportionately impacted by climate, but we’re the very least funded,” said Ann Marie Chischilly, executive director of the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals at Northern Arizona University.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is less likely to grant requests for aid from native tribes recovering from disaster, compared to non-Native communities, according to FEMA data.

Native Americans are also less likely to have flood insurance, making it harder to rebuild. Of 574 federally recognized tribes, fewer than 50 participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, according to a review of FEMA data.

That’s partly because the federal government has completed flood maps for just one-third of federally recognized tribes, compared with the vast majority of counties. Flood maps can help tribal leaders more precisely understand their flood risks and prompt residents to purchase flood insurance.

But insurance premiums can be prohibitively expensive for Native Americans.

Individual households on Native lands are also less likely to get federal help girding for disasters. Of the 59,303 properties that have received FEMA grants since 1998 to prepare for disasters, just 48 were on tribal lands, according to Carlos Martín, a researcher at the Urban Institute.

Anna Abraham, Chefornak’s mayor, grew up hearing stories from elders about how the weather would warm. “I never thought that I’d be living to see it,” she said.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times

Chefornak’s preschool sits on stilts in thawing permafrost. At high tide, water reaches the building, which needs to be moved to safer land. Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times

A home that collapsed into the eroding coast. Its former occupant, Delores Abraham, now lives in a city building that was designated as a pandemic quarantine space.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times

FEMA said it is committed to improving tribal access to its programs.

Chefornak’s efforts to relocate its preschool illustrate the current difficulties of dealing with the federal government.

While FEMA offers grants to cope with climate hazards, replacing the school wasn’t an eligible expense, according to Max Neale, a senior program manager at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, who helped Chefornak search for federal aid.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a program to pay for infrastructure on tribal lands, but the maximum amount available wasn’t enough for a new school, and the agency wouldn’t grant money until the village had found other ways to make up the difference, Mr. Neale said.

HUD declined to comment on the record.

Replacing the preschool would only begin to address Chefornak’s troubles. Some two dozen homes need to be relocated, potentially costing more than $10 million, according to Sean Baginski, an engineer working with the village. And Chefornak is just one of more than 100 Native villages in Alaska alone that are exposed to significant climate risks.

“If the intent is for the government to find a way to fund this stuff,” Mr. Baginski said, “now would be a good time.”

Living Without Water

Damian Cabman, a member of the Navajo tribe, filled buckets of water to take home at the Bataan water loading station in Gallup, N.M. Many tribe members had relied on wells that have run dry with climate change. Credit...Kalen Goodluck for The New York Times

Twice a week, Vivienne Beyal climbs into her GMC Sierra in Window Rock, a northern Arizona town that is the capital of Navajo Nation, and drives 45 minutes across the border into New Mexico. When she reaches the outskirts of Gallup, she joins something most Americans have never seen: a line for water.

Ms. Beyal’s destination is a squat concrete building that looks like a utility shed, save for the hoses that extend from either side. Once there, she waits as much as half an hour for her turn at the pump, then fills the four 55-gallon plastic barrels in the back of her truck.

The facility, which is run by the city of Gallup, works like an air pump at a gas station: Each quarter fed into the coin slot buys 17 gallons of water. Most of the people in line with Ms. Beyal are also Navajo residents, crossing into New Mexico for drinking water. “You can show up whenever you want,” she said. “As long as you can pay for it.”

Ms. Beyal has lived in Window Rock for more than 30 years and once relied on the community well near her home. But after years of drought, the water steadily turned brown. Then last year, it ran dry. “It’s on us to get water now,” she said.

Like much of the American West, Navajo Nation, the largest tribe in the country, has been in a prolonged drought since the 1990s, according to Margaret Hiza Redsteer, a professor at the University of Washington.

“As snowfall and rain levels have dropped, so have the sources of drinking water,” Dr. Redsteer said. “Surface streams have disappeared, and underground aquifers that feed wells are drying up. Conditions are just continuing to deteriorate.”

Leon Yellow Mexican used a backhoe to clear sand in Tuba City, Ariz., a Navajo town. Drought and loss of vegetation have unmoored sand, which forms dunes that block roads and threaten to bury structures.Credit...Kalen Goodluck for The New York Times

Roland Tso, a grazing official for the Navajo Nation at Many Farms Lake. “We’ve got to adapt to these conditions,” he said.Credit...Kalen Goodluck for The New York Times

But unlike nearby communities like Gallup and Flagstaff, Navajo Nation lacks an adequate municipal water supply. About one-third of the tribe lives without running water.

The federal government says the groundwater in the eastern section of Navajo Nation that feeds its communal wells is “rapidly depleting.”

“This is really textbook structural racism,” said George McGraw, chief executive officer of DigDeep, a nonprofit group that delivers drinking water to homes that need it. Navajo Nation has the greatest concentration of those households in the lower 48 states, he said.

The federal government is working on a billion-dollar project to direct more water from the San Juan River to a portion of the reservation, but that work won’t be finished until 2028.

The drought is also changing the landscape. Reptiles and other animals are disappearing with the water, migrating to higher ground. And as vegetation dies, cattle and sheep have less to eat. Sand dunes once anchored by the plants become unmoored — cutting off roads, smothering junipers and even threatening to bury houses.

“We’ve got to adapt to these conditions,” said Roland Tso, an official in the Many Farms area of Navajo Nation, where high temperatures hovered near 100 degrees for much of June. “We’re seeing the weather going crazy.”

New Administration, New Promises

As a presidential candidate last year, Mr. Biden highlighted the connection between global warming and Native Americans, saying that climate change poses a particular threat to Indigenous people.

But Mr. Biden’s most ambitious climate proposal, written into his $2 trillion infrastructure plan, included just two references to tribal lands: unspecified money for water projects and relocation of the most vulnerable tribes.

A White House spokesman, Vedant Patel, declined to comment on the record.

Ms. Haaland’s role as interior secretary gives her vast authority over tribal nations. But the department declined to talk about plans to protect tribal nations from climate change.

Instead, her agency provided a list of programs that already exist, including grants that started during the Obama administration.

“At interior, we are already hard at work to address the climate crisis, restore balance on public lands, and waters, advance environmental justice, and invest in a clean energy future,” Ms. Haaland said in a statement.

Heritage at Risk

Beyond the threats to drinking water and other basic necessities, a warming planet is forcing changes in the ancient traditions.

In Northern California, wildfires threaten burial sites and other sacred places. In Alaska, rising temperatures make it harder to engage in traditions like subsistence hunting and fishing. And on Cherokee Nation land, at the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, changing precipitation and temperature patterns threaten the crops and medicinal plants that connect the tribe with its past.

In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the forced relocation of five tribes, including the notorious march of the Cherokee, from the Southeastern United States to Oklahoma, known as the Trail of Tears.

Despite losing their land, the Cherokee retained part of their culture: Heirloom beans, corn, and squash, as well as a range of medicinal plants such as ginseng, which they continued to grow in the temperate highlands at the eastern tip of their reservation.

“There was certainly a lot lost, but there was also a lot that was able to be maintained,” said Clint Carroll, a professor at the University of Colorado and a citizen of Cherokee Nation.

Now, drought and heat make it harder to grow the plants and crops of their ancestors.

Mary Tunuchuk, 77, at her home in Chefornak. A neighbor’s house was recently condemned because of proximity to the eroding coast and because a sinkhole had formed beneath. “I’m next,” she said.Credit...Ash Adams for The New York Times

“It can be seen as another removal,” Dr. Carroll said. But this time, he said, “Cherokee people aren’t moving anywhere — it’s the environment that’s shifting.”

In March, Pat Gwin, senior director for Cherokee Nation’s environmental resources group, showed a visiting journalist the tribe’s heirloom garden in Tahlequah, an enclosed plot the size of a tennis court where traditional squash, tobacco, corn, beans and gourds grow.

Seeds from the plants are distributed to Cherokee citizens once a year, a link to centuries of culture and existence that is dimming.

“Our access to and use of the land is so tied up with identity,” said Anton Treuer, professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. “It’s who we are as a people.”

The Guardian view on getting to net zero: the crunch is coming

GUARDIAN NEWS
Opinion

Bold climate targets are meaningless without policies to meet them. The PM should grab the chance to make Cop26 a success

‘So far, the partnership of Boris Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has delivered nothing on climate.’ Photograph: Tom Wilkinson/PA

Targets are all very well. But not if there is no way of reaching them. In which case, they are a sham. This is the problem now confronting the government. The UK’s stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels is very ambitious. “Remarkable” was the word used last week by Lord Deben (the former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer). He chairs the climate change committee (CCC) that advises the government. Its latest reports make an unflattering contrast between impressive aims and the absence of plans to meet them.

A strategy setting out how the UK intends to meet its net zero pledge is promised before the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November. But there is little sign so far that ministers grasp the scale of the challenge. Not a single government department, the CCC finds, is moving at the necessary pace. Transport, agriculture, buildings, industry: in all the key emissions-producing sectors bar power generation, there has been an alarming lack of progress. Cuts to the aid budget now overseen by the Foreign Office mean that it too is implicated. Support for poor countries as they make the transition away from fossil fuels has long been recognised as a crucial element of the global climate process.

The UK is far from the only country that is falling far short on its commitments. Pakistan’s climate minister, Malik Amin Aslam, described the allocation of funding in the final communique of the recent G7 meeting as “peanuts”. Leaks from an upcoming report by UN scientists highlight growing concerns that – with emissions expected to bounce back rapidly after the pandemic – tipping points such as the melting of polar ice sheets could come sooner than expected. Alarm at such findings has led a group of scientists to form a new expert group, modelled on the UK’s Independent Sage, with a view to boosting public awareness. But as host of Cop26, and as one of the biggest historical emitters due to early industrialisation, the UK has a special responsibility to stop prevaricating.

The CCC sets out the steps that ministers should now take. The restoration of the green homes grant scheme and the phasing out of gas boilers could form part of plans to boost jobs and skills as well as cutting emissions. The outsize carbon footprint of the UK’s ancient (by international standards) and poorly insulated housing stock has been ignored for far too long. It shouldn’t need pointing out that any new housing must be built to the strictest environmental standards. That it does is scandalous, and speaks volumes about the housebuilding industry’s influence on the government.

The impact of Covid on transport has been tumultuous and requires addressing in a number of ways if increased pollution from road traffic is to be avoided. The Labour-led Welsh government struck the right note last week with a promise to freeze all road-building plans. The UK government’s £27bn plans for new roads must now be revised, while London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, should follow Wales’s example by cancelling plans for a new tunnel under the Thames. Higher taxes on flying are unpopular, but necessary if people are to be persuaded to use trains instead. Meat consumption must be reduced.

None of these ideas is new. But the buildup to November’s conference is a unique and historic moment. So far, the partnership of Boris Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has delivered nothing on climate. According to the CCC, ministers “blunder into high-carbon choices”. If this doesn’t change in response to the latest warnings, the risk of a diplomatic and environmental catastrophe following not far behind the pandemic will continue to rise.

$1 billion fund for renewables among key energy commitments made during UN ministerial forums

The IKEA Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation have announced plans to launch a $1 billion fund to boost access to renewable energy in developing countries – one of the key commitments made during a series of virtual UN ministerial forums this week.

UNDP I New power cube technology on display in Vanuatu. The cubes are charged with electricity using solar rays.

“All financial institutions must align with the #ParisAgreement. This means an end to financing energy projects reliant on unabated fossil fuels as soon as possible!

Learn more from the Financing #SustainableEnergy report for #HLDE2021➡️ https://t.co/vzkwkgN0rc pic.twitter.com/cCzvjq1BUb”

— UN DESA (@UNDESA) June 25, 2021

Some 50 ministers outlined their plans to reduce emissions and ensure that all people have access to electricity and clean cooking fuels, as the world transitions away from fossil fuels, towards renewable energy.

Laying the groundwork

The ministerial gatherings laid the groundwork for the UN High-level Dialogue on Energy that will be held on 20 September to accelerate action on the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, on the energy goal, SDG 7.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Forums: “We are running far behind in the race against time to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7 by 2030, and net-zero emissions by mid-century.

He called on “every country, city, financial institution and company to raise ambition and submit ‘Energy Compacts’” for the High-level Dialogue.

Globally, nearly 760 million people lack access to electricity and 2.6 billion continue to cook with traditional fuels like wood that not only contribute to carbon emissions but also causes 4 million deaths each year from indoor smoke.

Record pledge

The commitment by the IKEA and Rockefeller Foundations is the largest single philanthropic commitment ever on this issue. A consortium of organizations led by Kenya, Malawi and the Netherlands also advanced a call to action for clean cooking. 

During the Forums, more than 25 commitments were announced as “Energy Compacts” – voluntary actions pledged to achieve clean, affordable energy for all by 2030.

National Energy Compacts were previewed by ministers from Brazil, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Germany, India, Nauru and the Netherlands.

A Compact setting a regional target of 70% renewable energy in the power matrix for Latin America, was signed onto by Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and the Inter-American Development Bank, with other countries in the region invited to join.

Big business buy-in

The ambition of governments was met by strong private sector engagement, with tech giant Google reaffirming its commitment to source carbon-free energy for all of its operations in all places, at all times, by 2030.

Joining them were companies from the hard-to-abate cement sector – Ultratech and JK Cement – which made commitments for increased use of renewables and waste heat recovery systems for greater energy efficiency.  India’s largest power supplier, NTPC, pledged to achieve 60GW of renewable energy capacity by 2032.

GOGLA, a global association for the off-grid solar energy industry, committed to delivering improved electricity access for 1 billion people by 2030.

And the Association for Rural Electricity said it would work with the private sector to deliver sustainable electricity services to at least 500 million additional people.

A number of region and city networks said they will be putting commitments on the table for the September Dialogue, with the Basque region of Spain and the City of Ithaca, New York, announcing forward-looking Energy Compacts this week.

Youth leadership

At the Forums, young activists showed that they continue to lead from the front on energy and climate issues, with several strong keynote statements from youth calling on governments to take action.

IPCC steps up warning on climate tipping points in leaked draft report

Fiona Harvey and agencies

Scientists increasingly concerned about thresholds beyond which recovery may become impossible

Dried area of the Penuelas Lake, in Valparaiso, Chile. Hunger, drought and disease will afflict tens of millions more people within decades, according to a draft UN assessment. Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Climate scientists are increasingly concerned that global heating will trigger tipping points in Earth’s natural systems, which will lead to widespread and possibly irrevocable disaster, unless action is taken urgently.

The impacts are likely to be much closer than most people realise, a a draft report from the world’s leading climate scientists suggests, and will fundamentally reshape life in the coming decades even if greenhouse gas emissions are brought under some control.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is preparing a landmark report to be published in stages this summer and next year. Most of the report will not be published in time for consideration by policymakers at Cop26, the UN climate talks taking place in November in Glasgow.

A draft of the IPCC report apparently from early this year was leaked to Agence France-Presse, which reported on its findings on Thursday. The draft warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible. It warns: “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot.”

Tipping points are triggered when temperatures reach a certain level, whereby one impact rapidly leads to a series of cascading events with vast repercussions. For instance, as rising temperatures lead to the melting of Arctic permafrost, the unfreezing soil releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that in turn causes more heating.

Other tipping points include the melting of polar ice sheets, which once under way may be almost impossible to reverse even if carbon emissions are rapidly reduced, and which would raise sea levels catastrophically over many decades, and the possibility of the Amazon rainforest switching suddenly to savannah, which scientists have said could come quickly and with relatively small temperature rises.

Bob Ward, the policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said: “Scientists have identified several potential regional and global thresholds or tipping points in the climate beyond which impacts become unstoppable or irreversible, or accelerate. They could create huge social and economic responses, such as population displacements and conflict, and so represent the largest potential risks of climate change. Tipping points should be the climate change impacts about which policymakers worry the most, but they are often left out of assessments by scientists and economists because they are difficult to quantify.”

Previous work by the IPCC has been criticised for failing to take account of tipping points. The new report is set to contain the body’s strongest warnings yet on the subject.

Simon Lewis, a professor of global change science at University College London, said: “Nothing in the IPCC report should be a surprise, as all the information comes from the scientific literature. But put together, the stark message from the IPCC is that increasingly severe heatwaves, fires, floods and droughts are coming our way with dire impacts for many countries. On top of this are some irreversible changes, often called tipping points, such as where high temperatures and droughts mean parts of the Amazon rainforest can’t persist. These tipping points may then link, like toppling dominoes.”

He added: “The exact timing of tipping points and the links between them is not well understood by scientists, so they have been under-reported in past IPCC assessments. The blunter language from the IPCC this time is welcome, as people need to know what is at stake if society does not take action to immediately slash carbon emissions.”

Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, declined to comment on the draft report but stressed that avoiding dire impacts was still possible. “It’s important people don’t get the message ‘we’re doomed anyway so why bother?’. This is a fixable problem. We could stop global warming in a generation if we wanted to, which would mean limiting future warming to not much more than has happened already this century. We also know how. It’s just a matter of getting on with it,” he said.

According to AFP, the IPCC draft details at least 12 potential tipping points. “The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own,” the report says.

The reportmay be subject to minor changes in the coming months as the IPCC shifts its focus to a key executive summary for policymakers.

It says that with 1.1C of warming above pre-industrial levels clocked so far, the climate is already changing. A decade ago, scientists believed that limiting global warming to 2C above mid-19th-century levels would be enough to safeguard the future.

That goal is enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement, adopted by nearly 200 nations who vowed to collectively cap warming at “well below” 2C – and 1.5C if possible. On current trends the world is heading for 3C at best.

Earlier models predicted that Earth-altering climate change was not likely before 2100. But the UN draft report says prolonged warming even beyond 1.5C could produce “progressively serious, centuries-long and, in some cases, irreversible consequences.”

Water of death: how arsenic is poisoning rural communities in India

Deepa Padmanaban

‘A crisis is brewing’, experts warn, with contaminated water exposing villagers to increased risk of cancer and affecting children’s brain development

Women collect water in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Arsenic contamination in communities across India has increased by 145% in the past five years. Photograph: Sanjeev Gupta/EPA

Nine members of Pankaj Rai’s family have died from cancer over the past 20 years. But the 25-year-old farmer from Bihar only found out their deaths were likely a result of arsenic poisoning when his father got sick.

In 2017, Pankaj took his father, Ganesh Rai, to the Mahavir Cancer Institute & Research Centre in Patna. Ganesh had stage 4 kidney cancer. But Dr Arun Kumar, a scientist at the institute, identified the severe skin lesions on his body as signs of arsenic poisoning.

Pankaj’s sister and a number of villagers had also developed skin lesions and gastric problems but did not know why.

Kumar and his team visited the family’s home in Sabalpur village, east of Patna, where they had moved in 2000. They analysed groundwater samples and took hair samples, where arsenic can accumulate if there is long-term exposure.

In April, they published their findings. The team discovered high levels of arsenic in the groundwater – 244ug/l. The World Health Organization recommended limit is 10ug/l. Almost 90% of hair samples had above permissible levels of 0.2mg/kg. The highest arsenic level in hair was 35.5mg/kg.

They also found six people who had participated in their research had died of cancer, including Pankaj’s father.

Arsenic is listed by the WHO as one of 10 chemicals of major health concern. About 300 million people worldwide are affected by arsenic-contaminated groundwater; chief among them are those living in India and Bangladesh.

Arsenic contamination in communities across India has increased by 145% in the past five years.

Arsenic occurs naturally and can be released from soil and rocks due to the weathering process into surrounding aquifers.

Ashok Kumar Ghosh, a scientist and chair of the Bihar State Pollution Control Board, says: “Our studies have shown a direct correlation between arsenic and cancer.”

Elevated levels of arsenic in groundwater have also been associated with neurological and cardiovascular disease, and other serious health concerns.

Arsenic contamination in India was widespread in the 1990s in West Bengal and later in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Manipur. A study in Bihar found high levels of arsenic in water samples from hand pumps installed to access groundwater for drinking.

“In the Gangetic Plain [an extensive stretch of land in the country’s central north] people are unaware they are consuming arsenic-contaminated water and falling sick,” says Kumar.

According to Ghosh, more than 1 million people have died in Bihar from arsenic-contaminated groundwater. “In 18 districts out of 38, the arsenic level is over the permissible level 10ug/l. We have recorded levels up to 760ug/l.”

Lallanji Ojha, 70, a retired farmer from Semariya Ojha Patti village, has suffered from liver cirrhosis for the past 25 years. His village was the first in Bihar to report arsenic contamination, with levels up to 1,650ug/L. “Since I have got this disease, I am not able to eat well even though I feel hungry, due to gastrointestinal problems,” he says, adding that he believes everyone in the village has some sort of digestive problem.

But a complaint filed with the National Human Rights Commission of India by the Inner Voice Foundation, a research organisation based in Uttar Pradesh, has triggered action.

Saurabh Singh, the organisation’s founder, filed the complaint after discovering that children in the district were drinking water containing high levels of arsenic after testing school pipes.

“If they are exposed to this for more than five or six years, they will be impacted. This is a big crisis brewing,” he says. Studies have found arsenic exposure can affect brain development, impair memory and intelligence in children.

Skin lesions from arsenic poisoning. Photograph: Dr Arun Kumar

In 2019, India’s rights commission directed West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to address the problem.

Bihar state government says it will set up a taskforce to prevent, detect and manage arsenic poisoning. They also launched the har ghar nal ka jal (tap water for every house) project, aiming to provide clean and safe piped water.

In West Bengal a water quality database using geographic information systems to survey sites contaminated with arsenic is being developed and awareness programmes carried out.

In 2019, the Indian government introduced the Jal Jeevan Mission, which aims to supply safe drinking water through taps to households in rural areas by 2024.

Just before the pandemic led to a national lockdown last year, Kumar’s team installed an arsenic filtration pump in Pankaj’s house in Sabalpur. Although they have not been able to go back to check the impact, Pankaj says symptoms from arsenic exposure have improved. “My younger sister’s skin lesions have reduced in the last year,” says Pankaj. “If things improve, I hope to get her married soon, and achieve my dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur.”

U.N. Says Great Barrier Reef Is ‘in Danger.’ Australia Bitterly Disagrees

Livia Albeck-Ripka

UNESCO has called on the government to quickly mitigate the effects of climate change on the natural wonder and tourist destination, but officials say they are already doing plenty.

Tourists exploring the Great Barrier Reef last year. Credit...Natalie Grono for The New York Times

The United Nations has recommended that the Great Barrier Reef be placed on a list of World Heritage sites that are “in danger,” prompting a fierce reaction from the Australian government, which defended its management of one of the country’s top tourist destinations.

The recommendation, made in a report released on Monday by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, describes the long-term outlook for the natural wonder as having “deteriorated from poor to very poor” in the past several years.

“There is no possible doubt that the property is facing ascertained danger,” the report says. It calls on Australia to take decisive and immediate action to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the fragile reef, which stretches for 1,430 miles off Australia’s northeast coast and can be seen from space.

Inside Australia, climate activists seized on the UNESCO report to argue that the country’s conservative government, whose intimate ties to the coal industry have long stalled progress on climate change, had been put on notice.

Public support for stronger climate measures has grown steadily since devastating wildfires destroyed large areas of the country’s bushland in 2019 and 2020.

Sarah Hanson-Young, a senator and the environment spokeswoman for the Australian Greens party, said the recommendation was a “warning sign to Australia from a number of other countries that we really have to step up our climate ambitions.”

“We have to do better, and this is just the latest turning of the screws,” she added.

Public support for stronger climate measures has grown since the devastating wildfires of 2019 and 2020.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

The government, however, rejected any such suggestion. It challenged the decision — a recommendation that will be considered by the United Nations next month — as unfounded, citing Australia’s “world-leading reef management” and its $2.3 billion investment in reef protection.

“This draft recommendation has been made without examining the reef first hand, and without the latest information,” Sussan Ley, Australia’s minister for the environment, said in a statement released on Tuesday, adding that she had expressed her concerns in a call to the director general of UNESCO.

“I made it clear that we will contest this flawed approach, one that has been taken without adequate consultation,” Ms. Ley said. “This sends a poor signal to those nations who are not making the investments in reef protection that we are making.”

Leading conservative politicians claimed that the move had been driven by politics, noting that the 21-nation U.N. committee is currently chaired by China, whose relations with Australia are at their lowest point in years.

Some reef tourism operators also contested UNESCO’s characterization of the reef’s health. They said it retains its pristine beauty despite the threats it faces, and that a perception that it is dying will only further damage tourism, an industry vital to coastal areas.

“People just think, ‘Oh well, go see something else,’” said Scotty Garden, the chief executive of Passions of Paradise, a reef tour company. He added that he and other operators were committed to educating tourists about the challenges the huge ecosystem is confronting.

But scientists said that it had long been clear that the reef was suffering, citing mass coral bleaching events in 2016, 2017 and 2020 that have seriously damaged the ecosystem and its capacity to recover.

“This hasn’t come as a surprise to anyone. For the government to complain they were blindsided and ambushed is a bit cute,” said Jon Day, a senior research fellow at the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

“This isn’t just about the reef,” Dr. Day added, noting that climate change was becoming an increasing threat to most World Heritage sites, both natural and cultural.

Scientists warn that the reef’s future is in serious peril because of climate change.Credit...Kyodo News, via Associated Press

UNESCO lists World Heritage sites based on criteria that prove their “outstanding universal value.” When these characteristics are threatened, most often by conflict and war, natural disasters, pollution or unchecked development, the council lists the sites as “in danger” in an effort to raise awareness and encourage governments to take action.

Sites listed as endangered have included the Galápagos Islands, some 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, which were later removed, and the Iranian city of Bam, which was devastated by an earthquake in 2003. If sites are destroyed, they are sometimes removed completely.

In 2015, UNESCO recommended shifting the status of the Great Barrier Reef to “in danger.” But successful lobbying by a conservative-led government, which claimed that the group was engaged in a “misinformation” campaign, stopped the site from being reclassified.

A Reef 2050 Plan instituted that year has since made some commendable strides, according to a government report released in 2019, but ultimately has failed to stop the reef’s decline. The report added that “accelerated action at all possible levels is required to address the threat from climate change.”

Scientists warn that the reef’s future is in serious peril, as it faces compounding threats including rising sea temperatures, diminished water quality from sediment runoff, more powerful cyclones and swarms of crown-of-thorns starfish.

Coral is extremely sensitive to even minor rises in temperature, making it a barometer for the world’s overall progress in stalling global warming.

“Business-as-usual managing of the Great Barrier Reef is not stuff to stop its ongoing decline,” said Terry Hughes, a professor at the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

“If we can reach the Paris target, or very close to it, we’ll still have a Barrier Reef,” he said, referring to global climate pledges reached in France in 2015. But, he added, “we’ve got a narrowing window of opportunity.”

'All the water's bad': In McDowell County, you have to get creative to find safe drinking water

Hannah Rappleye and Adiel Kaplan

To get drinking water, Burlyn Cooper and his neighbors have to collect runoff from the rock face of a mountain. It’s contaminated, but it’s all they have.

BRADSHAW, W.Va. — Every week, Burlyn Cooper parks on the edge of a winding two-lane road, unloads a dozen plastic jugs from the trunk of his car, and uses a hose to fill them with the spring water that drips from a mountain's exposed rock face. For Cooper and many of his neighbors, the mountain's runoff is their most reliable, and trusted, source of drinking water.

"I've got so used to it, I wouldn't know how to act, to turn the faucet on and have good water," he said. "I can't imagine it."

Cooper and his wife, Hazel, once depended on wells for water. More than 43 million Americans use wells, which can be a plentiful source of clean water. Today, however, the Coopers' two wells are too polluted to drink from — the result, they suspect, of nearby natural gas extraction. The once-clear water, which they now only use to wash themselves and water their animals, is orange and sour-smelling. It leaves a thick sludge in their sinks, rust-colored stains on their taps and clothes, and an itchy, red rash on Burlyn's skin.

Hazel and Burlyn Cooper stand near their hand-dug well. They now only use the water to wash themselves and water their animals.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

So the Coopers gather water however they can, as do many other residents of McDowell County, once the crown jewel of coal country and now among the nation's poorest counties. They haul roadside water, collect rainwater in tanks, or spend their limited income on bottled water, all because they lack safe and reliable water and plumbing at home.

"It don't matter if you're around here or there," Cooper said. "In McDowell County, seems like all the water's bad."

An estimated 2 million Americans live without access to either safe drinking water, indoor plumbing or basic sanitation, according to DigDeep, a nonprofit that works to bring water to Americans without it. This "water access gap" disproportionately affects low-income, rural communities and people of color — communities left behind by the massive national investment in public water infrastructure in the past century.

Researchers found high levels of contaminants in the water from the Coopers' wells. The water leaves behind a thick sludge and a rash across Burlyn's skin.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

"This is absolutely at an individual, community, and nation level a crisis," said George McGraw, founder and CEO of DigDeep.

Ending that crisis, especially in McDowell County, is a complex task.

Welcome to McDowell

McDowell County is rich with water. Rivers and streams course through dense forests. But a confluence of economic decline, aging infrastructure and rugged terrain has made it an uphill fight to bring that water to people's taps.

Seventy years ago, more than 100,000 people called McDowell home. Coal was king. In the 1950s, its mountains produced more coal than any other U.S. county. The middle class grew and its towns boasted department stores, restaurants and movie theaters.

But as the coal industry mechanized in the '60s, mines began shutting down. McDowell was hit again 20 years later, when the decline of the American steel industry took many of the remaining jobs.

The county's population now hovers somewhere around 17,600 people. Thirty-three percent of its population lives below the poverty line. The dearth of economic opportunity has forced an exodus of young and working-age people, leaving behind a graying population and a minimal tax base to fund development and infrastructure.

Today, many McDowell residents are living through a water crisis, McDowell County Commissioner Cody Estep said. Some towns have been under boil-water advisories for years. Many locals rely on wells, but those are vulnerable to contamination from their surroundings, and can be expensive to fix. An estimated two-thirds of homes lack basic wastewater treatment, and many homeowners pipe waste straight into nearby streams. "People are beat down," he said. "Our population is aging. They're not able to haul water like they used to. Wells are dried up."

In the past 18 years, McDowell County's Public Service District, the county's public water utility, has taken over nine local water systems, and is set to take control of more soon — most of them small systems built and once maintained by coal companies.

Water cascades from a roadside spring where residents collect drinking water in McDowell County, W.Va.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

"We're dealing with leaks, we're dealing with overages, we're dealing with customer complaints, and we know it's going to be several years before we can get the funding to replace those systems," Mavis Brewster, the PSD's general manager, said.

The utility has at least a dozen improvement projects on its wish list, she said. But it doesn't have the money. Water systems are among the most expensive types of infrastructure to build and maintain, and public water utilities are largely funded by the rates customers pay them. A dwindling, low-income population means fewer rate payers, and less money for necessary upgrades.

Cash-strapped rural utilities often finance upgrades through a patchwork of state and federal funds, including loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But McDowell is already saddled with debt from such loans, Brewster said, and pays about $34,000 to cover it each month. That means she and her team spend a substantial amount of time applying for grants, so the utility won't have to take on more debt or raise rates.

In the meantime, Brewster fields a steady stream of calls from residents crying out for public water.

"In this day and time, everyone should have clean, dependable public water if they choose," she said. "That's just a very basic need. It's hard for me to imagine that people in the United States don't have that, and can't get it, [or that] you can't get the funding approved for the project to provide that to those people."

'Be patient'

In 2012, the McDowell PSD extended public water lines up part of Bradshaw Mountain, to the taps of some 450 households and businesses. But the funding only went so far. Delphine Stacy and her husband, Burl, live just 1 mile past the end of the water line, and the PSD has been unable to secure grants to extend it further. The Stacys' well dried up years ago.

Burl and Delphine Stacy live on a mountain ridge, just one mile from a public water line, but have to rely on rainwater and bottled water to drink, wash and cook with.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

Stacy calls Brewster nearly every week to ask for news about the water lines. She calls Estep, the county commissioner. She's even called West Virginia's governor, Jim Justice, who owns several coal mines in McDowell.

The connection to public water would cut her monthly water costs from about $100 to about $30. Disabled and on a fixed income, the extra $70 could go a long way for her.

"They tell me to be patient," Stacy said.

Estep, who was born and raised on Bradshaw Mountain, does what he can to help residents like the Stacys, hauling plastic water tanks up the mountain and finding equipment they need for repairs. While state and local officials like himself failed to plan for the future, he said, he also feels like the county has been left behind.

McDowell needs industry and jobs to grow, but it can't attract economic opportunity without basic infrastructure, like water. To solve its water crisis, he said, the county that once helped power the nation needs federal help.

"We're not begging, pleading for money as much as we are asking for a helping hand," he said. "Just help us get back on track here. … Give us something to start with, and we'll take it from there."

McDowell County Commissioner Cody Estep draws water from a mountain spring, the only source of drinking water for many residents.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

The U.S. has increasingly extended that kind of helping hand in its international water aid efforts. Congress passed two laws prioritizing water security in international aid and the amount of U.S. Agency for International Development money devoted to global water security projects grew 50 percent between 2008 to 2020, from $300 million to 450 million annually. But federal investment in domestic water infrastructure, while far larger at more than $18 billion annually, plateaued decades ago.

During the 20th century, the percentage of Americans without water and sanitation access declined rapidly. From the New Deal through the 1970s, federal initiatives funded the creation of small water systems across the country. But the burden of funding water infrastructure shifted increasingly to states and local governments beginning in the '80s, as federal funding efforts stagnated and shifted more toward loan than grant funding.

Meanwhile, Americans of color and rural communities have fallen through the cracks, said McGraw, DigDeep's founder. There is little federal data on the demographics of water and sanitation access, but recent research conducted by the nonprofit found that race is the strongest predictor of access, with Black and Latino families twice as likely as white families to lack running water. More than 17 percent of rural Americans report having experienced issues accessing safe drinking water. The challenges span the country, from McDowell to the Navajo Nation, from Texas border towns to the Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt.

"In some places in the country that gap is widening," McGraw said. "And if we don't start massively investing in this infrastructure that's literally falling apart underneath us, it's going to get a lot bigger."

'Heartbreaking'

Elizabeth Mason, 79, has planted peonies and other flowers around the house where she and eight siblings were raised in Kyle Bottom, a small neighborhood just off Route 52. Her father was a coal miner. The house had water when she was growing up, piped in through lines laid long ago by a coal company. But the pipes became unreliable a decade ago and residents have dealt with water outages and contamination for years.

Sometimes the water is out for weeks, and Mason has to rely on family and neighbors to haul water from a roadside spring and store it in barrels on her porch.

"Can you imagine not being able to take a shower?" she said. "Can't wash dishes. Trying to cook with contaminated water. It's hard to imagine, unless you experience it."

Elizabeth Mason's pipes are now so unreliable her water can be out for weeks at a time.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

She needed that help when, last January, after her 76-year-old sister entered the hospital with Covid-19, the water went out again. Her sister died and the water didn't come back. Without water, Mason couldn't cook for her family or bathe in her bathroom, and she couldn't have relatives stay at her home while they visited to attend her sister's funeral.

"It was heartbreaking," she said.

Her water system is one of those the county's public water utility will take over. The PSD has been replacing water lines that snake through a series of small towns, and also making other upgrades — a multimillion-dollar, grant-funded project that will connect nearly 1,000 households and businesses to new water lines when completed.

But homeowners like Mason will have to pay their share to connect new service lines to public water — a cost that, at about $1,200, is out of reach for many people in McDowell.

Mason got a hand from DigDeep, which recently launched the Appalachia Water Project, a series of initiatives to decrease the water access gap in the region. So far, the nonprofit has helped more than 50 McDowell households connect to the PSD's new water lines, and hundreds more may follow suit.

Mason's water was scheduled to be switched on in early June. That was until the equipment needed to finish the job broke.

"I waited this long," she said, seated on her front porch where, just a few feet away, her emergency reserve of water sits in a barrel and a dozen gallon jugs. "A few more weeks won't make much difference."

Next generation

The thick, rust-colored sludge left behind by Hazel and Burlyn Cooper's well water.Hannah Rappleye / NBC News

The county needs creative solutions, Krometis said. Home filtration systems are one option that could work for the Coopers. But even if McDowell gets an injection of federal funding for its water projects, she added, people like the Coopers might still get left behind.

"It's going to take a long time to upgrade those water treatment plants, to get pipes running up and down those mountains," she said. "In the meantime, people are still exposed."

Neither Hazel nor Burlyn believe public water will flow through their taps in their lifetime. But they can't imagine ever leaving, and not just because they don't have the money. Because it's home.

"I don't think I'll ever get water," Hazel said. "I want to pass this house on to my grandkids. Maybe they'll get to have water. That's what I care about.

No 10 says G7 summit not to blame for rise in Cornwall’s Covid cases

Nicola Davis, Jessica Elgot and Aubrey Allegretti

Rates have gone up in Carbis Bay where event was held; however, surge in county is blamed on several factors

G7 world leaders in Cornwall led by Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson on 11 June. Photograph: Adrian Wyld/AP

Downing Street has denied the G7 summit is behind a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases in Cornwall, an increase that is raising significant concern about extra tourism pressures on the region in the summer weeks.

Recent seven-day case rates have risen rapidly for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, increasing from 4.9 per 100,000 people on 3 June to 130.6 per 100,000 people on 16 June.

Outbreaks among students, as well as the impact of people travelling to and from Cornwall during half term, are believed to have significantly contributed to the rise.

There have been significant outbreaks in Carbis Bay – where the G7 summit was held – as well as nearby St Ives, and Newquay West – where many delegates stayed.

Rates are currently high in Ponsanooth, Mabe Burnthouse and Constantine, where the surge has been linked to an outbreak at the Penryn campus shared by Exeter and Falmouth universities.

Andrew George, the former Lib Dem MP for St Ives who is now a councilor in Cornwall, said the government must publish its risk assessment for the summit, a request he said had been denied.

“The correlation between G7 and the tsunami of Covid-19 caseload in St Ives/Carbis Bay and Falmouth is undeniable,” he told the Press Association.

“It ought to drive public bodies to at the very least maintain an open mind about the connection between the two. Those who were responsible for that decision and for the post-G7 summit Covid-19 case management and assessment should be held to account for their decisions and actions.”

On Monday, a spokesman for Boris Johnson denied a link between the event and the rise in cases.

“We are confident that there were no cases of transmission to the local residents. All attendees were tested, everyone involved in the G7 work were also tested during their work on the summit,” he said. “We always said, following the move to step three, that we will see cases rising across the country. That is what we’re seeing playing out.”

Concerns have been raised that those indirectly linked to the G7 summit could be associated with the rise, with police, hospitality venues, and a protest camp in St Ives all reporting cases of the virus.

Source: Public Health England. Data for seven days to 15 June 2021

Rowland Kao, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh who contributes to the Spi-M modelling subgroup of Sage, said Cornwall is not an outlier for vaccination uptake or levels of the Delta variant, suggesting other factors are behind the rise in rates.

These, he said, may include low rates of infection in previous waves – meaning those not yet vaccinated are also unlikely to have natural protection – as well as seasonal working patterns and increased mixing among locals working.

“Of course any risks would have been exacerbated by the large numbers of people arriving in Cornwall both for the G7 summit and for recreational purposes, increasing both crowding and contact,” he said.

Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, also said a mix of factors was probably in play.

“Whilst the arrival of the G7 attendees may have had some impact upon the numbers we are now seeing [in Cornwall], cases are predominantly in 15-24 year olds. These populations will mostly be unvaccinated, and there may well have been a fair amount of travelling to tourist sites over the recent half-term week,” he said.

The increase in Cornish cases is likely to raise questions about the prospects for other holiday hotspots in the UK with the public now being advised to avoid international travel.

Officials believe that a vaccination drive, particularly targeting younger adults, before the school holidays is now possible with the four-week delay to the final easing of lockdown restrictions.

“The overall expectation is that mixing in schools – and related contacts with parents and people working in the sector – will go down, conversely this also means that summer holiday locations like Cornwall can expect more,” said Kao.

“The net effect should be relatively positive – but holiday locations are more likely to [experience] higher levels of infection and therefore be at greater risk of more hospitalisations. And in that case, yes, vaccinations in those areas will definitely help.”

On Monday, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, confirmed people in England who have had both doses may soon no longer need to isolate should they be notified by the NHS Covid-19 app that they have come into close contact with someone infected with the virus.

Hancock said that a system was being trialled to let people avoid isolating who were fully inoculated but had been identified as a close contact of someone who had tested positive for Covid – so long as they took a lateral flow test every day.

We Don’t Need the G7

JEFFREY D. SACHS

The group’s recent summit in Cornwall should be its last. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them.

NEW YORK – The latest G7 summit was a waste of resources. If it had to be held at all, it should have been conducted online, saving time, logistical costs, and airplane emissions. But, more fundamentally, G7 summits are an anachronism. Political leaders need to stop devoting their energy to an exercise that is unrepresentative of today’s global economy and results in a near-complete disconnect between stated aims and the means adopted to achieve them.

There was absolutely nothing at the G7 summit that could not have been accomplished much more cheaply, easily, and routinely by Zoom. The most useful diplomatic meeting this year was President Joe Biden’s online meeting with 40 world leaders in April to discuss climate change. Routine online international meetings by politicians, parliamentarians, scientists, and activists are important. They normalize international discussions.

But why should those discussions occur within the G7, which has been superseded by the G20? When the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) began their annual summit meetings in the 1970s, they still dominated the world economy. In 1980, they constituted 51% of world GDP (measured at international prices), whereas the developing countries of Asia accounted for just 8.8%. In 2021, the G7 countries produce a mere 31% of world GDP, while the same Asian countries produce 32.9%.

The G20, by including China, India, Indonesia, and other large developing countries, represents around 81% of world output, and balances the interests of its high-income and developing economies. It is not perfect, as it leaves out smaller and poorer countries and should add the African Union (AU) as a member, but at least the G20 offers a fruitful format for discussing global topics covering most of the world economy. The annual EU-US Summit can accomplish much that the G7 originally aimed to cover.

The G7 is particularly irrelevant because its leaders don’t deliver on their promises. They like making symbolic statements, not solving problems. Worse, they give the appearance of solving global problems, while really leaving them to fester. This year’s summit was no different.

Consider COVID-19 vaccines. The G7 leaders set the goal of vaccinating at least 60% of the global population. They also pledged to share 870 million doses directly over the next year, presumably meaning enough for 435 million fully immunized individuals (with two doses per person). But 60% of the global population comes to 4.7 billion people, or roughly ten times that number.

The G7 leaders offered no plan for achieving their stated aim of global coverage, and in fact, have not developed one, even though it would not be hard to do. Estimating the monthly production of every COVID-19 vaccine is straightforward, and allocating those doses fairly and efficiently to all countries is entirely feasible.

One reason such a plan has not yet been developed is that the US government so far refuses to sit down with Russian and Chinese leaders to devise such a global allocation. Another reason is that the G7 governments let the vaccine manufacturers negotiate privately and secretly, rather than as part of a global plan. Perhaps a third reason is that the G7 looked at global targets without thinking hard enough about the needs of each recipient country.

Yet another example of the G7’s false promises is climate change. At the latest summit, G7 leaders rightly embraced the goal of global decarbonization by 2050, and called on developing countries to do so as well. Yet, rather than laying out a financing plan to enable developing countries to achieve that target, they reiterated a financial pledge first made in 2009 and never fulfilled. “We reaffirm the collective developed country goal,” they averred, “to jointly mobilize $100 billion per year from public and private sources, through to 2025 in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.”

It is hard to overstate the cynicism of this oft-repeated pledge. The rich countries missed their own deadline of 2020 for providing the long-promised $100 billion per year – a mere 0.2% of rich countries’ annual GDP. And the promised $100 billion is itself a small fraction of what developing countries need for decarbonization and climate adaptation.

The disconnect between the G7’s soaring aims and meager means is apparent on education as well. Hundreds of millions of children in poor countries lack access to primary and secondary education because their governments don’t have the financial means to provide teachers, classrooms, and supplies. In 2020, UNESCO estimated that the low- and lower-middle-income countries need around $504 billion per year up to 2030 to ensure that all kids complete a secondary education, but have only around $356 billion of their own domestic resources, leaving a financing gap of around $148 billion per year.

So, what does the G7 propose in this year’s communiqué? The leaders propose “a target to get 40 million more girls into education and with at least $2.75 billion for the Global Partnership for Education.” These are not serious numbers. They are pulled out of thin air and would leave hundreds of millions of children out of school, despite the world’s firm commitment (enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal 4) to universal secondary education. Large-scale solutions are available – such as mobilizing low-interest financing from multilateral development banks – but the G7 leaders didn’t propose such solutions.

The world’s problems are far too urgent to leave to empty posturing and to measures that are a mere token of what is needed to achieve stated ends. If politics were a mere spectator sport, to be judged by which politicians mugged best the cameras, the G7 summit would perhaps have a role to play. Yet we have urgent global needs to meet: ending a pandemic, decarbonizing the energy system, getting kids in school, and achieving the SDGs.

My recommendations: fewer face-to-face meetings, more serious homework to link means and ends, more routine Zoom meetings to discuss what really needs to be done, and greater reliance on the G20 (plus the AU) as the group that can actually follow through. We need Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the table for any true global problem solving.

Travelers care deeply about sustainability – until it inconveniences them

Karen Gilchrist

Surveys indicate a silver lining to the pandemic is a heightened commitment to “sustainable” travel by consumers. But as vaccinations lift travel prospects, hopes for a “green” recovery may have been overblown.

Sustainable travel has grown in popularity in recent years as people have tried to mitigate the negative effects of tourism, either by avoiding damaging practices or offsetting them.

The pandemic appeared to accelerate that trend.

According to a recent study by travel company Virtuoso, four in five people (82%) said the pandemic has made them want to travel more responsibly in the future. Almost three-quarters (72%) said travel should support local communities and economies, preserve destinations’ cultural heritage and protect the planet.

But a further probe tells a different story.

In a separate study by travel site The Vacationer, a similar majority (83%) said sustainable travel was somewhat or very important to them. Yet, almost half (48%) of respondents said they would opt for such trips only if it did not inconvenience them.

And convenience isn’t the only limitation.

Travel that costs the earth

Good intentions aside, cost remains the primary consideration for most travelers (62%) when planning a holiday, the study from The Vacationer found. Sustainability and carbon footprint, on the other hand, pales at 4%.

Seven in 10 (71%) said they would pay more to lower their carbon footprint, but the extent to which they’re willing — or able — to do so varies greatly.

Just over a quarter (27%) of respondents said they would pay less than $50 to counter their emissions, while one-third (33%) said they would contribute $50 to $250. Only 3% said they would be willing to pay over $500, and 29% would pay nothing.

Over-tourism and the resulting environmental damage are among factors hastening calls for sustainability in the travel industry. Oleh_Slobodeniuk | E+ | Getty Images

Therein lies the problem for the travel industry. It would cost $69 for an individual traveling from New York to Rome to offset the carbon emissions for the flight alone.

Such costs make mass adoption on the consumer side unlikely, said Dr. Srikanth Beldona, a professor at the University of Delaware.

“Sustainable travel will have to cost more if it must reduce its carbon footprint, and there are signs that a niche market for this can emerge,” he said, calling instead for a “universal solution” that combines the efforts of businesses and regulators.

Businesses get in on ‘sustainability’

Already, the pandemic has spurred some governments and companies to tout sustainability as part of their modus operandi — or at least their future modus operandi.

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, for instance, are among the major travel companies to have committed to carbon neutrality targets. Meanwhile, new businesses are emerging to meet consumer appetite for environmentally friendly vacations.

“Rather than overshadow the issue, the Covid-19 pandemic has roughly doubled the rate at which businesses and local governments commit to reach net-zero,” said Nora Lovell-Marchant, vice president of global sustainability at American Express global business travel.

Younger travelers express a greater interest in and willingness to pay for sustainable travel options. Paul Biris | Moment | Getty Images

But with sustainability metrics and accountability still in their infancy, greater collaboration is needed to ensure targets are met.

In the airline industry, for instance, offsetting carbon is just the first step. Developments in sustainable aviation fuel and aircraft are necessary in order to create long-term change, said Emily Weiss, global travel industry lead at Accenture, who has been advising airlines on getting back to normalcy.

“The pandemic’s carbon emissions data has highlighted that even severely reducing air travel is not the single answer to neutralizing the climate threat,” she said. “It will take cross-industry collaboration coupled with a more environmentally conscious consumer mindset to achieve a more sustainable future.”

‘Ceasing travel altogether isn’t feasible’

Still, with international travel showing signs of reopening, waiting for a wave of sustainable tourism is not an option — especially for the hundreds of millions of people whose livelihoods depend on the industry.

“Ceasing travel altogether isn’t feasible,” said James Thornton, CEO of Intrepid Group, a travel company specializing in sustainable tourism. “In fact, tourism provides countless benefits to communities around the world and the traveler themselves.”

Instead, travelers can opt for more environmentally friendly travel options that suit their price range and schedule, said Thornton, whose company employs 21 forms of public transport. Train travel, for instance, can be a novel way to experience a new place with far lower emissions than air travel.

“Traveling responsibly is not about making sacrifices or staying home,” he said. “It’s about planning trips carefully so that you’re able to enjoy the experience you seek, while leaving a positive footprint in the destination you’re visiting.”

‘The next pandemic’: drought is a hidden global crisis, UN says

Fiona Harvey

Countries urged to take urgent action on managing water and land and tackling the climate emergency

Containers are exposed as the waters of Sun Moon lake in Nantou, Taiwan, recede during a nationwide drought, Photograph: Annabelle Chih/Reuters

Drought is a hidden global crisis that risks becoming “the next pandemic” if countries do not take urgent action on water and land management and tackling the climate emergency, the UN has said.

At least 1.5 billion people have been directly affected by drought this century, and the economic cost over roughly that time has been estimated at $124bn (£89bn). The true cost is likely to be many times higher because such estimates do not include much of the impact in developing countries, according to a report published on Thursday.

Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, said: “Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic and there is no vaccine to cure it. Most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years. Demand will outstrip supply during certain periods. Drought is a major factor in land degradation and the decline of yields for major crops.”

She said many people had an image of drought as affecting desert regions in Africa, but that this was not the case. Drought is now widespread, and by the end of the century all but a handful of countries will experience it in some form, according to the report.

“People have been living with drought for 5,000 years, but what we are seeing now is very different,” Mizutori said. “Human activities are exacerbating drought and increasing the impact”, threatening to derail progress on lifting people from poverty.

Developed countries have not been immune. The US, Australia and southern Europe have experienced drought in recent years. Drought costs more than $6bn a year in direct impacts in the US, and about €9bn (£7.7bn) in the EU, but these are also likely to be severe underestimates.

Population growth is also exposing more people in many regions to the impacts of drought, the report says.

Drought also goes beyond agriculture,said Roger Pulwarty, a senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a co-author of the report.

He pointed to the Danube in Europe, where recurring drought in recent years has affected transport, tourism, industry and energy generation. “We need to have a modernised view of drought,” he said. “We need to look at how to manage resources such as rivers and large watersheds.”

Changing rainfall patterns as a result of climate breakdown are a key driver of drought, but the report also identifies the inefficient use of water resources and the degradation of land under intensive agriculture and poor farming practices as playing a role. Deforestation, the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides, overgrazing and over-extraction of water for farming are also major problems, it says.

Mizutori called for governments to take action to help prevent drought by reforming and regulating how water is extracted, stored and used, and how land is managed. She said early warning systems could do much to help people in danger, and that advanced weather forecasting techniques were now available.

She said working with local people was essential, because local and indigenous knowledge could help to inform where and how to store water and how to predict the impacts of dry periods.

The report, entitled Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: Special Report on Drought 2021, was published on Thursday, and will feed into discussions at vital UN climate talksk known as Cop26, which are scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November.

A new coronavirus variant is on the rise. Here's why experts are concerned

Madeline Holcombe and Holly Yan

The Delta variant may be on its way to becoming the dominant strain in the US, putting unvaccinated Americans at risk.

A new study shows the variant is associated with almost double the risk of hospitalization when compared to the Alpha variant -- the current dominant strain in the US.

The Alpha variant, first found in the UK, is "stickier" and more contagious than the original strain of novel coronavirus. It became the dominant strain in the US this spring.

But the Delta variant appears to be even more transmissible and may cause more severe illness.

Right now, about 10% of Covid-19 cases in the US can be attributed to the Delta variant. That proportion is doubling every two weeks, Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said in a CBS interview Sunday.

He said the Delta variant will probably take over as the dominant strain of coronavirus in the US.

The good news is Americans can stave off the danger by getting vaccinated. But the Delta variant could pose a serious risk for states lagging in Covid-19 vaccinations.

"I think in parts of the country where you have less vaccination -- particularly in parts of the South, where you have some cities where vaccination rates are low -- there's a risk that you could see outbreaks with this new variant," Gottlieb said.

While 52.5% of Americans have received at least one dose of vaccine, only 43.7% have been fully vaccinated, according to data Monday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Studies suggest those who are fully vaccinated have protection against the Delta variant.

"We have the tools to control this and defeat it," Gottlieb said. "We just need to use those tools."

New research shows the Delta variant may lead to more hospitalizations

The Delta variant -- or the B1.617.2 strain first detected in India -- has been linked to about double the risk of hospitalization compared to the Alpha variant first found in the UK, according to the preliminary findings of a Scottish study published Monday in The Lancet.

The Alpha variant used to be the dominant strain in the UK. But last week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the Delta variant had taken over -- making up 91% of new cases in the UK.

Researchers from the universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde and Public Health Scotland analyzed data from 5.4 million people in Scotland.

The study found that between April 1 and June 6, there were 19,543 Covid-19 cases and 377 hospitalizations.

Among those, 7,723 cases and 134 hospitalizations were caused by the Delta variant.

The early findings suggest two doses the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine does protect against the Delta variant -- but it may be at a lower level of protection than against the Alpha variant.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was found to provide 79% protection against infection from the Delta variant, compared with 92% against the Alpha variant, in community cases at least two weeks after the second dose.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which is used in the UK but not in the US, offered 60% protection against infection with the Delta variant, compared with 73% protection against the Alpha variant, the study found.

"This lower vaccine effect may reflect that is takes longer to develop immunity with Oxford-AstraZeneca," a news release from the universities said. The research team urged caution when comparing vaccines because of the observational nature of the study.

"It is therefore really important that, when offered second doses, people take these up both to protect themselves and to reduce household and community transmission," said Professor Aziz Sheikh, director of the University of Edinburgh's Usher Institute.

Heart inflammation in young people could be due to behavior, expert says

There's been a higher-than-expected number of cases of a heart ailment among young people, most often males, who've recently received their second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, according to the CDC.

Gottlieb said the inflammation could be due to behavior change.

"It could be the case that as young people get vaccinated, they're going out more. They're exchanging other viruses. We're seeing outbreaks of those viruses, and we know those viruses also cause pericarditis," Gottlieb said in his CBS interview.

He said those other viruses include respiratory syncytial virus, enterovirus, echoviruses and coxsackie.

"It's not clear that it's the vaccine or perhaps a change in behavior, but it's certainly something we should be looking closely at because we have to properly inform patients if in fact this is a risk," he said.

Gottlieb said he doesn't think the cases of heart inflammation change the risk-benefit analysis for the Covid-19 vaccine.

CDC advisers are set to meet this week to discuss a possible link between the vaccines and the inflammatory conditions.

The CDC said last week that the inflammatory condition is rare, and most patients who received care responded to treatment.

Airline disturbances connected to mask mandates

With vaccinations on the rise, many Americans have started returning to pre-pandemic activities. But not all of the transitions back have been going smoothly.

The US Travel Association estimates that 77% of Americans will take at least one trip this summer, up from 29% last summer in the midst of Covid-19 lockdowns. And for air travel, there will likely be a 44% increase.

The Federal Aviation Administration has received 2,900 reports of unruly behavior this year, about 2,200 of which were related to mask violations, an FAA spokesperson said.

"People have been wanting to get out. They have been told this mask issue is a political decision rather than a public health necessity," said Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants.

"It is causing incredible conflict because people have been set up to believe they are at odds with each other."

CNN's Sarah Dean, Lauren Mascarenhas and Aya Elamroussi contributed to this report.

Greenpeace Euro 2020 parachutist lucky not to be shot down, says politician

Bavarian minister says activist could have ‘paid with life’ for stunt before Germany v France game in Munich

A Greenpeace protester who parachuted into the stadium before Germany’s Euro 2020 match against France in Munich was lucky not to have been shot down by anti-terror marksmen enforcing a no-fly zone, a state minister has said.

Two people were injured when the activist lost control of his powered paraglider, which had a motor attached to his back, and hit overhead camera wires attached to the stadium roof. Fans ducked as he careered towards the spectator area, narrowly missing the stands and demolishing technical equipment before crashing in front of the German penalty area.

Debris fell on to the field and main grandstand, just missing the French manager, Didier Deschamps. Two German players were first to approach the protester, before he was led away by security services.

“Due to the Greenpeace banner the marksmen did not intervene,” said Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s interior minister for the state. “But if the police had come to a different conclusion that they might have been dealing with a terrorist attack, the aviator may well have paid with his life.”

Bavaria’s leader, Markus Söder, said the incident would be properly investigated. “This was no trivial offence,” Söder told Bavarian radio. “It will be dealt with very thoroughly. This was a clear violation.”

Munich police said on Wednesday they were investigating various potential violations of the criminal code and aviation act. “The pilot injured two men during the landing approach. The injured were given medical care by the emergency services and taken to hospitals for further care,” police said in a statement.

The police said none of the injuries were serious and the pilot, a 38-year-old man with an address in the south-west state of Baden Württemberg, was unharmed. “There is no understanding whatsoever for such irresponsible actions in which a considerable risk to human life is accepted,” the police said.

Munich’s deputy mayor, Katrin Habenschaden, who was in the stadium and witnessed the incident closeup, said: “I was sitting near the press tribune. The paraglider whizzed past me about 30 metres away,” she told the tabloid Bild.

Greenpeace activist lands on the pitch before the Euro 2020 match between France and Germany at the Allianz Arena in Munich. Photograph: Matthias Schräder/AP

A Green party member, she nonetheless condemned Greenpeace’s actions. “It was life-threatening and it was only pure luck that nothing more happened. Greenpeace has done great damage to its reputation.”

Greenpeace has apologised for the stunt, which it admitted had gone wrong. It said the protest action was aimed at urging the carmaker Volkswagen, a Euro 2020 sponsor, to stop selling diesel and petrol cars.

“This protest was never meant to interrupt the game or injure people,” the group said in a Twitter post. “We hope that everyone is OK and that nobody has been seriously injured. Greenpeace actions are always peaceful and non-violent. Unfortunately, with this stunt everything did not go to plan.”

In a second statement on Wednesday, Greenpeace said it apologised unreservedly to the two injured people. “The pilot had wanted to let a balloon hover in the stadium, but had to then do an emergency landing, due to the fact that the hand gas control of the parachute failed.”

The man at the controls of the parachute is reported to be a veteran activist stuntman, identified only as Kai S, who is known to police after he parachuted on to the roof of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt in March to highlight “central banks’ role in projects which are harmful to the environment”.

Uefa defended its environmental credentials in a statement on Tuesday, saying it was “fully committed to a sustainable Euro 2020 tournament”.

G7 Nations Take Aggressive Climate Action but Hold Back on Coal

Michael D. Shear, Lisa Friedman and Catrin Einhorn

President Biden pushed climate action after four years in which Donald Trump rejected cooperation with allies. But leaders failed to set an expiration date for burning coal.

President Biden during a news conference at the end of the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, on Sunday. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

BRUSSELS — President Biden joined with leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations on Sunday to take action aimed at holding down global temperatures, but failed to set a firm end date on the burning of coal, which is a primary contributor to global warming.

Mr. Biden and six other leaders of the Group of 7 nations promised to cut collective emissions in half by 2030 and to try to stem the rapid extinction of animals and plants, calling it an “equally important existential threat.” They agreed that by next year they would stop international funding for any coal project that lacked technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions and vowed to achieve an “overwhelmingly decarbonized” electricity sector by the end of the decade.

It was the first time that the major industrialized economies, which are most responsible for the pollution that is warming the planet, agreed to collectively slash their emissions by 2030, although several nations had individually set those same goals, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

But energy experts said the failure of the G7 nations, which together produce about a quarter of the world’s climate pollution, to agree on a specific end date for the use of coal weakened their ability to lean on China to curb its own still-growing coal use. It may also make it more difficult to convince 200 nations to strike a bold climate agreement at a United Nations summit in Scotland later this year.

The G7 leaders also declined to pledge significant new funding to help developing countries both manage climate impacts as well as pivot away from burning oil, gas and coal.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International. “This was a moment when the G7 could have shown historic leadership, and instead they left a massive void.”

Scientists have warned that the world needs to urgently cut emissions if it has any chance to keep average global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which experts say the planet will experience catastrophic, irreversible damage. Temperature change is not even around the globe; some regions have already reached an increase of 2 degrees Celsius.

Mr. Biden opened his first foreign trip as president last week by declaring that on issues like climate, “the United States is back.” After four years in which President Donald J. Trump mocked the established science of climate change, discouraged the development of clean energy while favoring fossil fuels and refused to cooperate with allies on environmental issues, Mr. Biden was once again part of a unanimous consensus that the world needs to take drastic action to prevent a global disaster.

“President Biden has committed to tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, rallying the rest of the world at the leaders summit, G7, and beyond to reach for bold targets within the next decade,” said Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser. “While the previous administration ignored the science and consequences of climate change, our administration has taken unprecedented actions to prioritize this on the global stage.”

In addition to rejoining the 2015 Paris Agreement that Mr. Trump abandoned, Mr. Biden has promised to cut the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and to eliminate fossil fuel emissions from America’s power sector by 2035.

But it was the United Kingdom, along with some other European countries, that had pushed aggressively during the summit this year to stop burning coal for electricity by a specific date in the 2030s. Burning coal is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, and after a pandemic-year retreat, demand for coal is expected to rise by 4.5 percent this year, according to the International Energy Agency.

Instead, the final language of the leaders’ “communiqué” makes only a vague call to “rapidly scale up technologies and policies that further accelerate the transition away” from coal without carbon capture technology.

The debate at the summit over how quickly to abandon coal came at a particularly delicate moment for Mr. Biden, whose push for a major infrastructure package in a closely divided Congress may depend on the vote of one Democratic senator: Joe Manchin of coal-dependent West Virginia.

In a statement to The New York Times, Mr. Manchin noted “projections showing that fossil fuels, including coal, will be part of the global energy mix for decades to come” and praised the Biden administration for recognizing the need to develop clean energy technologies. But advocates for faster action said concerns about placating Mr. Manchin appeared to have prevented more aggressive steps.

‘“Once again Joe Manchin is casting a heavy shadow,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G, a European environmental think tank.

The United States in particular had a chance to lead countries in strong language to move away from fossil fuels this decade, Ms. Morgan of Greenpeace said. But “it doesn’t seem like they were the ambition setters at this G7.”

Other leading climate change advocates and diplomats called the overall climate package a mixed bag.

Mr. Biden and the other leaders said they would deliver $2 billion to help nations pivot away from fossil fuels, in what leaders hope will be a global transition to wind, solar and other energy that does not produce planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. And they agreed to raise their contributions and meet an overdue pledge of mobilizing $100 billion a year to help poorer countries cut emissions and cope with the consequences of climate change, though firm dollar figures were not on the table.

Laurence Tubiana, C.E.O. of the European Climate Foundation who served as France’s chief climate ambassador during the 2015 Paris negotiations, said she was pleased that nations would stop financing new coal projects without technology to capture and store emissions. It will mean an end to virtually all funding for new coal, since carbon capture technology is nascent and not widely used.

“That leaves China to decide now if they want to still be the backers of coal globally, because they will be the only one,” she said. But she said the financing package was lacking for developing countries, which are particularly vulnerable to floods, drought and other impacts of a climate crisis created by the industrialized nations.

G7 nations this week also backed Mr. Biden’s sweeping infrastructure plan to counter China’s multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. As part of that, countries promised to help the developing world rebuild from the Covid-19 pandemic in a way that takes climate change into account.

Wealthy nations had agreed in 2009 to mobilize $100 billion in public and private funding by 2020 in order to help poorer countries move to clean energy and adapt to the most severe consequences of climate change. But they have delivered only about $80 billion on that promise, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And most of that money is in the form of loans, not grants, making it difficult for poor countries to use, experts said.

“The G7 announcement on climate finance is really peanuts in the face of an existential catastrophe,” said Malik Amin Aslam, Pakistan’s climate minister. He called it a “huge disappointment” for his country and others that have had to spend more to cope with extreme weather, displacement and other impacts of global warming.

“At the least, countries responsible for this inescapable crisis need to live up to their stated commitments, otherwise the climate negotiations could well end in futility,” he warned.

A recent report from the International Energy Agency concluded that if the world is to stave off the most devastating consequences of global warming, major economies must immediately stop approving new coal plants and oil and gas fields.

Extinction Rebellion climate change protesters at the summit.Credit...Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At the summit, the seven countries addressed biodiversity loss, calling it a crisis on the same scale as climate change.

They said they would champion a global push to conserve at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and water by 2030 and would set up such protections within their own countries. These measures are needed, scientists say and the G7 reiterated, to help curb extinctions, ensure water and food security, store carbon and reduce the risk of future pandemics.

Today, about 17 percent of the planet’s land and 8 percent of its oceans are protected, according to the United Nations.

Environmental groups welcomed the inclusion of the 30 percent commitment but emphasized the need for action, which requires adequate financing. That’s the hard part, to be hammered out at a separate United Nations biodiversity conference that will be held in October in Kunming, China.

Because the world’s remaining intact ecosystems and biodiversity hot spots are unevenly distributed, scientists emphasize that it’s not enough for each country to carve out its own 30 percent. Rather, countries should work together to maximize the protection of areas that will yield the best returns on reversing the interdependent biodiversity and climate crises. Researchers have mapped suggestions.

The rights of local communities, including Indigenous peoples who have been better stewards of biodiversity, must be valued, advocates said. Protecting nature does not mean kicking people out, but rather ensuring that wild areas are used sustainably.

Robert Watson, a former chairman of two leading intergovernmental panels on climate change and biodiversity, praised the agreement for linking the two crises. But he said it needs to address the factors that are driving species loss, including agriculture, logging and mining.

“I do not see what actions will be taken to stop the causes,” Dr. Watson said.

Western wildfires spread through California and Arizona as drought furthers extreme fire conditions

Hollie Silverman, Kay Jones and Michael Guy

Multiple wildfires prompted evacuations in California and Arizona over the weekend after quickly charring more than 1,500 acres of land.

Hundreds of thousands of acres have burned in the region as a drought continues to grip the area amid rising temperatures.

A strengthening heat wave is expected to worsen in the coming days with nearly 55 million people across the West -- including in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Phoenix -- under heat alerts.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 833,479 acres have burned across the US in 26,833 fires from January 1 until June 11, compared to the same time period last year, when 658,069 acres were scorched in 20,731 fires.

California has already faced nearly twice the acreage burned this year compared to last year by last week, with 2,733 fires burning 12,540 from January 1, 2021 through June 6, 2021, compared to January 1, 2020 through June 6, 2020, when 6,353 acres were burned in 2,025 fires.

By Sunday, Cal Fire's website showed that number had grown to 17,273 acres scorched in 3,151 incidents.

With temperatures across the west forecast to reach record highs, experts are warning that extreme fire danger will increase through the week.

Arizona

A wildfire south of Flagstaff that quickly grew to 1,000 acres prompted evacuations in one subdivision, a tweet from Arizona State Forestry said Sunday.

The fire destroyed one building and threatened nearly a dozen others, according to Inciweb.

It sparked in Cornville, which is 57 miles south of Flagstaff and 100 miles north of Phoenix. The cause is still under investigation.

One outbuilding was destroyed in the blaze and several other structures were threatened, according to the tweet.

The Yavapai County Sheriff's Office ordered the evacuations for the Mingus Panorama subdivision when the fire had scorched about 400 acres by the afternoon. It is unclear how many people or homes were ordered to evacuate.

Aviation and ground resources were ordered to respond to the scene, according to the tweet.

The Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management warned of very high fire danger for the weekend as hot temperatures and dry thunderstorms were expected in the region

A wildfire in Cornville prompted evacuations and quickly grew to 1,000 acres after igniting Sunday.

The department said in a news release Saturday that critical fire weather included the potential for "rapid fuel ignition and fire spread with very erratic and extreme fire behavior."

The release said the state has already seen 208,190 acres burned in 848 wildfires this year compared to 138,443 acres burned in 902 wildfires over the same time period last year.

"We cannot stress enough to the public the critical situation we are faced with. Firefighters are already challenged and any ignition starting within this drought-stricken fuel bed combined with our incoming critical fire weather could produce large, fast-moving and very active wildfires," DFFM Fire Management Officer John Truett said in the release. "Take personal responsibility, follow fire restrictions, and do your part with prevention efforts."

Arizona has already seen two massive fires -- the Telegraph and Mescal Fires -- burn more than 160,000 acres, according to Inciweb.

California

Three new fires sparked in California on Sunday, according to Cal Fire -- including the Flats Fire in San Bernardino County that grew to 400 acres in a few hours.

Two homes were destroyed, three homes and three outbuildings suffered damage, and one firefighter was injured, a fire update on Inciweb said.

Mandatory evacuations were ordered for the Pinyon Crest neighborhood near the Santa Rosa Mountains, which is about 130 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

The fire jumped highway 74 and moved northeast, according to a tweet from San Bernardino National Forest.

At least 400 personnel responded to the fire, which started around 11:15 a.m. local time. The fire is 10% contained and the cause is still unknown.

In another fire incident, evacuation orders were lifted for the the Goose fire in Amador County, east of Sacramento after the blaze charred about 60 acres, Cal Fire's website shows. Firefighters reached 30% containment on the fire after it started Sunday afternoon

About 85 miles northwest, another fire popped up in Yuba City, according to Cal Fire.

The Beale Fire has burned 150 acres and is 20% contained, the agency website shows. No cause has been determined.

Heat wave could bring record highs

The cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas could break their all time June warm temperature records, according to CNN meteorologist Michael Guy.

Las Vegas and other cities could break their all time heat records Guy explained, adding that "this could be the week Las Vegas is the warmest ever recorded."

"The grip of the heat wave settled in last week also and this week it is getting even hotter across the west and southwest."

Guy says Arizona could all see its all time records broken this week, with Phoenix forecast to have the next 7 days 11 to 13 degrees Fahrenheit above normal each day this week, hitting an estimated 117 to 118 degrees.

From Tuesday through Saturday, some locations could see temperature hit as high as 120 degrees. The hottest temperature ever recorded for Phoenix in June is 122 in 1990, according to Guy.

As the heat hits its peak on Thursday for most of the region, more than 250 heat records could be tied through Friday across the West, he said.

Such high heat, coupled with drought will only elevate the risk of wildfires by the end of the week.

According to US Drought Monitor, the drought got worse in the west through the period of June 8th, increasing from 87% to 89%.

Restoring nature ‘the test of our generation’: UN General Assembly President

Stepping up global efforts to combat land degradation is the only way to safeguard food and water security, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ward against future threats to health and the environment, the UN General Assembly President told ambassadors meeting in New York on Monday.

© UNICEF/Safidy Andriananten I UNICEF is assisting farmers in the recovery of their crops in drought-stricken Madagascar.

Addressing a high-level dialogue on desertification, land degradation and drought, Volkan Bozkir described restoring nature as “the test of our generation”, outlining the cost of inaction.

“As a simple gesture to demonstrate the necessity of soil to our survival, I have given every representative in #UNGA a basil plant and have asked them to share updates on their growth in line with key international milestones for environmental action. #EndLandLoss pic.twitter.com/IMYa6KSj0z”

— UN GA President (@UN_PGA) June 14, 2021

Existential crisis 

“Our planet is facing an environmental crisis that encompasses every aspect of the natural world: land, climate, and biodiversity, and pollution on land and at sea”, he said. 

“Our existence and ability to thrive in this world is entirely dependent upon how we reset and rebuild our relationship with the natural world, including the health of our land.” 

The General Assembly meeting, the first of its kind in a decade, is being held at a time when half of all agricultural land is degraded, threatening livelihoods but also driving extinction and intensifying climate change. 

“Without a change in course, this will only get worse”, Mr. Bozkir warned. 

“By 2050, global crop yields are estimated to fall by 10%, with some suffering up to a 50% reduction.  This will lead to a sharp 30% rise in world food prices, threatening progress on hunger and nutrition, as well as a myriad of associated development goals.” 

The fallout could also see millions of farmers pushed into poverty, while some 135 million people could be displaced by 2045, upping the risk of instability and tension. 

Path to progress 

Mr Bozkir brought countries together to galvanize international cooperation to avert further degradation and revive degraded land, ahead of UN summits this year on the topics of land, biodiversity and climate. 

The Organization has been clear on what steps they need to take, he said. 

“First, countries should adopt and implement Land Degradation Neutrality targets, which revive land through sustainable land and water management strategies, and restore biodiversity and ecosystem functions”, he advised.  

As the world embarks on 10 years of action on ecosystem restoration through 2030, Mr. Bozkir said countries should also apply lessons learned over the Decade to Fight Desertification, which concluded last year. 

“Land restoration must be at the heart of existing international processes, such as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to combat climate change, the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and COVID-19 recovery and stimulus plans”, he added. 

With “unsustainable agriculture” being a main driver of desertification, the Assembly President called for governments to conduct national dialogues on agricultural reform ahead of the UN Food Systems Summit in September. 

He also stressed the need for “greater synergy” between peace, development and humanitarian action, with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serving as a roadmap.  Cooperation here can be achieved through universal implementation of a UN framework on disaster risk reduction, which he said will enhance prevention efforts. 

Restore natural ecosystems 

He further stressed the need to devote a greater share of climate finance to forests and agriculture. 

“For an estimated $2.7 trillion per year – comfortably within the scope of the proposed COVID spending – we could transform the world’s economies by restoring natural ecosystems, rewarding agriculture that keeps soils healthy, and incentivizing business models that prioritize renewable, recyclable or biodegradable products and services. Within a decade, the global economy could create 395 million new jobs and generate over $10 trillion,” he said. 

The rights of the world’s more than one billion agricultural workers must also not be forgotten.  Most do not own the lands on which they work, he said, as currently, one per cent of farms control more than 70 per cent of the world’s farmlands.  

“Investing directly in land workers is an investment in our land and our planet’s future”, Mr. Bozkir stated. 

“When we enable workers to invest in their land, we support agricultural productivity. Environmental stewardship, wealth generation, civic participation, and the rule of law benefit, especially indigenous and small-scale producers, including female farmers.” 

‘Soil is the solution’ 

To reinforce the importance of soil for survival, Mr. Bozkir gave each representative a basil plant, along with a request to update him on their growth. 

“Restoring nature is the test of our generation and indeed of this multilateral institution. This is the challenge the UN was born to meet,” he stated. 

“If we upscale land action today we can safeguard global food and water security, reduce emissions, conserve biodiversity and guard against future systemic health and environmental risks. Put simply, soil is the solution.” 

Brood X cicadas in 2021: Why do they appear only every 17 years? Do they bite? What's the Brood X cicadas map?

MARCA

Everything you need to know about the 17-year cicadas in the USA

Brood X cicadas in the USA Carolyn KasterAP

Billions of cicadas are appearing in eastern and midwestern US states, emerging after 17 years below the ground. The Brood X cicadas only appear every 17 years, so haven't been seen since 2004.

This year, they're back and are expected to be seen in 15 different states, as well as the District of Columbia. Their emergence depends on the climate, so they'll appear in different states at different times over the coming weeks.

Here comes a look at the phenomenon of the Brood X cicadas and everything you need to know as they return in 2021.

Why do Brood X cicadas only appear every 17 years?

The emergence of cicadas every 17 years is a natural phenomenon. When they are born, they hatch from their eggs and burrow into the ground. There, they spend the next 17 years of their lives, surviving on the sap of tree roots.

After 17 years, Brood X cicadas - like most other 17-year cicadas - wait for the soil to reach the right temperature. They want the soil to be around 64°F or 18 °C.

Logically, the soil in different areas reaches this temperature at different times. This is why cicadas will appear at different times of the year in different parts of the United States.

Then, they spend four to six weeks looking for a mate, before the process begins all over again for the next generation.

What is the map of Brood X cicadas for 2021?

The cicadas are expected to emerge in Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

As seen in the below map from AccuWeather, this is the area of the USA that they should cover.

Do Brood X cicadas bite?

Adult cicadas don't usually bite humans. The only reason they would do so is if they remain on a human for a long time and if they mistake that person for a part of a plant. They would, in that situation, use their mouth to penetrate, looking to suck up what they'd think were plant juices.

Even if a human is bitten by a cicada, there shouldn't be irritation. So, their bites are not something to worry about.

They can still be annoying, though, as president Joe Biden found out himself on Wednesday.

G7 leaders face make-or-break moment in climate crisis

FIONA HARVEY

Analysis: message in Cornwall is clear – leaders must act now or go down in history as the ones who threw away last-ditch chance

Boris Johnson, right, and Joe Biden on stage at a G7 meeting at Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty

Global leaders arriving in Cornwall for the G7 summit have already found themselves in a changed world: masks and social distancing have replaced the usual hugs, handshakes and cheek-pecking, the entourages have slimmed down, and the usual media circus has been muted, with protesters having to content themselves with writing sand messages on the beach.

Boris Johnson has faced ridicule and accusations of hypocrisy for travelling to Carbis Bay by private jet. Some of the other leaders have been more concerned about the extent to which quarantine rules apply to them.

But amid the ever-present reminders that 2021 is a year unlike any other, one of the biggest changes will be entirely invisible: carbon dioxide is now at a higher level in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 4m years, newly released data has shown. The world has entered uncharted territory where global heating is concerned, and greenhouse gas emissions are rising strongly still.

The message could not be clearer: if the world fails to act now, the future will be changed beyond anything the coronavirus pandemic has brought about. Lord Stern, the climate economist, said: “This is a crucial moment in history. Either we recover [from the pandemic] in a strong and sustainable way, or we do not. We are at a real fork in the road. This decade is decisive.”

Scientists have made it clear that greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 if the world is to stay within 1.5C of global heating – the threshold beyond which extreme weather will take hold, small islands and low-lying areas will face inundation, and swathes of the world will face water stress and heatwaves.

Stern pointed to the chequered progress of the past 10 years, in which the cost of renewable energy has plunged and technology such as electric vehicles has increased, but in which progress on cutting emissions overall has been painfully slow. “The last decade was not very good, and this next decade could be just as bad or worse, if we make the wrong choices,” he said.

A sand drawing calls on world leaders to ‘share the vaccine and waive the patent’ at Watergate Bay near Newquay, Cornwall. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty

G7 countries are responding: all of the leaders coming to Cornwall – from the US, the UK, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the EU – have affirmed their commitment to holding temperature rises to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the lower limit set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.

All have long-term targets to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and nearly all have targets to cut carbon in the next decade. The UK has led with a goal of cutting emissions by 68% by 2030 and 78% by 2035, based on 1990 levels. The US will halve emissions by 2030, based on 2005 levels, and the EU will make cuts of at least 55% by 2030, on a 1990 baseline.

However, current plans under the Paris agreement from Japan and Canada have been criticised by campaigners as inadequate, and they are under pressure to toughen their targets before Cop26, the crucial UN climate talks to be held in Glasgow this November.

There has been also been progress in the run-up to the Cornwall summit: all of the G7 countries have agreed to halt the funding of coal and coal-fired power overseas, a huge step forward in making a global move away from the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Yet none of this is enough. Global carbon dioxide output is forecast to jump by an almost record amount this year, as the world returns to economic growth using fossil fuels, instead of making the leap needed to renewable and low-carbon energy. G7 countries are falling behind on the “green recovery” from Covid-19 that experts have been urging for more than a year, and reliance on coal has increased in some parts of the world, including the US.

The situation is worse in non-G7 countries. China, the world’s biggest emitter and second biggest economy, is not represented at the G7, as a non-democracy and because of its status as a developing country. China’s reliance on coal has increased further in the recovery from Covid-19, despite the country’s long-term goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said that while rich countries were cutting their emissions, some developing countries would continue to increase theirs unless they could gain far more investment in shifting to a low-carbon economy.

“More than 90% of emissions in the next two decades will come from emerging economies, but they are less than 20% of global clean energy investments,” he said. “If we can’t accelerate the clean energy transition in these countries, I believe this will be the most critical faultline in global efforts to reach climate goals.”

To fund the shift to clean energy, and to cope with the effects of climate breakdown, developing countries will need help from the rich world. So far, promises of finance have not been met. Under a longstanding pledge, made in 2009, poor countries were supposed to receive $100bn a year from public and private sources by 2020. That target has been missed, and the pressure is now on the G7, the grouping of the world’s wealthiest economies, to find a way of plugging the gap – a crucial step in gaining developing countries’ backing for any climate deal at Cop26.

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said: “If you look at climate finance, we are far behind. Yet [given the sums the G7 are spending on coronavirus] it is pretty clear that there is enough money, and these economies are pumping money into fossil fuels.”

Stern has led a call for a doubling of climate finance from public funds in rich countries, from about $30bn in 2018 to about $60bn a year from 2025. Funding for the climate would also need to be accompanied by commitments on vaccine access for poorer countries, as leading figures have repeatedly warned that the two crises are interrelated.

Boris Johnson can hope the minor storm over his arrival by private jet will blow over quickly. More damaging is the row he leaves behind him in parliament. The government’s decision to cut overseas aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP has been criticised by former prime ministers and provoked a sizeable rebellion from the prime minister’s own party.

At the G7, it has undermined the UK’s stance on climate finance and darkened any prospect of Johnson persuading other world leaders to provide the cash needed to fulfil climate finance promises. Paul Bledsoe, strategic adviser to the Progressive Policy Institute in the US, said: “It’s baffling and heartless. It’s stunning that at a moment of global crisis, as host of G7 and Cop26, the UK is the only country in the world that is reducing aid to the poorest countries.”

There are, however, still ways in which the G7 could address climate finance, he said. The International Monetary Fund is offering finance known as “special drawing rights”, that could be used to raise tens of billions for the climate emergency. Poorer countries could also be offered “debt for climate swaps” in which they would be forgiven debt in exchange for preserving forests or other carbon sinks.

“The challenge for the G7 is to think creatively about these opportunities,” he said.

What is most likely to emerge from the meeting is a fudge of warm words on climate finance, with renewed commitments to long-term goals to reach net zero emissions, and promises of action in the next crucial decade. Whatever the G7 comes up with, however, it is unlikely to measure up to the challenge.

Last month, the IEA said that if the 1.5C limit was to be maintained, all further exploration and development of new fossil fuels around the world must cease from this year, and came up with a series of milestones, such as phasing out fossil-fuelled vehicles, and fossil fuels for home heating, in the next two decades.

The G7 could make a collective commitment to embrace these policies and goals, said Morgan. “If not, it would be a complete failure of their leadership.”

When the G7 leaders fly away from Cornwall’s beaches, the last thing they may see is the writing on the sand, warning of the climate crisis. They will know that they have until November to come up with credible plans for Cop26.

“We need to see a positive dynamic for Glasgow,” said Morgan. “If not, they will go down in history as the group of leaders who had the chance of dealing with the climate emergency and who did not step up.”

National Geographic recognizes new Southern Ocean, bringing global total to five

Adam Gabbatt

Organization says the Southern Ocean consists of the waters surrounding Antarctica, out to 60-degrees south latitude

Scientists have long known that the waters surrounding Antarctica form a ‘distinct ecological region defined, by ocean currents and temperatures’. Photograph: British Antarctic Survey/Reuters

Anyone who thought the world had four oceans will now have to think again, after the National Geographic Society announced it would recognize a new Southern Ocean in Antarctica, bringing the global total to five.

The National Geographic, a non-profit scientific and educational organization whose mapping standards are referenced by many atlases and cartographers, said the Southern Ocean consists of the waters surrounding Antarctica, out to 60-degrees south latitude.

National Geographic Society geographer Alex Tait said scientists have long known that the waters surrounding Antarctica form a “distinct ecological region defined, by ocean currents and temperatures”.

Tait told the Washington Post that the span of water is yet to be officially recognized as an ocean by the relevant international body: “But we thought it was important at this point to officially recognize it.”

“People look to us for geographic fact: How many continents, how many countries, how many oceans? Up until now, we’ve said four oceans,” Tait said, referring to the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific.

The US Board of Geographic Names, a federal body created in 1890 to establish and maintain “uniform geographic name usage” through the federal government, already recognizes the Southern ocean as occupying the same territory, but this is the first time the National Geographic has done so.

Attempts to ratify the boundaries and name of the Southern Ocean internationally have been thwarted.

The concept was proposed to the International Hydrographic Organization, which works to ensure the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted, in 2000, but some of the IHO’s 94 members dissented. Despite that, Tait said it was important that the National Geographic christen the water area.

“We think it’s really important from an educational standpoint, as well as from a map-labeling standpoint, to bring attention to the Southern Ocean as a fifth ocean,” Tait told the Post.

“So when students learn about parts of the ocean world, they learn it’s an interconnected ocean, and they learn there’s these regions called oceans that are really important, and there’s a distinct one in the icy waters around Antarctica.”

End war on nature and ensure ocean health, UN chief says in message for World Oceans Day

Ending the “war on nature” must be part of global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday in his message for World Oceans Day.

The annual commemoration on 8 June is a reminder of the major role oceans have in everyday life as “the lungs of our Planet” and as a source of food and medicine.

“I had the privilege of growing up near the ocean.

It pains me to see how overfishing, pollution and rising temperatures are destroying our oceans and biodiversity.

As we mark #WorldOceansDay, let’s end our war on nature & ensure the health of our oceans for future generations. pic.twitter.com/xRn1iVUz48”

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) June 8, 2021

Although this year’s theme focuses on their importance for the cultural and economic survival of communities worldwide, the Secretary-General cited a recent report which confirmed that many of the benefits oceans provide are being undermined by human activity.  

Pollution, overfishing, acidification 

“Our seas are choking with plastic waste, which can be found from the remotest atolls to the deepest ocean trenches”, he said. 

But the list does not end there.  “Overfishing is causing an annual loss of almost $90 billion in net benefits – which also heightens the vulnerability of women, who are vital to the survival of small-scale fishing businesses”, he added. 

“Carbon emissions are driving ocean warming and acidification, destroying biodiversity and causing sea level rise that threatens heavily inhabited coastlines.” 

Sustainable Development link 

World Oceans Day falls as countries continue to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and the ongoing assault on oceans, seas and marine resources, the Secretary-General said. 

With more than three billion people worldwide, mainly in developing countries, relying on the ocean for their livelihood, he called for action. 

“As we strive to recover from COVID-19, let’s end our war on nature”, Mr. Guterres said. 

“This will be critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, keeping within reach the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement, and ensuring the health of our oceans for today’s and future generations.” 

Decade of Action

As part of the World Ocean Day celebrations, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has announced the selection of an initial series of actions to drive what it calls the “ocean knowledge revolution”.

Led by diverse partners from science, government, civil society and other sectors, they fall under the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development which runs through 2030.

“From restoring the Great Barrier Reef to mapping 100% of the ocean floor in high resolution, these innovative programmes and contributions make up the first set of Ocean Decade Actions that will contribute to help deliver the ocean we want by 2030”, said Audrey Azoulay, the UNESCO Director-General.

Exploration and innovation

The flagship Ocean Decade Actions were selected from hundreds of applications submitted to the agency’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), the UN entity that supports global ocean science and services.

They include initiatives to expand deep sea research and exploration of the “twilight zone” of the ocean.  Little is known about this layer, which extends from 200 to 1,000 metres (roughly 650 to 3,300 feet).

Other actions focus on developing knowledge and solutions to reduce the multiple pressures on marine ecosystems, including from climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, as well as measures to improve sustainable management of fish stocks.

“The hundreds of responses to the Ocean Decade’s first Call for Decade Actions showcase the success of and huge interest around this global movement”, said Vladimir Ryabinin, the IOC Executive Secretary.

“The initial Actions are just the first building blocks of the Decade – there will be many chances to engage.”