Just before the sun rose the rain started, and then didn’t stop for 24 hours. It was one of those dramatic floods, so dramatic that you don’t forget it, instead you remember the year, the month, the day, a long time afterwards.
It was said to be one of those events that cause the whole social fabric of a community to change, that only becomes apparent after the soaking wet carpets have dried and the roads have re-opened.
Dunedin is a place where you can be on edge any time it rains, when the gutters start to pool, and it threatens to start all over again.
New Zealand floods
This is the reality in the southern suburbs of Dunedin in New Zealand, where one of those floods began on the morning of June 3, 2015. It had been forecast by the Met Service that a low-pressure system from the south had been expected to cause “persistent rain, heavy at times” across coastal Otago, but the rain proved to be more intense than forecast.
Floods in Otago
So it was that by around midday, a month’s worth of rain had already fallen on coastal Otago. Another month’s had fallen again by 6pm, and once more by 6am the following day, when it finally stopped. In South Dunedin, over the course of the day, it was said that: “flooding had caused ponding up to half a metre deep in some streets, floodwater likely contaminated with sewage spilling into houses and businesses.”
An army Unimog truck was sent to evacuate children from a primary school, while the army also helped to sandbag coastal homes. It was also noted that “a retirement home was ruined, and its residents, some of whom had dementia, were unable to return for months.”
Insurance payouts topped $28m, after around 1200 homes and businesses were damaged by water but the cost of the event was much higher. It was reported that, “insurer IAG estimated the economic damage at $64m and the social damage at $18m, a combined cost of $138m.”
This is just one Climate Crisis story and one that took place in the Developed World. In the poorer, Developing World, in places such as the Sahel in North Africa, where the Sahara Desert is spreading south, like an unstoppable tsunami of sand and people can no longer grow the crops they have for generations, or on small Pacific islands such as Tuvalu, which are threatened with being swallowed up by the sea, the situation is even more serious.
It was for these people the many millions in Africa, Asia and South America, who are struggling with the consequences of a crisis they didn’t create, that the Conference of the Parties 20 (COP29), recently held in Baku in Azerbaijan really needed to deliver.
Did COP29 deliver?
On Saturday 23rd November, the climate activist Greta Thunberg went on Twitter/X to say this about the draft text from COP29 held in Azerbaijan: “As the COP29 climate meeting is reaching its end, it should not come as a surprise that yet another COP is failing. The current draft is a complete disaster….
With every negotiation, with every speech made by a world leader and with every agreement they sign, it becomes clear that it is up to us as a global collective to take the action we so desperately need and show where the leadership truly lies. They are not going to do it for us, as this COP29 yet again proves.” So, what has just happened at COP29 and how accurate is Greta’s analysis?
Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank said: “This [summit] has been a disaster for the developing world. It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously. Rich countries have promised to ‘mobilise’ some funds in the future, rather than provide them now. The cheque is in the mail. But lives and livelihoods in vulnerable countries are being lost now.”
COP29 a high stakes event
COP29, was always going to be a high stakes event, once the American election had concluded, just days before the COP opened and the world was faced with a Trump White House at next year’s COP along with American withdrawal from the Paris Agreement of 2015.
Yet it was dogged with controversy from the beginning, especially the proliferation of fossil fuel companies represented at the event amid accusations that a senior official at the climate change conference in Azerbaijan appeared to use his role to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals.
What needs to be done
The Climate Crisis is getting deeper and more dangerous with every year and every COP that passes by. In the Paris Agreement of 2015 ,it was agreed to “pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”” Yet less than 10 years later, it was being reported that the 1.5 limit had been well and truly breached.
Net Zero slowing down
We need to speed up the drive to Net Zero, yet around the world, there are many signs that we are instead slowing down. In our own country the government is spending huge amounts of money on a Carbon Capture and Storage Scheme that is subject to a legal challenge as it is claimed that it will merely allow fossil fuel industries to carry on with ‘business as usual’.
Climate Justice
We also need to ensure that there is Climate Justice and that consequently, developing countries are given a fair amount of money, to deal with adaptation to a crisis they have done little to cause.
COP29
COP29 will go down as another misstep on the road to a healthy world where humans and other life can live happily together. The fact that it was held in Baku, a city built on oil exports from an oil industry going back to the 1840’s perhaps explains part of why COP29 has not been a great success.
Indeed, so prominent has oil been in the story of Baku that Sunil Amrith has noted in The Burning Earth, that even before the oil industry really got started there in the 19th century, “for centuries, the area around Baku had been known to travellers as the place of ‘eternal flame’.
Spontaneous eruptions of oil from underground ‘gushers’, spouted from the soil when deposits of natural gas, ignited periodically”. And this influence of the fossil fuel industries still seemed to dominate proceedings at COP29 this year.
Baku
Speaking of the final negotiations, Fiona Harvey, reporting from Baku for the Guardian stated that: “early on Sunday morning, ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries gathered in Baku’s Olympic stadium to witness the drama of fossil fuel wealth battling with science, which says that continuing to burn oil, gas and coal will bring havoc and destruction to the planet if temperatures are not limited to a rise of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Most observers would say that science lost.”
Finance issues and low-carbon economies
Harvey went on to note that what was being discussed in Baku was the issue of the finance needed to help poor countries shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt their infrastructure to the impacts of extreme weather. About $1.3tn (£1tn) a year will be needed by 2035 for countries to achieve this, and for the world to stay within the 1.5C limit.
Harvey goes on to say that: “a deal on how to get some way to reaching that target was struck in that hall, but it was one so hedged, loose and half-hearted that many cried betrayal. Representatives of the least developed countries (LDCs) negotiating bloc said: “[We are] outraged and deeply hurt by the outcome of Cop29. Once again, the countries, most responsible for the climate crisis have failed us. This is not just a failure. It’s a betrayal.”
Budgets of developed countries
Only $300bn of the promised total will come directly from the budgets of developed countries and public finance institutions, such as the World Bank. The great majority of that money should be in the form of grants and low-interest loans, but loose wording means even that commitment is hedged – the cash could come from “a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources””.
Odds stacked against COP29
It would appear then that the odds against this COP were stacked against it from the beginning, with large fossil fuel corporations being given an enormous amount of power and influence, meaning that the carrying out of ‘business as usual’ was never seriously challenged, while Developing countries, which suffer most from Climate Change, despite having done least to cause it, continue to be largely ignored.
At its conclusion, nobody seems happy with the results of COP29. Meanwhile temperature records continue to be broken, while extreme weather events continue to get more, well, extreme. With a venue at oil producing Baku and the prominence of the fossil fuel industry, it seems that this particular COP was far from fair…
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