Welcome back! Normal weather (12C, rain) has returned to London, and the kittens have grown massively in recent weeks on a strict diet of Dreamies and cuddles.
As COP27 approaches, I will look at how some of the conference’s likely key themes intersect with climate security issues. Today, I cover how conflict and (in)security touches on methane emissions, the energy transition and climate “co-benefits” through the prism of the war in Ukraine. Bottom line: you (probably) can’t do net-zero and decarbonisation without managing geopolitical and conflict risks.
What happened over the last month?
🇵🇰 The impact from the flooding in Pakistan continues even as it falls off the headlines, as rates of dengue, cholera and malaria soar.
🍎 NY Climate Week: the biggest annual confab of climate folks next to COP [insert number], it’s clear corporations are shouldering an ever greater responsibility to deliver Paris targets and generally saving the planet. A variety of views were expressed on the week’s outcomes relative to the urgency of the crisis.
🇳🇬 Nigeria, the world’s sixth-most populated country and among the most vulnerable to climate change impacts, faces its worst flooding in decades.
🌀 Hurricane Ian slams into Cuba, Florida and South Carolina. Climatologists argue that warmer surface water temperatures over a wider area enabled more powerful maximum winds and durability. It is important to point out, though, that most damage to life and property from hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones come from flooding, not wind.
🇨🇳 🇺🇸 China suspended high-level climate talks with the US ahead of COP27 in Egypt, in response to US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August. Geopolitics matter.
🇧🇷 Brazil votes for a president. Amazon policy - and one of the global climate tipping points - is once again at stake. Not to mention the vibrancy of democracy in the Western hemisphere.
And there’s still a war in 🇺🇦 …so diving right in:
Armed conflict’s entanglement with climate change
Let’s bring back one of those Chatham House climate insecurity systems graphics:
Source: Chatham House Climate Change Risk Assessment (2021)
The Russian invasion of Ukraine triggering the past seven months of war has been devastating in the loss of life, livelihoods, economies, and much more. But what of the environmental and climate impacts? I would argue that the relationships between armed conflict and cascading risks like poor governance and food security are two-way: while the triggers for the Russian invasion are not climate-related, its ripple effects feed back into resource competition, social disorder, food security, displacement, and increased GHG emissions.
⚔️ War is dirty: such as emissions from military vehicles, destroyed infrastructure, fires, water pollution. The breakdown in key institutions critical to local governance and social resilience in armed conflict can effectively halt a region or country’s progress towards climate change adaptation. The Conflict and Environment Observatory published a detailed analysis of the emissions impacts of armed conflict:
Wars in Iraq and Libya contributed to significant flaring levels compared to oil production and emissions arising from damage or sabotage to hydrocarbons infrastructure. Disrupted energy networks (we’ll get to that) can also be an unpleasant contributor.
Vegetation loss from land cleared for timber, firewood and charcoal, or deliberate destruction of wood / croplands e.g. DRC, Yemen, Laos, Colombia, eastern Ukraine. These land use changes often destroy carbon sinks, increase risk of soil erosion, water pollution, coastal erosion and biodiversity loss. I would argue from the available evidence that where these carbon sinks are the nature-based assets for financial instruments e.g. carbon credits, care should be taken to understand the local social and political dynamics to avoid “banking” credits which could later be upended because of conflict. This possibility is one contributor to why such assets are considered “low hanging fruit” on the decarbonisation pathway; their comparatively low quality and impermanence against other carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches mean they are not seen as playing a big part of the long-term solution mix within the climatetech space.
Countries in armed conflict are focused on survival, and leaders are focused on military and political advantage. Climate change and environmental security considerations take a backseat or fall off the priority list altogether, leading to disengagement from domestic and international commitments. This may be one of the most visible manners in which war can sap momentum of globally decarbonisation efforts.
So can waging war and peace be “cleaner”? Possibly: the UK and US are testing electric APCs, but still early days. For more, listen to the Cleaning Up podcast episode with UK Lt Gen (Retd) Richard Nugee, who leads the UK Ministry of Defence’s climate change and sustainability strategy report.
🌾 Food insecurity: before the invasion, Russia and Ukraine were top 5 global exporters of wheat, barley, rapeseed and rapeseed oil, and sunflower and sunflower oil. This tightened global markets for those commodities and created food supply concerns among the likes of Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia, Kenya and Sri Lanka whom were heavily reliant on Ukrainian exports. The strain was only slightly lessened by the grain deal to enable shipments through the Black Sea. However, Ukraine’s military gains over the past month may jeopardise the deal - Russia has already challenged where the shipments are going, and could target Black Sea shipping lanes or seaports like Odesa in retaliation for battlefield losses. If the deal falls through, then the war’s feedback loop on inflation, food prices and social unrest may intensify again.
👟 Refugees: over 7.5 million of Ukrainian refugees are now in Europe and at least several hundred thousand Russians, mostly men, have fled to Europe, Turkey, Georgia, and Central Asia over the past two weeks. What are the near and long-term impacts on social services, labour markets, crime and safety and party politics in those countries? Would Russians and Ukrainian refugees who now find themselves in the same places adapt or take up their grievances in their adopted communities? Is this a taster of “climate refugees” in years to come?
🗳️ Political legitimacy: domestic Russian support for the war has dropped substantially since the mobilisation, and protests in Dagestan have turned violent, tapping into deeper grievances against Moscow. Energy insecurity in Europe could also trigger underlying elements of discontent, and coupled with high inflation and cost-of-living crises, could set conditions for political instability in the EU into 2023 and 2024.
⚡ Hiccups with the energy transition: the invasion highlighted the structural weaknesses in European reliance - particularly in Germany, Eastern Europe and the Balkans - on cheap Russian gas for over 20 years. In anticipation of complete de-Russification of their energy mixes, the EU is scrambling to sign new gas contracts with Algeria and Qatar, Germany is reluctantly delaying the decommissioning of two nuclear plants while ramping up coal use, and taking on expensive LNG imports from the US. This year, Europe is the only region which has seen a rise in coal use, with a 35% jump up compared with 2021, or 15 metric tonnes to the end of August. As the war is unlikely to end soon, coal is here to stay to make up for any shortfall not covered by natural gas and nuclear. This damages prospects of a “smooth” energy transition in the 2020s in Europe wherein coal and nuclear are phased out while hydrogen, utility-scale battery storage and natural gas infrastructure scale. In this sense, green energy investment should be seen as a form of medium to long-term resilient investment - if underpinned by sustained, unified EU leadership - to reduce geopolitical and conflict risks.
🔥 Lighters up: the invasion also disrupted global gas markets, which is not nearly as integrated as that for oil. Russia’s gas fields are far away from their customers, heavily geared towards Europe and Turkey (83% of exports by volume pre-war). EU sanctions and a relatively limited LNG infrastructure mean that Russia now has a lot of more gas that needs to be moved to countries that’ll deal with it (e.g. China, India). But as the map below shows, that isn’t easy as there is no pipeline connecting European fields with Asian customers. So what happens to all that excess gas?
Source: Wood Mackenzie
Back in August, folks in Finland near the Russian border saw a massive fire just over the border all day and night. It turns out that it was flaring at the Portovaya LNG terminal. Over 4.3 million cubic meters per day, or 9,000 tonnes of CO2 (or 3.3 million tonnes annually) was flared off, according to an estimate from Rystad Energy. The flaring continues; shutting the site off does not appear feasible given the lack of technical expertise within Russia to shut off and restart safely. Reducing gas flaring - especially routine flaring from upstream oil and gas operations - is key to avoiding a 2C world, with methane being 40x more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
Even before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was at best lukewarm to the Paris targets, with no major pledges in decarbonisation related policies, even though at 5% of global CO2 emissions it was one of the top emitters. Reclassifying its unmanaged forests is a major part of hitting its target of reducing emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2030 is a major part of its proposal, which violates UN guidelines on emissions inventories and was deemed “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker. In fact, an argument can be made that Russia believes climate change is a good thing, with an increase in arable land in Siberia and an ice-free maritime trade routes in the Arctic being two of the obvious potential economic benefits for Moscow. The war has removed any likely positive Russian engagement on climate issues for at least the medium term. The rest of the global community has to pick up the slack.
The recent rupturing of Nord Stream 1 and 2 off the coast of Denmark in international waters - quite possibly sabotage! - further highlights the challenges. One climate researcher estimated that at least 115,000 tonnes of methane was released from the NS2 leak, or 3.2 metric tonnes CO2-equivalent, with the overall estimate higher when also accounting for NS1. While some may have been absorbed by the Baltic waters before hitting the surface, most probably ended up in the atmosphere. Australian climate scientist Ketan Joshi estimated that the rupture’s emissions thus far is the equivalent what comes out of business-as-usual flaring from the US oil and gas industry every 2.5 weeks
Source: Euractiv.com
💶 Reconstruction of Ukraine: it will be nothing short of a herculean effort. In July, Ukraine’s allies met in Switzerland and launched a $705 billion fund for Ukraine, with each province - including those under Russian occupation - assigned to one or more EU state or partner. A September report from the Ukrainian government, European Commission and World Bank estimated reconstruction and recovery of Ukraine would be at least $349 billion for damage up to June 2022 - the final cost is almost certainly far, far higher and requiring boatloads of private capital. There is, at first glance, an obvious opportunity to “build back greener” particularly from companies who are ever-more incentivised to deploy capital to green infrastructure and decarbonisation projects. Robust policy and governance will have to be set up to make this happen. Perhaps Ukraine could be a first major test of “resilient investment” given that Ukraine and the West frame reconstruction as a means to make the country more resilient to future conflicts.
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s annexing four Ukrainian territories on 30 September places the near term trajectory of the war on an escalatory path. Ukraine is unlikely to be deterred by Moscow’s rhetoric as they seize the strategic initiative - territorial gains, higher troop morale, Western military support, and advantage in the information space. Thus the war’s impacts on climate change and environmental security are only going to rise 🫠
War’s relationship with emissions, climate change and environmental security are complex and require more study - fortunately, there are smarter people than me in the policy and development space who are doing just that. Ultimately, the answer here really is to reduce conflict risks and their underlying causes in any way possible - which is why policymakers, civil society, corporations and investors have their own important roles to play.
What caught my eye:
The Tesla of APCs? Check out the UK Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)’s Greening Defence podcast series to learn more the challenges and opportunities for militaries facing climate change and going on their net zero journeys.
A paper by Katongo Seyuba and Farah Hegazi of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on how climate adaptation projects can also reduce conflict risk, the gaps in existing adaptation efforts in being too narrowly focused in their technical objectives, and their shortcomings in addressing societal trust issues. Worth a read as a primer on where existing and future adaptation projects can better consider social coherence and security co-benefits.
Extreme weather events linked to La Niña can cost up to $1 trillion to the global economy by the end of 2022, says Bloomberg.
I enjoy reading LinkedIn posts from Alessandro Biasi at the International Energy Agency (IEA) - infographics and emojis galore - this one a reminder of how vulnerable supply chains are for clean energy tech. He also links to the recent IEA report on Securing Clean Energy Supply Chains. Make friends, onshore your supply chains where you can, dig for more.
And finally, quite possibly one of the best Twitter posts of all time (cw: profanity). Applies to so much out there these days…
Let me know your thoughts are in the comments - what should I write about? Until next month!