Environmental non-governmental organisation Greenpeace recently found that while coal investment in the Guangdong province has dropped, investment in fossil fuel projects has risen by a fifth. 

This is despite places like Guangdong being an economic powerhouse, which should mean the availability of more resources to innovate and experiment with transitioning to a cleaner energy system, said Ms Qiu Chengcheng, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

She added it seems Guangdong is looking to fossil gas as a “late-stage transition fuel”, as it wants to ensure its energy security even as it has pledged to cut coal.

“It will be a vicious cycle if you’re just going to put on more fossil fuels exacerbating climate change,” she said.

The increased investment in fossil fuel projects was also seen in other places in China, going up by 5 per cent annually since 2020 in Zhejiang province, and 19.9 per cent annually in Shanghai. 

WEATHER WOES

China’s pursuit of its clean energy targets has also been hampered by extreme weather this year, with a historic drought and heatwave drying up rivers and affecting hydropower output in the country’s southwest.

For many students, the floods have disrupted their education.

At a makeshift school set up under tarp sheets near Malook Khaskheli, schoolteachers said that about half of the batch of 63 students aged five to 12 are still attending classes, while the rest had moved away.

University student Wasseem Ali Khan, 21, was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in medical sciences at Makhdoom Mohammad Zaman Talib ul Moula Government Boys Degree College, New Saeedabad.

Two months ago, the college building was converted into temporary housing. Mr Ali Khan has not been able to attend classes since then. He is among 400 people from his village now sheltering on campus.

WOMEN’S HEALTH

Besides students’ education, the floods in Pakistan have also severely disrupted access to healthcare.

This is compounded by the spread of malaria and waterborne illnesses in the wake of the disaster, with the United Nations warning of a “second wave of death and destruction”.

On Wednesday, the Mercy Relief team visited a roving clinic serving about 80 women from three villages in Tando Allahyar district.

This is part of a medical camp for ante- and post-natal care organised by NRSP, which provides free consultations and medicine to pregnant women and new mothers.

The clinic will move on to serve different flood-affected villages over the coming days.

Gynaecologist Dr Maira Yaqoob, 27, said that most patients she sees are showing signs of pain, fever and weakness. Some also had symptoms of waterborne illnesses such as diarrhoea and skin infection.

BANGLA BAZAR: For generations Paban Baroi’s family guarded a temple to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, until Bangladesh’s mighty Padma river wreaked havoc of its own, wiping out the shrine, their home, and 200 other houses in their village.

The 70-year-old and his neighbours are among thousands in the country who will be rendered destitute this year as surging waters and eroding lands reshape the landscape – a phenomenon made worse by climate change.

One day in September, the waterway abruptly changed course and a swathe of the tight-knit community in Baroi’s village vanished as the very land on which it stood was washed away.

“The river current was so powerful,” he told AFP. “Many of us have been living under the open sky for the last few days.”

Baroi’s family were hereditary custodians of the temple in Bangla Bazar, on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, the site of an annual festival that long drew Hindu faithful and friends from its majority-Muslim population.

The ceremonies were staged even through some of the country’s worst catastrophes, including sectarian violence that accompanied the end of the British colonial era and a brutal 1971 independence war that saw an exodus of persecuted Hindus to neighbouring India.

But next year’s festivities could be cancelled for the first time in more than a century – as by then many of the usual participants will have been forced to move away.

“It has been a thriving community of carpenters, fishermen, farmers and traders,” Sohrab Hossain Pir, a councillor for the village, told AFP.

“But now everything is going into the river.”

Bangladesh is a delta country crisscrossed by more than 200 waterways, each connected to the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers that course from the Himalayas and through the South Asian subcontinent.

Periodic flooding that inundates homes, markets and schools has always been a fact of life for the tens of millions of farmers and fishermen who crowd the rivers’ banks – some of the most densely populated areas of the Bangladeshi countryside.

But scientists say climate change has increased the severity and frequency of the phenomenon, with more erratic rainfall causing more cyclones and flash floods.

“CLEARLY CLIMATE CHANGE”

This year Bangladesh saw record flooding that killed more than 100 people and cut off 7 million others, with relief efforts continuing for months.

The impact is expected to worsen significantly in the coming decades, just as rising sea levels threaten to displace tens of millions of people along the low-lying Bangladeshi coastline and inundate its most fertile farmlands with salt water.

Bangladesh is already rated by the UN and civil society groups as one of the countries most affected by extreme weather events since the turn of the century, with entire inland villages wiped from the map.

Around 1,800 hectares of land will be eroded by rivers in Bangladesh this year and the homes of at least 10,000 people will disappear, according to the state-funded Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS).

“These erosion events are clearly as a result of climate change,” Ian Fry, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, told reporters when he visited in September.

Residents of disappeared villages often seek a new life in the slums of Dhaka, a sprawling city of 22 million that has doubled in size since the turn of the century on the back of urban migration.

“Many of these people have been displaced by climate change-related reasons,” Fry said in a statement that highlighted endemic child malnutrition, a lack of safe drinking water and high rates of human trafficking.

Investors are bullish on the potential of plant-based fish, with alternative seafood companies raising US$175 million in 2021 – nearly double the amount raised in 2020.

In total, more than 120 companies are now developing alternative seafood products around the world, including many in East and Southeast Asia. For example, Singapore-based Growthwell, which is backed by Temasek and other investors, recently outlined plans to export their alternative proteins, including seafood products made of konjac, to China and the UK.

As the old adage goes, “the customer is always right”. When it comes to alternative seafood, customers want products that can match or exceed the taste, texture, nutritional value and affordability of the conventional seafood they know and love.

These are not unreasonable requests, but satisfying them will require substantially more investment from public and private stakeholders into open-access research and development. These funds should go towards improving the quality, variety and cost of plant-based seafood products beyond what’s currently available.

For the sake of securing Asia’s increasingly fraught food supply and preserving the richness of our oceans amid a world of surging protein demand, we should all hope that alternative seafood producers can live up to consumers’ high expectations.

Ryan Huling is the senior communications manager of alternative protein think tank Good Food Institute APAC.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government’s push towards the use of electric vehicles (EVs) in Malaysia is motivated by the need to reduce carbon emissions, to draw in investments and to create employment opportunities. Malaysia also needs to catch up with neighbouring automobile producers that are shifting their focus to EV production.

There are plans to expand the utilisation of electric buses and EV taxis as part of Malaysia’s efforts to encourage consumers and industry to shift from fossil fuels to electricity. However, despite improvements in public transportation, private transportation is still important due to commuters’ poor accessibility to public transportation.

The establishment of Proton and Perodua, under the national car policy in the 1980s, contributed towards the increase of car ownership. Low-cost versions of existing models from foreign technology partners produced by these companies were affordable and protected from foreign competition.

Unsurprisingly, most Malaysians, including half of the poorest 10 per cent of households, can afford to own cars and continue to see private car ownership as a necessity.

UNAFFORDABLE FOR THE AVERAGE MALAYSIAN

EVs can penetrate the Malaysian market at a meaningful rate only if they enter the mass instead of niche market. Budget 2022 provided incentives to hasten EV adoption, such as exemptions from all import duties and excise taxes, but although such incentives reduce the price of EVs, they remain unaffordable for the average Malaysian.

Now, EVs range from just over RM150,000 (S$53,600) to almost RM700,000 for individual buyers.

Perodua’s sales of conventional models continue to dominate the domestic car market, at 37.4 per cent in 2021. These were led by sales of the Myvi, Malaysia’s top selling car. A Myvi costs about RM46,500 to RM59,900, just over a third of the price of the cheapest EVs.

Buyers from lower income groups, first-time car owners, and second car users are Myvi’s prime consumers.

Desertification – where land degrades, becomes arid and loses its fertility – is now affecting more than 76 per cent of Mongolia’s total land territory. Climate change and human activity are both to blame and the situation has serious implications for the lives of nomadic herders as well as the nation’s food and water security.

Earlier this year, the country’s president Ukhnaa Khurelsukh officially launched the One Billion Tree movement, an ambitious plan to reverse the relentless spread of the Gobi. 

Mongolia aims to achieve the target by 2030, as part of its commitments to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Various incentives will encourage more people, as well as mining companies and corporations, to be involved.

The province of Ömnögovi has pledged to plant 70 million trees and provide financial packages to individuals for maintaining new trees in the area. Specialists there have designated 900,000 ha of land for forestation.

According to climate scientists, the idea has strong merits. In a special summary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2019, it was reported that “native and other climate resilient tree species with low water needs, can reduce sand storms, avert wind erosion, and contribute to carbon sinks, while improving micro-climates, soil nutrients and water retention”.

“In the Gobi, it is difficult to be a herder. No rain, with too many mines. For the last three years, we haven’t had any rainfall and we are just moving with our animals,” Nergui said.

“I left my camels because you need more people to herd the animals, it is a lot of work. I visited them this year and cut their fur in the spring.

“My camels aren’t doing well, they’ve gotten really weak. Maybe there are no plants they can eat and no water either. It’s quite bad,” he said.

Their new location in Ömnögovi does not offer a stable future either. The pasture is parched. There are too many animals scouring for the little greenery peeking out of the crusted soil. Yet another move is on the cards.

“We will move from here. We don’t have winter lodging and it is someone else’s homeland. If we move to the north, we are just afraid of the cold. In my homeland, it is warm and doesn’t get much snowfall. That is what I am afraid of,” Nergui said.

The family will look to the more plentiful grasslands, knowing they will be unwelcome there too and that the desert will be pursuing them like a shadow.

“If it rains, we will go back. If it doesn’t, there is no way for us to go back. Desertification is everywhere.”

PIGEON EGG SIZE DIAMOND DISCOVERY

Cempaka mine is one of the largest diamond mines in Indonesia.

In August 1965, the mine was in the headlines when miners reportedly found a 166.75-carat diamond. Its size was almost as big as a pigeon’s egg. 

The diamond was brought to Jakarta in early September. Then Indonesian president Soekarno named it Trisakti, meaning thrice sacred in Sanskrit.

It is estimated that the diamond was worth trillions of rupiah at that time. 

Hence, the government promised to reward the 24 miners who found the diamond. At that time, it was reported that the miners would be sent on a haj pilgrimage and their future generations would be taken care of.

But on Sep 30, an attempted coup d’etat took place. In 1966, Soekarno was forced to hand emergency powers to Soeharto who later became the country’s second president.

Eventually, the authorities lost track of the whereabouts of the diamond, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy. But they did keep their promise of sending the miners on a pilgrimage. 

Trisakti is not the only big stone discovered in Cempaka. 

In 1850, a 106.7-carat diamond was found there. Four years earlier, a 20-carat diamond was also discovered. 

Given these past events, the history of the mine will be an integral part of the new tourist park, said Yani.

“We will educate people that in 1965, miners found a diamond as big as a (pigeon’s) egg there,” said Yani.

Another interesting facet of mining in Cempaka is how the locals have their own taboos, said Noor Purbani, a senior official with Banjarbaru’s tourism agency. 

For instance, It is frowned upon to say the word diamond if they find it. Instead, the miners must call it “galuh”, meaning girl in the local language.

According to Purbani, the miners believe that the stone might disappear if they call it a diamond.

QUESTIONS ON ROHINGYA

Climate is not the only issue on which Bangladesh sees inaction from the West.

Around 750,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a scorched-earth campaign against the minority group by troops in neighbouring Myanmar, a campaign that the United States has described as genocide.

While the world has saluted Bangladesh for taking in the refugees – along with 100,000 who fled earlier violence – attention has shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As long as they are in our country, we feel that it is our duty,” she said. But for Bangladeshi hosts, patience is running thin, she said.

Michelle Bachelet, then the UN human rights chief, said on a visit in August that there was growing anti-Rohingya sentiment in Bangladesh.

“Local people also suffer a lot,” Hasina said. “I can’t say that they’re angry, but they feel uncomfortable.”

“All the burden is coming upon us. This is a problem.”

The Rohingya refugees, who are mostly Muslim, live largely in ramshackle camps with tarpaulins, sheet metal and bamboo.

Bachelet on her visit said there was no prospect of sending them back to Buddhist-majority, military-run Myanmar, where the Rohingya are not considered citizens.

But in her interview, Hasina signalled that there were few options other than for the Rohingya to reside in camps.

“It is not possible for us to give them an open space because they have their own country. They want to go back there. So that is the main priority for everybody,” Hasina said.

“If anybody wants to take them, they can take them,” she added. “Why should I object?”

SHANGHAI: The central Chinese province of Jiangxi has declared a water supply “red alert” for the first time after the Poyang freshwater lake, the country’s biggest, dwindled to a record low, the Jiangxi government said on Friday (Sep 23).

The Poyang Lake, normally a vital flood outlet for the Yangtze, China’s longest river, has been suffering from drought since June, with water levels at a key monitoring spot falling from 19.43m to 7.1m over the last three months.

The Jiangxi Water Monitoring Centre said Poyang’s water levels would fall even further in coming days, with rainfall still minimal. Precipitation since July is 60 per cent lower than a year earlier, it said.

As many as 267 weather stations across China reported record temperatures in August, and a long dry spell across the Yangtze river basin severely curtailed hydropower output and damaged crop growth ahead of the autumn harvest.