PARIS: As much of Europe bakes in a third heatwave since June, fears are growing that extreme drought driven by climate change in the continent’s breadbasket nations will dent stable crop yields and deepen the cost-of-living crisis.
The European Commission on Wednesday urged EU member states to re-use treated urban waste water as irrigation on the continent’s parched farms, after France and parts of England saw their driest July on record.
In France, where an intense drought has hammered farmers and prompted widespread limits on freshwater use, there was just 9.7 millimeters (0.38 inches) of rain last month, Meteo France said.
That was 84 percent down on the average levels seen for July between 1991 and 2022, making it the driest month since March 1961, the agency added.
Farmers nationwide are reporting difficulties in feeding livestock because of parched grasslands, while irrigation has been banned in large areas of the northwest and southeast due to freshwater shortages.
Environment Minister Christophe Bechu said July’s rainfall represented “just 12 percent of what’s needed.”
France is the forth-largest exporter of wheat and among the top five exporters of maize globally. Poor harvests due to drought may heap further pressure on grain supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused global shockwaves.
“Our food system has been under stress for a while, and with the supply issues from Ukraine, that has only gotten worse,” said Shouro Dasgupta, environmental economist at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change.
“These heatwaves are on top of droughts and will see crops wither faster.”
Dasgupta said that extreme heat driven by climate change is also contributing to food price inflation for consumers and harsher conditions for producers.
“Droughts and heatwaves impact people’s livelihoods. People will be less able to afford food,” he told AFP.
“And during heatwaves outdoor workers are only able to work fewer hours, which brings cascading impacts for supply.”
Britain’s Met Office this week said much of southern and eastern England had their driest July on record.
Some water providers have already announced restrictions affecting millions of people, and fruit and vegetable producers have announced several crop losses such as beans and berries.
Britain’s inflation surged to a 40-year high in June on rising fuel and food prices.
Elizabeth Robinson, director of the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said that spiralling food costs — worsened by heat-induced losses in Europe and Britain — were a sign that “food systems aren’t working for people.”
“There are some long-term, difficult conversations that need to be had, particularly about food waste and the diversion of grains away from food for people to feed animals,” she told AFP.
In Spain, already parched under a prolonged hot spell, temperatures will breach 40C in several areas this week.
The heat is worsening water shortages that have dogged Spanish agriculture since last winter, with local restrictions on water usage in the most affected regions.
The government said this week that Spain’s reservoirs are at just 40.4 percent capacity.
Juan Carlos Hervas, from the COAG farmers’ union, told AFP that Spain’s olive harvest from unirrigated land will come in at less than 20 percent of the average of the last five years.
Spain supplies nearly half the world’s olive oil.
Portugal, where temperatures yet again breached the 40C mark this week, is experiencing “the worst drought this century,” environment minister Jose Duarte Cordeiro warned last month.
Portugal along with Poland has asked its citizens to cut down on water use to ease the pressure.
“Water authorities across Europe are unprepared for what scientists have been saying for three decades,” said Dasgupta. “A high incidence of heatwaves will hit water supply .”
The European Commission in an updated assessment last month found that nearly half — 44 percent — of the EU and Britain was currently experiencing “warning” levels of drought.
It warned that exceptional low soil moisture levels meant several countries, including France, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Italy will experience reduced crop yield in 2022.
“The unfavorable forecasts for the coming months may compromise the water supply and will likely keep the competition for this resource high,” it said.
A separate EU bulletin, also last month, said that EU yields of soybean, sunflowers and maize were already 9 percent below average.
On Wednesday Virginijus Sinkevicius, EU commissioner for the environment, fisheries and the oceans. urged EU nations to re-use more of its waste water.
“We need to stop wasting water and use this resource more efficiently to adapt to the changing climate and ensure the security and sustainability of our agricultural supply.” he said.
Driest July in memory imperils Europe’s crops
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Driest July in memory imperils Europe’s crops
- The European Commission on Wednesday urged EU member states to re-use treated urban waste water as irrigation on the continent's parched farms
- Farmers nationwide are reporting difficulties in feeding livestock because of parched grasslands, while irrigation has been banned in large areas
Thousands to be evacuated after Mount Ibu eruption
TERNATE: Thousands of islanders are set to be evacuated after a volcano erupted in eastern Indonesia, spewing a towering column of smoke and ash into the atmosphere, officials said Wednesday.
Mount Ibu, located on the remote island of Halmahera, erupted for a fifth time this year on Wednesday, sending a column of smoke four kilometres (2.5 miles) into the sky.
The volcano's alert status was subsequently raised to the highest level by Indonesia's Geological Agency.
"Following the increase in Mount Ibu's (alert) level, today we will evacuate residents in five villages," said local disaster management head Wawan Gunawan Ali.
He added that local authorities were planning to evacuate approximately 3,000 residents from nearby villages on Wednesday evening.
Many residents had already gathered in a village hall, ready for evacuation, an AFP reporter on the ground reported.
Mount Ibu has shown a significant increase in volcanic activity since last June, following a series of earthquakes.
In the first weeks of January alone, the volcano, which is one of Indonesia's most active, erupted four times.
Residents living near Mount Ibu and tourists have been advised to avoid a five to six kilometre exclusion zone around the volcano's peak and to wear face masks in case of falling ash.
As of 2022, around 700,000 people were living on Halmahera island, according to official data.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity as it lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Last November, Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,703-metre (5,587-foot) twin-peaked volcano on the tourist island of Flores erupted more than a dozen times in one week, killing nine people in its initial explosion.
Mount Ruang in North Sulawesi province erupted more than half a dozen times last year, forcing thousands from nearby islands to evacuate.
German minister says ‘historic opportunity’ to support new Syria
- Schulze announced that Berlin was expanding an international hospital partnerships program to include facilities in Syria
Damascus: Germany’s Development Minister Svenja Schulze promised to support Syria’s “peaceful and stable development” as she visited Damascus on Wednesday to meet with the interim authorities.
“After over 50 years of dictatorship and 14 years of civil war, Syria now has the chance of peaceful and stable development,” Schulze said in a statement.
Her visit comes a little over a month after Islamist-led forces toppled longtime president Bashar Assad.
Schulze is due to meet with the new leadership as well as aid organizations “to identify how Germany can support the development of a peaceful, stable and inclusive Syria,” the minister’s statement said.
“It would be wrong of us not to use this historic window of opportunity to support Syria in embarking on a peaceful new beginning,” she said.
“Germany can do a lot to support the new beginning for... Syrian society.”
Germany is home to Europe’s largest Syrian diaspora community, having taken in nearly a million people from the war-ravaged country.
A German study last month said that if they returned home, Germany could face labor shortages, particularly in the health care industry.
Schulze announced that Berlin was expanding an international hospital partnerships program to include facilities in Syria.
The expansion is part of reconstruction efforts but also aims at retaining “vital” medical professionals in Germany, according to the statement.
Schulze said that while “Syria’s new rulers are keen to regain the skilled workers and professionals who fled the country” during the civil war since 2011, “Germany also has an interest in retaining them.”
Under the expanded program, “doctors from Germany can visit Syria to conduct medical training courses or to train their Syrian colleagues in using new equipment,” the minister said.
“And Syrian doctors can come to Germany for training on both medical and organizational issues.”
Syria has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity since Assad’s fall on December 8, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also traveling to Damascus earlier this month.
Mozambique inaugurates new president amid deadly unrest
MAPUTO: Mozambique kicked off an inauguration ceremony Wednesday where President-elect Daniel Chapo will be sworn into office after weeks of deadly political unrest, but the main opposition leader has vowed to “paralyze” the country with fresh protests against the fiercely disputed election result.
Venancio Mondlane had already called for a national strike in the days leading up to the inauguration and threatened on Tuesday to curtail the new government with daily demonstrations.
Mondlane, 50, who is popular with the youth, maintains the October 9 polls were rigged in favor of Chapo’s Frelimo party, which has governed the gas-rich African country since independence from Portugal in 1975.
“This regime does not want peace,” Mondlane said in an address on Facebook Tuesday, adding that his communications team was met with bullets on the streets this week.
“We’ll protest every single day. If it means paralysing the country for the entire term, we will paralyze it for the entire term.”
Chapo, 48, called for stability on Monday, telling journalists at the national assembly “we can continue to work and together, united... to develop our country.”
International observers have said the election was marred by irregularities, while the EU mission condemned what it called the “unjustified alteration of election results.”
The swearing in ceremony was expected to be snubbed by foreign heads of state, a move “which sends a strong message,” Maputo-based political and security risk analyst Johann Smith told AFP.
Former colonial ruler Portugal is sending Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel.
“Even from a regional point of view there is a hesitancy to acknowledge or recognize that Chapo won the election,” Smith said.
However, neighboring South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa was at the ceremony.
Amid tensions, security forces blocked roads throughout the capital Maputo and around Independence Square, where the swearing-in is being held.
The extent of the unrest from now on “depends on how Chapo will tackle the crisis,” analyst Borges Nhamirre told AFP.
The inauguration of parliamentary lawmakers Monday was held amid relative calm.
The streets were deserted, with most shops closed either in protest against the ceremony or out of fear of violence, while military police surrounded the parliament building and police blocked main roads.
Still, at least six people were killed in the Inhambane and Zambezia regions north of the capital, according to local civil society group Plataforma Decide.
Unrest since the election has claimed 300 lives, according to the group’s tally, with security forces accused of using excessive force against demonstrators. Police officers have also died, according to the authorities.
Chapo, who is expected to announce his new government this week, could make concessions by appointing opposition members to ministerial posts to quell the unrest, said Eric Morier-Genoud, an African history professor at Queen’s University Belfast.
There have also been calls for dialogue but Mondlane has been excluded from talks that Chapo and outgoing President Filipe Nyusi have opened with the leaders of the main political parties.
Chapo has repeatedly said however that he would include Mondlane in talks.
Mondlane, who returned to Mozambique last week after going into hiding abroad following the October 19 assassination of his lawyer, has said he was ready for talks.
“I’m here in the flesh to say that if you want to negotiate... I’m here,” he said.
According to official results, Chapo won 65 percent of the presidential vote, compared to 24 percent for Mondlane.
But the opposition leader claims that he won 53 percent and that Mozambique’s election institutions manipulated the results.
Frelimo parliamentarians also dominate the 250-seat national assembly with 171 seats compared to the Podemos party’s 43.
Russia fires over 40 missiles at Ukraine’s energy sector: Zelensky
KYIV: Russia launched more than 40 missiles and over 70 attack drones in an overnight barrage that targeted Ukraine’s energy sector, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.
“More than 40 missiles were involved in this strike, including ballistic missiles. At least 30 were destroyed. There were also more than 70 Russian attack drones overnight,” Zelensky said in a statement on social media.
Preventive power cuts introduced in Ukraine following a massive Russian missile attack
- Ukraine’s air force detected multiple missile groups launched by Russia during a nationwide air-raid alert
KYIV: Russia launched a massive aerial attack against Ukraine on Wednesday, forcing the country to introduce preventive power cuts, the Ukrainian energy minister said.
“The enemy continues to terrorize Ukrainians,” Herman Halushchenko wrote on Facebook, urging residents to stay in shelters during the ongoing threat and follow official updates.
The state energy company Ukrenergo reported emergency power outages in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kirovohrad regions.
Russian forces launched missile strikes targeting energy infrastructure in the western Lviv region early Wednesday, said the city’s mayor, Andrii Sadovyi.
“During the morning attack, enemy cruise missiles were recorded in the region,” he said.
No casualties or damage were reported.
Ukraine’s air force detected multiple missile groups launched by Russia during a nationwide air-raid alert, though initial reports indicated no damage.
Wednesday’s attack has further exacerbated the strain on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which has been a frequent target during the nearly three-year-old war.
