6 Min Read
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On hot summer evenings, Khawaja Magbool Hadieri’s family used to sit on their home’s balcony and relish the cool breeze wafting off the nearby Neelum river.
But these days, after 80% of the river’s flow was diverted for hydropower, “we’re sweating while sitting there, even using an electric fan,” Hadieri, 70, a resident of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir capital, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
As Pakistan seeks new sources of green energy, officials are diverting rivers through tunnels to harness clean hydropower.
But the diversions are also causing a range of problems, from hotter urban temperatures to water shortages and sewage buildups in riverbeds once rushing with water.
By Maya Gebeily, Thomson Reuters Foundation
6 Min Read Poorer Iraqis struggle to cope with power cuts Better-off residents bypass blackouts with generators
BEIRUT, July 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - No strangers to temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), Iraqis are adept at finding ways to stay cool in summer. But a spate of recent power cuts has exposed a deep divide between the heatwave haves and have-nots.
While relatively well-off residents of the capital, Baghdad, can afford generators that crank into action when the national grid falters, others have been struggling to cope without air-conditioning, fridges and electric fans for days.
Government employee Sadiq Sadkan pays about $200 per month to access a generator supplying his middle-class neighbourhood during blackouts, which worsen amid surging summer demand.
Bangladesh scraps plans to build 10 coal-fired power plants reuters.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reuters.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
U.S. lawmakers eye divesting from fossil fuels States, cities take separate steps to curb risk
By David Sherfinski
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The board overseeing the largest public retirement plan in the United States has not comprehensively assessed the risks climate change poses to its investments, a U.S. federal agency says, sparking fears retirement savings pots could be at risk.
The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) says its investment strategies already price in such risks to its portfolio as they track broader indices of companies coming under new pressure to disclose climate risks.
But federal investigators tasked with ensuring climate risks are accounted for in all areas of the government say the board has not assessed the potential investment risks that climate change poses to the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).
5 Min Read
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Reshaping patchy and largely ineffective carbon offset markets with much tougher standards will be key to helping companies and countries meet a recent avalanche of net-zero emissions commitments, climate finance analysts said on Thursday.
Offsets could play a major role in protecting nature and biodiversity in tropical countries where it is fast disappearing and could provide an alternative income for those now earning a living from destructive jobs like logging, backers said.
Making offset markets work will be “essential” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times, the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, said Mark Carney, U.N. special envoy for climate action and finance.