Climate change news from the ground, in a warming world Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here [[link removed]] Megan Rowling [[link removed]]

Climate correspondent

The United Nations this week announced its keenly awaited new climate chief: Simon Stiell [[link removed]], who was until recently Grenada's climate resilience minister.

Stiell will take over from Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa as executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change just under three months before the COP27 summit in Egypt.

Small island states will be happy with this choice, as Stiell has advocated at U.N. climate talks for the world's largest polluters to set more ambitious climate goals and to deliver finance promised to vulnerable countries.

His Twitter profile promotes the lower Paris accord warming limit of 1.5C "for the survival of islands" - a message that resonates from the Caribbean to the Pacific, and suggests a strong focus on issues crucial to those on the frontlines of rising seas and extreme weather.

At-risk countries are seeking funding to avert, minimise and repair the destruction caused by climate change impacts such as more powerful storms.

Last Friday, Pacific island state Vanuatu submitted a "groundbreaking" update to its national climate action plan that includes a costing of how it aims to tackle "loss and damage" [[link removed]] fuelled by global warming - most of which it hopes wealthy governments will cover.

"One of the complaints from developed countries has been that developing countries are not saying clearly what they need... but Vanuatu is leading the way," said climate scientist Bill Hare, the CEO of think-tank Climate Analytics.

Villagers look down a well that has dried up in Bamyan, Afghanistan, 22 June, 2022. Thomson Reuters Foundation / Stefanie Glinski

Some countries like conflict-torn Afghanistan are still struggling to put together more ambitious national climate plans, as geopolitics thwart action on the ground.

Since the Taliban grabbed power in the climate-vulnerable nation [[link removed]] a year ago, security issues, sanctions and the aid freeze that followed have stalled most formal efforts to adapt to warming-linked problems like drought, reports Stefanie Glinski.

Villagers in Bamyan Province told her how they face a dilemma of abandoning their land to seek a living elsewhere or grappling with water shortages that are decimating crop harvests and trees.

"This is our home, but if the water disappears, we'll have to go too," said Hussain Ali, who lost his job as a police trainer after the Taliban takeover and moved back to Afghanistan's central highlands intending to farm once more to provide for his family.

Forester Sarah Hall-Bagdonas talks with landowners Sara Velazquez and Dan Nelson at their property in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, in June. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Carey L. Biron

In western Kenya, rural herding communities - who are also dealing with drought - have found a solution to keep their animals fed and watered, and stop hungry wild animals such as lions and elephants [[link removed]] from marauding fields.

About 30 Maasai families decided to put nature first, converting some of the land they had leased to a farmer for income into a sustainably managed wildlife reserve where cattle and wild animals can co-exist and eco-tourism provides jobs for local people.

Meanwhile in the United States, smallholders like Sara Velazquez and her husband, who purchased 55 wooded hilly acres behind their rural Pennsylvania home, are looking for answers too: how to make the land pay without logging it?

Our correspondent Carey L. Biron reports on the nonprofit American Forest Foundation's Family Forest Carbon Program [[link removed]], which is helping landowners with as little as 30 acres do something new: access fast-growing "carbon markets".

No such thing as a quiet summer in a climate-changed world...

Megan

We tried Singapore’s sewage beer. What can we learn from their water recycling story? [[link removed]]

Water-stressed Singapore recycles sewage and calls it NEWater. Now a local brewery is making NEWBrew beer from recycled drinking water. Is it any good?

In Afghanistan, a wrenching choice between drought and migration [[link removed]]

Conflict, water shortages, and economic crisis have wiped out jobs, ruined crops and left millions of Afghans in humanitarian need

UN selects former Grenada minister as climate chief [[link removed]]

UN describes Simon Stiell as a "true champion for formulating creative approaches for our collective global response to the climate crisis"

How drought-hit Kenyan herders stopped lions from raiding their villages [[link removed]]

As drought and farming shrink habitats, animals are entering villages for food. By protecting land for wildlife, conservancies save crops and cattle, too

Energy price crisis exposes Britain's 'leaky' homes [[link removed]]

Buildings are essential to the UK's net-zero goals, but the country is lagging behind on insulation and other green upgrades

Small-scale forest landowners gain foothold in U.S. carbon markets [[link removed]]

New efforts seek to give smallholders alternatives to logging while helping to curb climate change

OPINION: If electric cars are the future, let’s make them responsibly [[link removed]]

We need rules and incentives to ensure human rights are respected as mining for electric car components grows

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