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By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

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Today’s newsletter follows on from Tuesday’s water scarcity crisis as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that the hydrological cycle was increasingly out of balance due to climate change and made a call for a fundamental policy shift towards better monitoring.

The WMO showed that over 50% of global catchment areas experienced deviations from normal river discharge conditions, with most of them drier than normal, citing China’s Yangtze River as an example.

“We are seeing much heavier precipitation episodes and flooding. And at the opposite extreme, more evaporation, dry soils and more intense droughts,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement as the U.N. agency released its State of Global Water Resources report for 2022.

The water report is only the second such analysis done by the WMO and includes data from large river basins, including river discharge, groundwater, evaporation, soil moisture and reservoir inflow.

A woman walking back home balancing pots of water on her head in Telamwadi near Mumbai, India. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas

The water report comes as researchers from Purdue University in the U.S. state of Indiana published a study showing how billions of people could struggle to survive in periods of deadly, humid heat within this century as temperatures rise, particularly in some of the world’s largest cities, from Delhi to Shanghai.

Towards the higher end of warming scenarios, potentially lethal combinations of heat and humidity could spread further, including into areas such as the U.S. Midwest, the authors of the report said.

While India, Pakistan and the Gulf already have briefly touched dangerous humid heat in recent years, the study found it will afflict major cities from Lagos, Nigeria, to Chicago, Illinois, if the world keeps heating up.

“It’s coming up in places that we didn’t think about before,” said George Mason University climatologist Daniel Vecellio, highlighting rising risk in South America and Australia.

Speaking of deadly heat in South America, Indigenous inhabitants in the Amazon are asking the Brazilian government to declare a climate emergency as their villages have no drinking water, food or medicine due to a severe drought that is drying up rivers vital for travel in the rainforest, their leaders said this week.

The drought and heatwave have killed masses of fish in the rivers that Indigenous people live off and the water in the muddy streams and tributaries of the Amazon river has become undrinkable, the umbrella organization APIAM that represents 63 tribes in the Amazon said.

The Rio Negro, Solimoes, Madeira, Jurua and Purus rivers are drying up at a record pace, and forest fires are destroying the rainforest in new areas in the lower Amazon reaches, APIAM said in a statement.

The region is under pressure from the El Nino weather phenomenon, with the volume of rainfall in the northern Amazon below the historical average.

Elsewhere in South America, a study by the scientific group World Weather Attribution (WWA) has warned that global warming was the main driver of the heat wave that scorched the region for most of August and September and raised temperatures by as much as 4.3 degrees Celsius.

Temperatures soared above 40 C (104 Fahrenheit) across large parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina in late winter and lingering into the Southern Hemisphere’s spring, with climate change making the event 100 times more likely, said the WWA.

At least four heat-related deaths were reported in Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city, but the true death toll is likely to take months to determine by analyzing death certificates, the study said.

“Heat kills, particularly in spring, before people are acclimatized to it. Temperatures above 40 C in early spring are incredibly extreme,” said Julie Arrighi, a co-author of the study and director at the nonprofit Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

A family picture can be seen on a wall of a damaged house after the recent earthquake in Chahak village in the Enjil district of Herat province, Afghanistan. REUTERS/Ali Khara 

Jason Judd, executive director at Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute and Angus Bauer, head of sustainable investment research at Schroders, share their analysis on extreme heat and flooding threatening key apparel production hubs:

“The apparel industry has focused its sustainability efforts on mitigating the impacts of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, textile waste and water usage.

“The industry produces apparel and footwear in some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries where extreme heat and intense floods are cutting into worker health, output and earnings.

“These climate adaptation risks are not accounted for by brands or investors. Fashion’s business model sees these issues as externalities for brands and retailers. In short, they’re someone else’s problem. 

“But our analysis shows that extreme heat and flooding pose material risks for brands and investors.

“For four countries we analyzed – Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Pakistan – this slower growth translates to $65 billion in export earnings and nearly 1 million jobs foregone between now and 2030.

“Looking at one sample brand, our analysis finds that the productivity headwind of heat and flood impacts in Cambodia and Vietnam could equate to five percent of net operating profits after tax per year.

“Our analysis also showed a positive return on investment for adaptation investments.

“If that’s not persuasive for brands and manufacturers, new regulations in Europe are coming that could make failure to prevent harms to workers from climate breakdown a legal liability for brands.

“So, these investments make sense whatever your perspective: protecting workers, protecting earnings, or managing risk for employers and governments, brands and investors.”

Harvard’s Claudia Goldin won the Nobel economics prize for showing that wage inequality between men and women spikes after children are born. Governments can rectify that by funding childcare instead of fossil fuels. A more balanced workforce will boost tax revenue and spur growth. Click here to read more about it from Reuters Breakingviews journalist Lisa Jucca (this may be behind a paywall).

 An array of solar panels point to the Nevada sky as they generate electricity for use on Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. REUTERS/Jason Reed

Today’s spotlight focuses on clean energy initiatives in the United States as a solar manufacturer restarts its cell factory while Biden’s administration announces the winners of a $7 billion grant to build hydrogen hubs.

Suniva, the U.S. solar manufacturer that successfully fought for tariffs on cheap panels made overseas, will restart its Georgia cell factory next year thanks to incentives in President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, the company’s president said in an interview.

The company is the latest to commit to new U.S. solar production capacity since passage last year of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which subsidizes domestic manufacturing of clean energy equipment.

“Solar cells can succeed in this market. We’re proving that and we’re coming back in a major way very, very quickly,” Matt Card, Suniva’s president, told Reuters last week.

The news is a long-awaited milestone for a manufacturer that six years ago filed for bankruptcy and sought trade remedies as a cure for its inability to compete with low-priced imports, primarily from China.

U.S. president Joe Biden walks past solar panels at the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative in Plymouth, New Hampshire, U.S. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The Biden administration is expected to announce the winners of $7 billion in federal grants to build out regional hydrogen hubs on Friday, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The announcement caps months of intense political jockeying among states from California to Pennsylvania for their share of the $7 billion in federal dollars to set the U.S. on a path to produce 50 million metric tons of clean hydrogen fuel by 2050.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill allocated up to $7 billion to launch the initiative, called the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program, which will help fund six to 10 regional clean hydrogen hubs across the United States.

“Nature loss is at the heart of many of our greatest problems today, from climate breakdown and water scarcity, to public health deficiencies and rural poverty. Knowing where biodiversity and ecosystems are still intact, and what we are losing and where, is essential to designing solutions.”

Pavan Sukhdev, Visiting Fellow at Yale University and founder-CEO of GIST Advisory, an India-based specialist consulting firm

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