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Sky News
3 days ago
- Climate
- Sky News
At least 150 killed after heavy flooding in Nigeria
Torrents of water that barrelled through a market town in Nigeria's north-central state of Niger this week have now killed at least 151 people, officials said on Saturday. Heavy rain that began falling early on Thursday submerged the town of Mokwa, a major trading and transportation hub west of Abuja, where traders buy beans, onions and other food. The deluge washed away sections of roads and bridges and left some buildings almost entirely underwater. On Friday, the death count rapidly soared from 21 to more than 100. As search efforts continued on Saturday, the number climbed again to 151, spokesperson for Niger State emergency service Ibrahim Audu Husseini said. And it inflicted further misery still, injuring at least 11 and displacing more than 3,000 people, while some are still unaccounted for. Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based thinktank Power Shift Africa, called it a "cruel irony" that parts of Africa can be "baked dry and then suffer from floods that destroy lives and livelihoods". He told Sky News: "The terrible floods in Nigeria are another reminder that Africa stands on the front line of the climate crisis." Polluting countries must "urgently" slash fossil fuel emissions that drive climate change and target climate funding at those who need it most, Mr Adow added. Residents have been picking their way through the wreckage and lamenting the loss of lives and livelihoods. Kazeem Muhammed said: "We lost many lives, and the properties, our farm produce. Those that have their storage, have lost it." Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said he has directed the activation of the national emergency response centre to assist the state quickly. "Search-and-rescue operations are ongoing, and all relevant federal agencies have been mobilised to support the state government's efforts," President Tinubu said in a late night message. "Relief materials and temporary shelter assistance are being deployed without delay. We will ensure that no Nigerian affected by this disaster is left behind or unheard of." In February, the UK government announced a cut to the aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income from 2027, to pay for increased defence spending. It followed other cuts by the previous government, and NGOs warn countries, including Nigeria, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe, will be hit hardest. Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at Bond, the UK network for NGOs, said: "The cuts to UK aid, alongside reductions in humanitarian and development funding by countries around the world, undermine our capacity to support countries like Nigeria - those that have contributed the least to the climate crisis but are suffering its worst impacts." "We urgently need an impact assessment of the UK aid cuts." What causes Nigeria's flooding? Flooding is common in Nigeria in the rainy season, which began in April. On Friday, local officials said , appealing for "long overdue" construction of waterways in the area to begin. But climate change adds an extra layer of danger. That's because hotter air can hold more moisture, so when it rains, it rains harder. Community leader Aliki Musa said Mokwa people are not used to such flooding. Heavy flooding that killed hundreds of people in Nigeria during 2022 was made at least 80 times more likely and 20% more intense by climate change, scientists at World Weather Attribution found.
The Independent
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump is slashing US spending on climate aid. But all is not lost
Millions of the world's poorest people are set to suffer the consequences of Donald Trump 's decision to cut US aid – with funding for developing nations to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis expected to plummet to zero this year. Leaked Congress files show that more than 80 per cent of aid projects supported by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have had their funding terminated, while the Trump administration has made clear that climate-related products are one the lowest priority areas. Africa – home to 23 of the world's 28 poorest countries – will be the hardest hit by the cuts, Mohamed Adow, from the Nairobi-based climate think tank Power Shift Africa, believes that these cuts 'could not have come at a worse time for Africa'. 'They will directly affect initiatives that help communities build resilience against climate impacts, such as droughts, floods, and desertification,' he says. 'In Kenya and Ethiopia, for instance, USAID has been pivotal in promoting sustainable agriculture practices and water management systems that are crucial in the face of increasingly erratic weather patterns, while in Zambia and Zimbabwe USAID has been supporting water conservation and renewable energy projects.' The leaked files show numerous terminated projects that are examples of what Adow suggests, including a $35 million (£26m) project improving climate resilience in Ethiopian pastoral areas, a $40m project boosting water management systems in Kenya, and a $25m project in Zambia pushing low emission alternatives to cooking with charcoal. This marks a dramatic shift from the last few months of Joe Biden's presidency. At the end of 2024, the US government announced record climate finance provision , totalling $11 billion: A figure seven-times greater than the $1.5bn recorded in the first year of the Biden Administration in 2021, which came in the wake of Trump's first term. In November, meanwhile, countries gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, at the COP29 Climate Conference, where they came up with a brand new global target for the world's developed countries to collectively provide at least $300 billion in climate finance to the world's poorest countries by the year 2035. That total is nearly triple the $115.9bn that countries provided in 2022 – the last year for which there is complete global data – with the extra billions set to provide a crucial lifeline for developing countries looking to both adapt to their rapidly changing climates. But while the about turn from the US has created worrying funding gaps in the short term, experts in the field have said that there is still hope that other countries of the world will be able to rally round and meet that multi-billion dollar climate finance target. For starters, there is the fact that the US has not traditionally been one of the largest contributors to climate finance. Japan, Germany, the EU and France – which collectively provided more than 50 per cent of global climate finance aid in 2022 – all gave significantly more than the US that year to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate. Even the Biden-increased spend of $11bn in 2024 would still only come third on the 2022 list after Germany and Japan. 'Based on its historical emissions or its GDP, the US should be responsible for some 40 per cent of climate finance,' says Ian Mitchell, from the Center for Global Development (CGD) think tank. 'But in most years, it has provided less than 10 per cent of the total.' With the US out the picture for at least the next four years, there is hope that other countries will feel motivated to fill in the gap . 'Other countries in Europe have also cut their aid budgets, but there is particular pressure on them to maintain their climate finance numbers', says Gaia Larsen, director of climate finance access at the World Resources Institute (WRI) research NGO. Then there are emerging economies like UAE – which runs Alterra, a $30bn climate-focused investment fund – and China, which announced in September that it would invest $50bn in infrastructure in Africa over the next three years. However, experts warn that the kind of loan-based finance that these sources offer is no match for the financing that USAID used to give, much of which came in the form of grants. For Bella Tonkonogy, an expert at the Climate Policy Initiative think tank, perhaps the biggest cause for optimism can be found in the developing countries themselves, many of which have rapidly-growing economies and increasingly powerful financial institutions of their own. 'Countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are now building renewables with a lot of local finance,' says Tonkonogy. 'Countries including Kenya have also said that they want to shore up their own finances and become less reliant on donor countries. But even before Trump's latest term in the White House is up, the US cuts to climate aid may never be quite as drastic as President Trump intends due to a quirk in how foreign aid is tracked by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which is the forum of wealthy nations that oversees and tracks foreign aid spending. 'Climate' is not an aid category in itself, according to the OECD, but is instead a secondary category that can be tagged to other aid types, such as energy, health, or development. So funding of some projects could continue, even if it is not marked as being climate-based. 'Members of the [Trump] administration have said that they are still interested in investing in new markets... And investing in renewable energy [is] a big part of that,' says Tonkonogy. Where the US is investing in infrastructure abroad, it seems likely that the administration will also look to make that infrastructure weather- and disaster-resilient, which will be their way of ensuring that investments are suitably-adapted to changes in the climate, even if they never acknowledge it as that, adds Tonkonogy. Which will help the countries in which it is built. The US government is, for example, a major financial backer via the IDFC of the Lobito Rail Corridor, which is a huge infrastructure project connecting cobalt and copper mines in Zambia and DR Congo to the port of Lobito, Angola, in a project seen as seeking to counter growing Chinese influence in the region. The US ambassador to Angola recently confirmed that plans have so far not been affected by Trump's spending cuts. 'Climate resilience' remains a key aspect of how the project is being designed and implemented. 'There is one scenario where the US government just completely pulls back and stops investing in anything overseas,' suggests Tonkology. 'But if the US does continue to invest abroad, it is likely that there will be at least some tacit financial support of climate [issues].'
