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Climate change may be costing Russia billions every year

InternationalApr 18. 2021

Fog shrouds Yakutsk, which has a reputation as the world’s coldest city, on Feb. 16, 2016. The eastern Siberian city is in Sakha Republic, Russia. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olga Tanas, Dina Khrennikova

The residents of Irkutsk, one of Russia’s coldest regions, are used to harsh winters. But when the temperature dropped to negative -76 Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) last January, even they had to submit to the elements. “Please stay at home unless absolutely necessary,” Governor Igor Kobzev pleaded on Instagram.

With the cold came the heaviest snowfall in 25 years. It blanketed Siberia, the Far East and central Russia. When temperatures starting rising at the end of March, the Ministry of Emergency Situations warned that the melting snow may cause dangerous floods.

“The unstable climate system is leading to increasing extremes, to a growing number of weather anomalies, including dangerous events,” said Anna Romanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Yu. A. Izrael Institute of Global Climate and Ecology. “The direction of the trend is undeniable.”

Russia is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. A significant part of its territory is in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world. That’s manifested in Siberia’s unusually high 2020 temperatures, two consecutive years of record wildfires and thawing permafrost-the frozen ground that covers vast swaths of the country.

The disasters have caused expensive damage. Reinsurance broker Aon Benfield estimated that June floods near Russia’s border with China in 2019 cost the nation more than $460 million. In total, major catastrophes may have led to just under $1 billion of losses in Russia that year, it said.

“The heat wave in Siberia in 2020 and the corresponding widespread fires are renewed evidence of climate change,” said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geo scientist at global reinsurance provider Munich Re. “We view with concern the thawing permafrost soils, which amplify global warming by releasing methane.”

Russia hasn’t developed a comprehensive system for assessing weather-related losses. Leading databases only record events with registered damage, some of the nation’s top climate scientists at its Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, or Rosgidromet, wrote in a 2019 paper. “Data on the losses are, for the most part, only descriptive, while monetary assessments are rare.”

The paper also cites confidentiality requirements and the lack of a developed insurance system as key hurdles to assessing the nation’s economic damage from natural catastrophes. The lack of data means current estimates for Russia’s annual weather-related economic damage by insurers, researchers and governmental bodies vary greatly.

Munich Re, which been gathering estimates of losses caused by natural disasters across the world for nearly 50 years, has only limited information on Russia’s recent annual weather-related damage. “The data quality for Russia is not sufficient,” a spokesman said.

A resident passes frozen trees, with a Russian orthodox church in the background, in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia, on Feb. 14, 2016. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov

The Russian climate scientists in their 2019 paper presented a mathematical model for assessing losses from only four high-impact weather events: strong wind, summer rain, winter snow and rain, and frost. According to the model, the events resulted in monetary losses of as much as $4 billion (234 billion rubles) in 2017.

Romanovskaya from the Yu. A. Izrael Institute says that calculations should go further, including not only direct but also collateral economic losses, such as damage to residents’ health and the environment. She estimates Russia’s total weather-related losses for 2019 were around 850 billion rubles, meaning working citizens paid almost 10,000 rubles each. It’s “kind of a climate tax,” she said.

The Russian government remains sanguine about the impacts of climate change. It’s the world’s biggest energy exporter and fourth-largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, yet lags other nations in taking steps to reduce its pollution.

The nation pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, assuming that its vast forests absorb the maximum amount of carbon dioxide possible. The target is so low that Russia met it years ago and has so far expressed no desire to set a more ambitious goal. Carbon Action Tracker, a U.K.-based nonprofit, rates its policies as “critically insufficient.”

Russia is working on a national climate strategy set to be adopted this year, with recent comments from officials indicating the country aims to develop a low-carbon economy in the next decades rather than reach full carbon neutrality.

Meanwhile the warming Arctic will keep causing greater weather imbalances in the northern hemisphere, according to Yury Varakin, head of the Rosgidromet’s situation center. In recent weeks, scientists have linked higher temperatures in the Arctic to the cold spell that moved as far south as Texas, shutting down power plants and leaving residents without electricity.

Air masses “are moving more frequently from north to south or south to north” rather than in the west-east circulation that dominated during the 20th century, Varakin said. That means an Arctic blast can reach southern regions relatively quickly and Mediterranean heat can move rapidly into northern areas. “This trend will only increase irreversibly in the next 10 to 15 years,” leading to wilder swings in the weather, he said.

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Asia’s richest man rebuilds a 261-year-old British icon

InternationalApr 18. 2021

The Hamleys toy store at the DLF Saket Avenue mall in New Delhi, on April 10., 202l. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanathan.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · P R Sanjai, Chris Kay

A struggling 261-year-old U.K. toy-store chain is seeking a new lease of life in the hands of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who’s looking to India where about a fifth of the world’s babies are born to fuel its revival.

Hamleys, a British retail icon that hasn’t made a profit for a number of years, plans to quadruple its outlets in the former British colony to more than 500 in three years despite the pandemic, according to Darshan Mehta, chief executive officer of Ambani’s Reliance Brands. Besides the main growth market, the company is also adding stores from Europe to South Africa and China, he said in an interview.

Ambani, 63, bought Hamleys in 2019 to strengthen his retail footprint as part of the ongoing transformation of his oil-and-chemicals conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd. into a consumer and technology behemoth. The deep pockets of Asia’s richest man and India’s demographics could help breathe new life into Hamleys, whose share of global toy sales was estimated at 0.6% last year by Euromonitor International, and see it avert the pitfalls faced by rivals such as Toys “R” Us Inc.

With a backer whose net worth is $72 billion, Hamleys is seeking to tap into what it sees as an inadequately serviced section of India’s almost 1.4 billion people, of which about 27% are children under 14. The country accounts for just 1% of the $90 billion global toy industry, meaning the potential for growth is high, Mehta said.

“There is a lot of headroom and India is no way near saturation,” Mehta said. “We are now mulling how we can roll out stores in newer geographies and new formats.”

Hamleys stores are famed for the carnival-like experience, allowing children to race toy cars, enjoy model train sets and play various games. In a country like India, with its densely packed cities and limited entertainment options, such an environment could be a hook to get customers to visit again. Product prices appealing to buyers of modest means as well as the super-rich make Hamleys an “elastic brand,” said Mehta.

A street cleaning buggy moves along the pavement outside The Hamleys Group flagship store on Regent Street in London on June 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Chris J. Ratcliffe.

In Asia, Hamleys is seen as “high class and it’s on par with Harrods in some ways,” said Marc Alonso, a London-based senior research analyst at Euromonitor. “So it’s attracting that customer base, which is why in some places like India and China, it has been seeing some good sales growth in the past few years.”

While the pandemic has been hitting parts of India’s economy, Mehta sees the toy industry as “recession proof” because many families choose the happiness of kids over anything else.

But other chains have struggled before the virus. Toys “R” Us was the biggest victim of the U.S. retail apocalypse when it filed for bankruptcy in 2017, crushed by debt and felled by competition from online sellers such as Amazon.com. Though the American chain is on a recovery path now under a new owner, a protracted pandemic points to an uncertain future for retailers.

Nailing online sales is key to avoiding the fate of other high-end toy chains, according to Reliance. As part of Ambani’s e-commerce and technology pivot, his group is building Jiomart, a shopping portal, to take on giants such as Amazon.com and Walmart’s Flipkart in the local market. Reliance Industries has roped in Facebook Inc. and Google as investors to fuel those ambitions.

With covid-19 accelerating the group’s digital strategy, Mehta expects 30% of Hamleys’ sales coming from orders online in five years, versus 20% now. Direct selling over the phone or via WhatsApp would account for 20% in the same period, he said.

Euromonitor’s Alonso said that target may be too ambitious because some customers could go to another portal that offers cheaper prices. “You can get the same product much cheaper by going straight to Lego, for example, on their e-commerce site,” said Alonso.

A child looks at a display in a Hamleys toy store at the DLF Saket Avenue mall in New Delhi, India on April 10, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanathan.

Founded by William Hamley in 1760, Hamleys has seen its share of troubles. Ownership of the London-based chain has changed at least three times in the past decade alone — from an Icelandic bank to a French group and then to a Chinese fashion retailer. Two years ago, Ambani snapped it up for about $89 million in cash. Hamleys’ most recent books for 2019 show a loss of almost 9 million pounds ($12.4 million) on revenue of about 48 million pounds.

The onset of the pandemic just months after Reliance took control compounded Hamleys’ financial distress in the U.K., where it runs 21 outlets. Like most shops in the deserted streets of London, its grand seven-story Regent Street flagship store that opened in 1881 remained closed for much of the past year until recently, while it cut a quarter of its staff to weather the crisis.

Mehta believes the U.K. operations will “come out very strongly” with non-essential stores reopening this week following the easing of curbs. After 100 days of lockdown, consumers flocked to shopping streets across England on Monday. Retailers like Hamleys are hoping the pent-up demand will translate into bumper sales. Mehta said another coronavirus wave could cause temporary disruption — like delayed plans for the U.S., a market Hamleys wants to crack.

Prior to the acquisition of the chain, Reliance had the master franchise for Hamleys in India. The retail unit of Reliance is also the local partner for over 45 international brands including Burberry, Hugo Boss, Jimmy Choo and Tiffany & Co., according to the company’s website.

The pandemic has limited Hamleys’ India target to just about 50 new stores this year before the roll out picks up pace. The toy retailer is looking at outlets in the U.S. this year or next, depending on travel restrictions, as well as in tourist hot spots in European countries, including France and Italy, the Reliance executive said.

Still, India is likely to be a key market, said Arvind Singhal, chairman of Indian retail consultancy Technopak Advisors. With about 26 million children born in the country each year, Hamleys is unlikely to be short of customers there even if only the top 5% of the population can afford to shop at its store, he said.

“Toys is one category where emotions sometimes overtake your financial abilities,” said Singhal. “Hamleys is probably one of the best investments from Mr. Ambani’s point of view in retail — the visibility the Hamleys brand has in India is unparalleled.”

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Afghanistan plans raise U.S. security concerns

InternationalApr 18. 2021

By The Washington Post · Missy Ryan, Shane Harris, Paul Sonne

WASHINGTON – The military and intelligence agencies are racing to refine plans for countering extremist groups in Afghanistan following President Joe Biden’s planned troop withdrawal, but current and former officials warn it will be far more difficult to head off threats to U.S. security from afar.

Biden said the United States would reposition personnel and equipment once the Pentagon pulls its forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“We’ll not take our eye off the terrorist threat,” Biden said as he announced his decision, to end a war that is now America’s longest, a goal that has eluded earlier presidents.

Top Biden aides said the move, which came despite warnings from military and intelligence leaders that withdrawal could permit a diminished al-Qaida to regroup, was necessary to comply with a 2020 withdrawal agreement President Donald Trump negotiated with the Taliban, and to allow the United States to focus on more pressing challenges, like China’s military rise.

But some officials cautioned that the trade-offs for American security, especially given the anemic state of peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government, could be steep without the constellation of military bases, arsenal of weaponry and aircraft, and network of human sources the two-decade American effort in Afghanistan has accrued.

“The reason why al-Qaida is pretty weak right now is that we’ve been putting pressure on them,” making it hard for them to attempt to regroup, said Lisa Curtis, who served as the top White House official for Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Trump administration. Without an American presence, she said, “they’re going to have the freedom to do just that.”

Curtis’ warning echoed statements from CIA Director William Burns, who told lawmakers this week that the military departure would diminish the U.S. government’s ability to detect and respond to upticks in extremist threats, also including the Islamic State. “To be honest, there is a significant risk once the U.S. military and the coalition militaries withdraw,” he said.

Pentagon officials say that preliminary repositioning plans, drawn up during a policy review Biden kicked off after taking office and during earlier debates about U.S. options in Afghanistan, will be reworked and submitted to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for approval.

“We’re still working out what the future bilateral relationship is going to be with Afghanistan,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Friday. “It will not include a U.S. military footprint,” he said, with the exception of a Marine force assigned to protect the U.S. embassy.

Among the biggest challenges once troops are gone will be how to effectively surveil – and potentially strike – extremist groups in Afghanistan, which is landlocked and far from any major American base. U.S. aircraft could launch flights from al-Udeid, the sprawling air base outside the Qatari capital that is the main U.S. air hub in the Middle East. But the Gulf nation’s distance from Afghanistan, compounded by the need to fly around neighboring Iran, makes it an expensive option.

Fighter jets flying from Qatar to Afghanistan require substantial aerial refueling, which if scaled up could further strain the military’s stock of aging tanker planes. More significantly, those staffed flights would occur without the on-the-ground search-and-rescue backup they now have.

Flying unstaffed aircraft like the MQ-9 Reaper from Qatar entails a six- to eight-hour round trip, reducing the time the drones can spend over Afghanistan. That means the military would need a high number of drones to attain 24-hour coverage over multiple areas of Afghanistan at a time when the Pentagon is seeking to shift surveillance resources to East Asia.

Current and former officials said the administration will likely consider closer options for drone operations, including Uzbekistan, whose Karshi-Khanabad base was a logistics hub for Afghanistan until Uzbek officials ousted the United States in 2005. While Uzbekistan is less under the sway of U.S. rival Russia than neighbors like Tajikistan, where U.S. officials say Moscow has positioned weaponry near the Afghan border, its dismal human rights record could make renewed cooperation unpalatable.

Also nearby is Pakistan, where the CIA once flew drone missions out of Baluchistan province’s Shamsi airfield until Islamabad closed it to American use during a 2011 dispute. While Pakistan has sought to show its support for Afghan peace talks, Prime Minister Imran Khan, who once led sit-ins against U.S. drone strikes, appears unlikely to approve such a move.

Pakistani leaders “want to be friends, but I don’t think there’s an eagerness to go back to old patterns,” said Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistani ambassador in Washington and is now a Hudson Institute fellow.

Current and former officials said that major advances in surveillance technology nevertheless means U.S. visibility would be far better in Afghanistan than it was before 9/11.

“But strike options will become more limited because we won’t have a team of JSOC who can go out and do a raid,” a former defense official said, referring to elite Joint Special Operations Command operatives who have carried out missions against militant leaders.

It’s not yet clear whether the Biden administration will, as other administrations have done in the past, seek to assign a small number of troops under embassy or intelligence authority in a way that could be seen as complying with the letter, if not the spirit, of the U.S.-Taliban deal.

Some former officials pointed to the U.S. experience in Iraq following the Obama administration’s hurried 2011 withdrawal as a potential model. There, a contingent of roughly two dozen Special Operations forces stayed behind, placed under embassy control so they could continue to advise Iraq’s elite Counterterrorism Service, which U.S. troops had established after the 2003 invasion.

“That proved to be pretty decisive” when the Islamic State overran much of Iraq less than three years later, said retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who served as head of U.S. Special Operations Command and Central Command before retiring in 2019.

Votel said Biden faced “a really hard decision” in Afghanistan. “But I am concerned it may be one we come to regret,” he said.

The Biden administration has declined to publicly address how the withdrawal will impact intelligence agencies in Afghanistan, where they have played a shadowy but substantial role since 2001.

Burns and other top officials have pointed to the Taliban’s responsibility, under the terms of the 2020 U.S.-Taliban deal, for ensuring Afghanistan does not again become a launchpad for terrorist plots.

“Our expectation is they’re going to live up to their obligation and continue to ensure that al-Qaida can’t again use Afghanistan as a platform to stage external attacks,” Burns told Congress.

But it remained unclear in the days following Biden’s announcement whether that intelligence presence, which in addition to traditional spycraft includes a paramilitary operation staffed in part by military personnel who partner with Afghan counterterrorism teams, can continue their work.

Simone Ledeen, who served as a Pentagon official for Special Operations during the Trump administration, said other U.S. agencies operating in Afghanistan “are doing so off the DOD logistics backbone.”

“They’re going to be really challenged if they’re left behind, despite the fact they still have a fundamental mission to keep the homeland safe,” she said.

Mick Mulroy, a former CIA paramilitary officer who also served as a top Pentagon official for the Middle East during the Trump administration, said he understood the desire to leave.

“We’ve reduced our exposure and we’ve significantly reduced our casualties,” he said. “I just don’t think the investment of 3,000 troops is too much to keep what we’ve gained in 20 years.”

A former intelligence official said while it may be possible for the CIA, which has its own aircraft, to press on, officials might also decide it is too risky without the medical support and far greater firepower the military can provide. “I have a feeling the new director is going to say ‘Heck no. We can defend ourselves, but it’s going to be an Alamo situation,’ ” the former official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

The troop pullout is likely to make the job of recruiting intelligence agents more difficult, and some experts worry that Afghans who have spied for the Americans will become Taliban targets.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA officer, recalled being in Kandahar in early 2002 some time after scores of Afghans had been hanged by the Taliban in a soccer stadium. Among them was an Afghan CIA agent, he said.

“I very quietly slipped into the agent’s family compound, and through a curtain, as I was not permitted to make eye contact with the female family members, I passed them money that the U.S. government owed our former agent,” Polymeropoulos recalled.

“I fear such scenes – bodies hung in soccer stadiums – will repeat themselves with a precipitous full U.S. withdrawal, as the Taliban takes revenge on any and all Afghans who helped the U.S. government over the last two decades,” he said.