A Brazilian firm selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) it says are linked to physical land in the country's Amazon rainforest has been asked by Brazilian prosecutors to prove its ownership of the land, which is in territory claimed by indigenous people.

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The prosecutor's office has given Nemus 15 days to show the land belongs to it and has accused the company of pushing indigenous people in the region to endorse documents they could not understand.

Federal Prosecutor Fernando Merloto Soave said his office was trying to work out if the land is privately owned, but added this would be made invalid if the territory is recognized by the federal government as indigenous.

He also said it was clear that indigenous communities had not been consulted in this case, as required by the International Labour Organization.

Nemus – whose slogan is "Treasure the forest" – sells NFTs it says are a digital representation of real pieces of land in the Brazilian Amazon.

Buyers, called "guardians," do not gain ownership of the land themselves but the company guarantees their money will be used to preserve the forest and support the people living there.

The buyers receive a collectable digital card that can be traded for game rewards.

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After Hunter Connell's California hometown of Santa Rosa was partially incinerated in a 2017 wildfire, she vowed to find a way to predict – and ideally prevent – similar climate change-linked disasters.

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"We needed a way to account for the complexity and interdependence of the environment and climate conditions that lead up to an event like this" said Connell, an environmental engineer turned venture capitalist.

"A human brain alone cannot understand all these forces," she said.

Connell is now the CEO of Terrafuse AI, one of a constellation of climate analytics start-ups that aim to predict how climate change will impact certain industries, communities, zip codes and even individual properties.

The firms are building complex models to look at flooding, wind, wildfire, and other climate-related threats, fusing known climate science with mounds of additional data, from satellite imagery to existing migration patterns and city street drainage.

That can generate risk scores, allowing investors to play out how different climate scenarios will hit their assets – with some firms even recommending new parcels of land to purchase.

The rise of these analytics tools could alert policy makers and asset holders to the risks posed by climate change – and even help direct resiliency efforts.

But they also raise a host of concerns, climate equity experts said.

"What happens in a world where only people who have a lot of money are getting access to these predictions – and the rest of us aren't?" asked Miyuki Hino, a University of North Carolina environmental planning professor.

"More data doesn't necessarily lead to benefits for everyone," she said.

Rich Sorkin, the CEO of Jupiter, one of the most established players in the industry, said he also saw the risks.

"In the wrong hands, this can be like dynamite," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, noting it could "start a panic."

But the information also could achieve the opposite effect – reducing risks as users better grasp climate threats, helping drive the behavior change necessary to cut emissions and prepare for climate shifts, he said.

For everyone from home buyers to utility companies to massive real estate holders, accurate predictions about climate risk are increasingly a financial necessity.

In 2020, for example, wildfires burned through more than $13 billion in insured properties in California. Connell, of Terrafuse, said that money could have been saved with more accurate predictions of wildfire behavior.

By using historical data, the firm is training its AI model to make increasingly precise predictions of wildfire losses each year, she said, which can help insurance companies decide where to underwrite properties.

"Climate intelligence is a superpower," said Iggy Bassi, the CEO and founder of Cervest. "You are going to need it whether you are a policy maker, insurance broker, real estate builder, speculator or if you're a slum dweller."

Cervest has spent two years developing its own model that allows users to see the climate risk for individual plots of land or larger portfolios, breaking down threats from heat, wind and other factors.

Tech venture capital firm Draper Esprit, an investor in Cervest, estimates the value of the global climate analytics market at $40 billion

While some aspects of Cervest's platform will be offered free to users, holders of larger portfolios will be charged for more tailored predictions. The firm says more than 30 major companies are already users.

"These kinds of analytics are going to rule every transaction," he predicted, with mortgage brokers, for instance, using the tool to look up risks on a particular property before offering a loan.

"If it looks like it's a pretty safe house from a climate risk perspective they can offer the buyer a green mortgage" at a lower rate, he explained.

Such analytics tools are now taking hold across sectors including financial services, city agencies, insurance companies and utility firms.

Since 2019, Moody's – one of the three major credit agencies tasked with assessing the risk of bonds and other securities – has acquired two climate analytics companies.

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Last year, Broward County in Florida worked with Sorkin's firm Jupiter to develop its 100-year municipal flood projections.

And last summer California insurance regulators approved the use of Zesty.AI, another wildfire prediction platform, to inform insurance rates in the state.

For those interested in investing in climate resilience, such analytics could help decide the most efficient place to channel limited funds, Bassi said.

The analytics can also be put to use for private gain.

"There are nimble billionaires who are saying, 'I am dumping land (because of climate risk), tell me where to buy,'" said Parag Khanna, the CEO of ClimateAlpha.

The firm calls itself the Palantir of property, after the famous data analytics software firm founded by Peter Thiel.

ClimateAlpha, Khanna said, has engineered a "data lake" that integrates 50 environmental, demographic, fiscal, energy, and other variables for a given property.

It runs the data through its proprietary algorithm and provides customers with value predictions based on various climate scenarios.

Chris Marlin, the former president of Lennar International, one of the largest home builders in the United States, recently joined ClimateAlpha's board.

Everyone from home buyers to banks to real estate owners will eventually need access to climate-risk data, he said.

"The whole value chain of real estate is going to wake up to climate impacts," he said. "The questions are: when, and who is going to be best prepared?"

Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who has studied the industry and serves on the advisory board for Jupiter, noted that "of course people are going to make money on climate change."

He has described the race to develop the best algorithms to predict climate impacts as a "climate intelligence arms race" – but says there's a reluctance to reckon with the implications of that trend.

In 2018, a California university changed the title of a talk Keenan was slated to give – "How to Make Money from Climate Change in Real Estate" – because they were offended by the concept, he said.

But "this is happening," he said. "We have to understand how this works so we can figure out the right regulatory environment."

Regulators, for instance, could step in and use climate analytics tools to predict how the assets of financial institutions will fare under different climate scenarios, to better protect investors and the economy, Keenan said.

Before the end of 2021, the US Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to roll out new rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose the risks climate change poses to their assets.

Some new climate analytics firms see helping make those predictions as a possible revenue stream.

But pricing risk and making accurate predictions is not the same as fighting climate change or responding to it fairly, said A.R. Siders, a professor at the University of Delaware's disaster research center.

"Pricing in the risk appropriately makes sense" – but doesn't necessarily lead to better public policy, she said.

"If what a town needs is a better planner this doesn't really help," she said.

Better predictions – without policies to protect the most vulnerable – also could simply supercharge climate inequities, she added.

"Let's say you use these tools to get a better sense of the risk of flooding," she said. As a result, "you make flood insurance more expensive and then all the low-income residents have to leave."

Hino worries that the insights derived from the tech might be deployed to benefit only a narrow set of interests.

"They may very well be used to argue for investments to protect the assets of those who need it least," she said.

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Lebanon is launching its first electric car, but skeptics say subsidized power will count for little in a flat economy reliant on fossil fuels.

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Designed by Lebanon's EV Electra, the coupe-style 'Rise' is the country's first foray into the electric car market, a fast-growing sector that promises to lower planet-warming emissions.

Costing $30,000, the Rise reaches 180 km (around 112 miles) an hour and goes on sale in Lebanon and Europe in late 2021, pending certification.

Lebanon's economy is in crisis, with just 62 new cars sold in the first two months of 2021, against 1,876 in the same period last year, according to local consultancy Information International.

The car's green impact is also set to be diluted in a country reliant on fossil fuels for electricity, while frequent power outages do not bode well for reliability.

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Now, rights activists in the conservative country say keeping the social media campaign's momentum going hinges on taking the message offline to reach poorer women, especially in rural areas, and changing attitudes in the justice system.

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"I hope this momentum does not remain in the upper- and middle-class segments of society but moves downwards to the lower social classes as well," said Entessar el-Saeed, head of the Cairo Center for Development and Law, an NGO.

"There are many women who are not educated and are exposed to sexual harassment but still do not speak up whether because they fear social stigma or they are not aware of the legal procedures," el-Saeed said.

She noted that many less-educated women, especially outside the cities, do not use social media or have internet access.

Only 54% of Egypt's population is connected to the internet, according to a 2020 report by UK-based creative agency We Are Social. In rural areas, that figure falls to 19.1%, found a 2019 report by the state-run statistics agency CAPMAS.

Randa Fakhr el-Deen, executive director of the NGOs' Union on Harmful Practices against Women and Children, said that in poorer areas many women do not have mobile phones and are barely aware of social media trends.

"Moreover, violence against women is at much higher levels in these areas," she said. "Those women are really left behind. That is why the state along with NGOs have to concentrate their efforts towards them."

She suggested taking #MeToo offline by organizing workshops where women can share their stories, and training more female rural leaders to help raise awareness among women about their legal rights and how to address gender-based violence.

The current reckoning over sexual violence began in July when a 22-year-old student launched a #MeToo-style Instagram page called Assault Police to expose a university student who is now accused of raping and blackmailing several women.

Weeks later, it brought to light a gang rape case, which now involves up to nine suspects from powerful, wealthy families.

Responding to the growing public debate, parliament passed a law in August giving women the automatic right to anonymity in a bid to encourage more to report sexual assaults.

In a country where women have long felt disadvantaged, rights activists are keen to seize on the movement as an opportunity to change deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes.

A 2017 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll found Cairo to be the most dangerous megacity for women and 99% of women in Egypt interviewed by the United Nations in 2013 said they had experienced sexual harassment.

Alia Soliman, a women's rights advocate, said there was a gap between improved public awareness and the way in which police and judicial authorities handle sexual assault cases.

"Social media use and raising awareness are important to shattering rape culture [and] victim-blaming. It needs to be complemented with strong and consistent legal zero-tolerance actions against rapists and sexual harassers," she said.

Fakhr el-Deen suggested installing special units in police stations to handle complaints of gender-based violence.

Many women still fear the stigma of reporting sexual abuse in Egypt, where there is a deep bias to put more blame on women for behavior deemed provocative than on men for sex crimes.

Reda Eldanbouki, a lawyer and executive director of the Women's Center for Guidance and Legal Awareness, an NGO, said #MeToo had highlighted the need for a law to protect witnesses.

Egyptian authorities arrested a man and three women who were witnesses to the gang-rape case, charging them with "morality" and "debauchery" offenses, according to Human Rights Watch.

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"This can make women fearful of reporting cases of sexual assaults as lawyers of suspects can turn the case against them and level accusations against them," Eldanbouki said.

#MeToo's supporters acknowledge the scale of their task.

Calling the campaign "a feminist revolution," Shady Noor, a women's rights advocate and filmmaker who has become a leading voice in the movement, said he was determined that women of all social classes should benefit.

"There is great resistance. We know that," he said.

"[But] we don't want it to remain for some time and then fade away like previous waves."

inst women, in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 30, 2018. Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

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Campaigners have for years pushed for women to be named on official documents including children's birth certificates, which like Afghan identity documents carry only the name of a person's father, under the hashtag #Whereismyname.

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This week the cabinet's legal affairs committee, headed by Vice President Mohammad Sarwar Danish, agreed to a proposal to change the law and allow the names of both parents.

The legal amendment still needs approval from the country's male-dominated parliament and must then be signed off by the president.

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In February, the Supreme Court ruled in February that excluding gay couples from surrogacy was unconstitutional, giving the government a year to amend a 2018 law that brought tens of thousands of LGBTQ people and their supporters onto the streets.

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On Tuesday the ruling coalition rejected a private member's bill that would have lifted the ban, leading Nissenkorn to promise a law to "ensure equality and right of parenthood to every citizen" would be introduced in 2020.

LGBTQ advocates said they were disappointed, particularly after Blue and had promised to support surrogacy for gay couples.

"It's very hard to trust them, because we've been disappointed by them so many times in the past," Julien Bahloul, the spokesman for the Association of Israeli Gay Fathers, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Israel is one of the most liberal countries for LGBTQ rights in the Middle East, where most states outlaw gay sex and some impose the death penalty. Israel recognizes same-sex weddings performed abroad and children adopted overseas by, or born to surrogates for, gay parents. Adoption within the country of 9 million is close to impossible for gay couples, according to advocates.

The country now has a record high of six openly gay lawmakers, after Yorai Lahav Hertzanu, a member of the opposition, was sworn in last week.

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El-Masry was arrested in April during an investigation into videos and photos on social media, including the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, that the public prosecution described as sexually suggestive.

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The dancer, 42, denied the accusations, saying the content was stolen and shared from her phone without consent.

Cairo's Misdemeanors Economic Court on Saturday said she had violated family principles and values ​​in Egypt as well as establishing, managing and using sites and accounts on social media with the aim of committing "immorality".

"There is a huge difference between freedom and debauchery," said John Talaat, a member of parliament who asked for legal action against el-Masry and other female TikTok participants.

Talaat said that el-Masry and the other female social media influencers were destroying family values and traditions, activities that were banned by the law and the constitution.

El-Masry said she would appeal.

Several women in Egypt have previously been accused of "inciting debauchery" by challenging the country's conservative social norms, including actress Rania Youssef after critics took against her choice of dress for the Cairo Film Festival in 2018.

Under Egypt's cyber crime law issued in 2018, anyone creating and running an account on the internet to commit a crime punished by the law can face imprisonment of 2 years minimum and a fine of up to 300,000 Egyptian pounds.

A group of female TikTok and Instagram influencers and YouTubers have been arrested by the Egyptian authorities in recent months on charges of promoting debauchery and prostitution on social media.

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Talaat said those influencers were expected to face the same prison terms as el-Masry as they had committed the same crime.

Entessar el-Saeed, a women rights lawyer and head of the Cairo Center for Development and Law, said women are the only category targeted by the authorities according to this law.

"Our conservative society is struggling with technological changes which have created a completely different environment and mindsets," she said.

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Yorai Lahav Hertzanu, a member of centrist opposition party Yesh Atid, became the Middle Eastern country's sixth openly gay member of the 120-seat Knesset when he was sworn in on Monday.

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"I'm gay and I'm proud of being gay and I'm very proud to be a gay lawmaker in Israel," 31-year-old Lahav Hertzanu, who also served in parliament in 2019, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Israel has the fifth-highest share of LGBTQ parliamentarians globally, with Britain taking the lead at 8%, followed by Liechtenstein, Scotland, and New Zealand, said Andrew Reynolds, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It is among the most liberal countries for LGBTQ rights in the region and one of a handful – along with Jordan and Bahrain – that allow same-sex relations, which are punishable by the death penalty in some Middle Eastern states.

Lahav Hertzanu – who won his seat because another lawmaker in his alliance resigned from parliament after being appointed a minister – said he felt lucky to live in a relatively tolerant country but there was still more to be done.

"I entered politics in order to make sure that we will no longer stay inferior under the law," said Lahav Hertzanu, who previously led the youth wing of Yesh Atid.

"I can't marry the love of my life and we can't have children here, because surrogacy is not available as it is available to straight couples."

Same-sex marriages are not illegal, but neither are they legally recognized in the country of 9 million, many of whom belong to socially conservative Orthodox Jewish and Muslim communities.

Israel recognizes same-sex weddings performed abroad and children adopted overseas by, or born to surrogates for, gay parents. Adoption within Israel is nearly impossible for gay couples, according to advocates.

Since a new government took office in May, Israel now has two openly gay ministers, Amir Ohana (Likud) and Itzik Shmuli (Labor). Neither were available for comment.

LGBTQ advocates welcomed the election of more role models for young gay Israelis, but said that representation needed to extend to lesbian, bisexual and trans people.

"Women earn less and have less opportunities ... so you see less lesbian and transgender women in politics," said Chen Arieli, the lesbian deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial capital.

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Pressures from global warming could intensify political tensions, unrest and conflict, fuel violent extremism and break down government security systems, the experts said in a report by the Center of Climate and Security, a nonpartisan policy institute.

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War-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East were cited as most at risk, but industrialized regions are vulnerable, it said.

"Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades," the report said.

"Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century."

Concerns over the impact of climate change have led to calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow the pace of global warming amid instances of climate-related extreme weather such as wildfires and floods.

A United Nations report last year warned of dire consequences as well.

The research released on Monday warned of displaced populations driven from their homes by rising heat, drought and dwindling water and food supplies.

Disease would spread, and border security and infrastructure would break down as resources grow more scarce, fueling extremism, crime and human trafficking, it said.

"We're really looking at a bleak future if we see more and more countries become fragile," said Rod Schoonover, a former intelligence analyst and co-author of the report, who spoke at a briefing about the report.

Panel members included former US government security officials and climate security experts.

The experts assessed threats under two scenarios – if the planet warmed by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius or by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius – by the end of the century.

The UN has warned that if emissions are not drastically lowered, the average global temperature will increase by 4 degrees Celsius by then.

A global pact to fight climate change was agreed upon in Paris in 2015 that aimed to keep the earth's temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has initiated efforts to pull the United States out of the Paris pact.

"I don't mean to be a doomsayer, but this is bad stuff," said retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a former US Army chief of staff, who spoke at the briefing but was not directly involved in the report.

"My question is, 'Is the US going to lead or are we going to stand around and watch?'" he said. "We need someone to step up and say 'I'll do it. Send me.'"

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Increasingly high temperatures linked to climate change, as well as wilder weather, particularly heavy rains and flooding, are taking a growing toll on the ancient stonework, said Abdelhakim Elbadry, a restoration expert who works at Karnak temple.

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"The changes appear noticeably, in the damage and cracks of the facades of many graves as well as the change of the color of the archeological stones, as a result of high temperature and humidity," Elbadry told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Granite that was once rose-colored has faded to a pale pink or even light gray over the last 15 years, he said.

"In every archeological site here in Luxor, you can witness the changes," he said.

Climate change is making efforts to protect Egypt's famed but fragile archeological sites even harder, preservation experts say.

From the pyramids and Sphinx to the Citadel of Qaitbay and an ancient Roman amphitheater near the Mediterranean Sea, the country's historic sites face growing threats from harsher weather and rising seas.

Egyptologist Zahi Hawass – the country's former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs – said virtually all open-air archeological sites in Egypt are in danger from stronger winds and humidity, higher temperatures, and bigger floods.

"I believe that in 100 years all these antiquities will be gone because of climate change," Hawass said, referring to expected serious deterioration of the monuments.

He said offices staffed by specialists should be set up near each of the country's archeological sites to record the changes taking place, try to find immediate solutions and to coordinate restoration of damage.

He has called for a joint effort by Egypt and the European Union to try to mitigate the effects of climate change on Egyptian antiquities.

Monica Hanna, an archeologist with the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, said she believes many Egyptian historic sites near the Mediterranean Sea could see significant damage from rising sea levels linked to climate change within about 30 years.

Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city, faces some of the biggest risks.

In remarks in Germany last year, Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN climate change secretariat, warned that climate change posed particularly severe threats to low-lying coastal cities such as Alexandria and Osaka in Japan.

Climate impacts "are not going to get better, they are going to get worse," she warned.

But a shifting climate also is just one of the threats to Egypt's antiquities, which also face pressure from everything from worsening air pollution to expanding settlements as the country's population grows, Hanna said.

Air pollution can erode the limestone and sandstone blocks that make up many ancient structures, she said, and the construction of housing areas without proper sewage systems, in areas near historic sites, can cause "tremendous" damage.

Egyptologist Hawas said visiting tourists also remain a threat to the structures they flock to admire.

"The flashes of mobile phones, the breathing, and touching the antiquities – all these have really harmful effects," he said.

Government action

Hussein Abdel Basir, director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, said the government is taking some action to better protect its archeological sites from climate threats.

In Alexandria, the national government has earmarked $14 million to protect the Citadel of Qaitbay from coastal erosion.

"A total of 4,700 concrete blocks have been dropped in the water around the citadel in order to protect it from rising water," Abdel Basir said.

In addition to that effort, which started in late 2018, the government is putting in place projects to protect beaches from higher waves and stop coastal erosion.

Abdel Basir said about 230 foreign-led archeological missions operate in Egypt, and about 10% of those are carrying out work to reverse degradation seen in the country's famed antiquities.

But that is still far too little to adequately deal with the growing climate change threats, he said.

The endangered monuments are "the heritage of the world. It is not only Egypt's civilization that is being threatened, it is the history of humanity," he said.

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