Qatar plans to expand fish farming to meet growing demand for fresh fish in local markets and maintain stocks in offshore Gulf waters in the face of devastating climate change.

Although fish in the Gulf have generally adapted to higher water temperatures, the frequency and scope of coral reef bleaching in recent years suggest the region is at real risk of losing its bio-diverse ecosystem in the coming decades, said Pedro Range, Research Assistant Professor at Qatar University.

Global warming damaging to coral reefs, coupled with overfishing, could cause a 30% decline in future fish catch potential in Qatari waters by the end of the century, he said.

“In terms of climate change unfortunately the actions we can take on a local scale are irrelevant. What we can do is control local pressures that interact with climate change, in terms of controlling fishery stocks and habitat availability.”

Last November, Qatar launched its first offshore aquaculture project, using floating cages producing seabass.

The Samkna fish farm, located 50 km (30 miles) offshore from Qatar’s Ruwais region, produces 2,000 tonnes of fish annually.

“We have started an expansion plan to double our production capacity to 4,000 tonnes. We are obtaining permits for the expansion and building new cages,” said Mahmoud Tahoun, operations and development director for marine aquaculture at Al-Qumra, the company running the Samkna fish farm. “Five years from now, we expect to cover 60% of local demand.”

Fish farm production is supposed to prevent the depletion of fish stocks in offshore waters, where access is regulated by Qatari authorities. But Range said if that the broader international problem of excessive production of greenhouse gases that create climate change is not tackled, then none of the local fish-preservation efforts can be effective.

The top U.S. solar industry trade group on Thursday issued a set of voluntary guidelines to solar panel manufacturers that it said could help rid products installed in the United States of components built abroad with forced labor.

Some U.S. lawmakers have voiced gorwing concern that the industry is dependent upon products, specifically the raw material polysilicon, linked to work camps in China’s Xinjiang region. The U.S. State Department has made a determination that Chinese officials are perpetrating genocide there, and imports of cotton and tomato products from the region were banned this year.

In an effort to address the concerns, the U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association unveiled a 40-page document https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-supply-chain-traceability-protocol that outlines measures companies should take to identify the sources of a product’s input materials and trace their movements through the supply chain.

“We do not want any indication of forced labor in the solar supply chain,” John Smirnow, vice president of market strategy for SEIA, said in an interview. “There were serious concerns raised and we are responding in a serious way.”

The protocol, which does not mention China specifically, recommends that rigorous descriptions and documentation be included with products as they proceed through factories and are shipped to the United States.

For instance, for an ingot of silicon that is shaped into logs and then sliced into wafers, those individual wafers should be identified as having come from a particular log or batch. That way the wafer purchaser could trace the products back to a specific ingot, according to the document.

The protocol also recommends that companies have their implementation of the procedures audited by a third party. China, the world’s largest maker of solar products, denies all accusations of abuse.

The World Bank on Wednesday granted $100 million for an emergency recovery project in northern Mozambique, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by a jihadist insurgency.

An agreement for the funding – part of a three-year $700-million project – was signed by the government and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) which oversees the project.

Gas-rich Cabo Delgado province has been battered by a bloody jihadist insurgency since 2017 by a group known locally as al-Shabab.

In a major intensification of the violence, Islamic State-linked militants raided the coastal town of Palma on March 24, killing dozens of people and driving more than 25,000 out of the town.

Three years of violence have killed at least 2,800 people according to Acled, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

President Filipe Nyusi, who attended the signing ceremony in Pemba, the provincial capital, said the agreement would help deal with a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

He vowed that “together we shall overcome and win” the battle with extremists, by focusing the national agenda on development.

“The heart of this plan is to remove families from situations of vulnerability through socio-economic inclusion,” the president said.

The government also sought “to restore normality to affected areas” where around 700,000 people have been displaced, he added.

The project aims to provide social services along with agricultural aid and infrastructure such as schools and mobile hospitals.

Agriculture and Rural Development minister Celso Correia who signed the deal on behalf of government said it represented “a positive dynamic”.

Meantime a summit of leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), that was due to be held in Maputo on Thursday, has been postponed because two presidents cannot make it.

Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who is the current SADC leader, is in quarantine after one of his office staff members tested positive for Covid-19.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will also be unavailable as he is testifying before an anti-corrpution judicial panel in Johannesburg.

The talks had been expected to discuss a report by a special team sent to Mozambique earlier this month to assess the security situation in Cabo Delgado and recommend ways to counter the extremist violence.

“We have never refused any support,” said Nyusi in Pemba. “No country can fight terrorists alone”.

Royal Dutch Shell swung back into profit in the first quarter as oil prices recovered strongly from a year earlier, the company said Thursday.

The Anglo-Dutch group posted net profit of $5.7 billion (4.7 billion euros) in the first three months of the year, Shell said in a statement.

That compared with a loss after tax of $24 million in the first quarter of 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic began to slam the price of crude.

The first-quarter performance this year benefitted also from a $1.4-billion gain following the sale of assets, the statement added.

“Shell has made a strong start to 2021, generating over $8 billion of cash in the quarter,” said chief executive Ben van Beurden.

Shell had dived into net loss of $21.7 billion last year as factories shut and planes were grounded.

As a result, it decided to axe more than 10 percent of its global workforce, or up to 9,000 jobs.

Its losses and steep job cuts mirrored the situation elsewhere in the energy sector last year.

After lockdowns began to spread towards the end of the first quarter in 2020, oil prices dropped off a cliff, even briefly turning negative.

Prices then rebounded sharply, however, with benchmark Brent North Sea oil contract currently trading around $67 per barrel.

Shell rival BP also recovered in the first quarter, announcing this week net profit of $4.7 billion, which compared with a year-earlier loss of $4.4 billion.

France’s Total, meanwhile, posted a net profit of $3.3 billion in the first quarter that was even higher than pre-pandemic levels.

On Thursday in the wake of its own results, shares in Shell climbed around 1.0 percent in early London deals.

“Fortunately for investors these latest results come without the drama seen this time last year when Shell cut its dividend for the first time since the Second World War,” said Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Interactive Investor.

Shell this time around increased its dividend payout by about 4.0 percent compared with the final quarter of last year.

Shell said this year’s deadly Texas winter storm cost the group $200 million in the first quarter on reduced oil output.

February’s polar vortex storm killed dozens of people, left millions without electricity and water, caused billions of dollars of damage to the sector and forced several Texas electric firms to file for bankruptcy.

The freezing temperatures also caused outages at energy installations — natural gas-fired power plants, wind turbines and nuclear plants — which are not typically insulated as they are in other states with colder climates.

Shares of U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co (F.N) fell more than 10% on Thursday, after it warned the global semiconductor chip shortage could cut its second-quarter vehicle production in half, a dour outlook for rivals and key suppliers.

Analysts said the chip shortage is getting worse as Ford also reduced its full-year earnings before interest and taxes outlook even after handily beating Wall Street’s profit estimate for the first quarter, helped by pricing gains.

“Ford joins a growing chorus saying the semiconductor issue won’t be resolved until 2022,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak wrote in a note.

The chip shortage has forced U.S. automakers to cut production of less profitable vehicles, while allowing them to raise prices on their most profitable ones as demand surges, offsetting the production loss.

Analysts say that trend won’t last long and prices will come down later in the year, as the supply of chips becomes normal.

Shares of Ford’s larger rival General Motors Co (GM.N) also fell over 4% on Thursday.

Ford’s lower second-quarter production is likely to weigh on suppliers such as Visteon (VC.O), BorgWarner (BWA.N), Tenneco (TEN.N), Lear Corp (LEA.N), Adient Plc (ADNT.N), RBC’s Spak said.

Shares of the suppliers fell between 1% and 5% in morning trading.

“While we believe Ford has every opportunity to execute a path that could achieve our $18 bull case valuation, we remain ‘underweight’ at this time given our elevated concerns around auto industry expectations broadly,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note.

Shares of Ford fell as much as 10.4% to $11.14, posting their biggest one-day loss in more than ten months. Ford’s stock is still up about 30% this year.

Three crew members aboard the cargo vessel that blocked global shipping in the Suez Canal last month will be allowed to return home, the ship’s manager said on Thursday.

The Ever Given has been anchored in a lake between two sections of the canal since being dislodged on March 29 and is caught in a legal dispute linked to a $916 compensation claim made by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) against the ship’s Japanese owner.

“Our utmost priority remains the safety and wellbeing of our crew. We are in regular contact with them and their families, offering all necessary support,” said Ian Beveridge, the CEO of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM).

“While we are hoping that the vessel and her crew will be able to resume the voyage as soon as possible, we are incredibly proud of our master and crew who have and continue to perform their duties to the highest standards with exceptional professionalism under difficult circumstances,” he added.

Two other crew members left the ship earlier in April due to urgent personal circumstances, the SCA said.