Global waste and water crises are part of the same interconnected system, and commitments expected at this year’s global climate summit must translate into concrete outcomes if those challenges are to be addressed, according to experts.

The United Nations COP31 climate summit will be co-hosted by Türkiye and Australia in the Mediterranean gem Antalya in November.

Lara van Druten, a member of the U.N. Zero Waste Advisory Board and chief executive of Netherlands-based Waste Transformers, said the fields of zero waste and water are deeply interconnected.

She noted that water systems are essential to production processes and that products ultimately become waste that returns to water systems as pollutants.

Reducing waste and pollution, she told Anadolu Agency (AA), would create more resilient water systems.

Druten stressed that waste should not be viewed as a single product issue but as part of a broader system.

Recalling that approximately 40% of food produced globally is wasted while one in every 12 people goes hungry, she said the scale of associated water waste is equally significant.

“That 40% of food which is wasted, when we throw it out, also means we are throwing out Lake Geneva’s contents of water three times every single year. That’s just simply water which is being thrown away and completely wasted,” she said.

“If we solve the waste problem, we’re also going to solve the water problem.”

‘Truly measurable outcomes’

Druten said zero waste will, for the first time, be placed at the center of a COP conference across all of its dimensions during the meeting in Türkiye, adding that inclusivity and resilience – applicable both to cities and food systems – are among COP31 priorities.

She said events leading up to COP31, including U.N. Water Week and the Zero Waste Global Forum, provide momentum for producing practical outcomes.

“No matter how fantastic the event is, no matter how strong and promising the pledges are that we make, we will be judged on one thing and one thing only, and that is the action that we take.

“So I would say at all of the events, please, let’s focus on moving from talk into action, into actually measurable results that make a difference for people like you and I,” she said.

‘Global common good’

Henk Ovink, chair of the board of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and executive director of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, said water itself will continue to exist, but human activity combined with climate change is undermining water security.

Ovink stressed the importance of understanding how human behavior and climate change together affect and deplete water systems.

“It is our bankruptcy, not water’s bankruptcy, that actually is defining our future,” he said.

Referring to the commission’s findings, Ovink said water supports the achievement of sustainable development goals and argued that water cycles should be treated and managed as a global common good.

“Water is something that we need to share and take into account in everything we do. That’s a challenge, but also an opportunity,” he said.

From COP31 to water conference

Ovink said Türkiye, like other countries, is expected to face increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, with floods and prolonged droughts weakening food security and biodiversity.

He stressed that the links between desertification, biodiversity and climate should be treated as critically important at COP summits and that water considerations need to be integrated into sectors including energy, food systems, urbanization, industry and investment.

Calling on stakeholders attending COP31 to bring water-related commitments to the conference, Ovink said such commitments should carry forward as an outcome into the next U.N. Water Conference to demonstrate alternative solutions.

“If we constantly evaluate the solutions that we present in the context of our past promises, we will fail,” he added.

“So it’s not only enough to rethink what we can do, we have to re-do and rethink how we validate and evaluate investments and the actions that we need to take to head to a future that is more just, more resilient and more sustainable.”

The Daily Sabah Newsletter

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Turkey,
it’s region and the world.

SIGN ME UP

You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Wall Street is abuzz with next month’s expected blockbuster debut of ​Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker SpaceX, but few of the biggest initial public offerings (IPOs) in recent years have paid off for investors who bought in when the deals came to market.

A Reuters analysis ⁠of the 50 IPOs with the highest valuations in the ⁠past five years shows that investors would have been better off buying an S&P 500 index fund about three-quarters of the time. The data underscores the difficulty of finding bargains among companies whose valuations have often surged long before the ​stock’s debut.

An investor who bought each of the IPOs tracked by Reuters would be up ​an ⁠average of 27% through May 21. That compares to an average gain of 53% in the S&P 500 over those same periods. The analysis assumes the buyer would be able to purchase shares at the IPO price – often not possible for a retail investor – or simply buy the broad-market S&P.

Historical returns for investors buying during the frenzied first day of trading of a stock fare even worse, the analysis showed.

“It’s difficult to make money unless you’re in the early stages of these things and buying these things before the IPO,” said Dennis Dick, a proprietary trader at Triple D Trading.

Beware of high valuations

SpaceX’s debut is expected to be followed by OpenAI and Anthropic, tapping into demand for AI-related companies that has sent the U.S. stock market to record highs. Set to trade under the ticker ‘SPCX,’ SpaceX filed its prospectus on Wednesday, with a share sale potentially as early as June 11.

Founder Musk is ⁠making ⁠some shares available to retail investors through Robinhood, SoFi and other trading platforms that would allow them to get in at a lower price.

The space exploration company is expected to target a $1.75 trillion valuation that would dwarf all previous Wall Street stock listings, but the Reuters analysis shows that such superlatives are no guarantee investors will make money.

University of Florida professor Jay Ritter, who studies IPOs, said that while most public listings underperform the S&P 500 over the long run, companies with particularly high valuations as measured by price-to-sales tend to fare the worst.

At a $1.75 trillion valuation, SpaceX’s price-to-sales ratio would be nearly 100, compared to AI heavyweight Nvidia’s price-to-sales ratio of 24. SpaceX lost nearly $5 billion last year.

“Every one of these companies where investors are willing ⁠to pay a very high price-to-sales ratio has a compelling story for why the future potentially can be really bright,” Ritter said. “But, you know, stuff could go wrong.”

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Among the IPOs analyzed, AI-related chip designers Astera Labs and Arm Holdings have been the biggest winners. Astera has ​surged over 700% since its 2024 IPO, while Arm has soared about 400% since its 2023 debut. Both of those performances outpace the ​S&P.

Cerebras Systems, another AI chip designer, soared 52% from its May 14 IPO price; it is down around 27% from its first intraday high. Among the biggest disappointments in recent years, Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global was delisted from the New York ⁠Stock Exchange in ‌2022 following ‌its heavily oversubscribed IPO the year before.

Now trading over-the-counter, Didi Global shares are down about ⁠74% from their $14 IPO price. Electric car maker Rivian Automotive has slumped 82% since its ‌IPO in 2021, which briefly made it the second-most valuable U.S. automaker.

The company continues to lose money for every car it builds, and is burning around $1 billion ​in cash every quarter. Shares in design software firm ⁠Figma nearly quadrupled in their first trading session last July. But with investors worried that generative ⁠AI could commoditize Figma’s technology, its stock is down 35% from the $33 IPO price.

Even the hottest offerings can lag. Chinese e-commerce company ⁠Alibaba, which Reuters did not include ​in its analysis, holds the record for the largest U.S. IPO by valuation. Touted as the “Amazon of China,” its shares have doubled since its 2014 Wall Street debut, during which time the S&P 500 has returned over 300%.

The Daily Sabah Newsletter

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Turkey,
it’s region and the world.

SIGN ME UP

You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Somalia expects positive results by the end of the year from offshore oil and gas drilling operations with Türkiye, according to a senior official.

Mogadishu is also looking to deepen cooperation with Ankara in the mining sector, Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Dahir Shire Mohamed said.

Türkiye’s deep-sea drilling vessel Çağrı Bey arrived off ​the coast of Mogadishu last month to launch the country’s first overseas deep-sea oil exploration ​project.

The start of the drilling operation came after Türkiye completed seismic surveys off the Somali coast, which Mohamed says has moved the two countries into a new phase of their energy partnership.

“The cooperation between Somalia and Türkiye on hydrocarbons is now entering the second phase, where we are doing the drilling,” the minister told Anadolu Agency (AA).

Mohamed said seismic data collection had been completed, analyzed and interpreted, and drilling of the first offshore well was now underway.

The planned well will reach a ​depth of 7,500 meters (24,600 feet), making it one of the deepest offshore drilling ​operations in the world.

Mohamed said the project reflected the commitment of the two governments and the close relationship between Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“We are very positive that we will have some positive outcome towards the end of this year,” Mohamed said.

While declining to speculate about the size of potential reserves, Mohamed said Somalia expected encouraging results once drilling operations and technical evaluations are completed.

Mohamed said any commercial discovery could play a major role in Somalia’s economic development through job creation and investment.

He added that training and knowledge transfer were also key parts of the agreement between the two countries.

“As part of the memorandum of understanding, local expertise should be trained through on-the-job experience,” Mohamed said. “At the end of the day, Somalis should be able to do the work currently being done by (foreign) experts.”

From humanitarian support to strategic partnerships

Mohamed described Türkiye as a “brotherly country” that had stood by Somalia since the 2011 humanitarian crisis and said ties had expanded steadily over the past decade.

“Türkiye came to Somalia when the country was in dire need of assistance,” he said, and added that since then, “Türkiye has never left Somalia.”

He said cooperation had evolved from humanitarian support and security assistance to strategic energy and mining partnerships.

“We are also expecting agreements in mining as Somalia is known to have deposits of critical minerals and other important minerals,” Mohamed said.

Türkiye’s technical expertise

During a meeting in Istanbul with Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, Mohamed said the two sides discussed accelerating cooperation under a 2016 mining memorandum of understanding (MoU).

“We want to review that MoU and see where we can start,” he said. “At least (we want) to form a technical committee to review the data we have.”

Mohamed said Somalia holds extensive mineral resources, ranging from silica sand to uranium, and that Türkiye’s technical expertise could help map and develop those reserves.

“Our country has plenty under the ground,” he said. “We want to extract and develop them in a peaceful, reasonable, and friendly way.”

Mohamed said that energy cooperation between the two countries could also contribute to regional energy security.

“When you look at the energy crisis in the world, it is very clear that no country can do energy security on its own,” he said. “Depending on one single source is also challenging, so there should be diversified and different routes that can guarantee the energy security of a country.”

Deepening energy ties

Türkiye and Somalia have expanded ties significantly since 2011 across defense, infrastructure, health, education and trade, with energy cooperation emerging as one of the most strategic areas of partnership.

Under a hydrocarbons exploration and production agreement between the two countries, Türkiye’s Oruc Reis carried out seismic surveys off Somalia’s coast that identified promising offshore structures.

Following the survey phase, deep-water drilling operations began in April at the Curad-1 well. The drilling campaign, conducted by Türkiye’s Cagri Bey drilling vessel, is expected to continue for six to nine months, depending on weather and sea conditions.

The project marks a new phase in Türkiye’s growing energy presence in the Horn of Africa, while both countries are also seeking to expand cooperation into mining and onshore resource development.

The Daily Sabah Newsletter

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Turkey,
it’s region and the world.

SIGN ME UP

You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Western governments pouring tens of billions into critical minerals to cut reliance on China may find history shows well-intentioned efforts to bolster commodity sectors can backfire.

As efforts to build stockpiles and combat China’s dominance gather pace, a dozen industry executives, investors and analysts point to the ⁠risk of a repeat glut scenario.

“There needs to be some coordination between Western governments ⁠as they seek to incentivize new production,” said Brett Beatty, a partner at Resource Capital Funds, a mining-focused private equity firm that supplies the U.S. government with niobium and tantalum via its holdings in Global Advanced Metals.

“The biggest risk is we all do our own thing,” Beatty added. “We ​all generate multiples of volumes the world needs and then you just crush everything, because you’ve got an ​oversupply.”

The ⁠U.S. has allocated upwards of $20 billion to support its critical minerals sector across multiple programs and financing tools, including $10 billion for its stockpile, Project Vault. Australia has earmarked at least AU$13 billion ($9.42 billion) to support critical minerals development across at least five programs, including its own reserve.

Rare earths are a small piece of the $320 billion critical minerals market that the International Energy Agency expects to double by 2040. The rare earths sector that produces strong magnets used in defence technologies, advanced manufacturing and medical equipment was worth about $6.4 billion in 2024, according to IEA figures.

And yet the U.S., European Union, Australia and Japan have promised combined financial aid to rare earths projects globally that is already beyond that market value, Reuters calculations show.

Containing oversupply risks

In the 1980s and early 1990s, subsidies, cheap energy and price guarantees fuelled massive overproduction of European dairy – dubbed “butter mountains” – Russian aluminum “floods” and Australian wool, which flooded global markets, sent prices into a tailspin and spread pain far beyond national borders.

The wave of Western investment is already set to tip some rare earths, a group of 17 metallic elements, into surplus in the coming years, according to David Merriman of Project ⁠Blue, ⁠a consultancy. He added, however, that he did not expect large surpluses to develop because governments could temper support.

“Government-led stockpiles can stop purchasing, which can have a market-balancing impact and there is only limited capacity supported by price floors or guaranteed purchasing by governments at present,” he said.

For now, stockpiles do not present any risk of swamping markets, said Amanda Lacaze, the CEO of Lynas Rare Earths, the world’s top rare earths producer outside China, on May 6.

“I’m pretty alert to how much rare earths are sitting in stockpiles around the world right now and it’s not very much,” she said.

Australian Minister for Resources Madeleine King told Reuters earlier this year that the country’s support for its stockpile was “very different from the wool situation.”

“This is about a targeted, project-based investment to make something work, for creating secure supply chains for Australian manufacturing, but also for our neighbors and like-minded partners,” she said.

Some global coordination is afoot. The Group of ⁠Seven (G-7) countries are in talks to create a permanent secretariat to make sure plans to increase critical mineral supplies survive beyond their rotating presidencies, five sources familiar with the discussions said earlier this month.

DRC and Indonesia

Government intervention has yielded notable success for some, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has stockpiled cobalt and set export quotas to boost its mining revenue.

In the near term, ​the policy lifted global prices, helping to fill government coffers, but prolonged restrictions risk accelerating the shift to substitutes as buyers seek more reliable supplies, said Geraud-Christian Neema, ​the Africa editor at the China Global South Project, a non-profit focused on Beijing’s role in emerging economies.

Authorities now face a difficult balance: easing quotas could trigger export surges from players like China’s CMOC and erase gains, while keeping them tight risks a long-term erosion in demand, he said.

The DRC followed ⁠a path forged by ‌Indonesia, which in ‌2020 banned nickel ore exports to encourage in-country processing and increase revenue from its resources.

Within three years, production trebled ⁠and it entrenched its position as the world’s dominant producer. But it has since cracked down on ‌mining quotas to stem overproduction and falling prices – and last week, it unveiled a plan to centralize control of commodity exports.

One way to lower the risk of oversupply would be to add processing capacity at ​existing operations so that target metals are produced as byproducts, ⁠rather than following price signals, said Huw McKay, a visiting fellow at The Australian National University who previously served as ⁠BHP’s chief economist.

That model is underway in Western Australia with Alcoa and Japan’s Sojitz, which includes backing from the Japanese, Australian and U.S. governments. They are adding ⁠a plant to extract gallium at Alcoa’s ​alumina operations near Perth. Trafigura has moved to extract antimony from its Nyrstar lead smelter in South Australia.

Given the capex of large miners, McKay said Western government investments were “more like seed funding.”

The Daily Sabah Newsletter

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Turkey,
it’s region and the world.

SIGN ME UP

You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Oil prices slipped nearly 6% to two-week lows on Monday, as optimism grew that the United States and Iran ‌were moving closer to a peace deal, even though they remain at odds over key issues such as blockades on the Strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude futures were down $6.01, or 5.8%, at $97.53 a barrel by 1125 GMT and U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were ​down $5.65, or 5.9%, at $90.95. Both contracts traded at their lowest since May 7.

U.S. President Donald Trump had ​said on Saturday that Washington and Iran had largely negotiated an understanding on a peace ⁠deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz trade route that carried a fifth of global shipments of ​oil and liquefied natural gas before the conflict.

However, several difficult issues remain, with Trump saying on Sunday that he ​had told his representatives not to rush into any deal.

“The underlying supply shortfall of 10-11 (million barrels per day) of crude oil does not go away immediately and will see markets still drawing inventories until Middle Eastern crude production is back online, which is ​months away,” said Sparta Commodities analyst June Goh.

Both sides played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough on Monday, with ​U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying there will either be a good agreement or Washington would deal with Iran in “another ‌way.”

Iran’s ⁠foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Iran was negotiating an end to the war and was not currently discussing nuclear issues.

Analysts expect a return to normal oil flows through the strait to take months, while damaged oil and gas facilities are repaired.

“We continue to believe that the key factors for the oil market to ​watch should be the physical ​oil flows; and so ⁠far, flows through the Strait remain restricted,” said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo.

Two liquefied natural gas tankers were exiting the Strait on Monday, heading to Pakistan and China, and a ​supertanker with Iraqi crude left the Gulf for China on Saturday after being ​stranded for nearly ⁠three months, shipping data showed.

U.S. energy companies responded to higher local energy prices by adding oil and natural gas rigs for the fifth week in a row, for the first time since February 2025.

The rig count, an early indicator ⁠of future ​output, rose by seven to 558 in the week to May ​22, its highest since June 2025. Even so, Baker Hughes said the total count was still down eight rigs, or 1%, from this ​time last year.

The Daily Sabah Newsletter

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Turkey,
it’s region and the world.

SIGN ME UP

You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Türkiye’s economic confidence rose in May after falling to a nine-month low in the previous month, driven mainly by stronger consumer retail and manufacturing sentiment, official data showed on Monday.

The economic confidence index increased 0.8% month-over-month to 97.2 in May from 96.4 in April, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).

April’s reading marked the lowest level for the index in nine months.

The index combines assessments from consumers and businesses across multiple sectors, including manufacturing, services, retail trade and construction, to provide a broader picture of economic sentiment.

A reading above 100 indicates optimism about the overall economic outlook, while levels below 100 signal pessimism.

The consumer confidence index rose 0.3% in May to 85.8, the data showed.

Meanwhile, the real sector confidence index, which reflects sentiment in the manufacturing industry, climbed 2.4% to 101.

The services sector confidence index fell 0.6% month-over-month to 109 in May, while the construction sector confidence index declined 1.7% to 82.1.

Retail trade sentiment, however, improved during the month, with the sector confidence index rising 0.8% to 112.5.

The Daily Sabah Newsletter

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Turkey,
it’s region and the world.

SIGN ME UP

You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.