Changing Climates In Africa Require Better Preparation, UN Says

Photo by Amali Tower

A multi-agency report led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is attempting to fill a gap in reliable and timely information on climate change in Africa, with the hopes that better information will spur greater climate-related development planning. 

Along with the report’s release, WMO’s Regional Strategic Office Director Filipe Lucio called for action on two fronts - adaptation “today” and mitigation “tomorrow.” A point made by a Senegalese economist whose work examines climate change impacts on migration in the Sahel, that we interviewed earlier this year in this PERSPECTIVES piece. 

Various strategies are required to address an alarming warming trend in Africa, with northern and southern Africa set to get even drier and hotter, while the Sahel region becomes wetter. 

The report offers policy recommendations in several different areas, reflecting the fact that climate change impacts a variety of sectors in complex ways. In particular, the report’s authors note the importance of addressing agricultural impacts, given the industry’s position as the “backbone of Africa’s economy.” Indeed, climate change is a serious threat to food security around the world, an issue inextricably linked to population displacement. 

Increasing food insecurity and displacement in Africa is a sinister combination, as the report notes. Refugee populations often live in climate ‘hot spots’, where they are particularly vulnerable to both slow and sudden crises, such as desertification or flooding. This can even result in secondary displacement.

For instance, IOM and UNHCR data indicate, 60% of all internal displacements in the East and Horn of Africa in 2019 were due to climate-induced disasters. In particular, pastoralists are highly vulnerable to the combined effects of drought, resource competition and conflict.

Facts and data are plentiful and should be persuasive, but as is our work premise, human impacts are the stories we need to tell, to spur change and filter up to policymakers who need to keep human beings disproportionately affected in the forefront, like our field report from the Sahel’s Lake Chad Basin.

While the report focuses on providing much-needed information for policymakers, it also provides some policy recommendations. For example, the authors highlight the need for strengthened guidance and increased protection for people displaced by environmental degradation and disasters. Additionally, better multi-hazard early warning systems, aimed at reducing the risk of disasters such as typhoons, would undoubtedly help build resilience to a changing climate while reducing the risk of secondary displacement.

In addition to filling information gaps, the report ultimately provides an important reminder that climate policy in Africa requires innovative thinking from policymakers and activists. As Lucio said during the report’s release, “forward thinking analysis” is required in order to anticipate trends and design better, more resilient systems. (UN News)

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Australia Urged to Accept 3,000 Pacific Islanders Per Year Due to Climate Change

Dave Hoefler via UNSPLASH

The Australian government has been advised to create a new visa category to allow Pacific Islanders to relocate permanently to Australia in order to mitigate the impact of climate change. The recommendation was detailed in a recent policy paper published by the University of New South Wales’(UNSW) Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law.

The report’s authors Jane McAdam and Jonathan Pryke argue that adaptation alone is insufficient in the case of the many Pacific islands threatened by increasingly frequent and severe weather events as a result of climate change. They also stress that the proposed 3,000-per-year relocation target is far from radical, representing just a “drop in the ocean” in terms of displaced persons. 

"If you look at where the trajectory is, unless you have major changes in mitigation and adaptation efforts, we're likely to see more displacement occurring." - Jane McAdam

According to reports, Jonathan Pryke thinks “relocating even a small number of people on a voluntary basis would help ease pressure on vulnerable countries.”

Australia’s Department of Home Affairs declined to respond to a question posed by Australia’s national broadcaster regarding a new visa scheme, instead offering a generic commitment to existing migration pathways open to Pacific Islanders.

This UNSW policy paper involves many important issues, but perhaps the most obvious is its timely reminder that dealing with the impacts of climate change requires a multifaceted approach. While mitigation efforts, such as emissions reduction, are important, the impacts of climate change are severe enough to require adaptation as well, especially in small-island states. Policy recommendations like the UNSW report’s proposed visa scheme must be pursued alongside mitigation strategies if we are serious about addressing the climate crisis. 

Despite activists and policymakers discussing relocation of Pacific Islanders for at least a decade, the current government’s record of inaction is not reassuring. When bushfires raged across New South Wales and Queensland in last December, scientists said they were “bewildered” by the lack of focus on the climate crisis by politicians. This was over a year after a joint Medical Journal of Australia-Lancet report warned that Australian inaction on climate change was a public health threat. (ABC News - Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Upcoming Election Offers Chance to Restore US Leadership on Climate Change

Annie Spratt via UNSPLASH

The impending presidential election will bring the US to a “crossroads in climate change leadership that will have unprecedented national and international implications,” according to analysis by Dr. Marcus D. King, the John O Rankin Associate Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security. 

If Democrat Joe Biden ousts incumbent Donald Trump, American climate policy will dramatically shift, giving the country the chance to re-enter the Paris Climate Accord and reverse the current administration's roll-back of various environmental regulations. King argues that doing so will allow the US to restore its leadership position on an issue that has already started to impact American communities while also rebuilding credibility on the world stage. 

“...the events that will unfold on November 4, the day after the US presidential election, will have real-world stakes for our planet that could not be higher.” - Marcus DuBois King, PhD

During a campaign stop in Florida, Biden shared that in an Obama-era briefing, the Joint Chiefs of Staff - the most senior uniformed leaders at the Department of Defense - identified global warming as the greatest threat to national security in part due to the inevitable displacement of millions of people. 

King raises the important point that re-establishing American leadership on climate policy will likely give US leaders much needed leverage to encourage other major greenhouse gas emitters to reduce emissions under the Paris framework. This of course includes China and India, two countries that will face major population movement and displacement as a result of climate change, especially if substantial progress is not made. In India, for example, decreasing agricultural yields due to more frequent droughts and other severe weather is fueling rural-to-urban migration, something India is not prepared to handle. A shift in American climate leadership has the potential to ameliorate such trends by encouraging countries like India to take more dramatic steps to address the climate crisis and, we hope, optimize climate financing to support India and other countries more robustly in adaptation to strengthen its resiliency. 

As the impacts of climate change worsen, the upcoming US presidential election offers an urgent chance for policy re-alignment that would be mutually beneficial to populations at home and abroad. (The Pacific Council Magazine)

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Inaction on Climate Change Poses Particular Risk to Indigenous Groups in Canada

Joris Beugels via UNSPLASH

The Canadian government’s failure to take meaningful action on climate change is putting Indigenous groups at risk of food shortages and poor nutrition, especially those in remote locations. A report by Human Rights Watch finds that habitat loss and extreme weather are major drivers of depleted traditional food sources, and nutritious food flown into communities remains too expensive.

Despite the Trudeau government’s commitments to be a leader on climate and advance the recognition of Indigenous People’s rights, Northern Canada is warming at a rate well above the global average. Provincial and territorial governments were also criticized in the report, which recommended stronger emissions reduction strategies as well as greater technical and financial assistance to communities facing negative impacts of climate change. 

One of the key implications of HRW’s report, which studied three different remote First Nations communities in Ontario, Yukon, and British Columbia, is that climate change is compounding already poor outcomes among Indigenous Peoples. For example, increasingly scarce traditional food sources are being supplemented by lower quality, less nutritious food brought in from elsewhere, which only worsens health outcomes stemming from centuries of marginalization and oppression. These intertwined issues are particularly concerning in the context of a global pandemic, in which poor health outcomes undermine coping mechanisms traditionally used to manage extreme events. 

"The horrible irony is that we have contributed very little to climate change but are facing the biggest impacts" - Vern Cheechoo, director of lands and resources at Mushkegowuk Council, which represents seven Cree First Nations in northern Ontario

In addition, this report highlights yet another example of how governments, even those that outwardly support the issues at hand, often fail to adequately include their most vulnerable constituents in discussions and policymaking. This means that even communities who take matters into their own hands, such as implementing food sharing networks and regional monitoring systems, are left with inadequate support. 

Worryingly, the findings of this latest report mainly echo previous warnings. Over a year ago, Canada’s environment watchdog found the government’s lack of progress on emissions reduction “disturbing” just days after Environment Canada’s scientists issued a warning regarding Canada’s rapid rate of warming compared to the rest of the planet. (Reuters, CBC)

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Preserving Our Place: Isle de Jean Charles

This article by Chantel Comardelle, Tribal executive secretary of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, is from the fall 2020 edition of the Nonprofit Quarterly is part of a series of works on the subject of environmental justice and Indigenous communities in the United States

Excerpts and SPOTLIGHT views presented below

Tyler Domingue via UNSPLASH

“Isle de Jean Charles is a small ridge of land in southern Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. “The Island,” as locals call it, is home to the Isle de Jean Charles (IDJC) Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe of Louisiana. The IDJC Tribe settled the Island in the early 1800s, having been pushed into “uninhabitable” lands by European settler colonialism, slavery, and social inequality.”

Long before climate change challenged the IDJC Tribe’s homeland, systemic discrimination and racism towards Indigenous people challenged their universal rights.

The IDJC Tribe adapted to life on a secluded island, accessible only by boat, by living solely off the land and surrounding waters. The Tribal children were denied public education until 1952 even though a missionary school was within reach on the mainland by the 1930s and the Baptist Mission built a church on the Island, which was used as a school in the 1940s.

When the “Island Road” connecting the Island to Pointe-aux-Chênes was built in 1953, a whole new world opened to the IDJC Tribe. However, the road crossed the marshland, leaving it wide open to erosion and flooding.

Since 1955, the Island has sustained a 98 percent erosion rate, contributing to floods and hurricanes that have destroyed some homes. Although the road was restored and elevated in 2011, and the Tribe was told this would permanently fix the problem, over the past 3 three years, the road has regularly flooded due to increasing extreme weather events, particularly where the Gulf is vulnerable.

The Island is now unable to sustain life for the entire IDJC Tribe, because of climate change. Climate change impacts like sea level rise, environmental disasters and gradual sinking of the land due to levees on the Mississippi River.

Tribal members have trickled off the island due to loss of homes, work and repeated flooding that began as early as 1974 with Hurricane Carmen. Gradually, there’s been an uptick in departures, with the biggest departure in 2002 when over 50 families left following devastation from Hurricane Lili.

The IDJC Tribe is now separated, displaced and losing their way of life. Oral histories, traditions and knowledge passed on for generations is also at stake.

Much like it is for refugees, most of whom live out the rest of their lives in exile. And much like it is for so many places in the world like the Lake Chad basin, for example, where nomadic ways of life are being disturbed by conflict and climate change and resulting displacement impacts separation and loss of that way of life.

For the IDJC Tribe, hope for solutions has dwindled over the years from many missteps and the state of Louisiana’s slow and improper implementation of the federal Housing and Urban Development National Disaster Resilience Grant, awarded in 2016, and meant to include the Tribe’s envisioned Tribal Resettlement Plan.

In the latest amendment, the state has made it clear that the IDJC Tribe would no longer be involved in any part of the grant nor receive any funds.

Now the Tribe has invested in “Preserving Our Place,” a movement to preserve the Island and the Tribe’s long legacy of traditions, culture and history. The IDJC Tribal Council approved the first Tribal Museum Policy and will establish a Tribal Museum and Culture Center, community gardens, storytelling activities, craft demonstrations and historical exhibits are just the tip of the iceberg.

But first must come efforts to ensure the Island and the IDJC Tribe does not erode, and they can’t do that alone.

“Thinking of the vast undertaking, for guidance—ironically—I look to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, whose Preamble begins, “We the People.” In order to fully accomplish our goal, we, the people of the Tribe, the community, and the country must ensure that the communities facing climate migration and resettlement are fully resourced. Communities dealing with these grave climate conditions need everyone to rally behind their vision to ensure the preservation of their place, and come alongside them in solidarity” - Chantel Comardelle

Chantel says that solidarity should include everyone from the federal government to philanthropy, pointing to the Government Accountability Office July 2020 report recommending that “Congress consider establishing a federally-led pilot program to help communities interested in relocation.”

Chantel says the report accurately covers the IDJC Tribe’s resettlement process, clearly states that there are many complex problems with the current resettlement plan.

The IDJC Tribe needs support and suggests many ways in which we can all help. We can follow their story and progress at www.isledejeancharles.com, and on Facebook. If you’re covering a news story about this, she suggests contacting community leaders to learn of the most pressing needs since many stories do not represent the real picture.

Most importantly, meaningful financial support and capacity-building grants are crucial, especially to get the Preserving Our Place project initiated. As far as in-kind support, their most immediate needs are archival space, equipment, funding and a building. (NonProfit Quarterly)

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Climate-Menaced Nations Say Survival Depends on Stronger 2020 Action

Patrick Hendry via UNSPLASH

Although 195 countries pledged to submit updated national climate action plans this year, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent crises that have followed, have thrown those ambitious goals off track, even delaying the UN climate summit until November 2021.

But this past Wednesday at the UN, developing countries stressed the urgency for action, with Ethiopia’s President reminding countries that the effects of the pandemic should not serve as excuse to commit to actions to fight climate change because “delayed response is going to be expensive and irreversible."

Ethiopia is one of 48 countries in the “Climate Vulnerable Forum” (CVF) who are working to submit updated plans this year, despite contributing very little to global warming.

A number of countries, several of them developing countries, have already submitted their plans, including in this challenging year.

Patricia Espinosa, head of the UNFCCC repeated warnings that temperatures had already increased by over 1C from preindustrial times and the world is on pace to warm close to 3C, even if current pledges made are delivered on time this year.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, current chair of the CVF, pointed out positive emissions reductions and climate adaptations like its efforts to develop floating agriculture technology and crops resistant to extreme weather impacts.

Costa Rica now produces 100% renewable electricity for most of the year, while Ethiopia has planted more than 5 billion tree seedlings, on pace to grow 20 billion trees by 2022.

She added the CVF, who represent more than 1 billion people across Africa, Asia and Latin America, expect G20 countries that are responsible for more than three-quarters of global emissions, to determine “clear and definite” plans for cutting emissions. (Reuters)

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