Local residents of La Playa rest under the shade of a bush on a polluted sandbar or “tibaracón” at the mouth of the Macaguaní River, near the city of Baracoa in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
BARACOA, Cuba, May 19 2017 (IPS)

A battered bridge connects the centre of Baracoa, Cuba´s oldest city, with a singular dark-sand sandbar, known as Tibaracón, that forms on one of the banks of the Macaguaní River where it flows into the Caribbean Sea in northeastern Cuba.

Just 13 wooden houses with lightweight roofs shield the few families that still live on one of the six coastal sandbars exclusive to Baracoa, a mountainous coastal municipality with striking nature reserves, whose First City, as it is locally known, was founded 505 years ago by Spanish colonialists.

These long and narrow sandbars between the river mouths and the sea have a name from the language of the Araucan people, the native people who once populated Cuba. The sandbars are the result of a combination of various rare natural conditions: short, steep rivers, narrow coastal plains, heavy seasonal rainfall and the coral reef crest near the coast.

Local experts are calling for special treatment for these sandbars exclusive to islands in the Caribbean, in the current coastal regulation, which is gaining momentum with Tarea Vida (Life Task), Cuba´s first plan to tackle climate change, approved on April 27 by the Council of Ministers.

Baracoa, with a population of 81,700, is among the municipalities prioritised by the new programme due to its elevation. Authorities point out that the plan, with its 11 specific tasks, has a more far-reaching scope than previous policies focused on climate change, and includes gradually increasing investments up to 2100.
“I was born here. I moved away when I got married, and returned seven years ago after I got divorced,” dentist María Teresa Martín, a local resident who belongs to the Popular Council of La Playa, a peri-urban settlement that includes the Macaguaní tibaracón or sandbar, told IPS.

The sandbar is the smallest in Baracoa, the rainiest municipality in Cuba, while the largest – three km in length – is at the mouth of the Duaba River.

“It’s not easy to live here,” said Martín. “The tide goes out and all day long you smell this stench, because the neighbours throw all their garbage and rubble into the river and the sea, onto the sand,” she lamented, while pointing out at the rubbish that covers the dunes and is caught in the roots of coconut palm trees and on stranded fishing boats.

A man fishes on the beach next to the mouth of the Macaguaní River in the Caribbean Sea, on the outskirts of the city of Baracoa in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

The Macaguaní River runs down from the mountains and across the city, along Baracoa bay, which it flows into. It stinks and is clogged up from the trash and human waste dumped into it, one of the causes of the accelerated shrinking of the tibaracón.

“We even used to have a street, and there were many more houses,” said Martín.

“We have lost other communication routes with the city. We have to evacuate whenever there is a cyclone or tsunami warning,” said the local resident, who is waiting to be resettled to a safer place in the city.

Local fisherman Abel Estévez, who lives across from Martín, would also like to move inland, but he is worried that he will be offered a house too far from the city. “I live near the sea and live off it. If they send us far from here, how am I going to support my daughter? How will my wife get to her job at the hospital?” he remarked.

Such as is happening with La Playa, the
Coastal regulations establish that municipal authorities must relocate to safer places 21 communities – including La Playa – along the municipality’s 82.5 km of coastline, of which 13.9 are sandy.

“We have exclusive and very vulnerable natural resources, such as the tibaracones,” explained Ricardo Suárez, municipal representative of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. “They are a sandy strip between the river and the sea, which makes them fragile ecosystems at risk of being damaged by the river and the sea.”

The disappearance of the tibaracones would change the “coastal dynamics”, explained the geographer. “Where today there is sand, tomorrow there could be a bay, and that brings greater exposure to penetration by the sea, which puts urban areas at risk and salinises the soil and inland waters,” he told IPS.

He said that these sandbars are affected by poor management and human activities, such as sand extraction, pollution and indiscriminate logging, in addition to climate change and the resulting elevation of the sea level. He also pointed out natural causes such as geological changes in the area.

In his opinion, the actions to protect the sandbars are band-aid measures, since they are destined to disappear. He said this can be slowed down unless natural disasters occur, like Hurricane Matthew, which hit the city on Oct. 4-5, 2016.

Suárez is the author of a study that shows the gradual shrinking of the tibaracones located in Baracoa, which serve as “natural barriers protecting the city”. He also showed how the population has been migrating from the sandbars, due to their vulnerability.

A man fishes on the beach next to the mouth of the Macaguaní River in the Caribbean Sea, on the outskirts of the city of Baracoa in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In the shrinking community where Martín and Estévez live, between the mouth of the Macaguaní River and the sea, there were 122 houses in 1958. And on the Miel River tibaracón, at the eastern end of the city, there were 45 houses in 1978, while today there are only a few shops and businesses.

The unique Miel River delta used to be 70 metres wide in the middle of the last century, while today the narrowest portion is just 30 metres wide. In Macaguaní, meanwhile, the shrinking has been more abrupt, from 80 metres back then, to just six metres in one segment, the study found.

The expert recommends differentiated treatment for these ecosystems, which are not specifically contemplated under Decree Law 212 for the Management of Coastal Areas, in force since 2000, which is the main legal foundation for the current land-use regulation which requires the removal of buildings that are harmful to the coasts.

Suárez said the removal of structures on sandy soil surrounded by water must be followed with preventive measures to preserve the sand, such as reforestation with native species.

In the study, he notes that the government’s Marine Studies Agency, a subsidiary of the Geocuba company in the neighbouring province of Santiago de Cuba, proposes the construction of a seawall and embankment to protect the Miel River delta. And he emphasised the importance of carrying out similar research in the case of Macaguaní.

Cuba´s Institute of Physical Planning (IPF) inspected the 5,746 km of coastline in the Cuban archipelago, and found 5,167 illegalities committed by individuals, and another 1,482 by legal entities. The institute reported that up to February 2015, 489 of the infractions committed by legal entities had been eradicated.

When the authorities approved the Life Task plan, the IPF assured the official media that the main progress in coastal management has been achieved so far on the 414 Cuban beaches at 36 major tourist areas. Tourism is Cuba´s second-biggest source of foreign exchange, after the export of medical services.

Owing to demographic drivers, countries are going to become more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious, says William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organisation for Migration. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 6 2016 (IPS)

Climate change is now adding new layers of complexity to the nexus between migration and the environment.

Coastal populations are at particular risk as a global rise in temperature of between 1.1 and 3.1 degrees C would increase the mean sea level by 0.36 to 0.73 meters by 2100, adversely impacting low-lying areas with submergence, flooding, erosion, and saltwater intrusion, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

But even before such catastrophes strike, the 660 to 820 million people who depend on a fishing livelihood – more so subsistence-based traditional fisher families who already find catches sharply dwindling due to over-fishing – will have no option but to abandon both home and occupation and move.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing at 11-26 million tonnes of fish each year, worth between 10 billion and 23 billion dollars, causing depletion of fish stocks, price increase and loss of livelihoods for fishermen.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) forecasts 200 million environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis. Many of them would be coastal population.

William Lacy Swing, Director General of IOM, spoke with IPS correspondent Manipadma Jena at the second UN Environmental Assembly May 23-27 in Nairobi where 174 countries focused on environmental implementation of the work that would achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What are today the other drivers of coastal migration besides environmental crises and depleting fish stocks?

A: Political crises and natural disasters are the other major drivers of migration today. We have never had so many complex and protracted humanitarian emergencies now happening simultaneously from West Africa all the way to Asia, with very few spots in between which do not have some issue. We have today 40 million forcibly displaced people and 20 million refugees, the greatest number of uprooted people since the Second World War.

If we add to that climate change events like Typhoon Haiyan in Philippines, and the Haiti earthquake, there would be another additional group.

We do not know how many of these natural disasters are climate related, but increasingly we are paying attention to climate change. After the Paris talks it is more evident that we must figure in adaptation strategies, especially in places like Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands, so people can avoid and prepare for the natural disasters.

Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, was saying they were fearful they would lose some of their 33 atolls. They are already purchasing land in neighbouring Fiji for their people to migrate. This is the kind of adaptation action we need to take.

Q. How do you see the picture of global coastal migration by 2030 and subsequently by 2050? What are the approximate numbers of coastal people that are on the move today? From which countries are the maximum movements being seen?

A: Coastal migration is starting already but it is very hard to be exact as there is no good data to be able to forecast accurately. We do not know. But it is clearly going to figure heavily in the future. And it’s going to happen both in the low-lying islands in the Pacific [and] the Caribbean, and in those countries where people build houses very close to the shore and have floods every year as in Bangladesh. Also, we have to look out for places prone to earthquakes. Philippines officials were talking to me last week about preparing for a major earthquake that could happen anytime.

We have to have an adaptation policy. The more adaptation you have, the less mitigation you need. The more you prepare the less you have to lose.

Q. Are increasing incidences of conflict over depleting resources being reported within coastal communities or with other groups such as large fishing operators?

A: It is quite clear that we will have more and more conflicts over shortages of food and water that are going to be exacerbated by climate change. Certainly, if coastal stretches have been over-fished for years, there is going to be conflict.
But it may not be just conflict that occurs. In Indonesia for instance, IOM worked hard to evacuate hundreds of fishermen who had been kept for years in human slavery in the fishing industry. With the help of the Indonesian government we freed them, counseled them and got them back to normal life.

Q: Even while migration is increasingly being recognized as a critical global issue, the absence of strong policies on migration is often attributed to insufficient studies and hard data by migration experts. Has there been any improvement in this status after Syria, West Asia, East Africa migration crises?

A: IOM has undertaken several initiatives to support better policies. We just established a Global Data Analysis Centre in Berlin. We are in partnership with a number of leading agencies like Gallop World Poll, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) the research arm of The Economist Group. We are looking for other partners as we see large gaps in the data base.

While a lot of data we have is spotty, a lot of it inaccurate, we however have enough already to know which are the driving forces for migration today and in the future, including demographic drivers. We have an aging population in the industrialized countries that are in need of workers at all skill levels. And we have a very large youthful population in the global south that needs jobs.

Our forecast is that countries are going to become almost inevitably more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
If this is going to work, economies are going to merge then it appears a pretty straightforward future scenario. But the problem is that more national migration policies are out-of-date, they have not kept up with technology. So we keep running into problems where we could in fact turn adversities into opportunities.

Q: What could be some mitigation, adaptation or preventive actions and policies affected countries should undertake? Which countries are already taking action?

A: Even if it is difficult to single out countries to mention as they are all members of IOM, Canada for instance took in 25,000 Syrian refugees earlier in the year. Several Asian countries like Thailand are providing migrants access to free public services because if this is denied you have unhealthy population living amongst you. There are other examples of proactive action being taken by countries but more is needed.

Excerpt:

Boys catch fish in a gully that runs through their community in Guyana. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Jun 10 2015 (IPS)

Despite its highly variable climate, Guyana is the only Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country that enjoys food security. But rapid climate change could pose a challenge not only for Guyana, but for its Caribbean neigbours who depend on the South American country for much of their produce.

Agriculture in Guyana accounts for 32 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP); 37 percent of all export earnings; and employs about one third of the labour force. Main agricultural exports are sugar, earning some 137 million dollars annually; rice, earning 55 million dollars, forestry, earning 70 million; fish products, earning 65 million; and other crops and livestock 7.5 million.“The big expenditure will come if we ever have to move from the coastline and go further inland...That would be something that we don’t want to contemplate but you can never tell when a catastrophe could strike." -- President David Granger

David Granger, who became Guyana’s new president after winning general and regional elections here on May 11, said his administration is not taking this for granted, and he is fully aware that climate change could cause the country to lose its food-secure status.

“On the coastland which is low and flat, the climate is actually slightly different to the hinterland and the forested mountainous areas where the rainfall is very heavy, part of the Amazonian rainforest; and deeper south, closer to Brazil you have a completely different terrain, a landscape of savannahs,” Granger told IPS.

“On the savannahs you have a long wet season, which is now taking place, and a long dry season. On the coastland we have a long dry season and a long wet season and a short dry season and a short wet season. So when we speak of climate change we’re speaking of very complex geographical phenomenon.”

Approximately 90 percent of Guyana’s population lives on a narrow coastline strip a half to one metre below sea level. That coastal belt is protected by seawall barriers that have existed since the Dutch occupation of the country. In recent times, however, severe storms have toppled these defences, resulting in significant flooding, a danger scientists predict may become more frequent.

The government is spending six million dollars annually on drainage and irrigation and requires some 100 million dollars to adapt its drainage infrastructure to deal with the effects of climate change.

“We have to plan a policy…we have to chart a course that protects our citizens and traditionally as far as coastal zone management is concerned. We have had to build sea defences and build proper drainage and irrigation works otherwise our people will be flooded out,” Granger said.

He related that the country experienced “a terrible flood exactly 10 years ago” and many of the communities on the coast were affected.

“We lost billions of dollars because of floods. So we have to protect our people from that type of catastrophe and we just have to continue  what we’ve been doing traditionally in terms of seawalls but also we have to implement plans to prevent the excessive cutting down of our trees and of course reforestation to plant back areas that have been mined out.”

Guyanese President David Granger. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

An impressive 80 percent of Guyana’s surface area is covered by rainforest the size of England. Beneath the jungle and savannah lie gold, diamond and bauxite – staples of Guyana’s economy.

Norway has committed to providing Guyana up to 250 million dollars by 2015 for avoided deforestation once certain performance indicators are met. Earnings from the partnership to date amount to 190 million dollars.

It is one of the highest payments worldwide for results achieved under a bilateral REDD+ partnership, second only to Brazil.

The partnership between Guyana and Norway began in 2009 and payments made to Guyana under it support the country’s ambitious climate action, keeping deforestation low while promoting development and sustainable economic growth through the country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

“The big expenditure will come if we ever have to move from the coastline and go further inland which is higher,” Granger said.

“Most of the inland territory, maybe 50 kilometres from here, is higher and the sort of doomsday scenarios that we might have to abandon some parts of the coastline, that would be a tremendous cost. That would be something that we don’t want to contemplate but you can never tell when a catastrophe could strike.”

The Guyanese president said the country has also been putting aside funds from the millions earned annually from the extractive industries.

“As part of our policy which we’ve already announced, profits from revenues from extractive industries – gold, timber, diamond, bauxite – will be used in something we call Sovereign Wealth Fund so that our children don’t have to face the ravages of poverty,” he said.

“It is something we have to include in our budget…we must start putting aside money in order to prepare for any form of catastrophe. We can’t depend on handouts all the time,” Granger added.

Jamilla Sealy, regional chairperson of the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN) and project manager of the World Wide Views on Climate and Energy, said climate change impacts in Guyana could affect neighbouring countries like Barbados.

“If Guyana, for instance, has significant flooding, and the major rivers overflow, the contents can reach our coasts via ocean currents. This can lead to fish kills and stress on the coral reefs in Barbados. Also climate change aids in the spread of vector-borne diseases, e.g. chikungunya and may cause a re-emergence of yellow fever and malaria,” she told IPS.

“In terms of food security, if we import most of our food from one country and it is diminished, then we will be severely affected. For example, if a large hurricane decimates a country like Ivan did to Grenada in 2004, it can destroy the country’s economy and draw on the resources of neighbouring islands such as water and food.”

Barbados’ imports from Guyana have grown the fastest of all imports from CARICOM countries except for Trinidad & Tobago, according to data published by the Central Bank of Barbados. Barbados imports more than 15 million dollars’ worth of goods from Guyana annually. The Caribbean as a whole expends 3.5 billion annually on food importation.

Sealy noted that Small Island Developing States like those in the Caribbean would be the first to be impacted by climate change.

“Owing to our size, we have limited land, water, and food. We import oil. So if something happens in another country that has the oil and food, we would not have any and we would be in a vulnerable state,” she said.

CYEN is a non-profit, non-governmental, regional organisation which has been empowering youth to address issues such as climate change, sustainable land management, solid waste management and other sustainable development issues. They have been operating since 1993 and there are currently 18 chapters in the Caribbean.

CYEN believes that there should be no decisions made about sustainable development without the involvement of youth.

Sealy said CYEN is on a drive to empower youth to address issues surrounding climate change.

The World Wide Views is the largest citizen consultation in the world which aims to include citizen voices into major international decisions. World Wide Views consultations were conducted by five CYEN chapters last weekend in Barbados, Bahamas, Grenada, Guyana and Haiti.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Grenadian fishermen prepare to head out to sea. They say they have been catching less fish and their livelihoods are threatened by climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PALMISTE, Grenada, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

Henry Prince has lived in this fishing village for more than six decades. Prince, 67, who depends on the sea for his livelihood, said he has been catching fewer and fewer fish, and the decrease is taking a financial toll on him and other fisher folk throughout the island nation of Grenada.

I heard about the climate change but never paid too much attention towards it,” Prince told IPS, adding that “we don’t catch jacks as before.”

Jacks, a small fish widely used by the fishermen as bait, are also fried and eaten by poor families for whom they are an inexpensive source of protein.

Over the last few years, fisher folk have not been catching the jacks, which are usually found in abundance around the month of November. Due to the scarcity of jacks, fishermen have been forced to import sardines from the United States to use as bait.

Grenada’s Agriculture, Land, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Roland Bhola believes the dwindling numbers of fish in the country’s waters are a direct result of climate change.

“Our fishermen are reporting less and less catches in areas where there was once a thriving trade,” Bhola said.

“We have been able to associate that with the issues of climate change … the destruction of our coral reefs and other ecosystems like mangroves,” he said.

“The catch is one day good, one day bad as far as I am looking at it,” Ralph Crewney, another fisherman, told IPS.

“For the last few months we hardly catch anything. Last June, it was just at the last moment that we made big catches.”

Grenadian fishermen Henry Prince (right) and Ralph Crewney see beachfront living as a virtual birthright, despite the risks posed by climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Crewney, 68, has been living on the seashore for close to 20 years. He noted that in recent times the sea is getting a lot closer to his small shack. But he has no immediate plans to move.

“I feel comfortable here because I like to be away from the noise,” he explained.

Other families in the area are now thinking about relocating to communities in hilly areas but are reluctant to move too far from their source of livelihood.

Fishing families in the Caribbean see beachfront living as a virtual birthright, with an alarming 70 percent of Caribbean populations living in coastal settlements.While storms and beach erosion have long shaped the geography of coastal environments, rising sea levels and surge from more intense storms are expected to dramatically transform shorelines in coming decades, bringing enormous economic and social costs.

In the CARICOM region, the local population is highly dependent on fish for economic and social development. This resource also contributes significantly to food security, poverty alleviation, employment, foreign exchange earnings, development and stability of rural and coastal communities, culture, recreation and tourism.

The subsector provides direct employment for more than 120,000 fishers and indirect employment opportunities for thousands of others – particularly women – in processing, marketing, boat-building, net-making and other support services.

Experts say that while storms and beach erosion have long shaped the geography of coastal environments, rising sea levels and surge from more intense storms are expected to dramatically transform shorelines in coming decades, bringing enormous economic and social costs.

Scientists and computer models estimate that global sea levels could rise by at least one metre (nearly 3.3 feet) by 2100, as warmer water expands and ice sheets melt in Greenland and Antarctica.

Global sea levels have risen an average of three centimetres (1.18 inches) a decade since 1993, according to many climate scientists, although the effect can be amplified in different areas by topography and other factors.

On Apr. 16, delegates attending a one-day National Stakeholder’s Consultation here urged the authorities to re-establish the National Climate Change Council as the island moves to strengthen measures to deal with the impact of climate change.

They said while Grenada had made progress on dealing with climate change and the environment, it still has some way to go to become climate resilient and to develop the capacity to implement climate resilience actions.

The one-day consultation was jointly organised by the World Bank and the Grenada government.

A government statement issued after the consultation said that the re-establishment of the Council will help “drive the climate change agenda of integrating climate change at the national planning level, the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation” as well as monitoring and reporting.

Grenada’s Environment Minister Roland Bhola says the small developing country has very high vulnerability to climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The Climate Investment Fund (CIF) Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR) recently approved a 10.39-million-dollar grant funding for a Caribbean pilot programme for climate resilience.

Grenada along with St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, Jamaica and Haiti stand to directly benefit from this grant.

A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the devastation wreaked on Grenada by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 “is a powerful illustration of the reality of small-island vulnerability.”

The hurricane killed 28 people, caused damage twice the nation’s gross domestic product, damaged 90 percent of the housing stock and hotel rooms and shrank an economy that had been growing nearly six percent a year.

Grenada and its tourism-dependent Caribbean neighbours are thought to be among the globe’s most vulnerable countries.

Scientists say the island has a high risk of being adversely impacted by climate change in several areas. These include coastal flooding due to natural disasters and storm surges. They also point to marine ecosystems being affected by increased ocean temperature, and increased freshwater run-off resulting in coral reef destruction and food chain interruption which affect fishing and tourism industries.

Over the last 25 years, the fragile Grenadian islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique have also been bombarded by storms, hurricanes, higher tides and sea surges.

This resulted in severe loss of mangrove vegetation along the coastline, beach erosion, damage to soil and serious threat to the local tourism industries which depend heavily on the pristine condition of the beaches and health of the marine life.

Meanwhile, as countries prepare to adopt a new international climate change agreement at the Paris climate conference in December, Bhola said Grenada is looking forward to the implementation with great anticipation.

“My country, Grenada, a small developing country, has very high vulnerability to climate change. A successful agreement for us therefore has to reduce the risks that we face from climate change and has to assist us in coping with the impacts on our country, our people and our livelihoods,” Bhola said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Fishermen from across Belize will see major benefits from the MCCAP project, which seeks to re-train them in alternative livelihoods to lessen the impact of climate change in their communities. Credit: Aaron Humes/IPS

By Aaron Humes
BELIZE CITY, Apr 9 2015 (IPS)

A five-year project launched here in Belize City in March seeks to cement a shift in view of climate change and its impact on Belize’s national development.

The Belize Marine Conservation and Climate Adaptation Project (MCCAP) has dual goals: putting in place structures to ensure continued protection for marine protected areas, and ensuring that those who benefit from use and enjoyment of those areas are educated on the dangers of climate change and given means of sustaining their lifestyles without further damage to precious natural resources.“Climate change is not an environmental issue. Climate change is a development issue." -- Enos Esikuri of the World Bank

Approximately 203,000 Belizeans live in coastal communities – both urban centres such as Belize City and the towns of Corozal and Dangriga, as well as destinations for fishing and tourism such as the villages of Sarteneja, Hopkins, Sittee River, Seine Bight and Placencia.

For these persons, and for Belize, “Climate change is not an environmental issue. Climate change is a development issue,” said World Bank representative and senior environmental specialist Enos Esikuri, who noted that keeping the focus on the environment on this issue would result in “losing the audience” – those who make their living directly from the sea through fishing and tourism.

According to Esikuri, there has been a change in Belize’s economy from a purely agriculture base to a service-based economy with tourism as a primary focus – but the marine resources in Belize’s seas and rivers are integral to the success of that model.

Belize also has to pay attention to the intensification of weather systems and how the reef protects Belize’s fragile coast and communities, he said.

Of Belize’s three billion-dollar gross domestic product (GDP), fishing accounts for 15 percent; 4,500 licensed fishermen and about 18,000 Belizeans are directly dependent on fisheries for their livelihoods.

However, tourism accounts for almost 25 percent of GDP and a significantly greater population living in coastal communities earn their livelihoods from this industry, Esikuri explained.

The Barrier Reef and its fish are a very important resource for this industry, he said, so protecting it safeguards more livelihoods.

The local Ministry of Fisheries, Forestry and Sustainable Development has received 5.53 million dollars from the World Bank’s Adaptation Fund, with the government contributing a further 1.78 million dollars for the programme, which seeks to implement priority ecosystem-based marine conservation and climate adaptation measures to strengthen the climate resilience of the Belize Barrier Reef system.

The MCCAP project will invest 560,000 U.S. dollars to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change, and educate people about the value of marine conservation, and how climate change will affect their lives.

The project will explore and develop strategies to help coastal communities become more resilient to climate change, and will encourage community exchange visits to help the people learn how they can adapt to climate change.

Project Coordinator Sandra Grant says that of the three components to the project – upgrades to existing protected areas in Corozal, at Turneffe Atoll and in South Water Caye off Placencia, developing community-based business ventures in aquaculture, agriculture and tourism and raising awareness on the impact of climate change and developing and exploring climate resilient strategies – it is the second one that she expects will have the most impact.

“We are going to look at the marine protected areas, but at the same time we are going to start the livelihood activities, because sometimes if you don’t show people the alternatives, then they will not buy in to what you are trying to do. So although it is three different components we decided to put them together simultaneously,” Grant said.

The selected protected areas were identified as priority by the project because of their contribution to the environment.

She added that fishermen and other stakeholders will be able to take advantage of new strategies for economic benefit such as seaweed planting, sea cucumber harvesting and diversification of business into value-added products.

Part of the project will help finance community-based projects to create small-scale seaweed farms to take advantage of the global demand for seaweed for use in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even in ice cream.

A cooperative in Placencia has already pioneered growing and drying seaweed for export. The bottom-feeding sea cucumber could become a cash cow as a prized delicacy and medicinal property in Asia and China.

Belize already exports about 400,000 pounds per year and prices range from 4-8 Belizean dollars per pound though the dried product fetches as much as 150 U.S. dollars per pound internationally. Again, one cooperative already has investments in this area.

Corozal Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve and South Water Caye Marine Reserve will install various features to assist in protection of their native marine and coastal ecosystems, including coral nurseries for the latter two.

Each of the components has its own budget and will be pursued simultaneously with each other.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

New York Harbour is Lower Manhattan’s first line of defence against rising seas. Credit: George Gao/IPS

By George Gao
NEW YORK, Feb 11 2013 (IPS)

During World War II, a German U-boat made its way into New York Harbour. It fired two torpedoes at a British tanker, splitting the hull in three places and igniting it in flames. The captain and 35 members of his crew burned to death.

Seventy years later, New York Harbour is Lower Manhattan’s first line of defence against another threat: the rising tides of the sea.

New York is situated on three large islands, one peninsula and a collection of smaller islands. In this sense, rising sea levels and increasingly erratic storm surges has rendered it water-bound.

Flooded subway systems, large-scale power outages and flurrying toxic waste along the coast during the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy brought attention to the city’s floundering climate resiliency strategies.

New and re-emerging ideas to improve resiliency have varied in shapes and sizes. They include inflatable subway-tunnel plugs, large storm barriers off the coast, a series of artificial islands, and porous membranes that cling to and protect Manhattan buildings.

Five to six years ago, New York representatives approached Jeroen Aerts, a professor at the VU University Amsterdam’s Institute for Environmental Studies, for advice on storm surge protection.

“At that time, nobody was really interested in flood risk in New York. Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg was mainly focusing on sustainability issues,” he told IPS. “After Hurricane Irene (in 2011), they said, ‘well, maybe we have to look at other options, like storm surge barriers.’”

Aerts is currently conducting a cost-benefit analysis, weighing the price of constructing storm barriers against the price of upgrading current legislation – such as building regulations, zoning codes and flood insurance. “What we do is we compare both strategies as to how much they reduce flood risks,” he explained.

Asked if storm surge barriers are used in other cities, Aerts cited several in the Netherlands, and the Thames barrier in London. “There’s (also) a large one just being finalised in St. Petersburg in Russia,” he said.

“One condition is that they (remain) navigable, because New York is a port city,” said Aerts, explaining that vertical or rotating floodgates would allow tides and boats to pass unimpeded.

One variation consists of a northern barrier in the East River, coupled with a larger southern barrier that spans from Sandy Hook in New Jersey to Breezy Point in New York. “That one (would) cost 15-16 billion dollars,” he said.

Peter Stillman, a professor of political science and environmental studies at Vassar College, told IPS that storm surge barriers often raise environmental justice issues.

“Unless the surge hits the barrier straight on, some of the surge and its energy will travel along the barrier and hit the places where the barrier stops much harder,” he explained.

In this case, the Rockaways and parts of New Jersey would receive the brunt of future storm surges, he added.

Stillman said that there exist other strategies, which work to mimic how nature protects landscapes. He cited oyster beds, wetlands, and artificial islands and reefs.

Aerts argued that while there’s a need for green projects in the area, he worries it may not be enough to protect the city from future storm surges on par with Hurricane Sandy.

Aerts noted that, nonetheless, the debate surrounding storm surge barriers, along with the time needed for its design and construction, delays the city’s protection against storm surges for a few decades. “Meanwhile, you have to do something else, right?”

He advocated for updating policies and building codes to encourage the construction of more resilient buildings.

Working with nature

Kate Orff, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, told IPS, “The new frontier in infrastructure is not solely in hard, grey mono-functional infrastructure.

“What I’ve been calling for is a hybrid approach, which integrates some protective hard infrastructures,” she continued. “It’s a big picture look of regenerating the sort of ecological protective infrastructure that we used to have.”

Orff explained, “In many cases, we’ve decimated our inland islands with dredging, or we’ve collapsed our reefs through pollution or through over-harvesting… these are ecological infrastructures that were once in place that have been destroyed.”

One of Orff’s ideas is to nurture an oyster culture in the Bay Ridge Flats. The project, entitled “Oyster-tecture”, includes reefs – of oysters, mussels and eelgrass – that would attenuate waves and filter millions of gallons of New York Harbour water.

Oyster-tecture was inspired by Orff’s roots in Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay, which “has a commitment to marine life and a functioning harbour – a harbour that is very active with boats and people and so on.

“But the key thing,” she said, “is that I’m sort of bringing this into a degraded urban condition, and trying to integrate it into, essentially, a new blue public-space system.”

According to a report by the NYS 2100 Commission – which was convened by Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, in response to Hurricane Sandy – NYC has lost 80 percent of its tidal wetlands and almost 200,000 acres of its oyster reefs.

Guy Nordenson, a professor of architecture and structural engineering at Princeton University and a member of the NYS 2100 Commission, told IPS, “I think some combination of engineered flood protection, offshore natural barriers, and onshore dunes and natural levees are necessary.”

The report also recommends further research into storm surge barriers, including its ecological effects – on aquatic life, on erosion, and on physical oceanographic conditions.

Adaptation mode

According to Aerts, people will continue moving into low-lying cities around the world. He estimated an additional one million people in New York City by 2040, even with foreboding storms.

“I don’t know any example of a city that retreated after a major event,” he said, with Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina (2005) in mind.

Stillman warned, “In a sense, we are in trouble in the greater New York-New Jersey area, because human beings have built homes – frequently expensive second homes… in areas that we are now learning (to be) very precarious in the case of storms.”

Orff, who is also the founding principal of SCAPE – a landscape architecture and urban design office, was slated to present at a Feb. 9 conference entitled “Waterproofing New York City”.

Ironically, the event was postponed when a winter storm covered the Northeast megalopolis in snow and flooded New York’s neighbouring coastlines.

On climate change, Orff told IPS, “We’re already in the mode of adaptation, which is simply assuming that our carbon dioxide emissions will be continuing to move exponentially upwards.

“What’s missing from the conversation is a discussion about carbon – carbon in cities and America’s carbon footprint,” she added.

Orff recalled her own experience during Hurricane Sandy: “I don’t think there’s anything like seeing water lapping at your feet on West End Avenue that provides a wakeup call. I can’t imagine what else could be more dramatic and focusing than water overtaking one of America’s celebrated international cities.”

Mohammad Jamal Hossain shows off vegetables grown on his “dike” garden. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
BARGUNA, Bangladesh , Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

Scientists predict that in the coming years, Bangladesh will be battered by even more climate disasters than it has already endured. Global warming has caused devastating damage in this lower Himalayan delta country of 150 million people, where seawater intrusion, increasingly intense cyclones, dried up rivers and extreme weather events have become the norm.

Crop production is said to have declined by 30 percent and if seawater inundation continues at its current rate, 16 percent of the country’s coastal areas will be underwater by 2050.

It is also estimated that by 2050 some 18.5 million inhabitants of coastal Bangladesh will face hunger, homelessness and poverty as a result of climate change.

Despite the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, widely recognised as the leading cause of global warming, industrialised nations have been unmoved.

As the recent United Nations climate summit in Doha, Qatar, made clear, appeals and tragedies have not been sufficient to prompt binding agreements on emissions cuts.

But faced with the threat of a massive humanitarian and ecological crisis in the coming decades, the government of Bangladesh is no longer willing to remain silent.

Since 2009 it has poured 350 million dollars into projects to address climate change, including devising better adaptation and mitigation models.

Community-based adaptation to climate change through coastal afforestation is one such model that has attracted global attention for its unique approach to adaptation and sustainability and is now being practiced in Bangladesh.

What started off as a pilot project in 2009 has now provided some 80 landless families in the coastal Sonatola village in the southwestern Barguna district with state-owned fallow land on which to cultivate fruit and vegetables, grow timber trees and rear fish.

Located about 480 kilometres from the capital Dhaka, this district was chosen for its past experiences of being hit by both Aila and Sidr, two of this century’s deadliest cyclones.

A mangrove forest planted along the seashore to protect coastal communities from flooding, cyclones and storms. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Along with growing fruits and cultivating fish for livelihood purposes, the project also included planting wild mangrove forests, locally known as golpata and kewra, to protect the coastal communities from cyclones.

The government also erected an embankment along the coastline to prevent seawater intrusion and shelter inhabitants from storms, surges and wind.

Each of the beneficiaries received about 23 decimals of land (about 1o,000 square feet) for the purpose of excavating a deep ditch and constructing a dike alongside it to confine the water.

Locals call it the ‘ditch and dike project’, though its official name is ‘Forest, Fruit, Fish’ or the ‘Triple F’ model.

Peasants planted fruit and timber trees along the embankment and released fish, including several carp varieties, into the ditches that lie parallel to each other.

Benefits to the community

The Triple F model has been a godsend for the once impoverished community.

The soil in Naltola, an area comprising a cluster of small villages from which many of the project’s beneficiaries hailed, had become too salty for growing crops, with soil quality worsening at an alarming pace, according to numerous scientists.

Local coastal farmers told IPS that, until the project began, their main source of livelihood had been disappearing fast, as they had been forced to give up growing crops.

Beneficiaries of the “dike and ditch” project hold up their fish catch. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

“Local fish stocks were also depleting due to high salinity. So the ‘ditch and dike project’ has really come to our rescue,” Shajahan Mallik, a 53-year-old former fisherman, who heads a committee of the new landowners, told IPS.

Twenty-three-year-old Mohammad Jamal Hossain, another of the project’s beneficiaries, told IPS he recently earned about 125 dollars selling four types of carp species in Naltola bazaar, a small fishing and farming village just four kilometres from the Bay of Bengal.

“I had virtually no income before this project but now I earn a regular income selling vegetables like cabbage, gourd, peas, beans, spinach and radish. Fish is in high demand here, and the big varieties I catch fetch good prices,” said Jamal, who lives with his mother and sisters.

Jamal’s neighbours made similar fortunes growing vegetables and cultivating fish. The fruit trees are not yet matured so the beneficiaries may have to wait another two years before they can start selling fruits.

Masuda Begum (33), one of the poorest women in the village, said, “I earned about 150 dollars last summer from the sale of fish and vegetables.”

Masuda’s neighbour Rahima (35) told IPS, “When I need to buy something I don’t have to worry about cash. I ask my son to catch fish and trade them for necessary commodities in the market.”

In fact, many of the families have stopped shopping for daily essentials except for some spices and rice, since fresh vegetables and fish are now plentiful. The trees also provide enough dry leaves and twigs for fires.

Some families have even bought ducks and released them into the fresh water ditches, hoping that the birds’ eggs bring even more profitability. This innovation bodes well for the project’s sustainability.

Observing the project’s success from afar, thousands of landless farmers in the surrounding villages have appealed for similar allocations of land on which to cultivate sustainable livelihoods.

“We are preparing a proposal for expanding the programme,” Mohammad Abdul Wahhab Bhuiyan, deputy commissioner of the Barguna district, told IPS, adding that the only way to cope with the enourmous number of requests is to replicate the project in the most vulnerable communities across Bangladesh.

Aparup Chowdhury, additional secretary of the ministry of environment and forests, told IPS, “The project has already received international recognition thanks to our State Minister for Environment and Forests, Dr. Hasan Mahmud, who has been an enthusiastic supporter all the way through.”

“We are now planning to take the lessons from Barguna to other coastal districts like Noakhali, Cox’s Bazar, Bagerhat, Bhola and Khulna, which would greatly help thousands of farmers there,” Chowdhury added.

This past April, the Triple F model received the renowned international ‘Earth Care’ award in recognition of its mitigation and adaptation efforts.

(END)