A tree felled by the outer bands of Hurricane Maria in Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Sep 20 2017 (IPS)

As Hurricane Maria continues to barrel its way across the Caribbean, details are slowly emerging of the number of deaths and the extent of the devastation left in its wake in Dominica.

Maria made landfall on the tiny island of 72,000 on the evening of Sept. 18 with maximum sustained winds of nearly 160 miles per hour.“Our governments must redouble their determination to confront the naysayers of climate change, however big and powerful they may be." --Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Lester Bird

Hartley Henry, Principal Advisor to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, said he had spoken with the prime minister early this morning via satellite phone.

“It’s difficult to determine the level of fatalities but so far seven are confirmed, as a direct result of the hurricane,” Henry said in a message. “That figure, the Prime Minister fears, will rise as he wades his way into the rural communities today, Wednesday. The urgent needs now are roofing materials for shelters, bedding supplies for hundreds stranded in or outside what’s left of their homes and food and water drops for residents of outlying districts inaccessible at the moment.

“The country is in a daze – no electricity, no running water – as a result of uprooted pipes in most communities and definitely to landline or cellphone services on island, and that will be for quite a while.

“In summary, the island has been devastated. The housing stock significantly damaged or destroyed. All available public buildings are being used as shelters; with very limited roofing materials evident. The country needs the support and continued help and prayers of all.”

In a Facebook message a few hours after Maria’s arrival, Skerrit said the island’s immediate priority was to rescue people who were trapped and provide medical care to the injured.

“I am honestly not preoccupied with physical damage at this time, because it is devastating… indeed, mind-boggling,” Skerrit said.

The Prime Minister had earlier posted that roofs were being torn off everywhere by the powerful storm’s winds. He himself had to be rescued from his official residence.

Following Skerrit’s social media posts, everything went silent. Communication with Dominica since then has been close to impossible.

According to Henry, “Little contact has been made with the outer communities but persons who walked 10 and 15 miles towards the city of Roseau from various outer districts report total destruction of homes, some roadways and crops.

“Urgent helicopter services are needed to take food, water and tarpaulins to outer districts for shelter. Canefield airport can accommodate helicopter landings and it is expected that from today, the waters around the main Roseau port will be calm enough to accommodate vessels bringing relief supplies and other forms of assistance.”

Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne said Wednesday, “The last I’ve heard, which would have been this morning, is that there is widespread damage to property, there has been up to seven fatalities so far. I understand that there are some remote areas that they have been unable to get to.

“They are asking for supplies including tarpaulin, water, food cots. As you know, in the case of Antigua and Barbuda, we have some supplies here. We are awaiting the all-clear so that a chopper that we have on stand-by could fly into Dominica. They have not given any landing permission yet so we are just waiting to hear from them.

Browne added that he spoke with Skerrit the night of the hurricane until after he lost his roof.

Dominica was still in the recovery phase following Tropical Storm Erika which hit the island on Aug. 27, 2015, killing more than two dozen people, leaving nearly 600 homeless and wreaked damages totalling more than a billion dollars.

That storm dumped 15 inches of rain on the mountainous island, caused floods and mudslides and set the country back 20 years, according to Skerrit. The island was inadequately prepared for a storm such as Erika. Many roads and bridges were simply not robust enough to withstand such high volumes of water.

In a national address shortly following the storm, Skerrit said that hundreds of homes, bridges and roads had been destroyed and millions of dollars in financial aid were needed to help the country bounce back.

“In order to get back to where we were before Tropical Storm Erika struck, we have to source at least 88.2 million dollars for the productive sector, 334.55 million for infrastructure and 60.09 million for the social sectors,” Skerrit said.

Skerrit and his counterparts in the Caribbean have long argued that large industrialized nations are to blame for the drastic change in the climate and the more frequent and stronger hurricanes being witnessed in region.

“Climate change is real.  We are the victims of climate change because of the profligacy in the use of fossil fuels by the large industrialized nations,” Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne told IPS on his way to the 72^nd General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.

“These nations, that have contributed to global warming and sea level rise, have an obligation to assist in the rebuilding of these islands. The funds required to rebuild is beyond their means and I join the clarion call of Sir Richard Branson, for a Marshall plan to rebuild the islands.

“Our common humanity, as citizens of a common space, called planet earth mandates a spirit of empathy and cooperation among all nations, large and small,” Browne told IPS.

Just over a week earlier, Browne’s own country Antigua and Barbuda suffered a similar fate as Dominica when Hurricane Irma decimated Barbuda, the smaller island of the twin-island nation.

A powerful Hurricane Irma, churned its way across the tiny island, killing a two-year-old child and leaving millions of dollars in damages.

When Irma’s core slammed into Barbuda, its maximum sustained winds were 185-mph, well above the 157-mph threshold of a Category 5 storm.

Browne estimates that it will take up to 300 million dollars to rebuild Barbuda, home to 1,800 people. All of the island’s inhabitants had to be evacuated to mainland Antigua after the hurricane.

At the time, Irma was one of three hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, the first time since 2010 that three active hurricanes have been in the Atlantic, according to reports.

“The whole idea is to deal with this Barbuda situation and to speak to the issue of climate change,” Browne said of his attendance at the United Nations General Assembly.

“I don’t think they care,” Browne said when asked if he believed the United States in particularly would be listening very carefully to what he has to say.

“But we have an obligation at the same time to advocate on what is clearly an existential threat, one of the most significant threats facing the planet. And no matter what they think, I know that America think that their interest is first, second, third until they get to last but we have a common humanity, we all occupy a planet called Earth and as far as we are concerned we are all inter-dependent on each other and perhaps sooner than later they will come to that reality,” Browne said.

During a special sitting of Parliament to discuss the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma on Barbuda, former Antigua and Barbuda prime minister Lester Bird said it’s time the “naysayers of climate change” wake up and face reality.

“Our governments must redouble their determination to confront the naysayers of climate change, however big and powerful they may be, even when we have a President of the United States, who should really be chastised for withdrawing the United States from [the Paris Climate Agreement],” Bird said.

Although the United States remains part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in June this year President Donald Trump ceased all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord.

That includes contributions to the United Nations Green Climate Fund (to help poorer countries to adapt to climate change and expand clean energy) and reporting on carbon data (though that is required in the US by domestic regulations anyway).

“Hurricane Irma nails the lie to all who claim that climate change and global warming are fantasies,” said Bird, who served as the second prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, from 1994 to 2004.

“The increased heat of the sea fed Irma’s size and intensity. The world has never witnessed a hurricane of the strength and size of Irma when it stormed through Barbuda leaving destruction and devastation in its path. Little Barbuda stood no chance against such a gigantic force,” Bird said.

“That is why I urge the government to continue to fight in the international community for mitigation against climate change and for the means to build up resilience in our island states; not just Barbuda but all of the island states that are low level.

“The prospect of climate change could even bring Tsunamis and undermine the existence of these islands as is demonstrated in Barbuda,” Bird added.

Meantime, Bird said Caribbean civilization is under threat because of climate change.

“Barbuda now lies prostrate, dispirited and depressed, a mangled wreck as the Prime Minister [Gaston Browne] has said. It is positive proof that the very existence of our civilization is now under deadly threat,” Bird said.

“This is the first time since the 18^th century that there is no human person legally living on Barbuda. Over 300 years of human habitation has been abruptly interrupted. That must not be the fate of our island communities. Our heritage, our civilization, our identity depends on it.”

Hurricane Maria is the third in a string of devastating hurricanes to sweep through the region in recent weeks.

Some 42 deaths have been blamed on Hurricane Irma which has decimated many countries in the Caribbean including Anguilla, British Virgin Islands and the Dutch and French island of St. Maarten / St. Martin.

Hurricane Irma left significant damage to public infrastructure, housing, tourism, commerce, and the natural environment in the British Virgin Islands. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands, Sep 15 2017 (IPS)

When Hurricane Irma ripped through the British Virgins Islands on Sept. 6, claiming seven lives, injuring an unknown number of people and destroying built infrastructure as well as significantly damaging the natural environment, the ferocity of the storm shocked many of the islands’ residents, including 72-year-old Egbert Smith, who has lived through plenty of severe storms.

“I seen a lot of hurricanes pass through here, but I never seen none like this. Never!” he told IPS from what was left of his home in Sophers Hole, a resort community toward the western end of Tortola, the largest and main island in the BVI.“If you read the climate change literature, as shocking as it is to experience this sort of disaster, there is nothing here that is a surprise." --Camillo Gonsalves, minister of sustainable development in St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Across from Smith’s beachfront patio, the storm deposited a large catamaran onto the roof of a one-storey building, shredding a large part of the pleasure craft.

On the other end of the bay, the Jost Van Dyke ferry terminal lay in ruins, its roof ripped off, and a large SUV pinned on top of raised a metal platform, the mangled vehicle having been deposited there by the storm surge.

“They say it was a category 5 but I think it was more than that. It might have been more than that,” Smith said of the monster storm, which lashed the island with 185 mph winds.

Before enduring Irma, Smith considered Hurricane Marilyn of 1995 to have been a terrible hurricane. But not anymore.

“This one was bad,” he tells IPS of the storm, which trashed his bedroom and its contents as his wife hid inside a closet and he just put his feet up on a chair and relaxed, having given up on trying to pick up items that were falling in his house during the passage of the hurricane.

On Sept. 14, a full week after the storm, the British Virgin Islands was still struggling to get basic systems back on track, with disaster managers forced to seek refuge in the recently constructed New Peebles Hospital after Irma destroyed their headquarters.

In addition to the dead and injured, the storm left widespread damage to the road infrastructure, housing stock, ports, telecommunications, electrical infrastructure and critical facilities.

Hurricane Irma had the most devastating impact on Sophers Hole, according to 72-year-old resident, Egbert Smith. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

Governor of the British Overseas Territory, Augustus Jaspert, declared a state of emergency on Sept. 7 and on Sept. 11, he extended by three hours the curfew put in place three days earlier, ordering citizens to remain indoors between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. to give disaster responders an opportunity to respond to the mammoth clean-up and recovery.

Disaster officials say a preliminary assessment indicated that 60 to 80 per cent of the buildings throughout the territory are damaged or destroyed, with a large percentage of the roofs severely compromised.

Approximately 351 persons are being accommodated in 10 temporary shelters and 106 persons were evacuated from Anegada, another of the islands, prior to impact.

One week after the storm, disaster managers were still considering options for housing the large number of displaced persons.

The municipal supply of water supply is not functional due to the lack of electricity and there was a limited stock of potable water available, with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Mounts Bay providing a limited supply to Virgin Gorda and Jost Van Dyke, two of the smaller islands in the territory.

Both of the desalination plants on Virgin Gorda, which has a population of 3,500, were destroyed.

The electricity generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure across the islands has been severely damaged and electricity is only being provided through generators.

Caribbean Cellular Telephone Ltd., the leading wireless provider in the BVI is not functioning and Digicel has coverage only in Road Town, the main city, while Flow has sporadic coverage throughout the territory.

The road infrastructure has been severely damaged and heavy equipment operators have been deployed to all districts and have been working to clear roads to at least single lane traffic.

The hurricane cut a similar swathe of destruction across other islands in the northeastern Caribbean before slamming into Florida last weekend, leaving more than six million people without power and many thousands in shelters. Overall, the storm claimed at least 14 lives in the so-called Sunshine State, six in the coastal U.S. states of South Carolina and Georgia, and 38 across the Caribbean, though some estimates are even higher.

It also came on the heels of yet another devastating hurricane – Harvey – which sideswiped Barbados and caused catastrophic flooding in the U.S. Gulf state of Texas, where 82 people died and more than 30,000 were displaced.

Camillo Gonsalves, minister of sustainable development in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, was among the officials from the Caribbean Community — a regional bloc of nations of which the BVI is an associate member — who visited the BVI in the aftermath of Irma.

Gonsalves visited to assess the situation in the territory and to ascertain what help Kingstown could provide, as well as to inquire into the welfare of Vincentian nationals, who make up 10 per cent of the population of the BVI.

The minister, who, as a diplomat, had helped was among the team of negotiators who ensured the interest of small island development states was captured in the 2015 Paris climate accord, said that those who have been paying close enough attention should not be surprised by the devastating impact of Hurricane Irma.

“If you read the climate change literature, as shocking as it is to experience this sort of disaster, there is nothing here that is a surprise,” he told IPS, adding that forecasters have long warned that with there would be more frequent and intense tropical cyclones as a result of climate change.

“You can’t point to any one storm and say this storm here was created by climate change but any casual reading of the scientific literature tells you this is going to happen in this area and it is going to affect livelihoods, it is going to affect infrastructure, it is going to affect just the way these countries exist and it is going to happen more and more in the future,” Gonsalves said.

The Caribbean and other countries in the region, including the United States, are losing lives and suffering tens of billions of dollars in damages from severe hurricanes such as Irma and other weather events – at a time when Washington seems to want to reopen the debate about the role of human activity in the well-documented warming of planet and what must be done to prevent it from getting even worse.

But Gonsalves is convinced that there is no debate about the causes of climate change and what must be done to mitigate against and adapt to it.

“We didn’t create this problem,” he said, adding that Caribbean nations, as small islands, have to assist one another and to band together in solidarity even as they are among the worst affected by climate change, notwithstanding their negligible contribution to it.

“Those who created this problem have a special responsibility to satisfy their debt to humanity and to assist countries like this not only recover from storms but adapt to the already changing circumstances and climate,” Gonsalves told IPS.

Pearland, Texas after Hurricane Harvey made landfall. Credit: Brant Kelly/cc by 2.0

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Aug 31 2017 (IPS)

The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines says it hopes that the devastating loss and damage that Hurricane Harvey has wrought in Texas might inspire the government of President Donald Trump to rethink its position on climate change.

Hurricane Harvey, the strongest storm to hit the United States since 2005 and the costliest in U.S. history in terms of damage, made landfall in Texas on Aug. 25 and left much of Houston and other parts of the state under feet of floodwater."We must be touched with the feeling of their distress and their loss and their grief and their anguish, because we are subject to the same." --Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis Straker

Harvey made its way to the United States about a week after it passed near St. Vincent and the Grenadines and other countries in the Caribbean.

Residents of this eastern Caribbean nation breathed a sign of relief after the only lasting sign of the passage of the storm was some flooding in Bequia, the largest and northern-most of the Grenadine islands.

Harvey made landfall in Texas for a second time in less than a week on Tuesday and the damage it left in the “Lone Star State” was a reminder to Vincentians of the power of tropical cyclones and the damage that they have caused over the last decade in this multi-island nation.

“I wonder what we would be doing if we had that sort of persistent rain. I trust that what is happening in Houston will open the eyes of a lot of people worldwide with regards to climate change,” Minister of Transportation and Works, Sen. Julian Francis told a press conference in Kingstown on Monday.

Francis was updating the media on a road repair programme and the annual road-cleaning that came ahead of September, which is traditionally the heart of the Atlantic Hurricane Season.

The minister noted that the programme, which normally runs for 10 days, was reduced to eight because of the passage of Tropical Storm Harvey.

But the two days of work that the temporary workers employed under the programme lost as a result of the storm was nothing compared to the damage and loss left by less powerful weather systems over the past few years.

AMO and Special Operations agents conduct rescue with CBP UH-1N helicopter as part of Hurricane Harvey response. Credit: Public domain

The senator, who also has ministerial responsibilities for local government, expressed sympathy for the victims of Harvey but also criticized President Trump, who shortly after taking office pulled the United States out of the global Paris Accord to reduce the greenhouse emissions driving climate change and severe weather, has attempted to cut government funding for the agencies that monitor climate, and has long downplayed the problem while promoting the fossil fuel industry over renewables.

“It is pouring down on the fourth largest city in the United States of America but we know what the position of the sitting president and his administration is with regards to climate change.

“So I trust this comes as an eye-opener to the administrators and policymakers in the United States of America. I do feel sad and sympathise with the people of Texas… I have been following it closely and I say I wonder what would happen to us if we had that sort of downpour,” Francis said.

Speaking at a separate event later on Monday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is among the top 10 countries in the world most vulnerable to extreme weather events as a result of climate change.

“We don’t have to have high winds. Because we are mountainous, we have a lot of landslides, the rivers overflow their banks, a lot of disasters are caused in this country by heavy rainfall, without the wind.”

Gonsalves said that the nation’s seacoast is being eroded by wave action resulting from the frequent and more intense storms associated climate change.

“The entire eastern coast is being eroded and also on the western side of the island,” he said.

He noted that between 2014 and 2016, his government has had to rebuild five major bridges in a five-mile area in eastern St. Vincent.

The bridges were built to replace older ones damaged or destroyed by extreme weather events, which also necessitated redesign to accommodate larger water flows during storms ranging from tropical depressions to hurricane.

At a total cost of 7.4 million dollars, the bridges represent a significant budgetary expense in a multi-island nation whose capital expenditure allocation in 2016 was 74 million dollars.

“I say these things so that we can keep this matter in focus,” said Gonsalves, whose government in May introduced a one per cent levy to help fund the cost of disaster response and mitigation.

In 2016, flooding as a result of tropical waves left damage to public infrastructure totalling EC$37 million, almost 10 per cent of the 342-million-dollar national budget.

Meanwhile, at Tuesday’s meeting of the national assembly, Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis Straker expressed solidarity with the people of the United States, and used the experience of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to remind nationals of what Texans might be experiencing.

“We are not immune to natural disasters and we have had our own flooding here, the major one being 2013 Christmas Eve, in which 13 lives were lost,” Straker said.

“Some people say that this is because of global warming, climate change, something that is denied and rejected by the president of the United States,” he told parliament.

“But what we have seen in Texas what is referred to in language as ‘of epic proportion’, ‘unprecedented’, ‘one in a 100 years’, the president said one in 500 years, and it is catastrophic. We must be touched with the feeling of their distress and their loss and their grief and their anguish, because we are subject to the same,” Straker said.

The foreign minister, whose oldest son lives in Texas, told lawmakers that all residents of the state have been affected in one way or the other.

“And we have to commiserate and sympathise and show solidarity with the Vincentians in the diaspora and with the hundreds of thousands of other people in Houston who have been affected by this storm, Harvey,” he said, noting that the storm passed St. Vincent and the Grenadines without much devastation.

Speaking about the impact on the lives of the people of Texas, he added, “Could you imagine that people work all their lives to build a home — that is very previous to a lot of people — and you furnish your home and you live comfortably with your family and within the space of a day or two, you could lose everything and you are left homeless? That’s a chilling prospect that all of us should contemplate,” Straker said.

Regionally, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a block of 15 Caribbean nations, also extended its sympathies to the government and people of the United States and especially the State of Texas on the loss of lives and extensive damage to property and infrastructure following the passage of Hurricane Harvey.

CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, in a message to U.S. President Donald Trump, said CARICOM is confident that the people of Texas and the wider United States have the resilience to recover from the disaster.

LaRocque assured Trump that CARICOM stands with the Unites States at this time of disaster.

“The widespread destruction wrought by this hurricane has brought suffering to many and will necessitate a significant and lengthy rebuilding process,” LaRocque said. “The unprecedented nature of this climatic event highlights the unusual nature of weather patterns that continue to affect nations across the globe.”

A poorly constructed house in Gelée, Les Cayes, Haiti is further damaged by trees that fell during the passage of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. A senior Caribbean diplomat assigned to the European Union says climate change events are preventing many Caribbean countries from moving up the development ladder. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jul 14 2017 (IPS)

With Antigua and Barbuda joining St. Kitts and Nevis as the two eastern Caribbean nations to attain middle-income country status, a senior diplomat has identified climate change as a major factor preventing other nations in the grouping from taking the same step forward.

According to the World Bank, a middle-income economy is one with a gross national income per capita of between 1,026 and 12,475 dollars in 2016, calculated according to the Atlas method — a formula used by the World Bank to estimate the size of economies in terms of gross national income in U.S. dollars."Those who are indigent, they would enter...an avenue in Dante’s Hell which is indescribable. So that is the real story.” --Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves

“What I do want to say is that the other countries, the independent ones in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) like Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, all of them are exposed to climate events annually and the climate events are devastating for us and you could have situations where 90 per cent of our GDP is wiped out in 22 hours, 23 hours, 15 hours, depending on how long a tropical storm sits on you,” says Sharlene Shillingford-McKlmon, chargé d’affaires at the Eastern Caribbean States Embassy to Belgium and Mission to the European Union

She was speaking to Caribbean journalists on a tour of the European Union Headquarters as part of activities to mark the 40th anniversary of the European Union Mission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

Shillingford-McKlmon’s comments came as she spoke to some of the developmental challenges affecting OECS nations and the response options available to them.

Between Dec. 23 and 24, 2013, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia began reporting heavy rain with accumulations over that 12- to 24-hour period recorded at 406 mm in St. Lucia, 156 mm in Dominica, and 109 mm in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The heavy rains were associated with a low-level trough system, and with the traditional hurricane having ended almost a month earlier, many residents had dismissed the rains as just another tropical downpour.

However, by the time the hours-long downpour subsided in St. Vincent and the Grenadines around 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve, nine people were confirmed dead, three were missing and presumed dead, and 37 were injured.

Over 500 people were affected, of which 222 had to be provided with emergency shelter, while 278 took refuge with family, friends and neighbours.

The Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA) said that sectoral damage assessment estimated that 495 houses were damaged/destroyed; over 98 acres of crops damaged; 28 bridges damaged/destroyed; and the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital suffered major losses.

The total damage/losses and cost of clean-up operations were estimated at 58.44 million dollars — some 17 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product wiped out in a matter of hours.

In St. Lucia, there were six confirmed deaths related to the weather system and an estimated 1,050 persons were severely affected.

In Dominica, an estimated 106 households in approximately 12 communities were affected by the Christmas Eve weather system.

And, just over 18 months later, Dominica would be struck by yet another weather system, this time by Tropical Storm Erika on Aug. 24, 2015, which left at least 20 persons dead, and a number of other missing.

The storm also rendered 574 persons homeless and resulted in the evacuation of 1,034 others due to the unsafe conditions in their communities.

Damage and losses were estimated at EC$1.3 billion or 90 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

In noting the impact of these weather system on OECS nations, Shillingford-McKlmon pointed out that previously, it was only when a hurricane struck that the Caribbean saw such levels of destruction.

“Now, we have to be concerned about a tropical storm, because you really don’t know what is going to happen. And what has happened is that with respect to graduation from middle- to high-income status, if you do not retain your GDP per capita level for three years in a row, you can’t graduate — and it is really sad to say that some of our countries, the only reason they have not graduated to higher income status, where we receive less help, less official development assistance, less concessionary loans, is because of a storm or hurricane comes and devastates us.”

She said such a position puts Caribbean nations in a quagmire, because they want to be proud of the development they have achieved. However, at the same time, once they graduate to high-come countries status, one climate event can wipe out all those gains even as the countries would no longer qualify for official development assistance.

“You are going to lose financing and at the same time you don’t want to be hit by a hurricane, you don’t want to be in a situation where … if a hurricane comes and something happens, I may not graduate because I lose my GDP. Who wants to be in that position? What an awful place to be.”

Shillingford-McKlmon said that currently, OECS nations do not have an alternative with respect to the criteria for graduation but are having that conversation with the European Union and other development partners.

“A country will graduate when its GDP per capita remains at a certain level for a three-year period and then it will move from one category to another. And so what we are doing, we are arguing this at the European Commission level and they’ve begun to have discussion with us that give us the impression that they are willing to consider new criteria or alternate criteria for graduation,” she said.

The diplomat argued that with the severe impact of climate events on OECS economies, “GDP per capita is not a full and complete reflection of a country’s development.

“We have inherent vulnerabilities as small island developing states that make it very difficult for us to be graduated and not receive aid when we could be struck down by environmental and other exogenous shocks and be severely affected,” she said.

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves has also spoken to the impact on climate change on national development – particularly the economic situation of individual families.

“Let us understand this. When we have a natural disaster, you go to bed at night middle class and after three hours of rainfall and landslides, torrential downpour, like we never used to have before the acceleration of man-made climate change, that person, in three hours, would move from middle class to poor,” he said in late June at Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum.

Gonsalves further said that after a few hours of intense rainfall, some persons who are poor become indigent.

“And those who are indigent, they would enter…an avenue in Dante’s Hell which is indescribable. So that is the real story.”

Bangladeshi farmer Aktar Hossain using the Sarjan model. He just planted eggplant (known locally as brinjal) worth 700 dollars and released fish worth 240 dollars. Hossain expects a profit of 1,200 dollars by the end of the season. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
BHOLA, Bangladesh, Jun 22 2016 (IPS)

A continuous influx of sea water is threatening agriculture and food security in vast coastal areas of Bangladesh, but farmers are finding ways to adapt, like cultivating fish and crops at the same time.

The coastal and offshore areas of this low-lying, densely populated country include tidal estuaries and river floodplains in the south along the Bay of Bengal. Here the arable land is about 30 percent of the total available in the country.

In a recent study, experts observed that salinity intrusion due to reduction of freshwater flow from upstream, salinization of groundwater and fluctuation of soil salinity are major concerns and could seriously hamper country’s food production.

According to salinity survey findings, salinity monitoring information, and interpretation of Land and Soil Resource Utilization Guides, about one million hectares, or about 70 percent of cultivated lands of the southern coastal areas of Bangladesh, are affected by various degrees of soil salinity.

It is already predicted that if the current trend of climate change continues, rice production could fall by 10 percent and wheat by 30 percent.

Dr. Mohiuddin Chowdhury, principal scientific officer of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute or BARI, told IPS, “We are indeed greatly concerned by the loss of arable land in the coastal areas that is already happening and the future from the past trends looks bleak.”

Dr. Chowdhury explained that salinity in the coastal regions has a direct relation with temperature. If the temperature rises, the soil loses moisture and the salt from tidal or storm surges becomes concentrated, which results in crops wilting or dying – a phenomenon that is is already widely evident.

Dr. Chowdhury stressed adaptation measures and crop management, since at this point, climate change “cannot be avoided, but we have to live with it.”

Salinity in Bangladesh, one of the countries worst affected by decades of sea level rise, causes an unfavorable environment that restricts normal crop production throughout the year. The freshly deposited alluviums from upstream in the coastal areas of Bangladesh become saline as it comes in contact with the sea water and continues to be inundated during high tides and ingress of sea water through creeks.

A study found that the affected area increased from 8,330 square km in 1973 to 10,560 square km in 2009, according to the Soil Resource Development Institute in 2010.

Despite efforts to increase resilience, climate challenges continue to result in large economic losses, retarding economic growth and slowing progress in reducing poverty.

To confront the challenges, farming communities in the coastal areas that always relied on traditional agricultural practices are now shifting to research-based farming technology that promises better and safer food production.

The chief of BARI, Dr. Mohammad Rafiqul Islam Mondal, who describes climate change as a tragedy, told IPS, “At BARI, we are concentrating on developing agriculture practices towards adaptation to the extreme weathers, particularly in the coastal regions.”

Recognizing the adaptation strategies, BARI, blessed with years of research, has successfully introduced best farming practices in coastal regions. One is called the Sarjan model and is now very popular.

A leading NGO in Bangladesh, the Coastal Association for Social Transformation Trust (COAST), which has over 35 years of experience working mostly in coastal areas, has played a key role in supporting farmers with adaptive measures.

During a recent visit to an island district of Bhola, this correspondent witnessed how COAST in collaboration with the local agriculture department has introduced the farming model that is making huge positive impacts.

Mohammad Jahirul Islam, a senior COAST official in Char Fasson, a remote coastal region barely 30 cms above sea level, told IPS, “The traditional agricultural practices are threatened, largely due to salt water intrusion. High salt concentration is toxic to plants and we are now forced to seek alternative ways of growing crops.”

The Coastal Integrated Technology Extension Programme (CITEP) being implemented by COAST in Char Fasson has been helping farmers since 2003 with alternative farming practices to improve crop production in the face of climate change.

As part of its capacity-building programmes, CITEP encourages farmers to use the Sarjan model of long raised rows of soil about one metre wide and 90 cm high for cultivating varieties of vegetables. The trenches between the rows are filled with water into which various types of fish are released for maturing. The water for irrigating the plants comes from nearby lakes filled with freshwater drawn from the Meghna River.

The advantage of using Sarjan model is that it protects cropland from inundation during storm surges, tidal waves and flash flooding and avoids high salinity.

CITEP project coordinator in Char Fasson, Mizanur Rahman, told IPS, “These lowlands, hardly 25 kms from the sea at the confluence of the Bay of Bengal, are prone to tidal waves and storm surges during the seasons. So the recent farming models introduced here have been designed to protect the crops.”

According to Sadek Hossain, a veteran farmer who is already benefitting from the Sarjan model, said it “is safer and gives risk-free crops as the spaces between the crops allow more sunlight exposure and also has far less pest attacks.”

The new farming practice has turned out to be very popular in Char Fasson, where over 9,000 farmers are now using the model. Many farmers have also formed self-help groups where members benefit from sharing each others’ experiences.

Manzurul Islam, a local official of the government’s agriculture department in Char Fasson, told IPS, “At the beginning, the challenges were huge because farmers refused to adapt to the new model. Realising the benefits farmers are now convinced.”

Losses of crops on flat lands are disastrous. Mohammad Joynal recalls how tidal waves three years ago destroyed huge crops. “We were helpless when the crops were inundated on about 5,500 hectares of flat land. The sea water inundation for four months caused all crops to wilt and eventually rot,” said a dishearten face of Joynal.

Hundreds of farmers have been trained using demonstration crop fields on the adaptation techniques. “We have many different models developed to grow crops at different levels of salinity which are already proven successes,” said BARI Director General Dr. Mondol.

Sea level rise is already evident in coastal Bangladesh. Projections show that 97 percent of coastal areas and over 40 million people living in coastal Bangladesh are vulnerable to multiple climate change hazards.

The Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) for 2014, which evaluated the sensitivity of populations, the physical exposure of countries, and governmental capacity to adapt to climate change over the following 30 years, ranks Bangladesh as the number one economy in the world at risk to climate change.

Globally, emissions of carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere are growing at a rate of 5 percent annually, according to a joint publication by COAST and the Equity and Justice Working Group (EJWG) on ‘Climate Change Impact and Disaster Vulnerabilities in the Coastal Areas of Bangladesh’.

Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, executive director of COAST Trust and one of the authors of the joint publication, told IPS, “The impacts of climate change with time would become more acute hitting right at the core of our economy – agriculture on which over 70 percent of our rural population rely on.”

Rezaul, well known for his contributions to development in the coastal regions, added, “We acted early considering the harsh realities of extreme weathers. Introducing the Sarjan model is one of many which we have successfully implemented, building capacities of the local farmers.”

Many Bangladeshi migrants and those from coastal Indian towns take up menial jobs in the construction industry and live in slums. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, May 19 2016 (IPS)

After the sea swallowed up her home and family in the Bangladeshi coastal district of Bhola along the Bay of Bengal, farmer Sanjeela Sheikh was heartbroken. Stripped of all her belongings, her fields swamped and her loved ones dead, she contemplated suicide.

But good sense prevailed. The frail 36-year-old decided to till her neighbours’ fields in exchange for food. At the same time, she started saving and planning to migrate to India for better prospects like some of her neighbours. Finally, Sheikh packed her belongings and boarded a rickety bus to India’s eastern state of West Bengal. From there, a ticketless train journey brought her to New Delhi where she now lives and works.

“I’ve accepted my fate,” Sheikh told IPS, now employed as a domestic help and living with an Indian family. “There’s no future for me in Bangladesh.”

Along with India, China, Indonesia and the Philippines, Bangladesh is considered one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change in South Asia. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina acknowledged in a speech last year that roughly 30 million Bangladeshis will risk becoming climate migrants by 2050."We're petrified of the authorities probing our Bangladeshi antecedents. We can be packed off without any questions. But that's a risk we're willing to take."

The reasons for migration are familiar — climate change, loss of livelihood due to disasters like cyclones, drought, ingress of the sea, and lack of fresh water for agriculture. In its report Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has highlighted grave causes and ramifications of climate-induced displacement. As per ADB, roughly 37 million people from India, 22 million from China and 21 million from Indonesia will be at risk from sea levels rising by 2050.

Changing weather patterns will also impact agriculture, hampering millions of livelihoods around the world, especially of poor and marginalised populations, add experts. Cyclone Phailin, which lashed the coastal Indian state of Orissa in October 2013, has triggered large-scale migration of fishing communities. Ditto the floods of 2013 in the Himalayas, which have wrecked millions of livelihoods forcing people to move elsewhere.

However, among the most daunting effects of climate change is human displacement as it involves migration, protection of vulnerable people and liability for climate change damage. The U.S. Department of Defence has rightly called climate change “an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water.”

These words ring all the more true when viewed against the ominous backdrop of the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters. These catastrophes are exposing millions of vulnerable people like Sanjeela to largescale displacement and forced migration. According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, at least 19.3 million people worldwide were forced out of their homes by natural disasters in 2015 – 90 percent of which were related to weather-related events.

Unfortunately, even as the numbers of these “climate refugees” crossing international borders in search of a safe haven has seen a dramatic upward spiral, the issue of legal rights or guaranteed help remains elusive for them.

“Despite being forced to leave their home countries, these migrants cannot apply for refugee status. They are bereft of legal protection under the U.N. High Convention for Refugees and can be deported at any time without question,” a senior official at the Ministry of External Affairs told IPS.

Zahida Begum, 45, is one such refugee who lives in constant fear of being deported. The poor farmer migrated from Bangladesh in 2014 when her fields were wrecked by floods. She now lives in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh with her three young children and husband. “When we’d just shifted,” Begum told IPS, “we used to spend entire days hiding. Now, we just pretend we’re from the Indian state of West Bengal as we speak the same language and our cultures are also quite similar. However, we’re petrified of the authorities probing our Bangladeshi antecedents. We can be packed off without any questions. But that’s a risk we’re willing to take.”

Researchers in Assam in India and in Bangladesh have estimated that around a million people have been rendered homeless due to erosion in the Brahmaputra river basin over the last three decades. Particularly susceptible to climate change are the Sundarbans, a low-lying delta region in the Bay of Bengal where some 13 million impoverished Indians and Bangladeshis live.

The 200-odd islands here constitute the world’s largest mangrove estuary shared by India and Bangladesh which has experienced loss of forests, lands and habitats due to rising sea levels in recent years.

Climatologists say seas are rising in the Sundarbans more than twice as fast as the global average due to which much of the delta could be submerged in as early as two decades. “That catastrophe,” says Dr. Abhinav Mohapatra of the Indian Meteorological Department, “could trigger a massive exodus of climate refugees creating enormous challenges for India and Bangladesh.”

Sahana Bose of the Central University of Assam states in her essay “Climate resilience and the climate refugees” that the migrant tribes in the Indian Sunderbans, working as agricultural labourers or cultivating small farms, locally known as ‘Adivasis’ are the worst type of climate refugees.

“Their very frequent displacement from one island to another within a span of five years has created a wide range of ecological and socio-economic problems leading to humanitarian crisis. These climate refugees are also the world’s most poor people living on less than 10 US dollar per month,” writes Bose.

A Greenpeace study suggests that India will face major out-migrations from coastal regions. According to these estimates, around 120 million people will be rendered homeless by 2100 in Bangladesh and India.

“Everyone knows that climate change is displacing people but no government is willing to acknowledge this officially for fear of having to recognise these people as refugees and be held responsible for their welfare,” explains Dr. Jamuna Sheshadri, an associate professor of sociology at Delhi University.

The problem is aggravated, says Sheshadri, with the scientific community still struggling to define “climate refugees” even though displacement and migration due to climate are a global phenomenon.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels in India are expected to rise at the rate of 2.4 mm a year; in 2050, the total increase will be 38 cm, displacing tens of thousands of people. For nearly a quarter of India’s population living along the coast, global warming is a scary reality.

The issue of climate refugees is also creating simmering tensions at the local level. In West Bengal, the massive and continuous influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh has become a fraught political issue. Waves of Bangladeshi migrants have settled in the state and the Northeast over the decades. The resultant pressures on land and economic resources is triggering clashes between local residents and the migrant Bangladeshis.

The migrants’ influx is also creating social marginalisation among local Indian populations apart from disguised unemployment, scarcity of land for agriculture and food insecurity. In Delhi, the city slums are experiencing a severe strain on civic services and urban infrastructure including paucity of potable water. Meanwhile, unscrupulous politicians are busy milking both the constituencies — of migrants and locals — to fatten their vote banks.

Where does the solution lie to the complex problem of climate refugees lie? The Norwegian Refugee Council, a prominent humanitarian organisation in Norway that works on global refugee issues, had suggested setting up of an international environmental migration fund bankrolled by industrialised nations. The idea of a UN pact to compensate victims of climate change is another suggestion, and the issue will also be taken up at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on May 23-24.

But, as some experts have highlighted, the issue first needs to be mainstreamed. A solid plan can then be devised and incorporated in national policies of the affected nations for a lasting and sustainable solution.

Excerpt:

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
LONDON, Jul 31 2015 (IPS)

The importance of mangroves in protecting coastal areas under threat due to sea level rise caused by climate change may have been underestimated, according to new research.

A joint study between researchers at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and the Universities of Auckland and Waikato in New Zealand looked at how mangrove forests respond to elevated sea levels.

“Within the mangrove forest, these channels become shallower through organic matter from the trees, reduced sediment resuspensions (caused by the mangroves) and sediment trapping (also caused by the mangroves) and the sea bed begins to rise, with bed elevation increasing a few millimetres per year until the area is no longer inundated by the tide.”

The team predicted what happens to different types of estuaries and river deltas when sea levels rise.

Taking New Zealand mangrove data as the basis of a new modelling system and using cutting-edge mathematical simulations, they found areas without mangroves are likely to widen from erosion and more water will encroach inwards, whereas mangrove regions prevent this effect. This is likely due to soil building up around their mesh-like roots and acting to reduce energy from waves and tidal currents.

In modelling sea level rise in the study, the ability of mangrove forests to gradually create a buffer between sea and land occurs even when the area is subjected to potential sea level rise of up to 0.5 mm per year. Even after sea level rise, the mangroves showed an enhanced ability to maintain an elevation in the upper intertidal zone.

Associate Professor Karin Bryan of the University of Waikato said, “In New Zealand, mangroves have been traditionally viewed as undesirable as they take over areas where there were once sandy beaches. In other countries, this is not the case as they are seen as a buffer for climate change in low level areas.”

Other studies have shown mangroves have the ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and protect people from hazards such as tsunamis.

Associate Professor Giovanni Coco of the University of Auckland said, “As we anticipate changes caused by climate change, it’s important to know the effect sea level rise might have, particularly around our coasts.

“Mangroves appear to be resilient to sea level rise and are likely to be able to sustain such climatic change. The implications for the New Zealand coastline are considerable and will require new thinking in terms of sediment budgets and response to climatic changes.”

“Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it”. Photo credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

By Dipti Bhatnagar and Susann Scherbarth
BRUSSELS/MAPUTO, Apr 1 2015 (IPS)

World governments expect to agree to a new global treaty to combat climate change in Paris in December. As the catastrophic impacts of climate change become more evident, so too escalates the urgency to act.

Mar. 31 should have marked a major milestone on the road to Paris, yet only a handful of countries acted on it. Unfortunately, the few plans that were announced before that date show that our leaders lack the ambition to do what it takes to tackle the climate crisis.

National plans for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will most likely form the basis of the Paris agreement. These plans – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – are meant to indicate a government’s self-stated commitment to solve the global climate crisis through domestic emission reductions as well as through support for the poorest and most vulnerable countries.“People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture”

This architecture will result in an agreement that is weaker than each country being legally mandated to reduce emissions based on their fair share, determined through science and equity.

Yet, even with this architecture, the idea was that national governments would declare these plans by the end of March so that they could then be scrutinised.

Only six pledges had been received by the United Nations by the deadline – from the European Union, the United States, Norway, Mexico, Russia and Switzerland. These nations, with the notable exception of Mexico, are among the worst historical carbon emitters, yet these pledges do not reflect that immense historical responsibility and do not show any real willingness to address the scale of the climate crisis.

The commitments are well below what science and climate justice principles tell us is urgently needed to avoid hitting climate tipping points. The European Union announced target to cut emissions by ”at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030” is merely re-hashed from last year’s announcement.

The United States has cobbled together a plan for a meagre reduction of 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels, by 2025. If these insignificant pledges are an indication of what is to come, we are on track to a world which will be 4-6°C warmer on average. To put this into context, the climate impacts we are facing today are the consequence of a planet which is only 0.8°C warmer than it was.

So far, none of these countries’ announcements would contribute their ‘fair share’ according to science and equity. All parties are capable of much greater ambition, and it is high time to bring it to the table.

The deadlines that matter most are not set by governments, but by our planet and its natural boundaries, which have already been stretched considerably by the impacts of the climate crisis, for instance by the lethal and extreme weather events from Vanuatu to the Balkans to the Sahel.

Climate change is already happening now, bringing more floods, storms, droughts, rising seas and more devastating typhoons and hurricanes.

The mockery made of this latest Mar. 31 deadline is just another revelation of our governments’ inaction – under the influence of powerful polluting corporations – in the face of impending disaster.

People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture.

Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it.

We need a just and drastic transformation of our societies, our energy and food systems, and our economies. Proven and workable alternatives exist and are already being implemented.

Key decisions about our energy systems are made regularly, and will of course be made long after the Paris summit. Take for instance U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring planet-wrecking tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

A decision is expected soon and a rejection of the pipeline project would send a strong signal that our long-term future is not founded on the exploitation and burning of more and more fossil fuels.

European Union governments announced their INDCs back in February with their new ‘Energy Union’ vision for meeting the region’s energy needs. The bloc has recognised the need to reduce energy consumption and help citizens take control of clean, local renewable sources. But these moves towards the good must not be negated with new investments in the bad – new gas pipelines are also on the menu.

Throughout 2015, Friends of the Earth International and others will be bringing more and more people together to fight against the power of the polluters and make sure politicians hear the voices of the voiceless and take real action.

In the run-up to Paris, and along the road beyond, we, together with thousands of others, will be promoting the wealth of real solutions and proven ideas that are already delivering transformation around the world.

We will be on the streets throughout 2015, in 2016, and as long as it takes to realise community-owned renewable energy solutions that benefit ordinary people, not multinational corporations.

The Paris deadline will come and go, like others before. But the energy transformation is under way and, whatever our governments will pledge or not pledge at the climate summit in Paris, the transformation will not be stopped.

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* Dipti Bhatnagar is Climate Justice & Energy Co-coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, based in Maputo.

* Susann Scherbarth is Climate Justice & Energy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, based in Brussels.

Excerpt:

Marine biologist and environmentalist John Mussington (left) and New York-based archaeologist Dr. Sophia Perdikaris. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CODRINGTON, Barbuda, Jun 30 2014 (IPS)

The 1,800 residents of the tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda are learning to adapt as climate change proves to be a force to reckon with, disrupting not just the lives of the living but also the resting places of those who died centuries ago. 

United States-based archaeologist Dr. Sophia Perdikaris said when Hurricane Georges hit in 1998, it did a lot more than turn the spotlight on the island’s shrinking coastline."One of the sure things that will happen as a result of climate change is that one-third wetlands will engulf the one-third lowland...so that will leave us with 21 square miles of usable land." -- John Mussington

“In the early years when I first started coming to Barbuda, it was because hurricane activity had exposed a lot of archaeology and it was an effort to do rescue. A human skeleton from 450 AD was exposed in the area called Seaview,” Perdikaris told IPS.

“In fact, some of the archaeology [including the human skeleton] that we are now housing in the newly formed museum was excavated by Hurricane Georges.”

Perdikaris, a professor of anthropology and archaeology at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, said some of the findings coming out of Barbuda point to climatic shifts in weather conditions at the same time that the northern part of Europe was experiencing the little Ice Age.

“Similar signatures are coming out of Barbuda that actually have the same stories in Greenland, Iceland and the North Coast of Africa,” she said. “Hence, Barbuda is not just a small island in the Caribbean but actually a major part of bigger weather events in the circum Atlantic.”

Perdikaris said one of the things that Barbudans are faced with today is “a big word, climate change – what does it really mean and how is it affecting people’s lives and what can they do to change it?”

But she noted that the residents are very adaptive.

“We do find solutions with the help of the amazing expertise of the local people because they are the best experts for their local environment,” she said.

“We are trying to gather enough information to see what our challenges are and how we move forward; and then find the funding resources and technology to make that happen.

“We are monitoring erosion in many parts of the island and we also have been testing the wells to see whether the water is safe to drink or whether the salinity has been changing; all of these efforts in order to assess the three aquifers that are under Barbuda,” she added.

Another project being developed on the island is aquaponics, the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics (growing plants without soil), amid a growing realisation that climate change will likely seriously threaten food security in Barbuda.

“There are diminishing resources in the sea. It is problematic to grow crops if you have a drought or if you only have salty water to water them so we have developed an aquaponics facility,” said Perdikaris.

Dr. Perdikaris said climate change has forced the residents of the island with a single village to make changes to their way of life and also to put measures in place to secure their future.

“As glaciers melt because of high temperatures what it’s doing to the rest of us is actually increase the sea level, and by increasing the sea level a number of things are taking place,” she said. “With a low-lying island like Barbuda, one of our main concerns is how much of the island, how fast, will actually be under water.

“As the sea waters are rising, they are not only claiming land but they are actually claiming the coral reefs,” Perdikaris added.

Marine biologist and environmentalist John Mussington said the warning by scientists that the 62-square-mile [161-square-kilometre] island is becoming one of the most vulnerable spots due to the consequences of climate change is not being taken lightly.

“Barbuda is flat; the highest point is just over 100 feet. Now with climate change predictions they are talking about several metres in terms of sea level rise. When you look at the present topography of Barbuda, it is 62 square miles. A third of Barbuda is taken up by lagoons and wetland systems.

“Another third is what we call the lowlands. One of the sure things that will happen as a result of climate change is that one-third wetlands will engulf the one-third lowland to become two-thirds wetlands,” Mussington told IPS.

“So that will leave us with 21 square miles of usable land for sustaining communities. That is the reality we are facing.”

Barbuda’s culture is firmly based in a “living off the land concept” that Mussington said is fast becoming a thing of the past with the advent of climate change.

“We want to sustain the fact that Barbuda has a tradition of its people living off the land and one of the things we are going to face in terms of challenges from climate change is we are not going to be able to do that,” he said.

“If we are going to survive we have to overcome those challenges, hence the direction we are taking in terms of being able to continue to feed ourselves protein wise and vegetable wise.”

The entire population is being educated in aquaponics technology, a method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating system.

“We had a dream in 2012 of actually helping the situation in Barbuda by being able to guarantee that we can continue to get our protein source in the form of fish as well as to produce vegetables in spite of what was going to happen and what is happening from climate change,” Mussington said.

“In the aquaponics technology that we are pioneering we now house in our tanks 4500 tilapia.

“We have to find solutions in order to continue living on the island. That is why aquaponics turned out to be one of those things that we are pushing because the end result of the climate change consequences is that our coral reefs are going to suffer, our beaches are going to be shifting and changing,” Mussington added.

A boy walks with his bicycle on a flooded street in Georgetown, Guyana. About 80 percent of wastewater that enters the Caribbean Sea is only partially treated or untreated. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Nov 30 2013 (IPS)

It’s a dirty, smelly business, but wastewater is gaining prominence across the Caribbean as countries from Jamaica in the west to Guyana in the south increasingly recognise its effects on the environment and the importance of improving its management.

Coordinator of the Guyana Wastewater Revolving Fund Marlon Daniels told IPS that with the advent of climate change, protecting the environment has become more of a challenge for countries of the region.The impact of sea-level rise on [urban] wastewater systems may be particularly severe." -- Dr. Adrian Cashman

He explained that climate change has resulted in unusual weather patterns, including more rainfall and flash flooding, and these have caused an increase in sewerage entering the sea.

“One of the effects of improving access to water, as required under Goal 7 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, is that more people instead of using a pit latrine now use a flush toilet, so they have an on-site treatment in the form of a septic tank,” Daniels said.

“When you have a huge storm or heavy rain, you have a toxic soup. There is refuse from septic tanks, which is not as dirty as raw sewerage but it’s still rich in nutrients and pathogens. All of that wastewater ends up in the environment as floodwater and you have populations being exposed to that.”

View with discretion: The intake at the sole wastewater treatement facility in Guyana’s capital Georgetown. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Dr. Donna-May Sakura-Lemessy, deputy director at the Trinidad-based Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA), says while the Caribbean benefits tremendously from the tourism industry – last year visitors spent an estimated 26 billion dollars – tourism-dependent economies of small island Caribbean states suffer the most from untreated wastewater with the destruction of reefs and the pollution of beaches.

“Poor wastewater management leads to degradation of both your potable water sources and your environmental resources. So what will happen is that your swimming waters will be contaminated and this could lead to gastro-intestinal diseases and things like ear infections,” Sakura-Lemessy told IPS.

“When people have to come into a country, they pay to go where they can enjoy themselves. They don’t want to come into a country and hear that no bathing or swimming is allowed or knowing that there is a risk that they could get ill if they bathe in the water.

“So if the resources are degraded then the chances of you maintaining a healthy tourism sector are minimised and you would lose out on whatever revenue tourism would bring to you.”

In some Caribbean countries, tourism employs eight out of 10 people, she stressed.

Daniels noted that fishing industries are also affected where pollution has destroyed fish breeding areas and food supply, and the interaction of untreated wastewater with stressed environmental systems makes future adaptation to climate change more difficult.

Persistent rainfall in Guyana on Nov. 26 left many areas of the capital flooded, prompting the country’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shamdeo Persaud to advise residents to pay special attention to water safety and personal hygiene.

“Stay out of the water as much as possible, as it can greatly reduce your chances of contracting diseases such as skin infections, leptospirosis, diarrhoeal diseases and other water-borne diseases,” Persaud said in an advisory.

She also urged residents to keep food separate, protected from the flood water; to throw away all food that has been in contact with the flood waters; and to wash all fruits and vegetables with treated water.

University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturer Dr. Adrian Cashman said the impacts of climate change on wastewater management will be through changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, sea level rise, and storm related damages.

“Many of the urban areas in the Caribbean are located in low-lying coastal areas with some 40 percent of the population living within two kilometres of the coast,” Cashman said.

“Given that the majority of urban areas are not serviced by centralised sewerage systems and therefore rely on other means of disposal, the impact of sea-level rise on these wastewater systems may be particularly severe.

“The potential effects are higher groundwater levels which will restrict the ability to soak away effluent and back-up systems as well as restrict biological activity that provides the assimilative capacity. This in turn will lead to elevated levels of beach and marine pollution, contribute to eutrophication of bathing waters and the creation of marine dead zones,” Cashman added.

In 2011, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) began funding a four-year project – the Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater Management (CReW) – that seeks to provide sustainable financing for the wastewater sector, support policy and legislative reform, and foster regional dialogue and knowledge exchange among key stakeholders in the Wider Caribbean Region.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are the co-implementing agencies for the project. The Project Coordination Group based in Jamaica carries out the day-to-day management of the CReW project, supported by Pilot Executing Agencies (PEA) in Jamaica, Belize, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

Project Coordinator of the GEF CReW Denise Forrest said that about 80 percent of domestic wastewater that enters the Caribbean Sea is only partially treated or untreated.

“We have to recognise that wastewater management and its effective treatment is not something that we can say is a low priority or something that we can ignore. It is in fact a significant development requirement, particularly in the context of a region whose development and quality of life for its people rests on its natural resource base,” she told IPS.

“If we fail to treat with the issue of managing wastewater effectively, we are perhaps dooming our region to a future that is not prosperous both in terms of our economic development, in terms of the health of our people, in terms of the quality of life, and in terms of hedging our bets in terms of how we adapt to climate change.

“It is absolutely essential that we deal with this issue,” Forest added.

A local woman returns to her home with a new shelter kit. While the destruction is widespread, local rebuilding efforts are already underway. Credit: Simon Davis/DFID/cc by 2.0

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Nov 21 2013 (IPS)

Nearly two weeks after Typhoon Haiyan devastated parts of the central Philippines, experts and activists here are warning that post-disaster reconstruction needs to be more transparent than past such efforts, while also focusing on a long-term assistance strategy that goes beyond immediate emergency relief.

In recent days, academics and civil society experts have also urged the international community to learn from some of the mistakes made during the disaster responses following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti."When the funding dries up, the rebuilding effort still needs to be taken care of." -- Prof. Jesse Anttila-Hughes

“I think there is a big myth that emergency response is split in different stages, with emergency relief coming first, followed by reconstruction and then rebuilding,” Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a think tank here, told IPS. “But what you actually need is a more comprehensive view, from the very beginning.”

Johnston has closely followed reconstruction efforts in Haiti following the earthquake that left an estimated 316,000 people dead and 300,000 injured, and displaced almost 1.5 million people. He says there are several lessons learned from the Haitian disaster that can be applied to the current crisis in the Philippines.

Keeping locals in the loop

“One thing that, unfortunately, didn’t go very well in Haiti was that the local government and civil society were largely bypassed by foreign organisations,” he says. “For instance, you saw USAID” – the U.S. government’s primary foreign aid agency – “spending almost 1.3 billion dollars in awards to contractors and NGOs that were mostly based in the U.S., with less than one percent of that money actually going to Haitian organisations.”

In the Philippines, he notes, international organisations should keep the Manila government in the lead, making sure that it is a prominent part of the coordination of the entire reconstruction mechanism.

Transparency and accountability can also be vastly improved over past efforts. Experts say doing so would ensure that the organisations working on the ground meet local needs and are effective in doing so.

“Nongovernmental organizations and private contractors have been the intermediate recipients of most of these funds,” Vijaya Ramachandran and Owen Barder, two senior fellows at the Center for Global Development (CGD), a think tank here, wrote last week. “But despite the fact that these organizations are beneficiaries of public funds, there are few publicly available evaluations of services delivered, lives saved, or mistakes made.”

The analysts note that this lack of transparency and accountability has led to growing disillusionment among the local population in Haiti. Perhaps more important, lack of transparency can also end up affecting the relief’s efficiency itself.

“In Haiti, we saw that the groups on the ground weren’t actually communicating with each other, leading to a situation in which different groups simply duplicated the same things,” CEPR’s Johnston says. “That’s a clear indicator telling us that there wasn’t enough transparency and accountability around the aid that was being provided.”

Greater communication between groups would enable them to be more effective with their work, while also increasing their accountability to donors, he says.

Still, some NGOs currently working in the Philippines are stressing that transparency and communication are already at the core of what they do.

“We try to be very transparent about our finances, and we make sure that everyone sees where all of our money is going,” Rachel Sawyer, a member of the communications staff at All Hands Volunteers, a non-profit that works in disaster-stricken areas both in the U.S. and internationally, told IPS.

“We are also constantly communicating with other organisations. When we see one, we either partner with them or we try to meet the unmet needs somewhere else.”

She warns that “‘disaster relief’ is obviously a very broad term.”

Long-term funding

One other major issue experts point to is the problem of ensuring that the outpouring of funds raised in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is maintained over time, which is what long-term reconstruction requires.

“While media, funders and emergency responders spend a short amount of time dealing with immediate needs,” Lori Bertman, the president and CEO of the Louisiana-based Pennington Family Foundation, a grant-making institution, wrote on Monday, “this does not create the infrastructure to mitigate future risk, and leaves long-term needs such as resettlement, mental and public health, as well as fiscal viability, unfunded and unattended.”

Bertman’s article was later endorsed by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank here.

Some have suggested that this short-term response may be partially due to the cyclical nature of media coverage, which tends to shift the public’s attention quickly.

“Obviously the news cycle is a cycle, and trying to get people to give more attention is not really going to work,” Jesse Anttila-Hughes, a development economics professor at the University of San Francisco, told IPS.

He notes, however, that the current strategy can be improved.

“Funding in these situations is very much focused on shelter and food. But then when the funding dries up, the rebuilding effort still needs to be taken care of,” he said. “What really needs to be done in these situations is to ensure that funding calls are specifically tied to clear, long-term reconstruction.”

According to the latest information released by the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council, the Philippine government’s agency monitoring the current crisis, Typhoon Haiyan has so far killed over 4,000 people, leaving almost 4.5 million people without a home.

Earlier this week, the Washington-based World Bank announced that it would release 500 million dollars in funding to support the Philippines’ effort in recovery and rebuilding. The funds, which are a loan, came in response to a request by the government in Manila, and Bank officials are already looking to see how this money can be stretched for the long term – and how it can be used to sidestep some of the problems that have beset previous reconstructions.

“Given the scale of this disaster, the country will need a long-term reconstruction plan,” Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank’s vice president for East Asia said on Monday. “We can bring lessons learned from our work in reconstruction after disasters hit Aceh, Haiti and other areas that might be helpful in the Philippines.”

U.S. Marines are assisting the Philippine government with humanitarian aid and disaster relief in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan. Credit: U.S. Embassy, Jakarta/cc by 2.0

By AJ Correspondents
DOHA, Qatar, Nov 13 2013 (Al Jazeera)

Relief operations in typhoon-devastated parts of the Philippines picked up pace Wednesday, but still only minimal amounts of water, food and medical supplies were making it to increasingly desperate survivors in the hardest-hit places.

“We need help. Nothing is happening. We haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon,” pleaded a weeping Aristone Balute, an 81-year-old woman who failed to get a flight out of the ravaged city of Tacloban for Manila, the capital. Her clothes were soaked from a pouring rain, and tears streamed down her face.

Five days after the deadly disaster, aid is coming, but too slowly for many. Pallets of supplies and teams of doctors are waiting to get into Tacloban — but the challenges of delivering the assistance mean few in the stricken city have received help, sparking looting in some areas.

Security forces exchanged fire on Wednesday with armed men amid widespread looting of shops and warehouses for food, water and other supplies, local television reported.

The confrontation broke out in the village of Abucay, part of Tacloban in Leyte province, said ANC Television. Military officials were unable to immediately confirm the fighting.

Meanwhile, the death toll continues to fluctuate. The Philippine government says the original estimate of 10,000 killed is too high. So far, 1,833 have been confirmed dead and 2,623 injured. The total death toll will likely be closer to 2,000 or 2,500, President Benigno Aquino III told CNN on Tuesday.

But the reduction in casualty figures provided little comfort for those still waiting for basic necessities.

“There is a huge amount that we need to do. We have not been able to get into the remote communities,” U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in Manila, launching an appeal for 301 million dollars to help the more than 11 million people estimated to have been affected by the storm.

“Even in Tacloban, because of the debris and the difficulties with logistics and so on, we have not been able to get in the level of supply that we would want to,” she said. “We are going to do as much as we can to bring in more.”

Tacloban, a city of about 220,000 people on Leyte island, bore the full force of the winds and storm surges on Friday. Most of the city is in ruins, a tangled mess of destroyed houses, cars and trees. Malls and shops have been stripped of food and water by hungry residents.

The loss of life appears to be concentrated in Tacloban and surrounding areas, including a portion of Samar island that is separated from Leyte island by a strait. It is possible that other devastated areas are so isolated they have not yet been reached.

From Cebu, to the southwest, the Philippine air force has been sending three C-130 planes back and forth to Tacloban from dawn to dusk and has delivered 400,000 pounds of relief supplies, Lt. Col. Marciano Jesus Guevara said. A lack of electricity in Tacloban means planes cannot land there at night.

Guevara said that the C-130s have transported nearly 3,000 civilians out of the disaster zone, and that the biggest problem in Tacloban is a lack of clean drinking water.

“Water is life,” he said. “If you have water with no food, you’ll survive.”

A team from the relief organisation Doctors Without Borders, complete with medical supplies, arrived on Cebu island Saturday looking for a flight to Tacloban, but had not left by Tuesday. A spokesman for the group said it was “difficult to tell” when the team would be able to leave.

“We are in contact with the authorities, but the (Tacloban) airport is only for the Philippines’ military use,” Lee Pik Kwan said in a telephone interview.

Doctors in Tacloban said they were desperate for medicine. At a small makeshift clinic with shattered windows beside the city’s ruined airport tower, army and air force medics said they had treated about 1,000 people for cuts, bruises, lacerations and deep wounds.

Thousands of typhoon victims were trying to get out of Tacloban. They camped at the airport and ran onto the tarmac when planes came in, surging past a broken iron fence and a few soldiers and police trying to control them. Most did not make it aboard the military flights out of the city.

The bodies of those killed by the typhoon are causing humanitarian and logistical problems for relief crews as well.

“It really breaks your heart when you see them,” said Maj. Gen. Romeo Poquiz, commander of the Second Air Division. “We’re limited with manpower, the expertise, as well as the trucks that have to transport them to different areas for identification … Do we do a mass burial, because we can’t identify them anymore? If we do a mass burial, where do you place them?”

Most Tacloban residents spent a rainy night wherever they could — in the ruins of destroyed houses or in the open along roadsides and shredded trees. A lucky few slept under tents brought in by the government or relief groups.

Damaged roads and other infrastructure are complicating relief efforts. Government officials, as well as police and army personnel, are in many cases among the victims themselves, which hampers coordination. The typhoon destroyed military buildings that housed 1,000 soldiers in Leyte province.

The storm also prompted a jailbreak in Tacloban. Army Brig. Gen. Virgilio Espineli, the deputy regional military commander, said he was not sure how many of the 600 inmates fled.

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier is headed toward the region with massive amounts of water and food, but the Pentagon said the ship would not arrive until Thursday. Other ships will arrive in the coming days as well. The United States said it is providing 20 million dollars in immediate aid.

Aid totaling tens of millions of dollars has been pledged by many other countries, including Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom, which is sending a Royal Navy vessel.

The Philippines, an archipelago nation of more than 7,000 islands, is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, but Haiyan was an especially large catastrophe. Its winds were among the strongest ever recorded.

Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The eye of Hurricane Sandy made landfall on Oct. 25, 2012, near the Mar Verde beach west of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
NEW YORK/HAVANA, Oct 30 2013 (IPS)

One year ago, Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeast United States, causing an estimated 68 billion dollars in damage and paralysing the world’s financial nerve centre.

But days before, in the Caribbean, the same storm ran roughshod over Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba and other countries, causing widespread loss of life and destruction that the region is only beginning to recover from."If you don’t start investing, for every dollar not spent on adapting, you will spend six or seven within a few years." -- UNDP's Guido Corno

The hurricane was one of several in the past decades that meteorologists had previously considered “once in a century” events.

Those predictions now appear outdated.

“The power of these storms is off the chart,” Guido Corno, chief technical advisor at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), told IPS. “Sandy was a massive storm, larger than any in the past 100 years.”

Scientists believe that by the end of the century, climate change will increase the severity of extreme weather events, making storms like Sandy more common.

For Caribbean nations with fewer resources, that spectre is daunting.

A path of destruction

On Oct. 24, Sandy strengthened into a Category One hurricane and made landfall in Jamaica, causing widespread damage in the east of the island.

Seventy percent of residents were left without power and in Portland Parish, on the northeast coast, the Red Cross reported 80 percent of houses had lost their roofs.

In Haiti, though the storm only skirted the coastline, it dropped nearly 20 inches of rain in the south of the country and came as a severe blow to hundreds of thousands still left homeless after the 2011 earthquake.

Already in 2012, Tropical Storm Isaac, which damaged parts of the north, had been followed by a drought that led up to Sandy. The combined effect of the three devastated Haiti’s farmers and left some 1.5 million Haitians at risk of malnutrition.

Residents in Santiago de Cuba, accustomed to storms that usually pass over west of Cuba, were caught unaware when the storm made landfall in the city as a Category 3 storms with winds up to 110 mph. Eleven died and half the houses in the city were either destroyed or severely damaged.

“Now I know what a hurricane is; when another comes, we won’t delay,” Rey Antonio Acosta, 12, who escaped the storm with his older brother, told IPS.

Though the hurricane was the deadliest to strike Cuba in seven years, the toll was relatively low considering its severity.

Cuba’s longstanding system of civil defence, which calls on all citizens in the event of disasters, has been able to plan well in advance of approaching hurricanes – recently with the help of climate change models – and spring into action quickly after storms pass.

The U.N. has highlighted the country’s disaster prevention initiatives that include “two-day training session in risk reduction for hurricanes, complete with simulation exercises and concrete preparation actions” as a model for the Caribbean.

Still, a year after Sandy, the government’s recovery efforts, hampered by the local economy and a U.S. embargo, have struggled to keep pace with a nationwide housing deficit that already existed well before the storm.

Vulnerability

In Haiti, like much of the region, “water is the main issue,” said Johan Peleman, head of the U.N.’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Haiti.

Port-au-Prince, a city of nearly 2.5 million, has no sewage system.

The hurricane worsened a cholera outbreak – alleged to have been brought by U.N. peacekeepers – that began in 2010 and has since infected more than 650,000 and led to the deaths of over 8,000 Haitians.

“Waterborne diseases were already one of the mass killers in Haiti,” Peleman told IPS.

The solution, an institutionally funded effort to build a water and sewage system from scratch, may take decades to fully complete.

What Haiti lacks in human-made infrastructure is only matched by what has been destroyed by human activity.

After years of often illegal logging, only two percent of the country is forested, leaving many areas vulnerable to mudslides that can wipe away neighbourhoods in heavy rains that pale in comparison to those seen during Sandy.

But mangroves, which serve as a natural barrier from the force of hurricanes and were lately on the verge of an ecological catastrophe in Haiti, have in recent years been included in preparedness plans and are making a slow but marked comeback.

After the earthquake and continuing in the wake of Sandy, the Haitian government, with significant outside funding began a process of disaster risk mitigation, mapping neighbourhoods by their risk assessments and marking houses with red, orange and green to indicate their habitability.

Still, as of July of this year, 279,000 internally displaced people were living in tent camps originally built after the earthquake, though it is difficult to delineate which catastrophe made them homeless.

An unpredictable future

For a region jarred by last year’s hurricane season, the third most active on record, 2013 has been eerily quiet.

Climate change could affect the already imprecise science of predicting weather, said Kathy Ann Caesar, acting chief meteorologist at the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in Barbados.

“This hurricane season, the forecasts were for normal to above normal activity,” Caesar told IPS. “But that hasn’t manifested itself – there have been no named hurricanes.”

In September, the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted temperatures could rise by as much as 4.8C by the end of the century, increasing food insecurity and harming many developing countries.

Years like 2013 are to be expected and shouldn’t be taken as indicative of trends, the panel said.

Even in a country as small as Haiti, where the northwest is predicted to experience temperature gains that outpace the rest of the country, the effects of climate change are expected to vary greatly.

Similarly, in Jamaica, climate studies “project we will have more rainfall in the next 20 years, then less after that,” said Albert Daily, principal at the climate change division of Jamaica’s Ministry of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change.

“There will be fewer hurricanes, but they will be stronger,” he said.

Daily said sea level rises pose a severe threat to coastal infrastructures and countries in the region are trying to head off the threat as early as they can by changing the dialogue on environmental issues.

“We are mainstreaming climate change policy in the planning of programmes and legislation,” Daily told IPS.

Part of that effort is convincing foreign donors and the treasuries of heavily indebted countries like Jamaica that the upfront costs associated with planning for climate change are about the best investment any country can make.

“It’s been shown, if you don’t start investing, for every dollar not spent on adapting, you will spend six or seven within a few years,” said Corno. “These costs will continue to skyrocket unless you have a long-term plan.”

With additional reporting by Patricia Grogg in Havana.

Rich benthic fauna and associated reef fish, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, which is expected to be one of the first places in the world to see prolonged, record-breaking heatwaves. Credit: Courtesy of Keoki Stender, Marinelifephotography.com

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 10 2013 (IPS)

A climate plague affecting every living thing will likely start in 2020 in southern Indonesia, scientists warned Wednesday in the journal Nature. A few years later the plague will have spread throughout the world’s tropical regions.

By mid-century no place on the planet will be unaffected, said the authors of the landmark study."Within my generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past." -- Nature study lead author Camilo Mora

“We don’t know what the impacts will be. If someone is about to fall off a three-storey building you can’t predict their exact injuries but you know there will be injuries,” said Camilo Mora, an ecologist at University of Hawai‘i in Honolulu and lead author.

“The results shocked us. Regardless of the scenario, changes will be coming soon,” said Mora.

The “climate plague” is a shift to an entirely new climate where the lowest monthly temperatures will be hotter than those in the past 150 years. The shift is already underway due to massive emissions of heat-trapping carbon from burning oil, gas and coal.

Extreme weather will soon be beyond anything ever experienced, and old record high temperatures will be the new low temperatures, Mora told IPS. This will affect billions of people and there is no going back to way things were.

“Within my generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past,” he said.

In less than 10 years, a country like Jamaica will look much like it always has but it will not be the same country. Jamaicans and every living thing on the island and in its coastal waters will be experiencing a new, hotter climate – hotter on average than the previous 150 years.

The story will be same around 2030 in southern Nigeria, much of West Africa, Mexico and Central America without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, the study reports.

“Some species will adapt, some will move, some will die,” said co-author Ryan Longman also at the University of Hawai‘i.

Tropical regions will shift first because their historical temperature ranges are narrow. Climate change may only shift temperatures by 1.0 degree C but that will be too much for some plants, amphibians, animals and birds that have evolved in a very stable climate, Longman said.

Tropical corals are already in sharp decline due to a combination of warmer ocean temperatures and  higher levels of ocean acidity as oceans absorb most the carbon from burning oil, gas and coal.

The Nature study examined 150 years of historical temperature data, more than a million maps, and the combined projections of 39 climate models to create a global index of when and where a region shifts into novel climate. That is to say a local climate that is continuously outside the most extreme records the region has experienced in the past 150 years.

Canada’s climate won’t shift until 2050 under the business as usual emissions scenario the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls RCP8.5. The further a region is from the equator, the later the shift occurs. If the world sharply reduces its use of fossil fuels (RCP4.5), then these climate shifts are delayed 10 to 30 years depending on the location, the study shows. (City by city projection here)

Tropical regions are also those with greatest numbers of unique species. Costa Rica is home to nearly 800 species, while Canada, which is nearly 200 times larger in area, has only about 70 unique or endemic species.

Species matter because the abundance and variety of plants, animals, fish, insects and other living things are humanity’s life support system, providing our air, water, food and more.

“It’s an elegant study that shows timing of when climate shifts beyond anything in the recent past,” said Simon Donner, a climate scientist at Canada’s University of British Columbia.

Donner, who wasn’t involved in the study, agrees that the new regional climates in the tropics will have big impacts on many species.

“A number of other studies show corals, birds, and amphibians in the tropics are very sensitive to temperature changes,” Donner told IPS.

The impacts on ecosystems, food production, water availability or cites and towns are not known. However, the results of the study confirm the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions to reduce those future impacts, he said.

Developed countries not only need to make larger reductions in their emissions, they need to increase their “funding of social and conservation programmes in developing countries to minimize the impacts of climate change”, the study concludes.

Amongst the biggest impacts the coming ‘climate plague’ will have is on food production, said Mora.

“In a globalised world, what happens in tropics won’t stay in the tropics,” he said.

A vendor selling produce at a market in Dominica, which has been alternately hit by flooding and severe drought. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

Malcolm Wallace always knew on which side his bread would be buttered.

At the age of 19, he built and operated his own greenhouse on his father’s farm in Dominica, planting lettuce, sweet peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers."Every step that we make forward we are probably making two backward." -- Samuel Carrette

“It was very lucrative and I actually made money,” said Wallace, now a graduate researcher at the Trinidad-based Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

“The push was financial. You do stuff and you see it’s actually making money, you are actually able to take care of your family and lime [party] a little bit. Which young person does not want that?” he told IPS.

Caribbean governments have long sought to attract more young people to their agriculture sectors, and the nine-member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has declared agriculture and tourism the “key pillars for development in the region”.

Samuel Carrette, permanent secretary for ministry of environment, physical planning, natural resources and fisheries for Dominica, says the OECS is focusing on these two sectors in order to build a sound economic base, improve the quality of life of residents, provide employment and to reduce poverty.

But he laments that both sectors are seriously challenged by climate variability and climate change.

“For agriculture we have many situations of greenhouses being affected, being blown away by hurricanes or strong winds. We have flooding of fields, we have the issue of access roads being blocked or carried away,” he told IPS.

“The weather variability provides a very serious challenge for us in terms of scheduling activities,” he said, referring to the challenges for the tourism industry.

In 2011, Dominica experienced its worst flooding on record. That followed almost a year of drought from 2009-2010 that severely affected the agriculture sector. In 2008, the island’s fishing industry was destroyed by hurricane Omar.

“Government had to find monies to rebuild the fisheries industry by providing the fisher folk with all the required fishing gear to rebuild,” Carrette said.

The OECS is a nine-member grouping comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands are associate members.

OECS countries have very limited resources – natural, physical and financial – as well as small markets and economies.

Ignatius Jean, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) representative in Jamaica and a former minister of agriculture for St. Lucia, told IPS that “food security is national security.”

Jean said that part of the IICA’s mandate is to support the member states in the management of natural resources, and coping with climate change in particular. They also work to show the linkages between the agriculture and tourism sectors.

He pointed to “the need for a multi-disciplinary approach towards managing the situation”, noting that this entails assessing the impacts of climate change and creating mitigation and adaptation strategies.

“We cannot run away from our territory. We have to learn to live with it. That is what adaptation is,” he said.

IICA has ongoing programmes to climate-proof the agricultural development strategies in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and the Dominican Republic.

Keith Nicholls, climate change expert with the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), believes the impacts of climate change will cripple tourism niche markets in the region.

He told IPS that increased storm surges brought on by climate change is impacting the dive sector, in particular coral reefs.

“Ultimately, if corals are going to suffer, then the loss of the biodiversity will represent a loss of a competitive advantage in tourism,” he said.

The increase in the severity of storms and hurricanes will also drive visitors away, Nicholls said. He argued that visitors will not come to a region deemed unsafe, especially given the vulnerability of beach resorts to storm surges.

“Tourists come here for sun and sea. Properties are losing their appeal because of beach erosion,” Nicholls said.

“Extreme drought conditions mean we have no water and the tourism industry is highly based on water resources. If tourists cannot get water in your country, they will go elsewhere to get water,” he said.

However, it is not just the absence of water that concerns Nicholls but the abundance of it.

“If it rains in the dry season and it rains all the time we are not going to want to come to such a place,” he said.

Carrette said his country, Dominica, has “been exposed to very erratic weather conditions and for us it is a bit too frequent. This is so because Dominica is exactly directly in the path of the hurricanes given its location so that predisposes us to the unfavourable conditions of the tropical winds systems.”

He noted that most of the countries in the Windward Islands are moving away from a reliance on the banana industry and trying to diversify their economies, so severe weather conditions are major setbacks.

“As small developing island states, basically every step that we make forward we are probably making two backward because we have to keep rebuilding major roads, seawalls and rehabilitating feeder roads in the context of agriculture and rescheduling of tourism activities,” he told IPS.

“We have to understand that the monies required for rehabilitation and restoration of human livelihoods are not available locally within your own budget and you do not have adequate reserves to mobilise resources to do restoration work and so you have to borrow. So for us it’s a major challenge as it increases our debt burden.”

Senior director of economic affairs at the OECS Secretariat, Randolph Cato, said recently that the total cost of climate change to the OECS tourism industry could be as high as 12 billion dollars over the next 40 years.

“We must do something about it,” he said. “Adapting to climate change will cost less than the potential damage.”

Boats washed up along the riverfront in Croton-on-Hudson, about thirty miles north of Manhattan, after Hurricane Sandy. Credit: Katherine Stapp/IPS

By Jared Metzker
WASHINGTON, Aug 20 2013 (IPS)

The United States government is recommending new preparations aimed at protecting vulnerable communities from climate change-related disasters, a year after a major hurricane devastated swaths of the country’s East Coast.

On Monday, a presidential task force released a report that details a strategy it says will both rebuild the region devastated in October by Hurricane Sandy and guard the nation from future climate change-related extreme weather."When we look at the costs of national disasters... it starts to become clear that those costs outweigh the costs of cutting down on the use of fossil fuels." -- Janet Larsen of the Earth Policy Institute

The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force Strategy Report includes 69 policy recommendations, some of which are already in practice. The authors says they are designed to “help homeowners stay in and repair their homes, strengthen small businesses and revitalize local economies and ensure entire communities are better able to withstand and recover from future storms.”

The government’s signal that it will directly confront challenges related to climate change is viewed positively by some environmental experts.

“It is absolutely critical that the U.S. takes climate change into consideration as it decides how to invest money into repairing and rebuilding infrastructure,” Janet Larsen, research director at the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington think tank, told IPS.

Larsen believes the United States learned the hard way that its communities are vulnerable to climate change.

“Ten or 15 years ago, if you asked where there were likely to be ‘climate refugees’, it was commonly thought they would just be from small island nations,” she notes. “But after Hurricane Katrina” – which hit the U.S. in 2005 – “there were a quarter of a million people who had to leave their homes, and many have yet to return.”

Twenty-three federal agencies participated in drafting the Strategy Report, headed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The report says its recommendations are aimed at “cutting red tape”, but advocates of more localised solutions note the continuing multitude of agencies involved. Such bureaucracy, they say, undermines claims that a massive federal effort would make responses to disaster more efficient.

“They talk about better coordination,” Ted DeHaven, a budget analyst for the Cato Institute, a think tank here that promotes small government, told IPS. “But the reality is that there are too many federal cooks in the kitchen.”

Nonetheless, the report presents guidelines for using the 50 billion dollars authorised by Congress and approved by U.S. President Barack Obama in January to rebuild the northeastern region.

According to HUD, the strategy outlined in the report is also intended “to serve as a model for communities across the nation facing greater risks from extreme weather and to continue helping the Sandy-affected region rebuild.”

The agency emphasises two of its recommendations as being of particular consequence, and both revolve around the potential for increased extreme weather in the future. One is to initiate “a process to prioritize all large-scale infrastructure projects and map the connections and interdependencies between them, as well as guidelines to ensure all of those projects are built to withstand the impacts of climate change.”

Another is to “harden energy infrastructure to minimize power outages and fuel shortages – and ensure continuation of cellular service – in the event of future storms.”

The report also urges the creation of a publicly available “Sea Rise Projection Tool” in order to keep vulnerable communities aware of how water levels may change.

Such measures, the authors suggest, “will improve our ability to withstand and recover effectively from future flood-related disasters across the country.”

Resilience and hard truths

In line with a growing trend across the globe, the stated goal of these new official recommendations is to achieve “resilient” communities – those with the ability “to respond effectively to a major storm, recover quickly from it, and adapt to changing conditions, while also taking measures to reduce the risk of significant damage in a future storm.”

Yet EPI’s Larsen suggests that some of this emphasis may be misplaced. She notes that while the concept of “resilience” is mentioned in the report over 300 times, root causes of climate change, such as fossil fuel emissions, are hardly addressed.

While she applauds the report for acknowledging the challenge of climate change, she regrets the lack of attention to these causes.

Larsen suggests that positive concepts such as rebuilding are politically popular and therefore easier to propose to the public, while “hard truths” that put the country on the defensive don’t resonate well with the United States’ “dominant” self-image.

Cato’s DeHaven agrees that politics are at play in the federally focused strategy. He says that state and local politicians, without considering long-term costs, are often all too quick to accept federal dollars.

Yet the long-term costs, according to DeHaven, are state and local governments that are dependent on federal cheques and therefore less in control of their own destinies.

“Once the federal government intervenes and accrues power, even after the original problem subsides, it tends not to relinquish that power,” he says.

DeHaven also notes that the federal policies have increased vulnerability by subsidising below-market insurance rates that encourage building in risky areas.

For EPI’s Larsen, a better national plan would include a more rapid timetable for cutting emissions and acceptance of the fact that “there may have to be some areas where we don’t build at all.”

“The main idea,” she says “should be that when we look at the costs of national disasters and understand that climate change contributes to them, it starts to become clear that those costs outweigh the costs of cutting down on the use of fossil fuels.” 

Flooding in Trinidad's capital of Port of Spain in May 2013 left residents little choice but to wade through the deluge. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Aug 19 2013 (IPS)

The Caribbean is in danger of becoming “a region of serial defaulters” with respect to international debt obligations, according to one expert, and this may partly be due to its economies suffering frequent shocks from natural disasters.

Caribbean nations are among the world’s most vulnerable to natural disasters, with the region being struck by 187 such disasters in the past 60 years.

According to an International Monetary Fund study entitled “Caribbean Small States: Challenges of High Debt and Low Growth” and published in February, “The effects of natural disasters on [the region’s] growth and debt are also significant,” and “many Caribbean economies face high and rising debt to GDP ratios that jeopardize prospects for medium-term debt sustainability and growth.”

Commenting on the region’s restructuring of loans after some countries had defaulted on bond payments, a Bloomberg news report quoted an expert in international finance from American University who claimed Caribbean governments find it easier to default on bond payments than to reduce their spending.

Over the past three years, a number of Caribbean countries have restructured bond payments, making this period one of the highest for defaults on loan agreements by Caribbean governments. The Bloomberg report cited Grenada, Jamaica and Belize as three of the Caribbean countries restructuring debt obligations.

However, Michael Hendrickson, an economic affairs officer with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), emphasised the pressures brought by natural disasters on these countries’ economies over the past decade.

“In Grenada, GDP contracted largely due to the fallout from Hurricane Ivan, the growth rate declined from 9.5 percent in 2003 (before Ivan) to -0.7 percent in 2004 (year of Ivan) then recovered strongly in 2005, with growth of 13.3 percent, no doubt related to strong reconstruction, i.e. investment, but declined again in 2006, after the investment had run its course.

“Jamaica also felt the impact of Ivan and its growth rate slowed from 3.7 percent in 2003 to 1.3 percent in 2004 [the year Ivan struck the island]. This reflected the impact on productive sectors such as agriculture, mining and tourism.

“Moreover, the impacts lingered into 2005, when the economy grew by only 0.9 percent. In Belize, growth slowed to 1.1 percent in 2007 from 5.1 percent in 2006, partly as a result of the impact of Hurricane Dean, owing to damage to agriculture and productive infrastructure,” he told IPS.

Regional governments’ tendency to fund social and economic development through borrowing rather than through establishing an appropriate framework for sustainable economic development has also contributed to the high debt to GDP ratio.

Some Caribbean countries “have debt levels that can be considered unsustainable”, Hendrickson said. “Moreover, debt service payments, namely, interest and principal repayments, absorbed a full 29 percent of government revenue in 2011.

“We are still collating numbers for 2012. This reduces the ability of governments to finance public investment and social protection programmes.”

The 2013 IMF study noted that “part of the build-up can be traced to the cost of natural disasters, successive years of fiscal deficit, public enterprise borrowing and off-balance-sheet spending, including for financial sector bailouts.”

An IMF working paper entitled “Macroeconomic Implications of Natural Disasters in the Caribbean” observes that following natural disasters in the Eastern Caribbean region, “the tendency appears to have been a marked increase in expenditure and a small reduction in total revenue (including grants) despite an increase in inflows of official assistance and aid.”

The working paper said this “is not surprising, as governments and households would be expected to borrow in response to temporary shocks.”

Since natural disasters affect two of the largest economic sectors in the region, tourism and agriculture, the impact on countries’ economic growth is considerable.

According to ECLAC’s “The Economics of Climate Change in the Caribbean Summary Report,” it is estimated that natural disasters due to climate change will likely cost countries in the subregion up to five percent of annual GDP between 2011 and 2050.

It is also estimated that GDP in the region has declined by about one percent annually over the past several years because of natural disasters.

However, because of their middle income status, the majority of the region is unable to benefit from international debt relief, says the 2013 IMF study on Caribbean debt. The study also noted that “only a few Caribbean countries still qualify for concessional borrowing at the World Bank.”

“Given the exceptionally high costs of natural disasters, small states in the Caribbean should be seen as frontline candidates for support from climate-change funding,” the IMF report stated.

The president of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Warren Smith, also stated a case for increased insurance coverage to help offset the impact of natural disasters due to climate change, at a recent meeting of the CDB’s governors.

He made specific reference to the region’s need to make greater use of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), an organisation set up to insure Caribbean countries against natural disasters.

Dr. Simon Young, who heads Caribbean Risk Managers Ltd., which supervises most of the technical aspects of CCRIF, said 16 countries in the region have policies with CCRIF.

“Those policies cover hurricane and earthquake and the total amount of risk that is covered amounts to just over 600 million” for all 16 countries, he told IPS.

Dr. Young conceded, “It is not adequate, but the adequacy of the coverage is a function of the countries’ ability to pay premiums that would be needed to buy adequate coverage. CCRIF provides premiums at less than half of what the commercial market would require.”

Yet, many countries find it difficult to pay for coverage even at those preferential rates. As a result, the insurance coverage has provided only “a very small amount” of compensation to islands hit by natural disasters in recent years.

Dr. Young added that insurance coverage should not be seen as a “silver bullet” for disaster risk reduction.

“Caribbean countries need to look for cost efficient ways to manage disaster risk reduction,” he said, and CCRIF provides just one tool for doing so.

By Lucy Westcott
NEW YORK, Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Like many people living in the path of Hurricane Sandy last fall, Lauren Scrivo needed more battery power. Despite a call offering help from the mayor of Fairfield, New Jersey, where Scrivo lives with her family, her concerns went far beyond extra water bottles and flashlights.

An emergency shelter at Seward Park High School in Lower Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy that disabled people had a hard time accessing. Credit: Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CIDNY)

Scrivo, a communications specialist at the Kessler Foundation, has a form of muscular dystrophy and uses a ventilator and power wheelchair. When the electricity went down during the storm, she only had battery power to fuel the machine; leaving the generator running outside was too risky.

“When we lost power it was a little scary, we didn’t know how long it would be for. I couldn’t leave the generator running at night because people were stealing them, so [I] had to use battery power,” Scrivo told IPS.

The gas shortage also presented an enormous danger for Scrivo as her generator began to run low on fuel.

“You can’t just go out and stand in the gas line,” she said. “If we couldn’t fuel our generator, we wouldn’t have been able to recharge my [ventilator] batteries or use my other necessary medical equipment.”

Now Scrivo, along with the global disabled community, will have the opportunity to voice her concerns after the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) launched a survey asking people with disabilities about their experience living with and preparing for disasters.

The survey, believed to be the first time global data on emergency planning and disabilities is being collected, asks participants what kind of emergency, from landslides to insect infestations, their communities are vulnerable to, and whether they have been involved in municipal emergency management planning.

“We know from a number of major disasters that disabled people are overlooked… twice as many [disabled] people died in the Fukushima disaster [than non-disabled people],” Denis McClean, spokesperson for UNISDR, told IPS from Geneva.

Roughly 10 percent of the world’s population is living with a disability, according to data from UN Enable, the United Nations body that focuses on disability issues.

“It’s quite clear that we need to pay more attention and talk to disabled people,” McClean said, adding that disabled people are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to early response in emergencies.

New York City’s disabled population, which numbers over 800,000 according to data from the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CIDNY), recently had to deal with devastation from Sandy.

During the storm, there were 118,000 disabled people in the Zone 1 evacuation area alone, according to CIDNY.

Milagros Franco, a disaster case manager for Sandy survivors at the Brooklyn Centre for Independence of the Disabled (BCID), believes that disaster planning and response for disabled people in New York City is inadequate.

“I was kind of snobbish… I got some food beforehand, I had two flashlights. I live in Manhattan, so I didn’t expect the lights to go out,” Franco, who has cerebral palsy and uses a power wheelchair, told IPS.

The day before Sandy made landfall in New York, Franco’s superintendent told her the building’s elevator would be shut down as the lobby of her East 21st Street building is prone to flooding. Although she lives on the second floor, “When you’re in a wheelchair, that’s pretty far,” Franco says.

Franco was stuck in her building for three days, but did have a friend with her who ventured to 34th Street for food and phone recharging. In lieu of the buzzer system, which was a victim of the power outage, Franco lowered her keys, tied to a piece of rope, out her window to let her friend inside.

But some people aren’t so lucky to have a support system, said Margi Trapani, communications and education director at CIDNY. Enlisting the support of family and friends is one of the main ways the City of New York tells disabled people to prepare for disasters, along with preparing a “go bag” of emergency supplies and knowing how and when to evacuate.

Trapani’s organisation, alongside BCID and two individual plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City of New York in 2011 after perceiving a lack of help from the city for people with disabilities during disasters in the decade following the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks. The case was heard in March, with the judge’s ruling expected at the end of the summer.

“During 9/11, people with disabilities had been left off the map,” Trapani told IPS. “There were a lot of respiratory problems and mental health issues [after], tonnes of issues no one was prepared to deal with.”

Hurricane Sandy revealed the inadequacy of emergency shelters for the city’s disabled population. Issues with the shelters include non-accessible and stairs-only entrances, lack of accessible bathrooms and cots, and staff who are underprepared to respond to disabled people, Trapani says.

More inclusion of disabled community in the emergency management planning process is a step the city can take to improve its response, Trapani says.

“Our community can help in these situations… we’re experts in figuring out how to deal with problems,” she says.

When a disaster strikes at short notice, there is sometimes a limit to how ready people can be.

“No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re never prepared until after the fact,” Franco said, adding that at least now she has a hand-crank radio.

(See Part Two and Part Three of the series)

Excerpt:

Severe flooding is one of many devastating effects of climate change, as the Caribbean island nation Dominica experienced in 2011. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Peter Richards
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Jul 15 2013 (IPS)

If the studies conducted by the International Code Council (ICC) are true, then by 2025, Caribbean countries will witness a significant increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes from the present level of 1.4 annually to four.

And if the studies by the ICC – which focuses on safe building designs – are not frightening enough, another recent study conducted by the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies  is projecting an increase in rainfall during tropical storms and hurricanes.

Against this background, the Caribbean last Friday launched a seminal online support tool that it hopes will promote climate-smart development by helping to embed a risk management ethic in decision-making processes across the region.

“The timing of this launch is opportune. To begin with, it comes during the 2013 Tropical Atlantic hurricane season, which, according to scientific predictions, will see above-normal hurricane activity,” said St. Lucia’s Sustainable Development Minister Dr. James Fletcher.

Fletcher told IPS that the Caribbean can expect, due to climate change, an increase in the severity of hurricanes and, therefore, an increase in the ability of these weather systems to inflict serious harm on the region.

“Studies point, for example, to the future inundation of a number of sea ports and airports across the region and some estimates point to the cost of climate change claiming as much as 21 percent of gross national product (GDP) in some Caribbean countries by 2100.

“Already, constraints such as geographic location, small size and open and relatively undiversified economies have colluded to render our countries particularly susceptible to external shocks. Only now, climate change has superimposed another layer of risk as a result of sea level rise, elevated temperatures, changes in precipitation and more intense hurricanes,” he added.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography said recently that greenhouse gas concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere have crossed the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold.

For many years, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has been calling for greenhouse gas concentrations to be stabilised at well below 350 ppm in order to ensure that their countries are not swallowed by the rising seas.

“Now that our planet has achieved this dubious milestone, the outlook is for more pronounced, and prolonged, climate change,” Fletcher said.

Myrna Bernard of the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, who also spoke at the launch of the new initiative, said that a recent study conducted by the regional governments-owned Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) indicates that losses caused by weather-related natural catastrophes in the Caribbean account for six percent of GDP and that figure could increase by as much as three percentage points by 2030.

The Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) has developed the Caribbean Climate Online Risk and Adaptation Tool (CCORAL) with funding from the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the London-based Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) that operates in 40 countries trying to respond to the gap “of what we call climate compatible development”.

“We know climate change is a global phenomena, we know the provision of more public goods and knowledge around it is very critical at multiple levels, and I think this is a tool that can play a critical role in this,” said the CDKN’s Sam Bechoseth.

He said the passage of Tropical Storm Chantal through the Lesser Antilles last week “reminded me of some of the threats your region faces”.

“The point is we have to integrate climate change into our development trajectories. It is absolutely non-optional and we need risk assessment tools that can help us in that process.”

He told IPS that both the private and public sectors have long been assessing risks “but we need to look at this in a different way and in a different light in the face of the current and expected future impacts from climate change”.

CCCCC executive director Dr. Kenrick Leslie said the development of CCORAL is a direct response to one of the actions defined in the Regional Framework for Achieving Development Resilient to Climate Change.

The framework and the regional implement plan were endorsed by Caribbean governments between 2009 and 2012, and Leslie said CCORAL is a crucial element of the region’s emerging strong early action framework for building climate resilience.

“CCORAL will aid the region in defining approaches and solutions that will provide benefits now and in the future by adapting no-regret actions and flexible actions and flexible measures. CCORAL is a practical approach to cost-effective climate resilient investment projects,” he added.

CCCCC Programme Development Specialist Keith Nicholas, who was praised for his work with CCORAL, said “the development of the risk assessment tool emerged after an extensive consultative process with regional stakeholders to ensure authenticity, relevance and ownership”.

The CCCCC said that CCORAL will help boost the capacity of the Caribbean countries to assess their risk amidst a variable and changing climate, while creating pathways for the identification and implementation of adaptation and mitigation options.

In one of the brochures handed out at the launch of the project, the CCCCC noted that the pilot country participants involved in the development of CCORAL gave a clear message that the biggest driver and barrier to using the online tool in decision-making will “be a positive mandate from ministers, policy makers, politicians and senior government officials.

“This will only be secured if the economic, social, environmental and therefore political, challenges of current climate viability and climate change are recognised and acted upon as an integral element of national development planning.”

Bechoseth has described the CCORAL as a “fantastic tool” but warned that “a tool is only useful when we start to utilise it and turn it into solving real life problems”.

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.”

Buildings near the coast, like these on the Bocagrande promenade, will no longer be permitted in Cartagena de Indias. Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS

By Helda Martínez
CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, Colombia, Feb 1 2013 (IPS)

The government of this historic walled city, a bastion of tourism on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, is widening beaches and building dual carriageways on its north side to protect against the ever-worsening impacts of climate change.

Construction projects close to the Rafael Núñez international airport were begun in August 2010 and are due to be completed by 2014, but they are already sparking complaints among the artisanal fisherfolk in the area, who perceive them as threatening their livelihood.

The projects include widening Santander Avenue, in order to improve mobility, create a cycle route and help protect the coast, according to an open document posted by the local government of Cartagena de Indias in December 2009.

The widening of the road and the beach will cause “minimal (environmental) effects, according to the findings of more than 100 professionals in different disciplines, including marine biologists,” engineer Jaime Silva, the general coordinator of the infrastructure works being carried out by the private Consorcio Vía Al Mar, told IPS.

The dual carriageway already extends for seven kilometres out of the city of Cartagena de Indias, named after Cartagena in Spain and home to one million people. It originates in the neighbourhood of Crespo, where there is a tunnel 600 metres long, with an additional 400 metres for the entry and exit ramps.

Cartagena has almost 49 kilometres of coastline on the Caribbean sea. To combat erosion, its beaches are to be made 60 metres wider and protected with a rock wall for a distance of 2.3 kilometres. Furthermore, nine new sea walls will be created along this coastal stretch adjacent to Santander and Primera de Bocagrande Avenues.

“In coastal cities like ours, when sand has been eroded and material has to be dredged up from the sea, authorisation is needed from public bodies” at the national level, marine biologist Francisco Castillo, adviser to the Cartagena de Indias Planning Secretariat, told IPS.

These permits allow dredging of the sea bed, and sand to be brought from dunes several kilometres inland, to be used for widening the beach.

The project is part of a plan called “Integrating climate change adaptation into city planning in Cartagena de Indias”, which is aimed at countering problems like the gradual rise in sea level, more intense rainfall, frequent swells, flooding and other climate alterations that have been experienced so far this century.

“Permits are based on technical studies of the dunes, and bathymetric studies to measure the depths of the sea bed. It’s something like taking out a loan from the sea bed, to put sand on the coastline, and create a soft protective layer that guarantees the width of the beach,” said Castillo.

The fisherfolk do not need special studies or reports to know that the project affects them. They know it from their daily experience of fishing for a living.

“The construction works are harming us, because previously we had beaches. The water used to come up to here,” fisherman Pedro Pineda told IPS, indicating a line now covered with sand and heavy machinery, at the edge of an old sea wall.

But the sea walls lost strength and utility over the years because of “lack of maintenance”, and need replacing, Castillo said.

Eduardo Jiménez, who has been a fisherman for 40 of his 50 years, also said that “the works do us an injury, because just think, even with the present sea walls, when there is a swell, we can’t fish. And the swells come up at any moment.

“We knew they were going to carry out engineering works but they didn’t consult us beforehand. Lately they have talked to us, over in La Boquilla (an adjoining village) where I live, but people are not content. In any case, now, we have to go farther away to fish,” Jiménez said.

Nowadays, “on a good day,” he earns the equivalent of 10 dollars, he said.

“The fisherfolk and beach vendors, as well as all the local residents, were informed in an efficient and timely manner,” engineer Silva affirmed.

“We remain ready to respond to any questions from any person,” he said, and stressed that Consorcio Vía Al Mar is hiring construction workers, cleaning crews and security guards from among fisherfolk and those who used to work giving massages or selling products on the beach.

But “sometimes the work is very hard, or boring for us who are accustomed to the sea and the open air. Many of those who were hired first have already quit,” Pineda said.

Silva, for his part, pointed out that fisherfolk and other local people were being offered stable jobs until the works are completed.

He also said that the project has responded positively to proposals by workers, including informal labourers, residents and traders, and that the area is one of the zones of greatest economic growth in Cartagena in the last decade.

“Opposition and uncertainty have arisen largely because of a lack of sufficient information. But this is being solved in an effective manner, by planning and correcting social aspects,” said Castillo.

The planning adviser underlined that only at the beginning of the 2000s did the city begin to turn its gaze — however timidly — to the sea and its coastal development in the comprehensive way that was needed, including taking account of global warming.

“In revising urban planning schemes for the next few years, we will be working hard on the issue of flood risks,” he said.

“On top of the construction works, clear and convincing guidelines will be established to prevent any building on land at risk of flooding, virtually on the beach, as goes on today,” he said.

“I hope they finish it, because it’s a good thing,” a passerby walking along the edge of the beach told IPS.

“It’s true that people are uneasy about the delay in different works, like the mass transport system and the underwater outfall pipeline (to carry urban wastewater out to sea), which has been delayed for over a year,” Castillo admitted.

“But it’s normal, with large projects involving the sea and rough conditions, that planning schedules are sometimes upset, although in this case the timetable is going well,” he said.

“Cartagena is a city surrounded by the sea and made up of islands, like Manga, Manzanillo and Barú, which makes its urban and social features more complex,” the marine biologist said.

But Castillo was confident that “when these projects are completed, they will convince the community that Cartagena de Indias is growing out of its parochialism and becoming (part of) real geopolitical strategy in the Caribbean.”

Hoping to prevent the tragedies that have become an annual event every rainy season, authorities in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro plan to require that municipal governments include environmental risk mapping in their infrastructure projects, in order to prohibit construction in vulnerable areas.

The initiative was put forward by the Rio de Janeiro State Secretariat of Environment, and must still be approved by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro. It was announced in the midst of yet another weather-related disaster in the state, earlier this month.

Since the beginning of the year, the southern hemisphere summer rainy season has already resulted in at least three deaths, while thousands of people have been left homeless due to collapsed buildings and flooding.

“We decided to submit this bill to the legislative assembly to bring an end to the suicidal ‘populism’ of some mayors, who ignore the maps of disaster risk areas,” Rio de Janeiro Environment Secretary Carlos Minc told IPS.

“I have seen mayors building streets and installing public services in places that have been identified by studies as vulnerable to natural disasters, which imminently endangers the lives of these populations,” said Minc.

If the bill is passed into law, disaster risk maps will become official public documents and “municipal governments will be obliged to incorporate their findings and restrictions in master plans and regulations on land use,” he added.

A study by the Rio de Janeiro State Geological Service, reported by the newspaper O Globo this month, revealed that there are disaster risk areas in 67 of the state’s 92 municipalities, and there are some 36,000 people living in these highly vulnerable areas.

In an interview with IPS, geotechnical engineer Willy Lacerda noted that most of these municipalities are in mountainous areas, which makes them susceptible to landslides during heavy rainfall.

Lacerda, an engineering professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, explained that different rainfall patterns can lead to different types of disasters.

In the case of steady, continuous rainfall, the ground slowly becomes saturated with water. “If the depth of this saturation is great enough, there may be scattered landslides,” he noted.

When there is heavy rainfall following a period of continuous precipitation, rivers can become swollen and overflow. The riverbanks are more susceptible to being washed out because the soil has become saturated and therefore less resistant to the water pressure.

“In this case, landslides are widespread,” he said.

This is what happened in 2011 in Teresópolis and Nova Friburgo, in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro. Flooded rivers and collapsed buildings resulted in 900 deaths and left some 25,000 people homeless, according to figures from the Rio de Janeiro state government.

A third variant is that of torrential rains of more than 60 millimetres an hour, which can set off widespread landslides on steep slopes, as was the case in Jacarepaguá in 1996.

Disaster risk mapping contributes to preventing or at least minimising climate-related tragedies, stressed Lacerda. In some cases, it could lead to the timely evacuation of the population from vulnerable areas. In others, it might bring about engineering works, such as containment walls to reinforce hillsides.

Lacerda, who participates in the development of these maps, explained that they take numerous factors into account, such as geology, the shape of the terrain (slope and concavity), the thickness and resistance of the topsoil, and the type of vegetation.

“This is how we define areas where there is a greater or lesser probability of landslides, and based on this, we determine which homes are more susceptible to landslides,” on a scale of high, medium and low risk, he said.

The risk of flooding, meanwhile, can be gauged on the basis of local hydrologic conditions and data like maximum and average rainfall.

None of these efforts, however, could prevent the catastrophic effects of a torrential downpour like the one that hit Vale de Cuibá, in the district of Itaipava, en 2011, and Xerém, in Duque de Caxias, earlier this month, washing away houses, bridges and cars “like a tsunami”, said Lacerda. Nevertheless, the impact of these disasters could be mitigated, he added.

Disaster risk maps also make it possible to identify areas where housing can be constructed to shelter people evacuated from high-risk areas.

The government of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the state capital, has installed sirens in neighbourhoods located in high-risk areas, including a number of its favelas or shantytowns. The sirens are activated six hours before the expected arrival of heavy rains.

For its part, the national government announced that it will allocate some 175 million dollars for construction projects to reinforce slopes in order to prevent landslides.

The state of Rio de Janeiro has already allocated resources for these types of public works, but in some municipalities the funds were reportedly misappropriated by corrupt mayors.

In Xerém, for example, trash collection had been interrupted before the devastating downpour due to a change of municipal government and reported irregularities in the contracting of the company responsible for urban sanitation.

While the accumulation of trash obviously did not cause the downpour, said Lacerda, it did aggravate its impact, because it obstructed the drainage of the rainwater and contributed to the spread of diseases.

Brazilian theologian and environmental activist Leonardo Boff, in a column published after the disaster in Xerém, classified the “tsunami” that devastated the municipality as a “crime against humanity”, like the other socio-environmental disasters that have become ever more frequent.

Boff proposed “a national law on socio-environmental responsibility… with heavy penalties for those who do not respect it.

“We are irresponsible towards nature when we deforest, when we dump billions of litres of toxic agrochemicals into the soil, when we release around 30 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases into atmosphere annually, when we pollute the water, when we destroy the forests along riverbanks,” declared Boff.

Moreover, “we do not respect the slope of mountains that can crumble and kill people, nor do we consider the banks needed by rivers so that floods do not wash everything away with them,” he added.

*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

Amanda Menjívar is moved by the sight of the 16 sewing machines donated to help a group of local women set up a sewing centre to get over the devastating effects of the disaster caused by Hurricane Ida in the Salvadoran town of Verapaz.

“We want to earn an income to help us get over the losses we suffered from those rains,” Menjívar, 26, told IPS. She is leading the project, which is just getting off the ground.

When Ida smashed through Central America in November 2009, it hit El Salvador particularly hard, leaving a death toll of 200 and causing 239 million dollars in material losses, equivalent to 1.1 percent of GDP, according to official estimates.

Verapaz, a town of 7,000 in the central department (province) of San Vicente, 56 km east of San Salvador, is a symbol of the tragedy caused by the hurricane in this impoverished country of 6.1 million people, the smallest in Central America.

The intense rainfall caused a mudslide from the slopes of the Chichontepec volcano, which buried much of the town.

A total of 355 mm of rain fell in just four hours – five times the average for the entire month of November. Local and international experts agreed at the time that the unusually heavy rainfall was an effect of climate change.

Three years later, the local population is still working to get over the impact of the catastrophe, which claimed 13 lives in Verapaz and destroyed much of the town’s infrastructure.

Three members of the Verapaz egg farm cooperative and one proud daughter show IPS their hens. Credit:Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“We want to get contracts from the government to make school uniforms, but we are not going to limit ourselves to that,” said Menjívar, excited as she talked about the workshop, which she hopes will grow quickly once it begins to operate.

The sewing machines were donated by Angels in Flight, a group of flight attendants working for JetBlue, a low-cost U.S. airline.

But Menjívar also had complaints: “It’s a pity that our efforts are not really recognised, because of the persistent idea that women are incapable of pulling ahead, when we actually carry much of the burden of dealing with all of these climate changes.”

The work carried out by local women’s associations and collectives to adapt to the challenges posed by climate change is not always acknowledged by the government or by society at large.

“Women’s contribution to the struggle to adapt to climate change and achieve climate justice is largely invisibilised,” César Artiga, the president of the Asociación Nueva Vida, a local organisation that is part of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), told IPS.

He said Salvadoran society, and especially key actors like the government and media, were not aware of the repercussions of climate change on people’s day-to-day lives.

Artiga also argued that the media are partly responsible for the invisibility of women’s work, because they still do not include issues like women, climate change and climate justice in their coverage.

To illustrate, he cited a public hearing held in December 2011, where rural women talked about the problems they faced as a result of global warming, and the efforts they were making to adapt to and mitigate the phenomenon.

Not only were government institutions absent from the hearing, but it received little media coverage, “despite the fact that El Salvador is at high risk from climate change,” Artiga said.

In fact, a 2010 report by the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) ranked El Salvador as the most vulnerable country in the world, with 95 percent of the population at risk of natural disasters.

“Let’s be realistic – it’s very difficult for reporters to put these (new) issues (gender and climate change) high up on the news agenda,” Nery Mabel Reyes, the president of El Salvador’s association of journalists, told IPS.

Discrimination towards women and their struggle to adapt to environmental risks represents “a lack of climate justice,” Artiga said.

He explained that this concept not only referred to the fact that different regions and population groups were affected in different ways and to varying degrees by global warming, but also extended to the recognition of adaptation efforts – in this case the ones made by women.

One of the few such projects that have been picked up by the media is a successful poultry farm run by a group of women in Verapaz seeking to pick up the pieces of their lives after the disaster caused by Hurricane Ida.

Salvadorans living in the U.S. city of Los Angeles, California donated funds to buy 500 chickens to start the egg farm in August 2011. It currently supports 15 families.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations acted as liaison between the donors and the women in Verapaz, and the National Centre of Agricultural and Forestry Technology (CENTA) provided technical support and training.

The farm sells 400 eggs a day on average. The profits cover the women’s earnings of 42 dollars a month, and the rest is reinvested in things like feed and medicine for the laying hens. The women also take home eggs for their families.

“We are very motivated; we have put everything into this, looking towards the future, for the good of our families,” 44-year-old Ana Cecilia Ramírez, who is raising four children on her own, told IPS. She heads the Los Ángeles Cooperative, which runs the egg farm.

“These 42 dollars a month are really helpful. I used to do ironing and cleaning, but I was only paid five dollars. I feel motivated to keep this project going,” she said.

Rosa Lidia Ávalos, a 43-year-old mother of four, is also happy about the farm, not only because of the material benefits it offers, but because her relationship with her husband has been strengthened since he totally supports her work outside the home.

“You’ll see how my husband brings my lunch at noon,” Ávalos told IPS during the day spent with the women at the poultry farm. And at 12:00 sharp, her husband José Raúl Romero showed up with her meal.

“I completely support her, because she is full of enthusiasm, and of hope now that they were promised that the farm would be expanded, and I think the income will increase a little, and I like to see her like this,” Romero said.

Miriam Acevedo, a 37-year-old mother of three, said it was her husband who signed her up for the project.

“We feel like we have really done something,” she said. “Our biggest dream is to have two or three sheds, to have more hens and earn more money. We have to take advantage of the high demand.”