World Environment Magazine 14 by Emanuele Graziano

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MAGAZINE

WORLD ENVIRONMENT MAGAZINE

Fossil Fuel Era Is it the End?

No 14 / FAll/Winter 2015/2016

Special COP21 Edition in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

CONTENTS Climate Change 4... Contributors The People who Made this Issue

18... Kalash Valleys Struggle to Survive Post Floods

6... Foreword Cathy Chami Tyan

30... On Syrian Refugees and Climate Change The Risks of Oversimplifying and Underestimating the Connection

8... BookReviews The Books we Love to Read 10... BookReviews/Focus 12... Interview with Sebastian Copeland 14... Postcard from the Edge

34... China’s Climate Migrants Forced Relocations in China’s Arid Ningxia Province Underline the Difficulties of Adapting to Climate Change 40... The Sahara Moves Northwards

56... Lost to the Sea Egypt’s Nile Delta Sinks while Sisi Digs in the Desert 64... Health Impacts of Water Salinity in Bangladesh 70... A Problem Put on Ice 78... Extreme Weather and Migration in Colombia 88... Climate Change Linked to Caribou Crash and Hunger in Canada’s Far North

Biodiversity 130... New Scientific Study Finds Coral Reefs Under Attack From Chemical in Sunscreen 133... Easter Island Proposal by Rapa Nui Community Leads to One of the World’s Largest Marine Protected Areas Waste Management

Around the World in Photos

156... Lebanon’s Garbage Protests: The Genie’s out of the Bottle

97... Kenya’s Wildlife

160... Agenda

From the book: © Arctica: The Vanishing North by Sebastian Copeland, published by teNeues, €98, also available as Collector’s Edition—www.teneues.com. Photo © 2015 Sebastian Copeland. All rights reserved. www.sebastiancopeland.com

Chairperson, Andrea Tucci, a.tucci@worldenvironment.tv. Editorial Director, Cathy Chami Tyan, c.tyan@worldenvironment.tv Editorial Project Coordinator, Mona Samari, mona@communicationsinc.co.uk Editing, Nathalie Rosa Bucher Concept & Design, RAIDY | www.raidy.com Photography, Autumn Spanne, Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation, Deneze Antoine, Diego Fernandez Gabaldon, Driss Ouabess, Duncan Gromko, Hassein Ouzayd, Jim Antoine, Rina Saeed Khan, Sebastian Copeland, Syed Harir Shah, The Journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. Sales and Advertisements, Vanessa AbdelAhad, vanessa@worldenvironment.tv, adv@worldenvironment.tv Informations, info@worldenvironment.tv Subscriptions, Subscription@worldenvironment.tv, P.O.Box 1396 Beit Mery, Lebanon Printing, RAIDY | www.raidy.com Publisher, World Environment Group Copyright, The articles become part of the magazine’s archives. Further publishings on other issues must be authorized by the editor following the author’s consent ISSN 17379229

WORLD ENVIRONMENT MAGAZINE’s policy is to use papers that are wood free, renewable, recyclable and from sustainable sources. In addition, all waste is sent for recycling. WORLD ENVIRONMENT MAGAZINE is available online at www.worldenvironment.tv 2

CONTRIBUTORS Autumn Spanne is an independent journalist who writes about science, the environment, sustainability and human rights. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Scientific American, the Christian Science Monitor, The Daily Climate, Environmental Health News, InsideClimate News and CNN. Autumn previously worked as a teacher at a high school on the Navajo Nation. She later became an editor at Youth Communication, a pioneering nonprofit educational publishing company that trains young people in writing and journalism and publishes their stories in two award-winning magazines. She holds an MS in journalism from Columbia University, an MA in education from Western New Mexico University and a BA in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a former fellow of the Metcalf Institute for Environmental and Marine Reporting in Rhode Island and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources in Montana. Autumn has traveled and reported widely in Europe, Latin America and the United States. She currently divides her time between New York and Barcelona.

Mona Samari is a keen ocean conservationist, right to information advocate, journalist and writer based in her hometown of London, but regularly travelling the world for project-based work. As part of the WE team, Mona is the editorial coordinator and has collaborated with the magazine on a number of issues. Since the Arab uprisings in 2011, Mona has been focusing on developing environmental related media projects in the Middle East and North Africa. She received a grant from the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) to set up the Tunisian Environment Reporting Network, in collaboration with WE. Since then, Mona has expanded her collaboration with EJN to include mentoring Arab journalists ahead of the Paris COP meeting. Mona is currently working on a number of international projects relating to ocean conservation, with a special focus on marine protected areas and migratory species such as sharks and bluefin tuna.

Emily Crane Linn Rina Saeed Khan is an environmental journalist based in Islamabad, Pakistan. She has worked as a communications consultant for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Pakistan and World Wildlife Fund ( WWF) Pakistan, travelling throughout the country, from the high mountains to the coastline, writing reports and case studies focusing on biodiversity, water issues and climate change. She has received international awards for her work, including the Earth Journalism Award for best reporting from Asia during the 2009 UN Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Currently, Rina writes a popular biweekly column on the environment for DAWN, Pakistan’s largest circulation English-language daily.

Diego Fernandez Gabaldon is a humanitarian worker with the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. He has served in Darfur, Sudan (2004 - 2007), West Timor, Indonesia (2008), Afghanistan (2010 – 2011) and Kenya (2011). While living in communities devastated by tragedy, Diego gathered images of the day-to-day life of Darfurians, West Timorese and Afghans, capturing their beauty, resilience and humanity. Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, Diego is an economist by profession, and worked with the Spanish Embassies in Iraq and Thailand, before joining WFP. Diego’s pictures can be found at: www.diegofgphoto.net 4

is a freelance writer based in Cairo where she focuses on issues of social justice and human rights. She is also currently working on a narrative nonfiction book project telling personal stories of the Egyptian revolution.

Shi Yi is a Chinese journalist, reporter at Thepaper.cn and winner of the China Environmental Prize Awards’ Best Climate Report. She also works with Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism on a three-month environmental journalism fellowship, investigating wildlife poaching in Namibia. Her series of articles on transnational wildlife crimes were supported by the Wits China-Africa Reporting Project, hosted within the journalism department of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Duncan Gromko works on agriculture and forestry projects at the Inter-American Development Bank and as a freelance writer. He previously worked on public health issues for the Peace Corps in Morocco and for the World Resources Institute monitoring deforestation related to palm oil. He earned his Master’s degree at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies studying environmental economics.

Francesco Femia is Co-founder & Director of the Center for Climate and Security, based in Washington, D.C., where he leads the Center's policy development, analysis and research programs, and facilitates the primary forum for climate-security dialogue in the U.S. national security community. He has over a decade of experience conducting research and policy development on the intersection of climate change, national and international security and has written and published extensively on the security implications of climate change, water stress and natural resource mismanagement in Syria and North Africa. Francesco is also a regular commentator on how militaries and intelligence communities address climate risks. He previously served as Program Director at the Connect U.S. Fund, where he directed operational and grant programs ranging from international climate policy, to mass atrocity prevention and response.He holds a master's degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he focused on EU security and defense policy, including a field study on Cyprus’ stalemated conflict. Francesco also serves on the advisory board of the Nuclear Security Working Group.

Chris Arsenault is a Canadian journalist and a correspondant with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He has held the Wolfson Press Fellowship at Cambridge University, The Phil Lind Fellowship at the University of British Columbia and has reported from: Venezuela, Mexico, Israel, Palestine, Argentina, Jordan, the US, Guatemala, Canada and Brazil. Besides holding a Master's degree in Environmental History from the University of British Columbia, Chris is the author of two books, including Blowback: A Canadian History of Agent Orange and the War at Home.

Caitlin E-Werrell is Co-Founder & Director of the Center for Climate and Security, where she leads the Center’s policy development, analysis and research programs, and facilitates the primary forum for climate-security dialogue in the U.S. national security community. She has written and published extensively on the security implications of climate change, water stress and natural resource mismanagement in Syria and North Africa. Her primary research interests include climate change, water policy and international security. She has spent over a decade investigating the intersection of security, natural resources, conflict and cooperation. Caitlin has experience in international and domestic climate and water policy, including as co-founder of the MAP Institute for Water & Climate, a Senior Associate at Earth Day Network (EDN), AD Partners, and as Director of International Programs at EDN. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Oxford, where she focused on transboundary water issues, concluding with a field study on water conflict and cooperation in Cyprus. Caitlin serves on the advisory board of the Nuclear Security Working Group.

Manon Verchot is a multimedia journalist focusing on international environment, health and sustainability. She obtained her master's from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Kent in 2013. Her work has appeared in the Global Post and the Queens Gazette. Manon has lived in Kenya, Indonesia, Brazil, France and England. She is currently based in New York.

Indrani Basu is news editor at Huffington Post India. Her work has previously appeared in The Times of India, Washington Post, Religion News Network and Global Post. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School.

Olga Dobrovidova is a freelance news reporter and producer based in Krasnoyarsk and Moscow, Russia. She spent four years reporting for the Science and Environment desk with the country's leading newswire service, RIA Novosti. Olga was one of the 2014-15 Knight Science Journalism fellows at MIT, and she currently writes for GEO, Colta.ru and a number of other Russian publications as well as Climate Home (UK).

Joanna Plucinska is a multimedia journalist. She currently works at TIME Asia as a reporter and video producer. Her work has appeared in TIME.com, Poynter, the Columbia Journalism Review and Voices of New York. She completed her MS at the Columbia Journalism School, where she specialized in foreign and video reporting. She is passionate about travel, languages (she speaks three fluently), social issues and women's rights. 5

Fall/Winter 2015/2016

Foreword COP21 is an important conference as it needs to achieve and implement a crucial international agreement on the climate, applicable to all countries, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C. These past two decades have witnessed twenty of the hottest years on record. Countries and communities around the world are being affected by extreme weather changes causing severe, persistent droughts, and major storm surges as well as major environmental degradation, which has lead to an increased incidence of extreme weather related incidents causing massive fires, floods and population displacement. No one can deny that all corners of the planet and all sectors of the global economy will be affected by climate change in the coming years. It is only by recognizing the existence of human-induced climate change and by giving industrialized countries the major part of responsibility for combating it that this COP21 meeting will have a positive outcome. Will it mark the end of the fossil fuel era? Is the world ready to switch to clean energy? Will the text be strong enough not to allow governments to back out of their pledges? How does the Paris conference fit into the wider combat for zero emissions and a greener economy? A lot of focus has been placed on powerful nations such as the US and China in the lead up to the negotiations – but what about critical developments happening in other countries? What role can aid money play in the 100,000 billion dollars pledge without undermining coping mechanisms and resilience? This Special COP21 edition, which was compiled by Mona Samari, was made possible thanks to our partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network (EJN) which commissioned a series of stories that capture the effects of climate change on increasingly vulnerable populations around the world, looking to highlight what is at stake for those most directly impacted by the consequences of our changing planet. The articles from around the world, exclusively featured in WE magazine, are about the human dimensions of climate change and were published ahead of the COP21 in December of this year. From Bangladesh to Colombia to Canada, to China, and including the harrowing Syrian refugee crisis, these stories demonstrate the omnipresent tragedy and tribulations our planet faces. We are also very honored to feature an exclusive extract from Sebastian Copeland’s amazing new book Arctica: Postcards from the Edge, along with an interview made possible by teNeuspublishers. Our beautiful cover also comes as courtesy of Copeland. A special thank you to our photographer, Diego Fernandez Gabaldon, for his generosity in allowing us to share his breathtaking photos of Kenya’s Wildlife. His fascinating yet so touching sun-drenched images feature an incredible preserved region and are a voyage into the African Savanna. As we are about to print this issue, wild fires are devastating Indonesia’s forests. This is, so far, one of the greatest environmental disasters of the 21st century. While forests are turning into ashes, children are being evacuated in boats and threatened species are being driven out of their habitat. Denying the anthropogenic causes of climate change would be a crime against humanity and nature. Let COP21 be the change we want, together let’s endorse a change. - Cathy Chami Tyan, Chief editor 6

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BOOKREVIEWS Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South

Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration

Towards a feminised urban future

Edited by Mirjana Lozanovska

By Sylvia Chant, Cathy McIlwaine Foreword by Caroline Moser

Developing regions are set to account for the vast majority of future urban growth, and women and girls will become the majority of inhabitants residing in these locations in the Global South. This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in ‘slums’. It systematically explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective.

The Routledge Handbook of Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Edited by Karen C. Seto, William D. Solecki, Corrie Griffith

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the interactions and feedbacks between urbanization and global environmental change. A key focus is the examination of how urbanization influences global environmental change, and how global environmental change in turn influences urbanization processes.

Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration explores the interface between migration and architecture. Cities have been substantially affected by transnational migration but the physical manifestations of migration in architecture – and its effect on streetscape, neighbourhood and city – have so far been understudied. This contributed volume examines how migrants interact with, adapt, and construct new architecture.

Arctica The Vanishing North By Sebastian Copeland Foreword by Sir Richard Branson

Public Perception of Climate Change Policy and Communication By Bjoern Hagen

Despite the findings on global climate change presented by the scientific community, there remains a significant gap between its recommendations and the actions of the public and policy makers. So far scientists and the media have failed to successfully communicate the urgency of the climate change situation in such a way that longterm, comprehensive, and legally binding policy commitments are being made on the national and international level. This book examines the way the public processes information, how threats are perceived. It also examines other perceptual factors that have a significant effect on how and to what degree climate change mitigation and adaptation are supported.

Few landscapes convey Nature in all of its untamed splendor like the Arctic. Fewer still conjure respect like the seldom traveled and ethereal North Pole. Yet, sadly, this largely pristine and mostly misconceived treasure is now in jeopardy. Sebastian Copeland's noble goal in these pages is to pay homage to this wonderland, and, in turn, draw awareness to its perilous plight. Copeland's multi-faceted background-not only as polar explorer and award-winning photographer, established author and journalist, but also as a dedicated environmental activist-offers us a unique vantage point from which to appreciate this lonely spot. Surely, this is the last true wilderness on the planet-and its demise should ring the alarm for the lower latitudes. Copeland's authority on the subject is unparalleled and, in this book, his passion for this place truly shines. Although the vision presented in these pages may be poetic, the book's aims are pragmatic-to seduce and inspire the world in order to help foster a marked transformation towards a sustainable future.

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BOOKREVIEWS/FOCUS by Mona Samari

Sebastian Copeland’s latest book brings the multi faceted landscape of the Arctic to the forefront of the climate change negotiations In order to understand the impact of climate change, one must understand the Poles – the Arctic and Antarctic may be literally poles apart – but they share many common changing geological features. The polar regions of the Earth are where climate change is having the most visible and significant impacts. Sea ice and freshwater glacial ice are melting, the permafrost continues to thaw and release even more greenhouse gases and many species find it increasingly hard to adapt to the escalating changes. But the signs of change in the Arctic are more pervasive than the attention grabbing declines of sea ice and collapsing ice shelves – behind the change, there is a human story and Arctica: The Vanishing North published by teNeues tells that story, not only through Copeland’s beautifully captured images but also through the collection of 10

Bookreviews/Focus

stories, thoughts, reflections and experiences of its contributors based on their personal experiences in this enigmatic continent. Arctica: The Vanishing North is a soulful tribute to one of the most enigmatic places on Earth – conveying both the awesome beauty of this mysterious continent and the alarming warnings made visible through his lens. The book strikes that rare balance of being able to appeal to both environment campaigners with the collection of essays as well as photographic aesthetes alike and by doing so, has the potential to reach new audiences and break new ground. The quality of the images are typical of Copeland’s style – dramatic isolated landscapes which evoke both solitude and questions about what it means to be an inhabitant of planet earth – hues of color sharpened to otherworldly perfection through the sensitivity of his lens. Aside from the outstanding body of work (some images left me breathless), this book serves as a reference point for generations to come – a record of how the Arctic is changing in the midst of climate change through the contributions

of the people who have been there and how their experiences in the Arctic changed or reinforced their perception about climate change. For all the stillness, expanse and peace conveyed in the images lies a deeper story of how man's impact on this remote continent is being experienced by nature and the Inuits. With a foreword by Sir Richard Branson and accompanying texts by Dr. Andrew Weaver, Dr. Ted Scambos, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Børge Ousland, this epic collection of breathtaking and thoughtfully selected images of what Copeland calls “the ice desert” takes the reader to a place seldom visited but which continues to fire people’s imagination, marking Copeland as one of the most important polar photojournalists of our time.

“Art generates emotions where science generally cannot. With the images I bring back, I hope to help people fall in love with their world, so that they will care more to protect it.” -Sebastian Copeland

Arctica: The Vanishing North Sebastian Copeland Foreword by Sir Richard Branson published by teNeues

“A desert is the landscape of the imaginary, and the sacred: it is where you go to have conversations with God. And the Arctic desert is a place to seek communion rather than dominance,” -Sebastian Copeland

Size: 29 x 37 cm / 11 2/5 x 14 1/2 in. 304 pp. incl. 4 gatefolds, Hardcover with jacket c. 200 color photographs Text in English, German, and French €98/$125/£80 ISBN 978-3-8327-3281-3

by publishing house teNeues

Interview with Sebastian Copeland Taking a closer look at your images of Arctica: The Vanishing North, the colors, the shapes and the lighting are especially extraordinary. What fascinates you the most about the Arctic? The poles are about as close as you will get to visit another planet. Everything about them is exotic. They are giant deserts, where the harsh environmental barrier has imposed a natural selection that excluded humans. A desert is the landscape of the imaginary, and the sacred: it is where you go to have conversations with God. And the Arctic desert is a place to seek communion rather than dominance. By definition of course, Nature is indomitable; but that notion gets blurred the closer you get to the human imprint. In the Arctic, despite continuing efforts to the contrary, we cannot bend Nature to accommodate our needs. The best we have done there is to survive. The cold, remoteness and limited resources impose a different relationship to the environmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more conscientious and respectful. For visitors like me seeking immersive experiences, it makes for thrilling and often humbling exploration. As with all landscape photography, the visual payoff is commensurate with the time invested. But the Arctic is especially rewarding to those efforts when everything lines up. The dominance of water, in either frozen or liquid form, and the low 12

angle of the sun makes for a limited color spectrum; while the stripped down landscape imposes focus. Visually, clouds and ice are kindred spirits: low contrast celebrates blues, and ice can acquire an iridescence that is unique to polar photography. There is also a mystic with capturing shapes that are forever changing from the winds, currents or the freeze and melt cycles. As for its fauna, it is so sparse that each encounter is an event. And who can tire of interacting with the Arcticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s undisputable and commanding predator: the polar bear? Can you tell us about a special or unusual situation you experienced in the Arctic? This book has been ten years in the making. It spans many trips to the Arctic on land, on sea and over the ice. I have spent a significant part of my life traveling the largest bodies of ice in the world, and have accumulated 8,000 kilometers under my skis. I have been beaten by gales, blinded by total whiteoutsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and everything in between. On Greenland, I spent 42 days crossing 2,300 kilometers of its lifeless ice plateau, two miles deep, with no help other than skis and kites. I spent 82 days crossing Antarctica from East to West. But my most challenging mission was crossing the Arctic sea to reach the North Pole on foot. The temperatures reached 55C below, even without wind chill, a challenge on everything, particularly camera

equipment. Once, I fell clean though thin ice into the Arctic sea in minus 35C. Even then, when it comes to high emotions, nothing compares to coming face to face with a hungry bear. I was once on the sea ice, by myself, and caught a glimpse of a bear staking me from behind a pressure ridge. Out on the ice, you stand out like a stain on a canvas, with nowhere to run or hide. The bear took a full charge, then a second and finally a third. It got to within ten feet of me and my heart pounded louder than the weapon I used to deter it. In between charges, I grabbed my camera and stole photos. I came as close as I would want to shooting it. But luckily, that last round was convincing. To this day, when I think of these moments, my heart beats just a little faster! Your images have great aesthetic value, but, in their stark beauty, they also sensitize the viewer, urging an environmental awareness if not call to action. Do you believe art is able to make a contribution towards the preservation of a fragile region? The more remote an environment, the harder it is to engage people to care. That is just human nature. We protect what we know, and what we love. The Arctic is complex and forbidding. It is a harsh and formidable environment that makes challenging the task of speaking

Photo by Keith Heger

to its fragility. It is counterintuitive. What’s more, numbers and scientific data can be esoteric and misleading. In the Arctic, as with everywhere, warming trends are non-linear, and measured over half centuries or more. When we speak of temperatures changing by just a few degrees, it’s easy to reach for the clicker and look for other news. But the last ice age was precipitated by a shift of just five degrees; today, some regions of the Arctic have warmed by up to seven degrees. It is a race happening in slow motion. What shocks the scientific community has failed to capture public opinion. In many ways, it is a communication and marketing failure. But we face an “all hands on deck” moment in our development where every tool must be used to raise the alarm on this critical and urgent threat. My work purports to bridge the gap between the heart and the mind, and help pave the way for a program of action. When confronted with the beauty of the Arctic environment, it is hard not to be seduced. Or to ignore that this ice that weeps before it dies, is so close to us both literally and figuratively, and at the mercy of our actions. Art generates emotions where science generally cannot. With the images I bring back, I hope to help people fall in love with their world, so that they will care more to protect it.

SEBASTIAN COPELAND is internationally renowned as a photographer, polar explorer, author, and environmental activist. His first book won him the IPA's Photographer of the Year award. His award winning documentary, Into the Cold, premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. He lectures across the globe to prestigious audiences such as the United Nations and The World Affairs Council about systemic changes in the Polar regions. In 2015, Sebastian was named one of the world's top 50 adventurous men.

Postcard from the Edge Exclusive extract for WE magazine from Arctica: the Vanishing North, published by teNeues A desert is the landscape of the imaginary; and the sacred. It’s where you go to have conversations with God. And ice deserts are the dominion of superlatives. But in the High Arctic, the brutal cold and prevalent void may suggest that even He would be reluctant to go there! Or perhaps He may simply have wanted the place for Himself, for the harshness intimates an otherworldly beauty that is indeed hallowed. In the extreme latitudes, perspective takes on the dimension singular to regions where life and death evolve in tight quarters. The exposure, scarcity of food, and the vicious climate highlight what it feels to be a speck of nothing on a giant canvas! Away from the convenience of modern living, when surviving rather than conquering is the de facto currency, humility becomes a frequent traveling companion. These are places to seek communion rather than dominance, a tenet of local culture. And those who wander the high latitudes are invariably changed by the power of this harsh environment, and surprised by answers that come from questions 14

they had not sought to ask. Eventually, it would seem, everyone is forced to ponder the same questions: who am I, and why am I here? In the white stark vastness of the Great North, answers come easier because there aren’t as many places to hide. I have committed a significant part of my life traveling the world’s largest bodies of ice. With close to eight thousand kilometers under my skis in the Polar Regions—half of that in the Arctic—I have fallen through the ice, been tracked by polar bears, beaten or blinded by gales, and everything in between. In the cold months, the air will sting like a fist of needles, and conditions there can simulate an altered state. A dead calm whiteout, for instance, feels like being lost inside an eggshell. Always, I have sought an epiphany. But the best I did was to survive. And curse a lot, in frustration or in fear! Invariably, when the drift fades to the comfort of warmer climes, memory erases pain and celebrates the dream. And I miss it. Luckily for me, photography is the anchor that keeps me there; and I get to revisit it again and again, without the high price. Until I go back for another round.

by Sebastian Copeland

As with all landscape photography, the Arctic’s visual payoff is commensurate with the time invested there. For visitors like me seeking immersive experiences, the ice can be especially rewarding when everything lines up. The dominance of water, in either frozen or liquid form, and the sun’s low angle makes for a limited color spectrum; while the stripped down landscape imposes focus. Visually, clouds and ice are kindred spirits: heavy skies and low contrast extract the best of the blues, and ice will acquire an iridescence that is unique to polar photography. The

architect Louis Kahn once said that the sun never knew how great it was until it struck the side of a building. Those words could easily speak to the sun’s relationship to the ice, especially in a place where, at its summer zenith, it remains so close to the horizon, and never sets. Icebergs take on different personalities (they are bi-polar!) depending on the light. And there is undeniable mystique in capturing shapes that are forever changing from the winds, currents, or the freeze and melt cycles. As for its fauna, it can be so sparse as to make each encounter an event.

And who can tire of interacting with the Arctic’s undisputed and commanding predator: the polar bear? The Arctic is changing. Not surprisingly, ice is the first line of defense in a warming world. While opinion makers are busy debating science on the cause, more ice has vanished in the last thirty years alone than had in the previous one million. And all models point to a full retreat in the summers by 2040, a first in close to three million years. This book is a visual testament of this delicate world before it is changed forever. Ten years in the

making, it constitutes a photographic diary assembled over the course of many expeditions across the northernmost latitudes from Alaska to Norway; through Canada’s northern territories and the Greenland ice sheet; and of course, the great frozen extent that links them all: the Arctic Ocean. It is also an invitation into your world, and a call of the wild. Welcome to the ice! © Arctica: The Vanishing North by Sebastian Copeland, published by teNeues, €98, also available as Collector’s Edition www.teneues.com

CLIMATE CHANGE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH INTERNEWS EARTH JOURNALISM NETWORK

“Climate change has happened because of human behavior, therefore it’s only natural it should be us, human beings, to address this issue. It may not be too late if we take decisive actions today. We are the first generation that can end poverty and the last generation that can take steps to avoid the worst impact of climate change. Future generations will judge us harshly if we fail to uphold our moral and historical responsibilities.” — Ban Ki Moon, Secretary-General, United Nations, Tackling Climate, Development and Growth, Davos 2015

Magazine Kalash Valleys Struggle to Survive Post Floods................................18

Health Impacts of Water Salinity in Bangladesh..........................................................64

By Rina Saeed Khan By Manon Verchot, Indrani Basu and Joanna Plucinska

On Syrian Refugees and Climate Change.......................................................................30

A Problem Put on Ice..................................70

By Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia By Olga Dobrovidova

China’s Climate Migrants.........................34 By Shi Yi

Extreme Weather and Migration in Colombia................................................................78

The Sahara Moves Northwards ........40

By Autumn Spanne

By Duncan Gromko

Lost to the Sea ...................................................56 By Emily Crane Linn

Climate Change Linked to Caribou Crash and Hunger in Canada’s Far North.......................................88 By Chris Arsenault

The entrance to the Kalash Valley of Bumburet.

Text and photos by Rina Saeed Khan in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

Kalash Valleys Struggle to Survive Post Floods “You won’t recognize Bumburet Valley when we get there,” my driver informed me as we navigated through streams and attempted to cross broken roads that were washed away by the devastating floods that hit Chitral District, situated in northern Pakistan in July and August of this year. One now needs a four-wheel drive to reach the Kalash Valleys – a harrowing two hour drive from Chitral, a town, which sits along the border with the Afghan province of Nuristan.

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Kalash kids — full of smiles and showing off a pet bird.

The three Kalash Valleys of Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir are encircled by high mountains, a natural barrier from Nuristan whose people were converted to Islam in the 19th century by an Afghan king. The Kalasha are an ancient tribe, the last survivors of Kafiristan (of which Nuristan was once a part of), and their pre-Islamic religion is focused on their environment: although they worship a creator called “Desau”, they also believe that trees, stones and streams all have souls. A narrow road used to lead into Bumburet, the largest of the three valleys. Only recently re-opened, it’s now strewn with large boulders brought down by the floodwaters. Vehicles must cut through agricultural fields and crisscross the main nullah – or riverbed – just to get to its villages. Near the valley’s entrance, we passed a badly damaged government primary school. Here children must study in tents along the side of the road. The nearby Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation Motel is also in ruins. A gushing stream that used to surround the property turned into a surging river as floodwaters came rushing down the mountains and into the Bumburet Valley, destroying its wooden chalets and large garden. The rest of the valley’s main town was also badly hit. Once a popular tourist destination, the big hotels all suffered major damage, as did countless shops, around two dozen houses, many orchards, fields and of course the main road itself. “I would say the floods were a result of all the deforestation that has taken place in these valleys in recent years, just look at the bare mountain sides – and of course climate change was

also responsible. It is almost the end of September now and it is still warm; in earlier years the summer would end in August when we would celebrate our autumn festival,” explains Akram Hussain, a Kalash man who is in charge of the Kalasha Cultural Center built by the Greek government in 2004, which is thankfully still intact. The Center houses an impressive museum, community center and educational facilities for the Kalash people. In the museum, one can find a large collection of Kalasha antiques like old jewelry, cooking utensils, sculptures of horses, rugs and costumes. The Kalasha women still wear their traditional dress, an embroidered black frock tied at the waist by a belt or sash. Strong stone walls built around the Center by Greek volunteers ultimately saved it from the forceful impact of the floods. “The high walls withstood the floodwaters, which came rushing down from the mountains at one end of the valley and went around the building,” says Hussain. Sadly, it’s likely to be the last bit of sizeable aid the Kalasha will receive from the Greek government, which continues to pay for teachers and school supplies at the Cultural Center, but is now facing severe economic problems at home. The Greeks believe that the Kalasha are descendants of Alexander the Great’s army, which marched through the Hindu Kush Mountains centuries ago. Indeed, last year a team of geneticists led by Oxford University sampled genomes from around the world and found that the Kalash people of Pakistan have chunks of DNA from an ancient European population.❮

Kalash girl in her traditional colorful dress.

Today, only 4,114 Kalasha remain according to a census conducted in July 2014, but there have been many conversions to Islam as more outsiders settle into the Kalash Valleys, often building homes near the main road. Around 1,800 Kalasha live in Bumburet, but higher up along the sides of the valley. “Our culture was already under threat, and now these floods have destroyed our crops and orchards. We will have to buy food from the bazaar and store it if we are to survive this winter. Luckily, there was no loss of lives in Bumburet because we got a call from the border police which jointly patrols the border with the army. They called us over our mobile phones to warn us that the flood was coming,” says Hussain. “I called people living near the Bumburet nullah (the mountain stream that runs through the valley floor) and told them to get out.” Hussain tells us there were two major floods in Bumburet in July and a smaller one in August. “The second flood in July that lasted for two days caused the most damage. We have never seen floods like this in the Kalash Valleys before. I would say that at least half of Bumburet Valley was destroyed or damaged by these floods.” Despite the widespread destruction, only four of the 22 houses swept away belonged to Kalash families. “Our houses are mostly built higher up and all the people living below ran up to our homes,” explains Shaheen Gul, a young Kalash woman living in Krakal Village in Bumburet. “But our fields with corn and beans that were ready for harvest and fruit trees like walnuts and apricots are gone as they were near the nullah.” Krakal Village is one of the oldest

settlements in Bumburet, built high above the main road. While the Kalasha’s traditional wooden homes are well-built and extremely tough, Gul says it was a terrifying night for all involved. “We could hear the flood before it arrived – we were so scared by the roaring sound in the middle of the night. Then the earth started shaking as if there was an earthquake. It was raining very hard that night,” she recalls. “Later when we came down we saw all the destruction – these floods were definitely much worse than the 2010 floods.” The soldiers patrolling the border with Afghanistan say that melting glaciers also played a role in the recent floods. “There are around four glaciers high up above in these mountains overlooking Bumburet,” explains Shair Shah, a member of the Chitral Levies border force. “Glacial floods came down along with the rain water, that is why there were so many large boulders and we even saw large chunks of black ice.” Syed Harir Shah, a disaster risk reduction expert from Chitral, feels that torrential rainfall was the main cause of the flooding, “The shifting of the monsoon further west to Chitral is a highly unusual event,” he says. “It needs to be researched. How did it shift? Why was no proper warning given to the people of Chitral?” National climate change expert Dr. Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry blames the erratic monsoon weather this year on El Niño, a periodic warming of the ocean along the equatorial Pacific that impacts weather patterns. “[El Niño] contributed to the abruptness of the monsoon this summer. Some monsoon currents ❮

Map of Chitral and surrounding countries.

penetrated into the Hindu Kush mountain range, an area which generally lies outside the monsoon belt,” says the former head of Pakistan’s Meteorological Department. “The persistent rainfall accelerated snow melting and triggered both floods and the outbursts of glacial lakes.” His explanation reflects what eyewitnesses in Rumbur Valley – the second area to be badly affected by the flooding – have reported. The third Kalash Valley of Birir was not damaged by the floodwaters. “The floods started on the 13th of July and we had almost continuous flooding until the 5th of August. We had rainfall almost every day. There were two types of floods – one was a glacier flood in the Rumbur Nullah and the other was flash floods coming down one of the mountain sides,” says Mohammed Iqbal, a Kalash social worker with the Pakistan Red Crescent Society. “The water flooded into the Jestak temple (dedicated to the deity that protects family) in Balanguru village, but luckily it was not badly damaged.” According to Iqbal, a survey of the valley found that around 34 houses ❮ 24

The damaged Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation Motel.

The floods washed away all the bridges. Photo by Syed Harir Shah

The massive floods in Chitral. Photo by Syed Harir Shah

in Rumbur were damaged or destroyed by the floods, but an early mobile alert from shepherds high up in the mountains prevented any loss of life in the valley. “The shepherds told us that they saw cloudbursts over the Gangalurat glacier on the boundary with Nuristan which then burst,” he says. Just like in Bumburet Valley, the floods brought down boulders, trees and whatever else was in their way, destroying orchards, fields, water channels and roads. Today the road to Rumbur Valley – an hour’s drive from the larger Bumburet Valley – is barely open. At a certain point, one must travel by foot to the villages beyond a bridge that has miraculously survived. “I think there were around 40 to 50 floods here this summer – in 2010 (a year of widespread flooding throughout Pakistan) there was just one big flood,” explains Iqbal as we walk a path to the valley that eventually disappears, having been swept away by the flood in the nullah. The Kalash people living higher up in the Rumbur Valley have to literally cling to the cliff wall above the nullah. Precarious wooden planks wedged into the mountainside provide a rickety path to the main village where shops are located. There are no big hotels here, just a few guesthouses where tourists can stay overnight. Locals say the re-opening of the road to the valley in late September brought an end to a worsening food crisis – at least for now. “We were confined to the houses located further up on the mountain sides and we ran out of food,” recalls Iqbal. “We had to rely on the army helicopters who dropped wheat and other rations during the

floods.” Luckily, their mobile phones were still working so they could alert the outside world. “The noise of the floods was deafening. The children are still so traumatized. Every time it rains now they start crying and saying ‘a flood is coming,’” says Naseem, a Kalash woman who lives in Grum Village at the entrance to the Rumbur Valley. She says with winter approaching they will be facing some hard times. “All our crops with potatoes, beans and sorghum near the nullah are gone along with so many fruit trees,” she says. “The drinking water supply has not been restored and the women have to go down to the nullah daily to fetch water and carry it up in large vessels. The children and elderly are starting to get waterborne diseases and falling sick. Electricity has not been restored either.” A micro-hydro plant used to provide electricity to Rumbur Valley, but was damaged by the floods. The community plans to fix it before winter. The main water pipeline was also damaged and the local people are urging the government to restore it. “For now the people who lost their homes are living with relatives, but that will put a strain on everyone over the long winter months when the valley is cut off by snow and we can’t buy supplies from the outside. In November, the snow starts to fall and roads are closed for almost four months,” says Quaid-e-Azam, a Kalash man who works for a hotel in Chitral town. “However, I have heard that the World Food Program (WFP) is planning to give food to the Kalash Valleys for the four winter months.” Despite the obvious hardships, the Kalasha people remain quite resilient. They even celebrated their ❮

Traditional Kalash homes are built up on mountain sides where floods cannot reach them.

Children studying outside the government primary school that was damaged by the floods.

While this house withstood the floods, everything around it has been destroyed and covered in stones. Photo by Syed Harir Shah

annual Uchaw Festival in late August. “Uchaw commemorates the harvest,” explains Azam, “and we celebrated it… despite all the destruction. This is a religious festival and we have to continue with our culture and rituals.” But he worries about the future. “The floods are becoming worse each year… we have to plan now for future floods. Today because of the growing population in the Kalash Valleys people have no choice but to build near the nullah, but they are risking their lives. They only got saved this time because of the mobile phone warning. They were extremely lucky.” Some Kalash villagers fear their deities are angry with them for the widespread environmental damage that has taken place in their ancestral homeland. “We feel the floods are coming as they are cursing us people for all this deforestation and destruction of their habitat,” says

Zarin Khan, a Kalash man who works for the government’s Tourism Corporation in Chitral town. “Trees and entire forests have been cut down for both construction and firewood purposes, the animals living up in the mountains have no pine nuts to eat and even the birds go hungry.” During the Uchaw Festival, Kalash elders prayed to the creator Desau to save the people from future floods. But according to Azam, the torrential rainfall was so severe that the flooding even affected parts of the Chitral district where little deforestation is taking place. "The floods occurred in places like Reshun and Brepp were there are historically no forests. No one is safe now with all this climate change,” he says from behind the reception desk at the hotel he works at in Chitral town. "I'm very worried; the next few years are going to be very hard for us. We can only hope to survive with better planning."

Syrian refugee calling for help over a barbed wire fence.

Unidentified Syrian refugee boys show peace signs in the detention center in Pastrogor, Bulgaria.

Climate Change

By Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

On Syrian Refugees and Climate Change The Risks of Oversimplifying and Underestimating the Connection It unfortunately took the heartwrenching image of a dead Syrian child on a Turkish seashore to fully alert the international community to an unfolding disaster: the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. As the crisis ensues, many in the public eye have been asking the question: What is behind this extraordinary exodus? Essentially, what is the proximate cause? The answer to that question is straightforward. A brutal civil war in Syria has left many people with little choice but to flee. Some commentators are asking another question, however, that seeks to illuminate “ultimate” causes of an unstable Syria, and the current crisis. Namely: What were the conditions that led Syria to collapse, and how can we prevent these crises in the future? And in that context, does climate change have anything to do with it? The answer to that is complex, of course. But if one were to summarize in a few words: No. But

yes. Meaning climate change is not directly behind the current refugee crisis, as some oversimplified accounts might suggest. But indirectly, despite some accounts that underestimate the problem, climate change is a factor. This muddled response may be the most responsible way of treating an issue that has significant consequences for both human and national security.

The risks of Oversimplifying the Role of Climate Change The current Syrian refugee crisis is the direct result of a collapsed state, and the civil war that emerged. It is not, despite some headlines to the contrary, the direct result of a changing climate. This is an important point to emphasize, as giving climate change an outsized role in the current crisis can unwittingly serve to absolve human and governmental actors of any wrongdoing, and thereby stymie

meaningful action. It is not a significant stretch, for example, to imagine a Bashar Al-Assad, or an ISIS leader, pointing to the sky and saying: “Don’t blame me for these atrocities. It was climate change. And the West created that.” Ultimately, oversimplifying the link between climate change and the Syrian refugee crisis risks glossing over core social, political and economic issues that need to be resolved.

The Risks of Underestimating the Role of Climate Change While we should not overstate the role of climate change in specific and complex human events, such as the current refugee crisis, it is equally unhelpful to underestimate the comprehensive scale of climate risks in the region, which impinge on a broad range of environmental, social, political and economic drivers ❮ 31

Syrian refugees demand help from Germany written on a wall at the Budapest Keleti railway station in Hungary.

Stranded refugees in front of the Budapest Keleti railway station in Hungary.

of state fragility (see, for example, the G7-commissioned report “A New Climate for Peace”). Indeed, climate change risks may already be playing a destabilizing role in the Middle East and North Africa, by straining critical water and food resources. As we highlighted in 2012, a combination of extreme drought, natural resource mismanagement and population dynamics helped set the conditions for a fragile Syrian state. From 2007-2010, the country experienced the worst drought in its history of records. This drought was part of a trend of declining winter precipitation in the region – a trend linked to climate change (Hoerling et al, 2011). According to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate change made this drought 2-3 times more likely to occur (Kelley et al, 2015). Combined with water, food and land mismanagement by the al-Assad regime, who subsidized waterintensive agriculture, this drought contributed to the devastation of a significant percentage of Syria’s crop and rangeland, and the displacement of 2 million farmers and herders, many of whom fled to urban centers. This massive internal displacement went largely unnoticed by the international community, and the underlying food and water crisis was not adequately captured in popular fragility indices. Indeed, in early 2011, Syria was still broadly believed to be immune to the instability that other “Arab Spring” countries were experiencing. While it is not clear precisely how this significant internal displacement of peoples contributed to the revolutionary movement, it is clear that Syria was already a fragile place, and that climatic stresses were a factor in that fragility.

Finally, recognizing the role of climate change does not imply a minimization of the social, political and economic drivers of unrest and conflict. Rather, it gives those dynamics an additional layer of definition. As with oversimplifying the link between climate change and this refugee crisis, underestimating the risks associated with climate change could also mean missing important contributing factors to state fragility.

The Value of the Muddy Middle The simplest way to summarize how climate change fits into the story of the Syrian refugee crisis is not simple at all. Essentially, an extreme drought made more likely by climate change contributed to (along with other key factors) a mass internal displacement of peoples in Syria; that displacement (and other key factors) contributed to the instability that preceded the Syrian conflict; and that conflict is driving the current refugee crisis. This assessment, though clunky, attempts to avoid both oversimplifying the connection, which can artificially take the critical role of governance (or a lack thereof) out of the equation, while also attempting to avoid downplaying the significant climate risks the region faces – risks that left unrecognized, could leave governments and populations fundamentally unprepared for the arrival of further refugees. The value of this muddy middle is that it is where the truth lies, and thus, where the best solutions will emerge from. Oversimplify the climate connection and you cut out important pieces of the equation. Underestimate the climate connection, and you are left unprepared. 33

Climate Change

By Shi Yi thethirdpole.net/chinadialogue.net. in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Climate Migrants Forced Relocations in Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Arid Ningxia Province Underline the Difficulties of Adapting to Climate Change As the roof of their home was brought crashing down in a planned demolition, Ma Guoqing and his family set off to start their new life. Ma, 31, was leaving the village of Luziwo in the northwestern Chinese province of Ningxia, where he lived with his parents, his wife and his son.

A poor and old Chinese woman carrying lots of recycling materials. 35

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A joint study into climate change adaptation in China, carried out in 2010 by China, Great Britain and Switzerland, found that agriculture in central and southern Ningxia relies on precipitation, rather than irrigation.

They knew nothing of their new home, as Ma Quoqing had only been given a new key and the address. On a cold and clear December day in 2013, only two days after definite notice of relocation had been issued, he and his family set off in a large convoy of trucks hired by the government to move the entire village. They left the mountains in the south of Ningxia and headed for the plains of the north, leaving behind a village of broken old homes. Ma and his family’s move was just one small part of plans by Ningxia officials to relocate 350,000 people. Residents are being forced to abandon their homes in an area that is becoming increasingly sandy, where the environment is fragile, rain is rare, and natural disasters frequent. A Chinese language graphic, compiled by thepaper.cn (further to the right on this page), charts the movements of villagers from arid areas of southern Ningxia to northern parts of the province. Xihaigu, the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) named it as one of the world's most uninhabitable places in 1972. Today, Xihaigu is the site of an ecological restoration scheme in which entire villages are to be emptied. When residents leave, their homes are demolished, even with neighboring homes still occupied. Guo Jianfan, deputy head of the Ningxia Relocation Bureau, says this new policy aims for more decisive relocations than in the past. Authorities justify the harsh moves, saying people relocated to other areas often drift back, dividing their time between old and new homes, making it difficult to manage movements of population and restore vulnerable ecology such as grasslands.

Luziwo village is named after the reeds that grow in a hollow up in a mountain gully, where the soil is so salty crystals lie on the ground like snow. Located in Xiji county, part of Guyuan city in southern Ningxia, droughts there can last years, and new arrivals find their throats dry up and crack, just like the soil. So how dry is it? Figures from the county meteorological bureau put the average annual rainfall at between 200 and 650 millimeters – but that is far outstripped by annual evaporation figures, of between 1,500 and 2,000 millimeters. Access to water is the focus of village life. The first daily chore is to direct donkeys to the well and haul back water that is then stored in underground cisterns. While younger villagers are keen to leave and escape poverty, and outsiders are unlikely to choose to live here, the area is still overpopulated. Ma Zhongyu, former deputy head of the Ningxia Development and Reform Commission, says the south of the province can only support about 1.3 million people – compared with the 2.3 million living there currently. Overpopulation, he says, exacerbates poverty and environmental damage. A relocation program was launched in 2011 in order to reduce pressure on the environment as part of the 12 Five-Year Plan. Luziwo was chosen as one of the villages from which residents were relocated, moving to a village 500 kilometers north in Pingluo county, located near Miaomiao Lake. Although relocations only began in the past few years, Ningxia’s arid climate is by no means a recent phenomenon, said Wang Yiming, a professor at Ningxia University’s

Chinese Migrants trying to adapt to and survive in the city.

School of Resources and the Environment. “The arid environment of the northwest of China started to take shape around 65 million years ago,” explained Wang. “The formation of the Himalayas greatly increased the height of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and aridity increased.” But climate change does seem to be making things worse. Research by the Ningxia Meteorological Bureau has found average temperatures here have increased by 2.2C over the last 50 years, with droughts and other extreme weather events becoming more frequent. That compares with an average global increase in land surface temperatures by 0.85C over the last 130 years, according to the UN‘s climate science panel. In some areas, increased temperatures can lead to more

rainfall, but Ningxia’s arid conditions and impact of global warming will result in increased evaporation, so any extra precipitation will be lost, says climate expert Lin Erda. A joint study into climate change adaptation in China, carried out in 2010 by China, Great Britain and Switzerland, found that agriculture in central and southern Ningxia relies on precipitation, rather than irrigation. Climate change has seen grain yields per mu (Chinese units of land measurement: 1 Hectare corresponds to 15 Mu) fall to only about 30 kilograms, while climate disasters are increasing crop losses. Statistics for 2005 from the Ministry of Environmental Protection show 95% of China’s poor live in areas with extremely fragile environments – areas particularly sensitive to climate change.

He remembers that during the time of people’s communes, any land that could be cultivated was exploited, and even mountaintops were used to try to grow crops and increase harvests. “The springs didn’t give much water to start with, and after a few years the ones high up failed and new ones had to be dug lower down.” The Hulu River that once rose in the southern foothills of Ningxia’s Yueliang mountains is now just a dried-up riverbed. Gao Yujie, Manager of Xiji county's water company, blames overdevelopment and global warming. He says just 20 years ago the river was lined with trees, “I played in the river when I was a kid,” he recalled. Parts of that dried-up river bed are now celery fields as prices for the crop have risen in the last few years, meaning the water-hungry vegetable ❮ 37

In one of China’s most parched regions, villagers in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region are being relocated to less arid areas as precious water supplies evaporate in the face of climate change.

is much more widely planted. Gao says he understands but disapproves of this choice: “Those of us who study water know this is a problem, but growing celery does increase incomes for farmers.” The fragile environment forces more use of natural resources to increase harvests, meaning poverty, population, environment all become interlinked. Wang Yiming explains that relocations are intended to reduce demand for natural resources – mainly water – to a sustainable level. It isn’t about retreating, Wang says, it’s a necessary compromise between humankind and nature. And in the parts of Xiji emptied a year or more ago, alfalfa – an important source of forage for livestock – and wild grasses now sprout up into the warm air.

New Homes, New Problems But life in the new villages isn’t as good as was hoped. In some cases, the new homes are smaller than those relocated villagers have left, while newer residents complain about problems with bureaucracy, farming, jobs, and other sources of income. Fan Jianrong, a professor at the Beifang University of Nationalities, located in Yinchuan City, Xixia District, the capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region who has researched relocation of communities, finds that older villagers are the most despondent about the prospect of moving and have the biggest problems in adapting to new homes. Guoqing’s uncle Ma Cunzi is 45, for instance, and wants to stay in Luziwo despite a final government ultimatum to leave. He even planted potatoes 38

and wheat as soon as the weather was right. The family’s new home is in Miaomiao Lake’s District 7. His mother, Ma Cuifang, has been here for several months, but doesn’t like to leave the village as she can’t read and doesn’t know many of the neighbors. His father, Ma Bingwu, spends his time thinking about the cows and fields he used to have. Now, he says, he’s “useless” to the family. He rides a borrowed bike to the vegetable market, but comes home empty-handed and complaining about the prices. “It’s all more expensive here than in Xiji. It was 0.50 yuan for a kilogram of potatoes there, and 1 yuan here!” And it is not just older people that can’t settle here. Younger residents have become increasingly anxious about jobs and opportunities. The town’s Party Secretary's home is full of people who come to ask about work or complain of various problems. “The government moved us here, and now we don’t know what we’re meant to be doing,” says someone in the crowd, to general agreement. Wang Xinglong of the Pingluo county labor and employment bureau explained that “on one hand you’ve got companies in the area that can’t find the workers they need, and on the other hand, many relocated villagers can’t secure suitable work.” The government’s decision to cut off links to relocated villagers' original homes has caused controversy amongst academics. Meng Huixin, a post-doctoral student at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Urban Development and the Environment, said success of the Ningxia relocation effort will be crucial for China to demonstrate capacity to adapt to climate change.

View over Agoudim, a town in Moroccoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Atlas Mountains. Photo by Duncan Gromko

Text and photos by Duncan Gromko in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

The Sahara Moves Northwards While the predicted impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are dire, it is important to note that the futures of Morocco and other countries embattled by climate change are not set in stone. The actions of polluting countries at COP21 and in the future can go a long way to alleviating these problems. Duncan Gromko explores the topic further.

In 2011, a storm near Agoudim, Morocco triggered a large flood that swept down the mountain towards a small, Berber village. The river overflowed its banks and caused chaos in town: all crops near the river were lost; the only road into Agoudim suffered so much damage that it was permanently closed, and many houses were completely flooded. Despite the great personal impacts from the flood, people were most distraught about the damage to the mosque, the spiritual center of the community. Four years later, the destruction wrought by the flood sticks in the collective memory of the approximately 4,500 inhabitants as a danger of environmental change. It may be counter intuitive, but increased flooding is a symptom of desertification and the slow creep of the Sahara Desert. When it rains in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, the lack of topsoil means that water runs straight into rivers. Hassein Ouzayd, a resident of Agoudim, told me that overgrazing and the harvest of firewood caused the devastating floods, but increased flooding is also connected to global climate change, which disproportionately impacts the world’s poorest. Flooding is just one way that desertification threatens the livelihoods of rural Moroccans. Agriculture, which provides 44% of labor opportunities and generates 19% of GDP in the country, is most at risk. Access to firewood and water are also at risk. Unaddressed, these issues will diminish the quality of life in rural Morocco. Even more troubling is that experts expect climate change to make these problems worse by reducing precipitation and increasing temperature. The line between old problems caused by 42

environmental degradation and new problems caused by global climate change is blurry, but all signs point to big changes for Moroccans, especially for poor farmers. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Agoudim from 20082010, I came back to Morocco in 2015 to see how environmental degradation is affecting the Amazigh culture.

The Amazigh are a fiercely independent people that have long fought against outside rule. Much of the “Arab Spring” protests in Morocco centered around an Amazigh independence movement.

The Amazigh The problems currently facing Morocco have roots in the history and culture of the country. The Amazigh – Berbers – migrated to Northern Africa before 10,000 B.C. Although much of Morocco has adopted Arab identity, the Amazigh maintain a unique language and culture in parts of the country. Rural areas – especially areas around the Rif Mountains, the Middle, High, and Anti-Atlas Mountains, and near the Sahara – have resisted “Arabization”. The Amazigh are a fiercely independent people that have long fought against outside rule. Much of the “Arab Spring” protests in Morocco centered around an Amazigh independence movement. One way that the Amazigh have adopted Arab culture is by embracing Islam. In the marginalized areas where the Amazigh live, people tend to be socially conservative. Islam plays a central role in most people’s lives. It’s no surprise that damage to the mosque in Agoudim was so traumatic. Many Moroccans regard the Amazigh as uneducated and poor. The word “Berber” itself has a derogatory origin, meaning

Town in the Atlas Mountains.

Winter in Agoudim, a town in the Atlas Mountains.

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barbarian in Greek and Roman. Approximately 40-45% of Moroccans identify as Amazigh and speak a Tamazight dialect, but many more have Amazigh ancestry. As Morocco modernizes and many Moroccans leave rural areas, younger generations speak less and less Tamazight, learning the more cosmopolitan languages, Arabic and French. Travelling in Arab cities as a foreign, Tamazight speaker reveals an interesting relationship between Arabs and the Amazigh. Vendors and tour guides are quick to talk up their Amazigh roots and exotify the 44

culture for the benefit of tourists. But many urban Moroccans told me that the Tamazight language I learned was the language of a backward people; their disdain for the Amazigh was easy to hear and feel. Amazigh areas have undergone a rapid transformation in the last twenty years. Small villages like Agoudim that were nearly completely isolated have gained electricity, cellphone service, improved access to healthcare and education, and roads that connect them with the outside world. Despite this development, Amazigh areas remain the most marginalized

in Morocco, with local economies based on semi-subsistence agriculture, pastoralism, and moderate income from tourism. According to Dr. Korbinian P. Freier, an environmental scientist with the Research Unit Sustainability and Global Change at the University of Hamburg, Germany, 30% of people in Southern Morocco regard herding of goats and sheep as their primary source of income. Herders walk their animals dozens and dozens of miles, often staying out weeks at a time. I once walked to the top of a nearby mountain ridge; at 10,000 feet, it is about 4,000 feet above Agoudim.

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After three hours of hard hiking, I was amazed to find three young men from my village at the top of the mountain. They take their herds to the summit in order to eat the melting snow, which is one of the few sources of water in the summer. Herding has always been hard, but now young men walk harder to find food and water for their animals. Some communities are still seminomadic, moving between high mountains in summer and the desert plains in winter. Dr. Ismail Ouraich, an agricultural researcher from Goulmima, Morocco, said that sheep and goats are more important

Todra Gorge near Tinghir, Morocco.

than just the income they generate: “[People] use livestock as bank accounts. If you have leftover, you invest it in your herd. And if you need the money, you bring the goat to the butcher for money.”

Environmental Changes Hurt Rural Communities On the fringes of the Sahara Desert, Moroccan agriculture has always faced challenges of poor soil quality and little precipitation. Population and economic growth have put increased pressure on a vulnerable environment. Extensive grazing, the

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Will Morocco be the same? Walking the dusty streets of Agoudim for the first time since 2010 was an emotional experience. The changes like the 2011 flood are just the tip of the iceberg. The Amazigh have been living in the Atlas Mountains for millennia. They are a resilient people who have fought back against invading armies, but I wonder how much more they can withstand, while remaining who they are and maintaining their way of life. I admired the beauty of this place and these people, but I am afraid for their future. I know that there is no time to lose when it comes to climate action. The most likely climate change adaptation strategy is not one managed centrally by the Moroccan government or supported by environmental projects, but a collection of choices made by individual Moroccans to protect their livelihoods. These choices will affect Amazigh traditions and an ancient way of life. Rural Moroccans are resourceful and have always dealt with harsh climatic conditions, but climate change will test their resiliency. The Amazigh and other North Africans will look northwards, to Europe, to escape the advancing Sahara Desert. Dr. Freier says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Europe is already overwhelmed by the refugees from Syria. If climate change has a large impact and people are free to choose, this refugee wave will increase.â&#x20AC;? Will Europe and other major polluting regions make the necessary investments now in order to avoid this climate catastrophe? Or will they delay and pay a different price later?

expansion of agriculture, and deforestation have degraded soil cover, leading to erosion and the loss of soil fertility. The Rif Mountains, for instance, have one of the highest rates of erosion in the world. 46

Energy for cooking and heating primarily comes from wood harvested from nearby forests. Mountainous areas are surprisingly cold in the winter, with individual snowstorms covering the ground in

The Sahara Desert, in the south of Morocco.

Climate Change

more than one foot of snow. Wood stoves are the primary means of staying warm in this frigid environment. I spent one winter night in Taararte in Midelt Province, where hillsides have been completely

deforested. The family I stayed with was the wealthiest in the village and was fortunate enough to be able to buy wood driven in by trucks. Most people had to shiver around fires fueled by small bushes.

Each day in Agoudim, a steady stream of people on donkeys and mule exit the town, in search of firewood. A local, middle-aged woman, Ziniba, â&#x20AC;&#x201C; told me that it takes her several hours to collect â?Ž 47

wood. Women and girls are primarily responsible for wood collection and this is a huge drain on their time. Ziniba said, “I have to walk farther to cut wood now than when I first came to Agoudim [nearly 20 years ago]. I get home, I’m tired, I don’t have time to milk the cow or talk to my friends before I have to cook dinner.” Without ground cover, rainwater runs immediately into rivers and floodplains, creating flash floods. Destructive floods are increasingly common in Morocco; a flash flood in 2014 killed 31 people. These challenges, driven by population and economic growth, are already changing life in rural Morocco. Experts predict that climate change will exacerbate these problems, fueling the northward march of the Sahara. According to Dr. Janpeter Schilling of the University of Hamburg, precipitation could decline by as much as 20% by 2050. At the same time, temperatures are likely to rise by two to three degrees Centigrade. These changing climactic conditions could lower agriculture productivity in the region by 30-40%. Small farmers will be hurt the most because they are more dependent on seasonal weather. As Dr. Ouraich explains, “The sector is dependent on rainfall, especially small and medium farmers, specifically with cereal crops. This problem is structural in Morocco, we’re still struggling to modernize the sector in order to reduce reliance on weather effects.” According to Dr. Ouraich, the resulting food price increases will have the biggest impact on poor Moroccans. Surprisingly, many farmers are actually net buyers of food, meaning that increasing prices will hurt them. 48

Possible Solutions Major polluting countries shoulder major responsibility for climate change and its resulting impacts on countries like Morocco. The negotiations this year in Paris at the Conference of Parties is an opportunity for these countries to commit to change course through legally binding emissions reduction. Should pollution levels continue to rise along their predicted trajectory, however, experts are considering a number of ways for Morocco to adapt to these changing conditions, including increased temperatures and low water supply. In 2008, the Moroccan government launched the Plan Maroc Vert – Green Morocco Plan – to modernize agriculture in the country by improving productivity and resource efficiency in agriculture. Pillar One of the Plan works with larger farmers to improve farming input use, while Pillar Two focuses on working with small farmers in marginal areas by helping them switch to higher value, droughtresistant crops, such as olives. According to Dr. Gabriella Izzi, the Team Leader for the World Bank’s support for agriculture in Morocco, many of the changes will improve farmers’ resilience to climate change by better managing water use and switching to more resilient crops. Additionally, the Plan’s investments are reducing soil erosion by helping farmers switch to no-till farming methods. As of 2014, Pillar Two of the Plan has reached 722,000 farmers. Despite some successes, the Moroccan Government faces a challenge to reach the small farmers who will be most affected by climate change because they are not credit-

Major polluting countries shoulder major responsibility for climate change and its resulting impacts on countries like Morocco. The negotiations this year in Paris at the Conference of Parties is an opportunity for these countries to commit to change course through legally binding emissions reduction.

Goat foraging in tree.

Goats in the Atlas Mountains. ❮

Photo by Driss Ouabess

Winters in Agoudim get very cold.

Driss Ouabess walking home after cutting wood.

worthy. Unfortunately, the most vulnerable farmers are unable to borrow from banks that channel the Planâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s investments. Additionally, the Plan only works indirectly on issues related to herding and soil degradation. Community leaders in Agoudim are skeptical about such government initiatives because previous efforts never turned out as promised. When I first arrived in 2008, there was a plan to build a community center to train people on carpet-weaving techniques and computer literacy. Two years later, the building was only half finished. When I came back to Agoudim in 2015, I was

excited to see that the building was completed. To this day, however, it has been locked, shuttered, and has never hosted any of the promised activities. There are small-scale projects that target pastoralism. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco from 2011-2013, Sara del Fierro worked on a project in collaboration with the Moroccan High Commission on Water and Forests, a local development association, a nearby National Park, and local government to reduce erosion, flooding, and landslides by stabilizing river banks and reforestation. Unfortunately, the â?Ž 51

A traditional wedding in the Atlas Mountains.

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The 2011 flood caused much devastation in Agoudim. Photo by Hassein Ouzayd

project was cancelled because of differences between the various groups. Del Fierro wrote, “I think there's a strong sense of grassroots community organization and entrepreneurialism in Morocco, which gives it a great context for projects to thrive in. Almost every village near [my site] in the High Atlas had some sort of local organization... But introducing these kind of external projects inevitably changes the dynamic. Questions

come up: Who would be the first (pilot) site? Who gets what resources? Who decides who gets these resources?” Competition for scarce resources from international organizations can sour a project and ultimately enrich the most powerful players. Another Peace Corps volunteer (2008-2010), Logan Sander, worked on a project supported by the United States Agency for International Development to introduce more efficient woodstoves in an effort to ❮

Berber women bringing in crops.

Sheep grazing in the Middle Atlas.

Climate Change

reduce deforestation from firewood collection. According to Dr. Freier's research, if firewood collection were eliminated, the soil conservation benefits would be high enough to offset losses from climate change in some areas. Despite two years' of work, Logan was only able to convince one business to switch to an efficient woodstove. Accustomed to their traditional stoves, people were skeptical of a foreign technology pushed by an American. Changing engrained behavior in rural areas represents an enormous challenge, especially in the case of publicly owned environmental resources. Dr. Ouraich says, “It’s a collective action problem, it’s the tragedy of the commons... Nobody has the incentive to do something about it. People are smart, they’re not stupid, and they see that the cost of doing something is really high.” Hassein told me that, although people recognize the source of the problem, sheepherders are unwilling to reduce the size of their herds because they have no other way to make money. Driss Ouabess, a resident of Agoudim, started a small hotel and guide service in an effort to diversify his income. If people can make money from sources that don’t degrade the land, it will reduce pressure on the environment. The hotel is growing in popularity, but in an isolated place like Agoudim, Driss is unable to attract enough tourists in order to stop farming. Whether or not these small-scale efforts are effective, it is important to remember the enormity of the problem and that nothing less than economic revolution is required to reduce Morocco’s susceptibility to climate change. 55

Climate Change

By Emily Crane Linn in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

Lost to the Sea Egypt’s Nile Delta Sinks while Sisi Digs in the Desert Egypt’s Nile Delta region is sinking into the sea and no one is doing a thing about it. The region is home to 60 percent of the country’s population and produces two thirds of its food—and by 2030, as much as 30 percent of it could be underwater, according to a 2013 study by the Environment Committee of the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association.

Massive cement tetrapods lie along the beach in Baltim, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The huge blocks are a stopgap to prevent erosion, but the sea is steadily overtaking them. The first stages of this wall have been almost completely overtaken by sand; only their mosscovered tops remain visible. Without action, the other rows will soon disappear as well.

Egypt’s Nile Delta region is sinking into the sea and no one is doing a thing about it. The region is home to 60 percent of the country’s population and produces two thirds of its food—and by 2030, as much as 30 percent of it could be underwater, according to a 2013 study by the Environment Committee of the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association. In the northern coastal city of Baltim, mango farmer Mossad Abu Ghali recalls watching the city build a new boardwalk on the beach when he was a child, after the old one disappeared under water. “But that was a long time ago,” he says. “Inshallah [God willing], the sea is not

advancing anymore.” But Abu Ghali need only take a short drive up to the beach to see that that is not the case: the Baltim sea wall, built of stacks of concrete tetrapod blocks in 1992, is today halfway buried in sand. Before the construction of the High Aswan Dam in 1970, the coastal region managed to maintain a sort of equilibrium with the sea: whatever the sea washed away from the coastline each year, the Nile returned to it in the form of sediment deposits. Since the damming of the Nile, however, the river no longer floods and blocked sediments no longer supply the coastline with fresh earth, leaving the sea to advance unchecked.

All along the coast, populous cities such as Alexandria, Port Said and Damietta are frantically building and replacing sea walls to keep advancing coastal erosion at bay. But those on the coast are hardly the only ones affected. Beneath the surface, the sea is seeping into the water table and slowly making its way inland into farmers’ irrigation canals and soil. One hundred kilometers south of Baltim in the town of Kafr el Sheikh, Ahmed Abuleinein watches on as one of his hired hands drives a tractor through his field, pulling up what remains of the hay harvest. Beneath his feet, the soil is as hard as asphalt, coated on top with a

white film that gives it a lifeless, greyish color: salt. In two months’ time, Abuleinein will attempt to plow through this coarse, uninviting soil to plant his wheat crop. Next spring, he will plant rice, just as he has done for 40 years. But his yields are hardly what they used to be. “The farmer is losing money,” he says. “He can sell something for 8 EGP a kilo and it cost him 20 EGP a kilo to grow it.” He points to the north. “It is worse in places like Baltim,” he says. “The soil has become weak.” Rice has become a particularly unproductive crop, says the tractor driver, named Mohammed Shaaban, during his lunch break.

“There isn’t water like before,” he says, scooping up a bite of soft, white cheese with a piece of flatbread. “One feddan [acre] that used to produce 2-3 tons of rice now produces 1 ton so the farmer is paying more and getting less.” For centuries, farmers have relied solely on the Nile to water their cropland, digging a complex and impressive network of irrigation canals to connect the entire delta region to the river and its tributaries. In the last 50 years however, Cairo’s population has more than doubled and so has its water consumption, leaving farmers downstream to cope with a drastically reduced water supply. ❮ 59

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In desperation, farmers have turned to wells, pumping fresh water from aquifers to replenish their irrigation canals. As the Nile water shortage has increased, more and more farmers have turned to pumping, digging deeper and deeper. This only makes the problem worse, says Badr Mabrouk, hydrology professor at Zagazig University. “When you draw the water up from the deep aquifers, it creates pressure and it draws the sea in,” Mabrouk says. “The government is not in control of these wells; they are dug by the farmers who do not understand.” And so the pump down the road, churning out water meant to keep Abouleinein’s fields alive, is in fact slowly killing them. The hour is late for Egypt’s farmers. “The land is slowly, slowly running out of time,” Mabrouk says. “We must think about tomorrow.” But that is precisely the problem, says Hassan Husseiny, Water Management Specialist for the Research Institute for Sustainable Environment (RISE) at the American University in Cairo. “Rising sea levels in the delta for the government are not a high priority,” says Husseiny. “Studies say climate change could begin to have a real effect after 20 years. The government doesn’t look that far ahead.” What’s more, the government is hesitant to even acknowledge climate change as an urgent and ❮ 60

Mohamed Shaaban graduated from university with an Arabic Literature degree, but “what good is that out here?” He’s worked for the last four years as a tractor driver. “There isn’t water like before, one feddan [acre] that used to produce 2-3 tons of rice now only produces one.”

unyielding problem. Aymen el Gamal, Deputy Director of the Coastal Research Institute (CoRI) in Alexandria, the primary government agency dealing with rising sea levels, says he is personally unconvinced that human-induced climate change is even real. “The earth is very clever. It can take in energy and emit it,” el Gamal says. “There are those who say there is the greenhouse effect and the ozone— no, the earth is bigger than all of this.” His smile is confident and kind.“So the climate change from my point of view is a normal phenomenon.” Of course, in his office half a kilometer from the sea, he can’t deny the sea levels are rising, but he says there is little use in trying to predict the rate at which it will rise or to plan farther than one or two years into the future. Most existing models are just alarmist and unhelpful, el Gamal says. Rather, he sees his role as one of simply monitoring sea level rise and

adapting to the data as it comes in. “There are three strategies for combatting the issue of rising sea levels,” he says. “The first is to study the problem, the second is to create plans to adapt to it, and the third is to look at how to mitigate the problem. But this is Egypt,” el Gamal pauses, chuckles. “So… our thinking focuses on how to adapt.” Since 2009, the CoRI has been working on a UNDP-funded “Integrated Coastal Zone Management” project to set up sea barriers constructed from natural sediment and vegetation. Six years and $4 million later, they have managed to “select a pilot site,” design an “adaptation technique” and “prepare tenders for the pilot site”—but have yet to build a single sea barrier. As far as Husseiny knows though, that’s pretty much par for the course. “There has yet to be any action taken in the Delta that I know of,” Husseiny

says. “There have been conferences and meetings and discussions, but no action.” Instead, President Abdul Fattah el Sisi has turned his attention to the desert where he has launched a billion dollar initiative to create arable land out of sand by drilling solar-powered wells. It’s a nice concept. The only problem is, it might not work, and if it doesn’t, Sisi will be left with less farmland, more people to feed and a sea that continues to advance. “In the Western Desert, we must take care because the groundwater is not suitable for large scale agriculture,” Mabrouk says. “It is suitable for people to live there, to have some manufacturing and some agriculture, but not large agriculture, like the delta.” What’s more, the would-be desert farmland has no infrastructure connecting it to Egypt’s major cities, and no towns or facilities nearby for the farmers to live in.

“The government is building this agricultural project without a plan,” Husseiny says. “Without facilities for farmers: without schools, hospitals. People are not encouraged to move from the delta to the desert. Why would they?” Unless something changes however, millions will soon have no choice but to leave. Husseiny estimates 10 million at minimum will be displaced as their land floods over the next 30 years. If this proves true, Abu Ghali, the mango farmer from Baltim, would be among the first to have to flee. He isn’t alarmed however; he has full and unflinching faith that his president will take care of him. “The government is under a lot of pressure,” Abu Ghali says. “We can’t expect everything to come all at once. Sisi needs to first give jobs to people who need them. That’s why he is focused on the desert right now. We at least have jobs and land. Later, he will help us.” Inshallah—God willing.

A thin white film on the sun-scorched earth in a field betrays the reason for dying crops: salt. As the Mediterranean Sea rises due to climate change, salt seeps into Egypt’s Nile Delta, poisoning crops and ruining fresh water. This area is the breadbasket of Egypt, supplying two thirds of the nation’s food.

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By Manon Verchot, Indrani Basu and Joanna Plucinska in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

Health Impacts of Water Salinity in Bangladesh Drinking wells in the villages of southwest Bangladesh have been contaminated with salty ocean water for so long, people have gotten used to the taste. Now, scientists think that worsening salinity could be having dire, long-lasting health effects on the people living in the region — and climate change is likely to blame. In December, the world’s nations will meet in Paris to address climate change and work towards an agreement that would limit global warming to two degrees celsius. But even if an ambitious, legally binding agreement is made, many coastal communities worldwide, including those in India and in American states like Florida, will face freshwater shortages in the coming decades as oceans continue to rise and further contaminate drinking water. As a low-lying country in which nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line, Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable. Already, scientists and researchers are referring to Bangladesh as the “ground zero” of climate change, foreshadowing the water shortages that will likely spread around the world and affect more than one ❮ 64

billion people by 2060, according to the United States Geological Survey. “Bangladesh stands at the forefront of saltwater contamination,” said Aneire Khan, a consultant for the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Research, Bangladesh. She was the first to broach the topic four years ago in a study conducted in Dacope, a small administrative district in coastal southwest Bangladesh. “However, the same trend potentially affects all 11 Asian large river deltas, and other major deltas, notably the Nile and the Mississippi,” she said. When Khan visited Dacope’s local hospital, she discovered alarming rates of high blood pressure-related conditions among pregnant women, which she linked to high salt content in local drinking water sources. Khan and her team measured blood pressure and took urine samples from women in the community and found that the number of hypertension cases was almost eight times higher than in noncoastal regions of Bangladesh. High blood pressure is among the lead causes of maternal death in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Heavy salt intake increases the risk for coronary heart disease, which is the single most important risk factor for stroke, Khan explained. High blood pressure also makes pregnant women particularly vulnerable to a condition called preeclampsia, which can lead to severe headaches, organ damage, and even death. Khan’s study caught the attention of Susmita Dasgupta, lead environmental economist for the Development Research Group at the World Bank. With a team of researchers, Dasgupta began to investigate how saltwater consumption during 66

Climate Change

pregnancy affects infants. She found that babies whose mothers consumed saltwater during the last month of pregnancy were at risk. Indeed, their survival rates were as badly affected as by other factors known to determine infant mortality, such as a mother’s age, education and availability of toilet facilities. Dasgupta also noted that climate change is likely to exacerbate existing salinity problems. The rising seas and increased storm surge in coastal Bangladesh breach groundwater wells and rivers, turning these water sources salty. Even though freshwater is abundant during the monsoons, resulting in major floods, it’s the opposite during winter. As the ground dries up and rainfall peters out, salt stays behind. During this dry season, the level of salt concentration in drinking water can reach as high as eight times what is deemed safe by the WHO according to research from Imperial

College in London. This is worsened by shrimp water farming in these regions. The issue is not new – communities in southwest Bangladesh have battled the rise of the ocean and violent typhoons for decades. But with each passing year, the problem worsens at an unprecedented rate. The typhoons that accompany climate change have gotten stronger, and Khan found that drinking water sources as far as 100 kilometers inland Bangladesh are turning into brine. Research shows that in the last 35 years, salinity in the country has increased by 26 percent, putting the 40 million people who live in coastal Bangladesh in danger. Bangladesh is rapidly disappearing under the sea, and its people are increasingly forced to adapt or to simply move to parts less vulnerable to flooding and salinity. Numerous NGOs and international

organizations, like BRAC, Shushilan, the World Bank, and Concern International are trying to solve the issue and prevent a mass exodus of people from the coastal parts of the country. There are three main ways that NGOs and the Bangladeshi government are trying to improve freshwater access in these areas, said Santanu Lahiri, a water supply and sanitation expert for the World Bank. The most traditional of these approaches involve building standing freshwater ponds, where rainwater is collected and stored for the dry season. However, this is hardly fool proof — as these ponds can remain unsheltered from the elements, the water sometimes evaporates and can be contaminated by outside sources, said Yan Zheng, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Columbia University, New York. Instead, some scientists are ❮ 67

adopting a second method, explained Jonathan Gilligan, a professor of environmental science at Vanderbilt University located in Nashville, Tennessee who has conducted extensive fieldwork on flooding in southwest Bangladesh. They are setting up aquifer recharge stations, where freshwater is pumped deep into the ground. Once there, it can be stored without risk of contamination for up to two years, said Gilligan. A third method is that of reverse osmosis, added Lahiri, which removes salt from the water to make it potable. But this is an expensive and timeconsuming proposition, requiring financing, proper management and regular maintenance — all things that these small communities often are unequipped with, according to Zheng. In a country plagued by political instability and poverty, it may take 68

years for solutions to spread across the region. While major NGOs and even governments, as well as the European Union are investing into projects and research, many of these projects are still at an experimental stage. Implementation continues to prove a challenge, with limited funding, fragmented resources and difficulty in accessing the areas that are worst affected. “We can't deliver sustainable development without taking urgent action to tackle climate change and supporting the communities already suffering from its impacts,” said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change Development in Bangladesh and a regular attendee at the international United Nations climate change meetings. “In Paris, governments can start delivering on their newly enshrined development goals.”

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By Olga Dobrovidova in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

A Problem Put on Ice It is early Thursday evening in mid-September; the sun is setting into a veil of smog from the power plants and people are coming back from work This could be any small industrial town in Russia, but it is Norilsk â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a northern city of180,000 people with an average annual temperature of minus 9.8 degrees Celsius. There is a one in three chance the palladium in your mobile phone was mined here

Norilsk is also officially the most polluted city in Russia and one of the most polluted in the world

A view from a window in Norilsk, one of the most polluted cities in the world.

Dudinka, a city of contrasts in housing maintenance.

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I was born in the capital of the Krasnoyarsk region, of which Norilsk is the second largest city. This is my first time so far north, some 1,500 kilometers away from where my family still lives. During a walk around town, I found myself standing in front of an apartment building with aboveground foundations big enough to walk into. It may sound strange to most, but this style of building has been adapted for the presence of permafrost. In Norilsk and other northern cities, buildings are “lifted” above ground to ensure an air gap limits the amount of thermal impact on the frozen ground. Otherwise warm water and heat from the building can melt the permafrost cover, decreasing its bearing capacity or how much weight the foundation can hold. Often permafrost melts unevenly, which leads to cracks in larger, more complex structures and even partial collapses. 72

I can see what the foundation looks like — through the gaping hole in the side of the housing structure. While this hole is there to prevent the melting permafrost, it may be adding to it. Some thermal impact is unavoidable, but it’s clear that these permafrost-reinforced buildings are not getting the maintenance they need. And yet, no one returning home from a long day of work appears to be worried that this hole is there.

Uncommon Ground Explorers of the Russian East during the 17th century had a difficult time convincing the capital that they really had found soil that stayed frozen year-round, even in the summer when only a thin top layer would melt. We now know that permafrost actually covers two-thirds of Russia’s territory — more than the total area of Canada. This frozen land is home to more

Climate Change than a third of the country’s proven reserves of oil and gas and over 90% of estimated reserves, some of the largest gold, tin, nickel, copper and coal deposits, as well as freshwater and forest resources. Large-scale industrial exploration of the region, which started in the 20th century, required building power plants, factories and housing that could withstand the frozen ground and extreme conditions of the North. A growing need to better understand the science behind permafrost sparked robust research efforts during the time of the Soviet Union. By the 1960s, the country had а specialized permafrost research institution, with a vast network of monitoring stations in western and eastern Siberia. Experimental sites were also set up to study permafrost under various stresses and conditions. The USSR held the world’s second international conference on the subject in July 1973, in the East Siberian city of Yakutsk, where attendees could see "six-story apartment buildings being constructed” as well as the 117 meter “well”, or Shergin shaft, used for the first scientific study of permafrost a century earlier. A history museum in the central Siberian town of Igarka, tells the story of early settlers who started building a lumber mill in the summer of 1929. The town later rose to prominence as a regional hub for the international lumber trade, but the early houses and structures they constructed barely survived the winter as people were not prepared to deal with complications stemming from building on the frozen surface. Igarka’s permafrost research station was founded later that year.

New Times Today, the people and industry that drove migration to the inhospitable

region are still there.The Russian Arctic is home to some 2 million people who produce around 4% of the country’s GDP and 20% of its exports. Another 5 million live in the so-called sub-Arctic regions. Most of these estimates can vary quite significantly across sources, in part because legal boundaries of what is now officially called the Russian Arctic zone were not defined until the spring of 2014. Unlike the rest of the global Arctic, Russia’s Far North is already a highly urbanized region with over 80% of the population living in settlements of 5,000 people or greater. Approximately 40 towns in the area have populations of over 10,000 people; at least five – Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Noyabrsk, Novy Urengoy and Norilsk – have populations of over 10,000 people. But most of these settlements are getting smaller, mainly due to economic migration. Murmansk, the world’s largest city north of the Arctic Circle, and Norilsk have lost about a third of their populations since 1990. For smaller settlements such as Igarka or Tiksi on the Arctic coast of Yakutia, the figure is closer to 60 or 70%. Overall, the region is estimated to have lost a quarter to a third of its population in the last 25 years. Shrinking populations and general socioeconomic stagnation in towns that are no longer connected to oil and gas, or mining industries are partly to blame for the neglect visible in older buildings, not unlike the one I walked into in Norilsk. Local municipalities responsible for this upkeep receive little to no support from the higher levels of government and often have no means of adequately funding the continuous maintenance required for Soviet-era infrastructure. Over the last few decades, interest in

permafrost has also plummeted. Russian papers on the subject and a 2014 state report on climate change give an overview of the extent of the damage to buildings in Igarka, Tiksi and other smaller settlements on permafrost in the Siberian North and further to the east. Numbers range from place to place, between 40 or 50 percent of all structures with deformations in some cities and even 100 percent in unnamed remote settlements in the Siberian Arctic. This review relies mainly on a nonpeer-reviewed source from 2001. Dr. Oleg Anisimov of the State Hydrological Institute in Saint Petersburg, who was one of the lead authors of the 2014 report, agrees the data is old but says there is simply no newer information because hardly anyone is studying this issue now. "Permafrost itself is a really simple thing, actually, all processes there are incredibly well understood. The difficulty lies in the fact that there’s very little data on its current state and trends”, he adds. A lot of Russian research on permafrost conditions such as temperature or active layer thickness – how deep it melts in the short summers – ceased in the 1990s when political and economic turmoil left research stations severely underfunded and understaffed. Data from Roshydromet, the state weather and climate service, suggests that in 2014, only 36 out of 64 Russian stations involved in the global Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) project actually collected data, and most had continual measurements for no longer than 10 to 15 years. This lack of data complicates any estimate of longterm trends, says Dr. Anisimov. “Only 12 to 15 of these stations in Russia have long time series, and they are used in the analysis. And ❮ 73

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now try and picture those 12 to 15 stations, most of which are located along the Arctic coast, against the whole area of Russian permafrost,” Anisimov, who is also involved in gathering and processing this data, notes. Overall, the CALM network has 168 stations in 15 countries; Canada, where permafrost covers about half the landmass, has some 60 stations with measurements dating back to the start of the project in 1991. Symbolically, a decades-old map documenting permafrost cover, adorns the wall of the director’s office in the Igarka research station. Dated 1991, it’s a comprehensive picture of permafrost conditions across Siberia and elsewhere, but it’s also a map of a different country – the Soviet Union. Dr. Nikita Tananaev, former head of the research station and a research scientist with the Melnikov Permafrost Insitute in Yakutsk, says newer maps of permafrost conditions do exist, but they cover smaller areas and much of the information gathered, for instance, by oil and gas companies is proprietary. “To make a new map at this scale — this one is quite detailed — we would have to collect lots and lots of new data. And there is no one to make everyone share the information they do have," he says.

A Cold Topic According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Russia's Dr. Alexey Kokorin, who works to develop climate change awareness in these regions, there is little interest in sharing this information and building a more accurate picture of the state of permafrost. Oil and gas companies who have invested in this research have already built their infrastructure to be "almost immune to changes in 74

permafrost.” Government estimates, however, indicate that it may still cost them up to 55 billion rubles (a little over $800 million) a year in maintenance. And since a decrease in population is naturally followed by a decrease in demand for housing, the plight of the people remaining in these crumbling Arctic settlements "is not really sounding the alarms”, says Kokorin. There’s also a surprising complacency from those left to deal with “building deformities" on a daily basis. A section of apartments in a residential building in Igarka had to be abandoned after damage to the foundation had rendered them unsafe — but residents still live in other parts of that complex. Two houses down that street, an entire half of another building had to be demolished. It seems like much of this acceptance of present conditions stems from a peculiar fatalism common to all Russians but particularly striking in the North. When I asked a woman who had lived in that apartment building for 10 years if she was scared to stay there, she expressed a sentiment I would continue to hear throughout my trip: of course I am, but what is there to do? During my travels, I passed a shiny new youth activity center in Dudinka, a major river port town in the Siberian Arctic. The building had a memorable poem written on its side: “If we have to, then we have to, then our gardens here will bloom.” It’s a quote from a Soviet song called “70th Parallel Kids.” Sitting at the 69th parallel, Dudinka is close, but it’s so cold you can barely grow onions here. Residents of the North are quite aware of the changing climate realities they face, but the issue of thawing permafrost has taken a backseat to other concerns. In

casual conversations about the weather, people often lament that traditional predictions of weather patterns based on years of observation no longer hold. The Yenisey, Lena and other Siberian rivers are also experiencing marked shifts in their fall freeze and spring melt times. In the Taymyr peninsula, the northernmost part of central Siberia, both indigenous communities and scientists have confirmed that deer have already started wintering in places they used to leave because of the extreme cold. While locals are worried about the future impacts of climate change on infrastructure, these problems are nothing new. Many residents have lived in these crumbling buildings for decades. Despite a lack of perceived urgency, the threat posed by thawing permafrost to these settlements is real. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report states that, with a high level of confidence, "rising temperatures, leading to the further thawing of permafrost, and changing precipitation patterns have the potential to affect infrastructure and related services in the Arctic,” with particular concerns for damage to residential buildings and storage facilities for hazardous materials. Russia’s own second assessment report on climate change and its consequences paints a more detailed picture. It asserts that climate change has already led to "a decrease in the permafrost bearing capacity by 17% on average and by up to 45% in some regions relative to the 1970s.” This means that in some parts of western Siberia, permafrost degradation is already approaching the limits of operational safety. According to the same research, degradation is less severe in the ❮

Two teenage girls walking on a pipeline in the port of Dudinka.

A Soviet-era sign such as this, urging people to keep their house safe and avoid permafrost degradation by keeping water and trash out of the basement, are now found in museums.

A house in Igarka, where people (and pets) are living absurdly close to permanent permafrost damage (left).

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Poor housing maintenance is no laughing matter.

central Asian part of the Arctic, northern Yakutia and the Krasnoyarsk territory. While Dr. Anisimov agrees that climate change is contributing to the thawing permafrost, he says there are more urgent problems to address. "A building itself really does not care why a decrease in the permafrost bearing capacity happened — it just happened. Right now the dominant factor for us is bad maintenance, and attributing this to climate [change] would be silly. It does not diminish the issue, though, it just means one problem is compounded by the other”, says Anisimov. “You cannot separate them: construction standards have to be reviewed and updated to reflect changing climate norms.”

Limits of Risk In theory, any new construction in the north should be planned with climate change in mind, but Anisimov says 76

he has yet to come across a project whose developers are accounting for this risk.“There is this very clear idea among engineers that climate change is completely made up and a hoax. Yes, sometimes it’s warmer — but there are always fluctuations and that is why safety factors exist,” he says. “Climate science is in one corner and engineering is in another.” This reluctance to bring climate change into the engineering equation may seem somewhat understandable. The second national assessment report claims that improper management and maintenance are having a far more damaging affect on infrastructure built on permafrost than climate change. In fact, one of the major changes between this report and its predecessor from 2008 is a more conservative approach to the link between climate change and infrastructure risks and a more nuanced representation of the problem.

Climate change may not yet trump poor maintenance, but that does not mean it can be discounted. “Since the ultimate reason behind most failures and accidents is a decrease in bearing capacity, which is projected to continue throughout this century, the current problems with infrastructure <…> can be viewed as a physical model of what can happen due to climate change in the absence of other impacts”, the report continues. In other words, just as with extreme weather events, even though climate change may only be partly responsible for what we are seeing now, it is a very useful snapshot into what can happen in the future, even with proper construction and maintenance. It may well become the straw that breaks the camel’s back or, in this case, the foundation pile. Anisimov also notes that the common safety factor Russians use for bearing capacity, whether or not permafrost is involved, is around

Some maintenance work, like here in Norislk, is being done to permafrostreinforced buildings but it is often "too little, too late".

40%. This number means that a Russian foundation pile can potentially hold 40% more weight than it will actually have to once a building has been constructed — it’s a margin left for safety purposes. In other countries like the U.S. or Canada it’s closer to 90%, so “this means an eventual decline in bearing capacity due to rising temperatures in the permafrost will approach the safety limits much sooner here [in Russia] than in other places,” he says.

Left Out in the Cold Permafrost degradation and the resulting risks to infrastructure used to fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Regional Development. In a report submitted to the UN in 2013, Russia announced that its ministry was "leading the development of a science–based set of measures to minimize risks to buildings, transport and infrastructure from the southern

permafrost border shifting to the north.” According to court documents and information from the federal procurement system, the ministry did contract work on this initiative out to a Moscow construction research institute in August 2012. But then in September 2014 this ministry was dissolved, and experts say it is not immediately clear which agencies, if any, took over its climate change portfolio. A representative of the Gersevanov Research Institute of Bases and Underground Structures confirmed that it completed a $270,000 study for the government, but is still waiting to be paid. Its research has not been released to the public. At the 2014 UN climate conference in Lima, countries from Chile to Finland met to discuss the impacts of climate change on glaciers, ice caps and the Polar Regions. Russia has the largest amount of permafrost in the world, yet its

delegation was noticeably absent. That was a public outreach event with no direct impact on the negotiations but it was still striking to see the same indifference found everywhere from official strategies to city streets. Climate change may continue to trail engineering issues in its impact on Arctic buildings, or it may eventually force us to reinvent construction on permafrost altogether. A new building in the early stages of construction that I found in Norilsk may one day crack due to simple neglect — or it may do so because of failure to account for climate change risks in the project. The need for accurate and relevant information on the state of permafrost in a changing climate has never been more pressing. Whether or not Russia is willing to study or discuss this problem, extensive infrastructure damage in the North as well as the worries of those who live there are unlikely to melt away. 77

Climate Change

Text and Photos by Autumn Spanne in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network

Extreme Weather and Migration in Colombia The widespread floods during the powerful 2010-2011 La NiĂąa event in Colombia were collectively one of the worst weather-related disasters in the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history, affecting nearly five million people throughout the country. The floods destroyed thousands of homes and displaced many times that number. Many of the worst-affected regions were those already suffering from the severe effects of armed conflict and poverty.

Wayuu children greet a young girl as she returns to her rancheria from a 10kilometer journey by burro to collect water from the nearest potable well. 79

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The floods were also a trigger for Colombia to start thinking about a future in which climate change, not just armed conflict, might play an increasing role in internal displacement and migration. Colombia is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, with 80% of its people living in places likely to be affected by extreme weather, sea level rise and other climate-related phenomena. In the five years since the floods, Colombia has suffered a range of extreme weather and other phenomena associated with climate change. Communities on the Pacific and Caribbean coast are increasingly concerned about sea level rise, while drought and floods by turns threaten the livelihood of farmers in some of the country’s most fertile agricultural regions. Currently, the northeast Caribbean desert of La Guajira, where an unprecedented drought has caused a humanitarian crisis among the Wayuu, one of the largest indigenous groups in the country, is faced with the most dire situation. The national government has taken note of the risks posed by increasingly common extreme weather events. Last year, Colombia became one of the first countries in the region to include migration in its national climate change policy. But this is also unchartered territory, and figuring out how best to count and respond to those affected is a big task. “We have a lot of challenges with climate change issues,” said Rodrigo Suárez Castaño, Director of the Climate Change Division of Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development. “Our thought is if things keep going this way, we’re gonna have people moving from one side of the country to the other side, and more people 80

living in the cities. It’s a big, big challenge we have on our hands.” In 2013, the Colombian government collaborated with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to seek a better understanding of how climate change contributes to migration. Using a government registry that had been established to provide emergency aid in the aftermath of the 2010-2011 flooding, IOM undertook a pilot project to count and track the movements of about 2,000 people who had been forced to leave their homes. They found that more than half had returned home, even in situations where it wasn’t necessarily safe for them to do so due to landslides or other hazards. “IOM has developed measurement tools in other countries, and we are trying to do that here in Colombia,” said Elsa Garcia Salazar, an environmental monitor at IOM specializing in climate change and migration. It’s not simply a matter of replicating tools developed for other countries, she added. The geographical, political and cultural circumstances are different in each country, and particularly complicated in Colombia with its history of social conflict and displacement. It’s also more difficult to document climate-induced migration that occurs because of slow-onset events, like drought and sea level rise — particularly because there is a greater likelihood in such cases that multiple factors are involved in people’s decision to leave their homes. Nowhere in the country are such complicated social, political and environmental factors more at play than in La Guajira, the hot, windswept desert peninsula on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The region has been in a state of extreme ❮

A Wayuu girl from the rancheria of Porciosa returns home from a 10-kilometer journey to collect water for her family from the nearest potable well.

drought for three years, and many Wayuu say they’ve felt the effects of increased temperatures and lack of rain for even longer. The Wayuu are experts at finding water and eking out a living from this harsh land. Yet many communities are now struggling for survival and facing several more months of sparse or no rain as strong El Niño conditions are expected to continue through at least the first few months of 2016. “It’s very critical, the situation of our community,” said Araico Pushaina, the traditional authority of Porciosa, a Wayuu “ranchería” (village) near the town of Manaure with a population of about 50 people. “We haven’t had a drop of water here in three years and the consequences have been very hard.” The only source of water near Porciosa are two artisanal wells contaminated by animal waste — unfit for human consumption. To get potable water, the women of Porciosa travel a distance of 10-15 kilometers in the searing heat on foot or with a burro (small donkey) to fill plastic containers at a safe well. Pushaina says his community feels abandoned by the government. He is concerned about what their future holds if they don’t receive rain soon and if these extreme droughts become more frequent. Some women in Porciosa aren’t able to breastfeed their babies, and children are frequently weak with hunger, some showing classic signs of chronic malnutrition like stunted growth, dry, flaky skin and pale, straw-like hair. Others suffer from diarrhea and other intestinal diseases from drinking or cooking with contaminated water. Porciosa is emblematic of how vulnerable indigenous communities in La Guajira are affected by the drought. A 2014 investigation by 82

Colombia's Ombudsman Office found that La Guajira had the highest rate of child malnutrition in the country. And Colombia's National Statistical Department (DANE), reported that between 2008 and 2013, about 3,000 children died of malnutrition and preventable diseases, many related to inadequate food and contaminated water. The drought has also disrupted the Wayuu’s traditional economy. Communities have had to abandon subsistence crops of corn and beans for lack of water. Edible cactus fruits are more scarce. Goats and pigs, emaciated and sick, don’t feed as many people as they used to and fetch a poor price at the market or in trade. And tens of thousands have died from starvation and lack of water. Most people here rely on horses, burros, bicycles or simply walking across the parched desert sands for miles in the blistering heat to see a doctor, buy basic supplies and fetch water daily from potable wells. Like the goats and pigs, it’s not uncommon these days for horses and burros to die of starvation or thirst. The Wayuu are adamant that they will remain on the land that’s been their home for two millenia. After all, it’s not the first time they’ve faced drought. But this drought is different — longer, hotter and more unrelenting: some parts of the region haven't received any rain at all for two years. Some have left in search of work, medical care and other social services in Riohacha, the regional capital, or further away in neighboring provinces. Few here would say that climate change is the sole driver of the crisis in La Guajira. Water-intensive extractive industries like coal mining and petroleum, upstream cattle ranching, regional political corruption

and neglect, lack of adequate infrastructure, and now a border crisis with Venezuela have all contributed to the problem, pushing Wayuu families to a state of desperation. Previously, Wayuu migrated with regularity across the border to Venezuela to buy cheaper food and other basic supplies. The traditional territory of the Wayuu straddles both countries, and they have dual citizenship. But in August, Venezuela closed its border, purportedly to crack down on illegal cross-border smuggling of cheap goods and gasoline. Though Wayuu are still able to cross, it’s much harder to get more affordable Venezuelan products into Colombia, leaving many Wayuu with no choice but to spend more of their dwindling income on significantly more expensive Colombian products. La Guajira is typical of how climate change often combines with preexisting social and environmental problems to reach a tipping point that prompts migration, displacement and relocation. “There are often these other factors along with climate change — maybe exacerbated by climate change and other environmental issues — that result in this movement of peoples,” said Robert Natiello, a senior IOM program officer in Bogota. Teasing out how much migration is due to climate change and extreme weather events versus other social, political and economic factors is a complicated task in any country, particularly one in which the circumstances of displacment are often layered with other stressors, especially violent conflict. But such complexities are not unique to Colombia. Around the world, governments, researchers, policymakers and advocates are grappling with how to identify and ❮

A Wayuu child stands in front of the village of Porciosa. Children here lack access to potable water in their community. Many suffer from malnutrition and water-borne illnesses, the latter likely caused by consuming dirty water from artisanal wells tainted by animal waste and other contaminants.

A goat searches for food in the Wayuu rancheria of Porciosa. Like many Wayuu communities, Porciosa has suffered loss of livestock during the prolonged drought here. Goats are a primary source of food as well as a form of currency for the Wayuu.

respond to those forced from their homes by climate-related phenomena, whether they move within their own country or travel across national borders. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an average of 22.5 million people have been displaced each year since 2008 by weather and climate-related disasters. The organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2015 Global Monitoring Report notes that climate change will likely amplify the number of these events as extreme weather events continue to become more frequent and intense. This year has seen a big push in several major international policy arenas to set the agenda for anticipating and responding to climate-related displacement and migration in coming decades. These include the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which was adopted by 187 countries and has â?Ž 85

Children from the Wayuu rancherĂa of Porciosa sit alongside the community's only local source of water: two artisanal wells containing animal waste and other contaminants. The nearest potable water is a 10-12 kilometer journey from the community, which women make by burro, bicycle or on foot early in the morning to avoid the worst heat of the day.

A girl and toddler in Porciosa exhibit pale, brittle hair, a sign of malnutrition. The toddler also suffers from a skin rash, which her family worries could be the result of consuming contaminated water.

numerous references to climate displacement and migration, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which include provisions for climate adaptation and support of vulnerable populations. The big question now is whether migration and displacement will be included in the new climate agreement in Paris at the COP21. One major proposal this year has been the creation of a climate displacement coordination facility to organize humanitarian responses in developing countries experiencing climate-related disasters. Another option is to continue with displacement responses under the current adaptation mechanism, the Warsaw Mechanism on Loss and Damage, rather than creating a new entity to coordinate displacement response efforts. But the issue providing compensation for affected countries remains a significant sticking point.

“The big fight right now is whether to look at loss and damage as a separate pillar or as adaptation,” said Walter Kaelin, Envoy of the Chairmanship of the Nansen Initiative, a consultative process seeking greater protection for people forced to flee across borders in the aftermath of disasters. While there’s general agreement among the Parties that climate displacement will only grow in coming decades, the politicization of proposed responses makes agreement difficult in Paris, added Kaelin. “But my argument remains that if you don’t have something in the Paris outcome, it will be much more difficult to keep [climate displacement] on the list of priorities.” Whatever the final agreement in Paris, there is a need to support expanded data collection on internal and cross-border migration in order to assess current patterns

and predict future movements of people, contends Elsa Garcia of IOM. Only then can countries mount effective adaptation responses that fully respect human rights, she added. Garcia pointed out, for example, that drought conditions existed not only in La Guajira but in several other Colombian provinces during the past several months, potentially affecting millions. But without consistent, rigorous data collection tools, the extent to which these slow-onset weather extremes are contributing to migration — and perhaps exacerbating pre-existing problems caused by social conflict — won’t be fully accounted for. “We are moving beyond the social conflict already occurring in the country toward a different vulnerability, and some of those people have no recognition and no future unless we try to understand what’s happening.” 87

Sunrise over the Willow Lake River on the morning of September 29, 2015. Photo by Deneze Antoine

Climate Change

By Chris Arsenault in Partnership with Internews Earth Journalism Network Travel financing for this reporting was provided by the Earth Journalism Network.

Climate Change Linked to Caribou Crash and Hunger in Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Far North Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, Canada Indigenous hunter Jim Antoine has watched the decline of caribou herds with alarm, convinced that global warming is at least partially responsible for the crisis in Canada's far north. An important food source for the Dene people, an indigenous group living in the northern boreal and Arctic regions of Canada, as well as for other northern communities, the caribou population has crashed in recent years. Scientists, hunters and government officials say there are several possible causes for the fall in numbers of the woodland caribou that prefer cooler conditions, but climate change is likely a significant driver. In parts of the Northwest Territories, average annual temperatures have already risen more than three degrees over the past two decades, a local politician said, impacting everything from housing and

transportation to the local caribou population. This comes amid rising fears that the world is not on track to limit greenhouse gas emissions to keep temperatures within a U.N. goal of two degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times, which will be debated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) in December 2015. "We live with (climate change) every day," Antoine said at his home in Fort Simpson, a mostly Dene community of about 1,200 residents just over 500 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. Piles of moose meat from a recent hunt sit on a table in his garage. A large man with thinning silver hair and a wry smile, Antoine led the Northwest Territories as Premier in the late 1990s, giving him a front row seat on the changes taking place in the north. "In the old days, it stayed cold for a longer time and there was more water on the land ... all of that will impact the animals," Antoine said â?Ž 89

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Joseph Antoine and Deneze Antoine hunt in the Northwest Territories, Canada. The indigenous residents are concerned that climate change is leading to a decline in the local caribou population. Photo by Jim Antoine

between bites of moose meat and sips of tea during a late night interview in his comfortable, suburban-style home. The caribou crisis is one manifestation of climate change facing residents in a region considered the "canary in the coal mine" by environmentalists, as global warming is felt here first and often with more intensity than other areas. The Arctic ecosystems, Greenland ice sheet, and tropical coral reefs are systems earmarked as particularly vulnerable to increased temperatures. Scientists fear the vast, frigid Arctic region is warming at twice the rate of other parts of the globe, which threatens traditional communities even as it opens up new sea lanes and vast oil and mineral resources. Wildlife is particularly affected by the changes. The number of breeding females in one major caribou herd, a key population indicator, dropped by

half between 2012 and 2015, the territorial government said in late September. In 1986, the herd was approximately 470,000 strong. Now it's down to about 16,000. As warming continues across the once frozen north, residents worry the situation will get worse.With hunted meat drying above the stove, a roaring wood fire keeping the place warm, and massive hunting dogs roaming around, Joseph Antoine, a relative of Jim's with decades of experience on the land, worries about the future."This decline of the caribou is not going to stop," Joseph said. "Certain areas had a huge amount of caribou at one time." While indigenous hunters are feeling the effects of climate change first, the problems they have faced over the past two decades with increasing ferocity will invariably impact larger populations further south, scientists said. â?Ž

Joseph Antoine, a longtime hunter from the Dene Indigenous group in northern Canada, hunts for moose in the Northwest Territories. Water levels on major rivers used for transportation in the territory have been lower than normal, which local residents link to climate change. Photo by Jim Antoine

View of the city of Yellowknife, where Joseph Antoine a long-time hunter hails from. Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

Deneze Antoine standing next to a moose he harvested. Photo by Jim Antoine

Jonas and Jim Antoine working on cutting and skinning moose. Photo92 by Deneze Antoine

Jonas (brother of Jim Antoine) taking a quick coffee break while working on moose during a moose harvest. Photo by Deneze Antoine

Permafrost Melt Greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are causing the Arctic to warm twice as fast as the global average, according to a Cambridge University study released in September. As permafrost melts due to rising temperatures, long buried carbon dioxide and methane seep from the ground, creating a potentially catastrophic feedback loop. The expected cost of melting permafrost, according to the Cambridge study, could soar to $43 trillion in economic damage by the end of the century. Earlier melts and later freezing of winter ice could be part of the reason for reduced caribou populations, scientists said, as normal migration routes to breeding grounds or winter food sources are disrupted. The crash in the caribou population is not unique to Canada with similar declines happening across the north, said Nancy Maynard, an Emeritus Scientist with NASA. The numbers of reindeer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a cousin of the caribou â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in Norway and Russia's eastern regions are also declining rapidly, she said, citing ice melts, increased forest fires linked to warming, and industrial development as possible causes. During the winter months, caribou survive by using their hooves to dig through deep piles of snow to reach lichen and other plants buried underneath. But warmer temperatures have led to winter snow melts or rain on the snow, which later freezes, forming layers of ice interspersed with deep snow. This means the caribou can't break through the ice to forage for food and can sometimes starve due to "pasture lockout", Maynard said. "The changes are happening so fast and it's dramatic how people are forced to cope."

"The rate of change has accelerated and it has been surprising scientists," she said. "Particularly over the last few years, extreme and unpredictable weather has become really noticeable and measurable."

Healthy Eating Imperiled In northern villages like Fort Simpson, caribou hunting isn't just a cultural practice honed over generations, or a marker of indigenous identity, but essential to the local diet. The meat represents a key food source in a region where groceries normally cost more than double southern prices. "People are nutritionally affected by the caribou (decline)," Bob Bromley, a politician said during an interview at the legislature in the territorial capital Yellowknife."They have been raised on caribou and their bodies are adjusted to deal with that kind of food. Store-bought food is not as healthy and usually has higher fat and sugar content than they are used to." With the decline in animal populations, and a reliance on expensive store-bought food, much of the north fares poorly for health indicators. Obesity is rising, physical activity is declining and lifestyle related ailments like diabetes and cancer are increasing across the Northwest Territories, with indigenous people particularly affected, the government said in a 2014 report. It did not provide specific statistics. It's difficult to draw a direct link between negative health indicators and global warming, but residents across the region said they believed there was a connection. In some small communities, people depend on traditional foods for up to a third of what they eat, said Jessie â?Ž 93

The town of Behchoko, an hour's drive north of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, is mostly populated by indigenous members of the Dene Nation, including many who depend on hunting and fishing for their diets.

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Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

Bob Bromley, a Canadian politician and member of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

Mackenzie from the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research."(Almost) every household has someone who hunts or traps for food," the Dene researcher said."The warmer temperatures are causing the caribou to become more food insecure, and we, in turn, become more food insecure." Across northern Canada, the number of people depending on food aid more than doubled between 2008 and 2013, according to a report from Food Banks Canada. More than 3,500 people in Canada's three northern regions — the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories — now depend on food assistance in a "dire public health emergency", the report said. Along with the decline in caribou, high transportation costs of trucking or flying food throughout the Northwest 94

Territories, an area larger than Egypt with a population of less than 50,000, also stoke food insecurity. Vegetables and other fresh foods are particularly expensive, leading some residents to opt for cheaper pasta or canned goods, exacerbating health problems.

Safety Issues When moose, caribou or other large animals are available for hunting, ice melts and changes in the land due to warming are making life harder, and less safe for hunters, residents and scientists said. Many residents hunt on snowmobiles and rely on traditional knowledge of ice thickness to navigate the region's frozen lakes and rivers with four to five feet of snow on the ground in winter. ❮

Moose meat hanging in the Antoine family's kitchen. Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

Deneze Antoine (Jim Antoine's son) lays out moose meat in the family garage. Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

Hunters from the Dene Nation in northern Canada are concerned that climate change is impacting the fish and animals they depend on for food. Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

Members of the indigenous Dene Nation perform a drumming ceremony in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The sprawling area in northern Canada has been hard-hit by climate change as water levels in major rivers are dropping, and animal populations are declining. Photo by Chris Arsenault/Thomson Reuters Foundation

With global warming, the ice in some northern regions isn't freezing as deeply and is melting earlier, said Jamal Shirley, a manager at the Nunavut Research Institute in Canada's northernmost territory. According to Shirley, a number of younger people, who often don't have enough traditional knowledge to know when the ice is safe, have died in recent years by falling through weak ice when fishing. Problems like these can't be blamed on climate change alone, he acknowledged, citing historical trauma faced by indigenous residents due to colonization, language loss, food insecurity and other contributing factors. "With all of these factors occurring at the same time as climate change, it's hard to look at the challenges in isolation," said Shirley."Ultimately, nature is in control here and human

beings are vulnerable." That vulnerability is increasing in some regions, as the weather becomes more erratic due to climate change. Some residents, including Jim Antoine, believe a five degree rise in northern temperatures is likely if current trends continue based on recent rises and the amount of carbon dioxide still being emitted into the atmosphere. Few have faith that their situation will improve following another round of United Nations climate negotiations in Paris in December where the 193 member nations are due to agree on a new global deal to slow climate change. "The countries doing the polluting aren't going to stop," said Antoine. "We aren't the ones causing climate change, but we are the ones living with it."

AROUND THE WORLD IN PHOTOS Kenyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wildlife Photos by Diego Fernandez Gabaldon

KENYAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WILDLIFE Kenya is blessed with many different environments, from snowcapped mountain ranges with cool wooded slopes, to flat savannah plains and deserts, lowland equatorial forests, coasts with mangrove swamps and sandy beaches sheltered by coral reefs. With this variety of natural habitats, it is hardly any wonder that Kenya boasts over a hundred species of mammals, 12 different types of primates, a range of reptiles and more than 1,000 species of birds, including over 75 birds of prey and more than ten different woodpeckers.

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Kenyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diversity of flora also reflects the varying conditions, with many plants adapted to their surroundings, such as the Acacia thorn tree, which withstands the fires and drought of the grasslands. Some families of plants, such as mallows and orchids, thrive across a range of habitats and can be found throughout the country. â?Ž

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Animals and Wildlife in Kenya Kenya offers excellent wildlife viewing. All of the “Big Five” are regularly seen on a standard safari. The Masai Mara is one of the best places in Africa to see big cats and white rhino are easily seen in Lake Nakuru. The Rift Valley lakes, especially Lake Nakuru and Lake Bogoria, attract thousands of flamingos, which feed in the shallow waters. ❮

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Wildebeest Migration The wildebeest migration is one of Africa’s greatest wildlife spectacles. At least two million ungulates – mainly wildebeest, but also zebra and gazelles – move throughout the Mara – Serengeti ecosystem. The crossing of the Mara River is the absolute highlight of the migration. Wildlife Specials Samburu and Meru in the north are home to some interesting localized dry country species. The odd looking gerenuk is often seen standing on its hind legs feeding from dry bushes. The Grevy’s zebra and reticulated giraffe are beautiful variants to the more common species found throughout the region. Tsavo is home to the rare fringeeared oryx. ❮ 111

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Around the World in Photos Kenyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wildlife

Best Time for Wildlife Viewing Kenya offers quality wildlife viewing throughout the year, but for the ultimate game viewing the best times are during the dry season from June to October. This corresponds with the time the wildebeest migration takes place in the Masai Mara. The exact timing depends upon rainfall, but it's typically in August that the wildebeest migration reaches the northern Serengeti and they begin to cross into the Masai Mara. In October they make their move back into the Serengeti. These months are high season for tourism. The parks are much quieter during the low season and prices are more competitive as well. â?Ž 117

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Around the World in Photos Kenyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wildlife

Mammals you May or May not Know Safari tourists can see the common predators and grazers, such as giraffes, zebra and antelope in abundance. But Kenya is also home to a number of lesser known species. For example, the lucky visitor may see large cats such as the spotted and striped serval or the tuft-eared caracal (Caracal caracal), a kind of lynx. Into the Water Other unusual animals include omnivores like the civet and genet (both relatives of the mongoose), termite-eaters such as the aardvark and pangolin, rodents such as the jumping hare and giant forest squirrel and rock and tree hyraxes. The latter look like rodents, but are in fact ungulates (hoofed animals) and their closest living relative is the mighty elephant. In the marine environment, the dugong lives in the shallows around the Lamu Archipelago. The coastal region contains an abundance of fish, with important coral areas protected by reserves. As with Kenyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birds, many marine species are wonderfully colourful, like the butterfly and angelfish. Larger and less conspicuous underwater residents include eels, octopus and barracudas. Kenya has four species of turtle â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the green, hawksbill, loggerhead and giant leatherback. Privately initiated projects to protect egg sites and release baby turtles back into the sea are preserving these populations. 123

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“At the end of the day, no amount of investing, no amount of clean electrons, no amount of energy efficiency will save the natural world if we are not paying attention to it — if we are not paying attention to all the things that nature gives us for free: clean air, clean water, breathtaking vistas, mountains for skiing, rivers for fishing, oceans for sailing, sunsets for poets, and landscapes for painters. What good is it to have wind-powered lights to brighten the night if you can't see anything green during the day? Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.” — Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America

BIODIVERSITY

Magazine New Scientific Study Finds Coral Reefs Under Attack From Chemical In Sunscreen ...................................................130 Published in the Journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology

Easter Island ...................................................133 By Cathy Chami Tyan

Published in the Journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology

New Scientific Study Finds Coral Reefs Under Attack From Chemical in Sunscreen A new study published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology has found that a chemical widely used in personal care products such as sunscreen, poses an ecological threat to corals and coral reefs and threatens their existence.

Panel A is a normal, healthy juvenile coral (also called a planula). It is about 5 mm in length. Panel B is a coral exposed to oxybenzon for 8 hours. Used with permission from Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.

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Oxybenzone (also known as BP-3; Benzophenone-3) is found in over 3,500 sunscreen products worldwide, and pollutes coral reefs from swimmers wearing sunscreens and through wastewater discharges from municipal sewage outfalls and from coastal septic systems. Oxybenzone has already been identified as a threat to human health. The European Union’s International Chemical Secretariat has listed oxybenzone on its “Substitute It Now” list of substances that should be replaced and meets the criteria for

“Substances of Very High Concern.” The study comes less than two weeks after National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared the third ever global coral bleaching event and warned that locally produced threats to coral, such as pollution, stress the health of corals and decrease the likelihood that they will resist bleaching, or recover from it. Toxicopathological effects of the sunscreen UV filter, oxybenzone on coral planulae demonstrates that exposure of coral planulae (baby ❮

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MAGAZINE

coral) to oxybenzone, produces gross morphological deformities, damages their DNA, and, most alarmingly, acts as an endocrine disruptor. The latter causes the coral to encase itself in its own skeleton leading to death. These effects were observed as low as 62 parts per trillion, the equivalent to a drop of water in six and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools. Measurements of oxybenzone in seawater within coral reefs in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands found concentrations ranging from 800 parts per trillion to 1.4 parts per million. This is over 12 times higher than the concentrations necessary to impact on coral. A team of marine scientists from Virginia, Florida, Israel, the National Aquarium (US) and the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, undertook the study. Lead author Dr. Craig Downs of Haereticus Environmental Laboratory Virginia, said, “The use of oxybenzone-containing products needs to be seriously deliberated in 132

islands and areas where coral reef conservation is a critical issue. We have lost at least 80% of the coral reefs in the Caribbean. Any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers. Everyone wants to build coral nurseries for reef restoration, but this will achieve little if the factors that originally killed off the reef remain or intensify in the environment.” The study found that oxybenzone is a photo-toxicant with adverse impacts exacerbated in light but even in darkness, planulae were transformed from a motile (mobile) state to a deformed, sessile (immobile) condition and exhibited an increasing rate of coral bleaching in response to increasing concentrations of oxybenzone. This is particularly relevant for areas facing mass bleaching events including Hawaii. Between 6,000 and 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion are emitted into coral reef areas each year, much of which contains between one and

10% oxybenzone. The authors estimate that this puts at least 10% of global reefs at risk of high exposure, based on reef distribution in coastal tourist areas. This study is one of less than twodozen scientific studies that closely examine the impact of personalcare product ingredients on marine organisms and habitats. According to MarineSafe, a campaign concerned with the impact of these products on ocean health, there may be as many as 82,000 chemicals polluting our marine environments, just from personal care use. Professor Alex Rogers of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean at Oxford University, which established MarineSafe said, “Far too little attention is paid to the chemicals entering the ocean and their destructive impact. We need better understanding, testing and management to ensure that we are not eroding vital ocean resilience through the careless use of marinetoxic chemicals.” IPSO’s 2012 State of the Ocean report called for action to “prevent, reduce and strictly control inputs of substances that are harmful or toxic to marine organisms into the marine environment”, recognizing its critical role in eroding the resilience of the ocean to the impacts of climate change. Since the 1970s, coral reefs have been devastated on a global scale. Regional weather and climate events are often the cause of widescale mortality but the long-term causative processes of sustained demise are often locality specific and increasingly thought to be linked to pollution. Oxybenzone is found in a range of products from lipstick and mascara to sunscreen and shampoo, it acts as a barrier to UV light, a task for which other ingredients are available.

By Cathy Chami Tyan

Easter Island

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Proposal by Rapa Nui Community Leads to One of the Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Largest Marine Protected Areas

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Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

As a World Heritage site long recognized for its cultural significance, Easter Island is also celebrated as one of the world's most important marine habitats and for its ecological significance.

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Photo by Max Bello

World renowned Moai statues of Easter Island.

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Photo by Mazerack

World-renowned for its Moai statues, Easter Islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waters are also celebrated as one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most unique ocean areas.

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Biodiversity

Easter Island is home to rich geological features, such as the extinct volcano Rano Kau.

“This marine park will not only conserve the many species that call the waters of Easter Island home but also the tradition of our Polynesian ancestors and the Rapa Nui people,” says Pedro Edmunds Paoa, Easter Island’s mayor. “The park will be complemented by a fishing area that will allow our ancient practice of tapu — or smart fisheries management — to endure.” The highly anticipated announcement at the Our Ocean conference of the Chilean Government’s plans to set up a marine park around Easter Island was welcomed by conservation groups including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Bertarelli Foundation who played a key role in the process. At 631,368 square kilometers (243,630 square miles), the new marine park will be the thirdlargest fully protected area of ocean in the world. Creation of the marine park will help combat illegal fishing — a problem that has been detected by satellite monitoring of activity in Chilean waters as part of a joint project supported by Pew and The Bertarelli Foundation. The indigenous community of Easter Island — or Rapa Nui, as the island, ❮ 139

Fish depend on the healthy corals found in Easter Islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waters.

Photo by Geografica

Easter Island is home to many endemic species, including the Easter Island butterfly fish.

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Butterfly fish flourish in Easter Island’s waters.

its indigenous people, and their language are known — proposed for the park to safeguard the biodiversity of the island’s waters, which are home to 142 endemic species, 27 of which are threatened or endangered. The park will also help the Rapa Nui continue centuries old subsistence fishing practices within an area that extends 50 nautical miles from the shoreline. The Rapa Nui community has become increasingly concerned with threats to their ocean environment such as marine pollution, illegal fishing, and the loss of traditional fishing practices. In September 2014, the Municipality and 20 local organizations met at the Rapa Nui Ocean Town Hall where it was decided that the waters of the entire province needed to be protected. Since then, an Ocean Round Table, including representatives from local fishing associations, has been working over the past several months to determine the ideal way to conserve the island’s waters. Their work has focused on strong ocean protection and management of ancestral shore and pelagic fisheries. In fact, Rapa Nui fishing groups have proposed fully protecting about 700,000 square kilometers of Easter Island’s waters, while leaving a band around the island open to local fishermen. ❮ 143

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

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Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Easter Island is home to a myriad of marine species, including 142 found only in its waters.

Photo by Geografica

Rapa Nui butterfly fish are native to Easter Island's waters.

Research and progress toward the park was made possible with the support of The Bertarelli Foundation, which has made significant investments in securing other large-scale protected areas. Dona Bertarelli’s support enabled the largest scientific assessment ever completed of the island’s marine environment, an economic analysis of the impact of a marine park, education and training for the

local population, the facilitation of cultural exchanges with other native Polynesian people, and assistance with monitoring for illegal fishing activities. “This is an exciting breakthrough, and I’m very proud of the role the Foundation has been able to play in supporting the Rapa Nui’s campaign and bringing this about,” Bertarelli, Chair of the Foundation said. “Rebuilding ocean resilience ❮ 147

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

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Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Easter Island hosts over 142 species, including the Chinese Trumpetfish.

through protected areas is a crucial contribution to wider ocean health, in addition to securing the unique habitats of Easter Island for future generations.” In January 2015, Chile participated in the launch of Pew’s Project Eyes on the Seas. Developed in partnership with the U.K.-based Satellite Applications Catapult, this innovative satellite technology can be used to monitor marine reserves remotely and detect suspicious activity within moments of it happening. An enforcement plan for the new park is still to be determined but high hopes are being placed on this newly protected area. Some 4,000 kilometers (2,500miles) west of Chile’s mainland, the largely unexplored waters of Easter Island are an oasis in the nutrient-poor Pacific and known to contain biological hotspots—including the only hydrothermal vents in Chilean waters. The area is also an important spawning ground for many species, including tuna, sharks, marlins, and swordfish. “The ocean is the basis of our culture and our livelihood”, continued the mayor of Easter Island. “The Rapa Nui community is immensely proud of this marine park, which will protect our waters for generations to come.” 151

Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Easter Island is home to many endemic species, including the Easter Island butterfly fish.

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Photo by Eduardo Sorenson of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Fishermen engaged in traditional Rapa Nui fishing wrap monofilament fishing line around rocks and then lower the hand-caught bait to the right depth in the water. Typically, they use a single hook, the size and shape determined by the species of fish being targeted. Once the Rapa Nui reach their fishing spot â&#x20AC;&#x201D; often passed down from generation to generation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they throw the lines over the side of the boat. The rocks pull the line and hook toward the ocean floor before eventually becoming loose and falling off. 154

“My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Magazine Lebanon’s Garbage Protests: The Genie’s out of the Bottle............156 By Tita Najjar

Garbage burning in the summer heat set many Lebanese to protest against the government's waste management policy as well as broader socio-economic issues plaguing the country.

Waste Management By Tita Najjar

Lebanon’s Garbage Protests: The Genie’s out of the Bottle The 2015 calendar featured an extra season: the “zbele” (waste) season. In the wake of the Naameh landfill south of Beirut closing on July 17, garbage quickly started piling up in the capital. With the usual summer heat and humidity, Beirut became unbearable. Once the garbage was set on fire, the air became toxic and streetscapes filled with smoke – a somewhat apocalyptic scenario. It could easily have been avoided but once again the representatives of the people of Lebanon, did not fulfill their mandate. After all, the relevant government departments were well aware that the contract with Sukleen, the company contracted to remove garbage in Beirut, was coming to termination, and that this was coinciding with the closure of the Naameh landfill where the capital’s waste had been dumped since 1998. Waste deposited there had in fact exceeded the planned 2 tons, reaching a staggering 15 tons. Over the years, residents had often voiced their anger and blocked Sukleen trucks, demanding a long-term solution. Within days of the closure of Naameh and the ensuing garbage crisis, protests started to erupt, in Beirut and then elsewhere too. The stench catapulted groups of activists into action and would soon receive the support of a diverse, distinctly non-sectarian crowd, which rapidly grew from a defiant dozen to exceeding fifty thousand during large protests in late August.

Long-Standing SocioEconomic Grievances “The current protest movement is a culmination of a series of reform

activities after the formal end of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) which did not resolve historical demands of Lebanese to achieve various political, social, and economic rights including eliminating the discriminatory sectarian system and establishing rights for education, health, and secure care for the elderly,” Dr Sami Ofeish, based in the Department of Political Sciences & International Affairs at the University of Balamand put forward. He added that the current protests developed in response to the deteriorating conditions for the populace from 1990, including increasing poverty and higher unemployment. “It was mainly triggered by the current waste crisis, continuing for around 100 days now, where the state proved unable to collect garbage from the streets, resulting in various health hazards that may turn more catastrophic with the coming winter season. The state’s inability to address this crisis was due to chronic corruption and its failure to enact sound environmental steps that will address this issue drastically.” Parallel to the protests, various social groups adopted specific causes. While the trigger may have been the garbage crisis, demands rapidly encompassed broader issues such as progressive environmental policies, a sustainable waste management plan, a new electoral law, holding parliamentary elections, accountability and transparency for tenders and for the Minister of Environment to step down, to name a few.

Achievements What has been achieved nearly two months and many protests, sit-ins and events later, most marred by police violence? According to an overview published online by Executive Magazine (October 13, 2015), one of the key achievements of Shabab 22 Ab (August 22 Youth), one of the grassroots movements or “facilitators”, is their broadening the public sphere by interviewing youths from various religious and social communities, including marginalized ones and sharing the clips through social media. They have been focusing on waste management and teaching recycling methods to empower poorer communities to take charge of the waste issue. While the government and various parties repeatedly tried to discredit protesters or to hijack the movement to their own ends, not a single public service announcement, to encourage waste reduction and a change in consumption patterns has been issued by the Ministry of Environment since the beginning of the garbage crisis. This would have been the perfect opportunity to fast-track progressive legislation such as banning certain plastic bags and making customers pay for them but the Ministry failed to seize it, likely due to the significant revenue it has been generating from over-priced garbage removal tenders. Instead, efforts were made to get poor communities in the North to take on waste from the capital. Manna Mazbale (Akkar is Not a Dumpster) have been receiving support from Bedna Nhasseb (We Want ❮ 157

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Accountability), another active group, in resisting Akkar becoming the sanitary dumping ground for waste from Beirut and Mount Lebanon. They used the rare media presence in their region to raise issues around the much-neglected North’s potential notably as an eco-tourism destination. Among the demands made by Tolaet Rihitkom (You Stink), is the municipality-level system while implementing nationwide recycling, adopting an immediate eco-friendly solution to the garbage crisis and environmental degradation caused by it, and for the government to introduce “bidding terms” that are acceptable by environmental experts. The overall plan should include sustainable solutions (no for burying, no for incineration, no for land fills in the sea). Furthermore, the group required everyone who caused the crisis to be held accountable, and open a transparent investigation about all the money that has been wasted and/or stolen. The protests held on August 22 and in the following days were marked by excessive use of tear gas and police violence. As a result the grassroots movements demanded the resignation of Mohammad Al Mashnouq, the Minister of Environment and those responsible for the violence to be held accountable. Although a sit-in was held in the Ministry of Environment and plenty of footage was taken and circulated, including of members of the press being attacked by police force, these demands have not been met.

The Genie is Out of the Bottle Bedna Nhasseb did focus on corruption and was instrumental in countering Nicolas Chammas’, Head of the Beirut Traders Association’s concern that the city center, where 158

the protests happened, would be claimed by “Abou Rakhousa”, a derogatory term for poorer folks. Bedna Nhasseb countered by organizing two hugely successful “Abou Rakhousa” markets, during which second hand items were sold cheaply or traded, stalls with affordable goods were set up, food and beverages were sold as well as plenty of brooms, mops and cleaning detergents. This was not a hipster yard sale but a genuine coming together of Beirutis of all ages, many of them admitting not having been in the city center for very many years. “Abou Rakhousa” markets were a point in case for the spirit of the protest facilitators and protesters: razor-sharp humor and bold responses, shooting from the hip and making use of social media. Indeed the placards brought along to protests derided the government in no uncertain terms: “I wish my girlfriend was as dirty as our politicians,” one poster read. It feels indeed, as if the genie was let out of the bottle and refuses to get back in with plenty of examples of civil disobedience at its best: “The protest movement, receiving significant popular support, pushed for various reform demands, including reclaiming public space on Lebanon’s coast occupied illegally by private investors throughout the years,” Ofeish commented. “Although youth had constituted the bulk of the activists who clashed with the police, the movement included members of different generations including children along with their parents looking for a brighter Lebanon based on social equality.” “ I have been a supporter and a consultant on environmental matters for the You Stink movement,” Ziad Abi Chaker of Cedar Environmental Co. underlined. “As a citizen, I can safely say that the movement has broken the status quo and that no issues are taboo anymore and everything is being

discussed in the open, in the media and on the social networks. We witnessed issues of corruption being openly spoken about with names being named and the whole nine yards. As a political observer I can see a third alternative to the March 8 and 14 movements crystallizing and disgruntled citizens from both 8 and 14 are rallying to the movement and we did see lots of them in the many streets demos.”

Dreams and Solutions “My ultimate dream is that the pressure is kept both in the street and in the media/social media to have a new electoral law based on proportionality and the whole country as one electoral district,” Abi Chaker put forward. “The best thing to happen to the garbage file is the government finally acknowledging that a true solution lies in a wide scale decentralization plan where municipalities are given back their vital role.” He added that the main points of the plan stipulate that all garbage that has been thrown in open dumps must be collected, local municipalities must take over responsibility of sweeping, collecting garbage and recycling, and that clear conditions on waste management must be put in place by the Ministry of Environment, supervised by the Ministry of Interior, civil society organizations and environmental experts. Besides behavior change with regards to consumption patterns, encouraging citizens who watched the protests, glued to their television to overcome their fear of participation and join in the protests and civic action, is the ultimate challenge the grassroots movements face and that will determine their success. “We live in happy times,” a regular protester nonetheless professed.

Illegal dumping has been taking place for many years all over Lebanon. Once it started happening in Beirut, many Lebanese realized the severity of the problem. And their government's incompetence.

UPCOMING ENVIRONMENTAL EVENTS December January

February

March

30 November/ 11 December 2015 COP21 — UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change www.unfccc.int

1/3 February 2016 7th International Conference on Environmental Science and Development — ICESD www.icesd.org

2/3 March 2016 Ajman 4th International Environment Conference 2016: Smart Cities and Green Innovation www.aiec2016.org

Paris, France 7/8 December 2015 Sustainable Innovation Forum 2015 www.cop21paris.org

Paris, France

8/9 January 2016 Samhit ’16 — Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) www.nuv.ac.in

Vadodara, Gujarat, India

Ajman, UAE

Rome, Italy 16 March 2016 The 6th Build It Green — Lebanon Annual Sustainability Solutions Conference www.BigLeb.com

19 January 2016 IIER — 35th International Conference on Natural Science and Environment (ICNSE) www.theiier.org

27 February 2016 ISERD — 25th International Conference on Environment and Natural Science (ICENS) www.iserd.co

Miami, USA

Istanbul, Turkey

Monroe Hotel Beirut, Lebanon

25/26 January 2016 Solar & Wind Projects, specialized conference www.solarandwindproject sjordan.com

Amman, Jordan

April

May

June

July

19/22 April 2016 The First International Conference of Genetics and Its role in life science development, “Applications and Future prospects” www.icg2016.webs.com

18/20 May 2016 Sustainable Tourism 2016 www.wessex.ac.uk

16/18 June 2016 ARCHDESIGN ’16 / 3rd Architectural Design Conference www.archdesignconference .com

13/15 July 2016 22nd International Sustainable Development Research Society Conference www.isdrsconference.org

Istanbul, Turkey

Lisbon, Portugal

Alexandria, Egypt

Valencia, Spain 30/31 May 2016 11th International Energy Conference 2016 www.irannec.com

Tehran, Iran 31 May/ 3 June 2016 Project Lebanon www.projectlebanon.com

Beirut, Lebanon 160