South Sudan Faces Severe Flooding Due to Climate Change

The consequences of climate change have already ravaged communities across the globe, with the poor dealing with the brunt of the damage. Record-breaking floods in South Sudan have proven that the young nation is no exception. 

Children fetching water during flooding. United Nations. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. 

Devastated by the repercussions of civil war and an acute poverty problem, South Sudan faces yet another alarming episode in its ongoing humanitarian crisis. For the past six months, South Sudan has faced the worst flooding that the region has seen in 100 years. Since June 2020, the nation has been overwhelmed by rapid flooding of the Nile, Pibor and Sobat rivers. Humanitarian experts found that over 1 million people have been affected, with nearly half of these victims originating in Jonglei state. 

Jonglei has easily become the worst area hit by these floods, with entire villages submerged if not entirely washed away. So far, the count for those displaced is nearing 500,000. The floods have ruined farmland and drowned cattle, causing both short- and long-term threats to communities; nearly 90% of South Sudanese rely on farming for income. The displaced have been left to swim through chest-deep waters in search of aid to fight famine or waterborne diseases that are exacerbated by the floods. Those affected now wait eagerly for medical aid by humanitarian agencies, taking themselves and their families to higher and drier land. 

Street flooding. nafeersudan. CC BY 2.0. 

Although South Sudan has always experienced a dramatic rainy season, weather data shows that climate change has profoundly contributed to the record-breaking floods of this past year. Increased precipitation found in nearby areas increased the water flowing through the nation’s rivers, thereby increasing the flooding that ravages the country. Not only has climate change increased the severity of the flooding, but it has reduced the communities’ abilities to recover. Since 1980, an increased annual temperature has rendered the nation’s dry season even drier, which has fed into the area’s social, political and economic instability. With unprecedented flooding now in full swing, the nation’s weak infrastructure has now broken under the pressure. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has also aggravated both the damage among villagers as well as aid availability. Pandemic regulations have restricted help from other countries; due to lack of funding, victims are unable to decipher which disease they are suffering from. Relief packages by humanitarian agencies such as Cordaid have arrived in Bor, the capital of Jonglei state. Aid workers have expressed extreme stress with the current situation, many voicing concerns that an inability to meet long-term solutions will result in harsh consequences. For instance, aid workers have advised that a reliable clean water supply is essential; otherwise the availability of drinking water will continue to diminish rapidly. 

A battle between climate change and humanitarian efforts has characterized the history of this new nation. South Sudan has a long road ahead, but there is hope that stability will be regained and long-awaited peace will finally be restored. 

---

RELATED CONTENT:

South Sudan Continues to Face Starvation Crisis

These 5 Major Cities are Sinking Rapidly into the Sea

‘Climigration’: When Communities Must Move Because of Climate Change

---

Ella Nguyen

Ella is an undergraduate student at Vassar College pursuing a degree in Hispanic Studies. She wants to assist in the field of immigration law and hopes to utilize Spanish in her future projects. In her free time she enjoys cooking, writing poetry, and learning about cosmetics.

The Global Coffee Crisis Takes its Toll on Small Farmers

While the world’s most craved caffeinated beverage has become a beloved staple, not many people know how its production has affected the people behind the scenes.

Coffee. Mckaysavage. CC BY 2.0

Today the coffee industry is considered big business, with an annual revenue of around $200 billion. Global demand for coffee is on a steady incline, increasing by 2% each year. Americans’ demand alone has risen 3% in the last four years, and the country’s citizens drink a whopping 400 million cups of it daily. But if demand for this beverage is so high, why are the people who produce and cultivate it in a state of poverty?

Cappuccino. Mckaysavage. CC BY 2.0

The industry has always been in a perpetual state of change, with prices rising and falling depending on demand. But in 2019 another coffee crisis hit when Brazil, the world’s top producer of coffee, flooded the market with large amounts of its product. This dropped global coffee prices to the lowest point in over a decade, far below the minimum that a small farmer needs in order to break even. Gradually, small farms in Latin America are going out of business while big producers from Brazil and Vietnam are becoming suppliers’ go-to sources.

Freshly picked coffee beans. Mckaysavage. CC BY 2.0

Eighty percent of the world’s coffee is produced by 25 million small farms spread across the world. These farmers have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of coffee cultivation, and rely on the income they receive from the annual harvest to survive. Over half of the growers in Central America and Mexico, though, have reported difficulty getting enough food to feed their families.

Coffee plantation. Mikefats. CC BY 2.0

Coffee drying in Colombia. CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture. CC BY-SA 2.0

There are about 100 different coffee species on Earth. The few that are cultivated on farms are mostly robusta, commonly known for making instant and espresso coffee, and Arabica, the smoother and more expensive coffee. Colombia, the world’s third-largest coffee producer, demonstrates the difficulties of relying on these two types of coffee plants. With the rise in global temperatures impending coffee’s growth, bacteria and fungi like “coffee rust” have become more common, devastating crops. Infrequent and sporadic rain patterns have become a big worry among growers, as coffee is very specific in terms of how much water it needs. 

Coffee beans in Colombia. Mckaysavage. CC BY 2.0

There are many things that Colombian growers can do to help protect their crops, such as planting shade trees to keep plants cool and to stabilize the soil. They can also shift their entire crops uphill to higher elevations that can keep them from overheating. Farmers have also been switching their usual crop with a more resilient plant, a hybrid with some of the unused wild species. The biggest issue with these changes is that it takes money that many farmers do not have. One coffee farmer in Colombia stated that, “Nowadays coffee production is equivalent to losing money.”

Beans. Mckaysavage. CC BY 2.0

For farmers to continue producing coffee, more of the revenue gained from increased consumption must go back into the hands of the people who grow it. More revenue for farmers will allow them to fight back against climate change, letting them continue the generational line of work that has become, in essence, a part of them.

---

RELATED CONTENT:

Practice Sustainable Coffee Farming in Costa Rica

Ghana’s Cocoa Farmers are Trapped by the Chocolate Industry

Fighting to Keep Mexico’s Floating Farms Alive

---

Yuliana Rocio

Yuliana is currently a Literature/Writing major at the University of California San Diego. Yuliana likes to think of herself as a lover of words and a student of the world. She loves to read, swim, and paint in her free time. She spent her youth as part of a travel-loving family and has grown up seeking adventure. She hopes to develop her writing skills, creating work that reflects her voice and her fierce passion for activism.

As Glaciers Disappear, Scientists Struggle to Preserve the Ice

By the second half of the 21st century, there may not be any glaciers left. Despite this grim prospect, scientists are working to preserve what they can of glaciers around the world.

Ice breaking off from a glacier in Alaska. Schmid Reportagen. CC BY 2.0. 

Around the world, glaciers are disappearing at unprecedented rates. In the past five years, Swiss glaciers have shrunk more than 10%. In the Himalayas, glaciers are melting at a rate double that of the last century. If current estimates are accurate, most glaciers around the world will be completely gone by the second half of the 21st century. As indicators of global warming, melting glaciers illustrate the catastrophic effects of climate change. Scientists are working to preserve glaciers in a multitude of ways before the last of the glaciers vanish. 

Ice core drilling. Helle Astrid Kjaær. CC BY 2.0. 

Ice Memory 

Headed by the French and Italian National Commissions of UNESCO, the Ice Memory project aims to preserve and archive glacier ice. Mountain glaciers are phenomenal natural records and contain a physical history of atmospheric composition. Preserving these records of the climate and environment is the goal of this project, which aims to collect ice core samples from 20 of the world’s most prolific glaciers before they disappear. The Ice Memory project plans to maintain an archive of ice cores in a repository in Antarctica to ensure the long-term preservation of the heritage of ice. 

Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, the site of the original Carbfix project. Sigrg. CC BY 2.0. 

Carbfix

Icelandic glaciologist Oddur Sigurdsson has predicted that Iceland’s 300 or so glaciers will be gone within 200 years. However, Icelandic environmental engineers are working on a promising new method called Carbfix which captures atmospheric carbon dioxide and pumps the greenhouse gas underground, where the gas mineralizes in less than two years in an effort to capture carbon emissions. The relocation of carbon emissions below ground helps to mitigate climate change, which in turn prevents glacial melt. The goal of the project is to transform CO2 into something that “stays buried underground as rock forever,” says Edda Arradóttir, Carbfix’s project manager. 

The Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps. Jam Cib. CC BY 2.0. 

Glacier Blankets 

Each winter for the past decade, Swiss residents near the Rhone Glacier have covered their neighboring glacier in white canvas blankets that reflect sunlight away from the ice. While over 131 feet of this glacier has disappeared in the past 10 years, Swiss glaciologist David Volken believes that this preservation technique is working. The blankets, as he told Agence France-Presse, have reduced the ice melt by almost 70%. While this technique is not a long-term solution, scientists are researching how to further utilize the sunlight-reflection technique in protecting glaciers across the Alps. 

---

RELATED CONTENT:

Explore Glaciers in Patagonia

Future Memories

Glacier Hunting in the Pacific Northwest

---

Sarah Leidich

Sarah is currently an English and Film major at Barnard College of Columbia University. Sarah is inspired by global art in every form, and hopes to explore the intersection of activism, art, and storytelling through her writing.

Land Witness Project Fights Climate Change in New Mexico

New Mexico is one of the states most vulnerable to climate change. The Land Witness Project shares stories of how climate change has impacted New Mexico communities and what needs to be done to prevent its effects. 

New Mexico wildfires. National Interagency Fire Center. CC PDM 1.0 

The time to reverse the environmental damage caused by humans is now. Climate change is worsening, and the window to mitigate and undo the harm to our environment narrows every day. The Land Witness Project, which launched in September, is a collection of stories from people with “deep emotional and physical ties to New Mexico” about the way climate change has impacted their lives. 

Focus areas of the project, according to its website, are water, temperature, snowfall and fire. New Mexico is one of the states in the U.S. most vulnerable to climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a 2016 article that climate change alters weather patterns that impact temperature, water availability and weather extremes in New Mexico. Average annual temperatures in the state have increased 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, causing hotter summers, shorter and less predictable winters, and early springs. Early springs mean earlier snowmelt, which leads to low stream flows during later, more environmentally and economically critical, parts of the year. Since the article was published in 2016, New Mexico’s climate situation has only grown more dire. 

The Land Witness Project shares stories from New Mexicans about “families and traditions, doubt and worry, land and water, and love and commitment” from ranchers, farmers, conservationists, business owners and environmental justice activists. The project is inclusive, with stories from a diverse range of New Mexicans, including Indigenous communities. Beata Tsosie-Pena, a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, is one of the first people whose story is up on the website. Over 80% of Santa Clara Pueblo’s tribal lands have been lost due to wildfires, and Tsosie-Pena describes how long-term drought and nuclear weapons production are factors in this loss of land. Tsosie-Pena also discusses how Indigenous people are both more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and uniquely positioned to offer solutions to climate change that could benefit everyone. 

The Land Witness Project was funded by 350 New Mexico and the Isora Foundation. 350 New Mexico’s goal is to create an inclusive movement to prevent climate change and climate injustice in New Mexico while allowing New Mexicans to fight the fossil fuel industry and transition to renewable energy. The Isora Foundation is an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based family foundation that aims to empower individuals to make positive change within their communities in areas like health, social justice, education and economic development. 

The Land Witness Project is accepting submissions of stories about how New Mexico communities are impacted by climate change, which can be sent in through their website here. In addition to providing firsthand accounts about climate change in order to inspire change, the project’s website has a list of resources for how individuals can get involved in the fight, including volunteer opportunities and organizations seeking donations.

---

RELATED CONTENT:

4 Ways Climate Change Is Affecting Food Security Right Now

The Eco-Friendly Genius of 'Earthships' | That's Amazing

---

Rachel Lynch

Rachel is a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY currently taking a semester off. She plans to study Writing and Child Development. Rachel loves to travel and is inspired by the places she’s been and everywhere she wants to go. She hopes to educate people on social justice issues and the history and culture of travel destinations through her writing.

Geopolitical Tensions Hinder Climate Science in the Himalayas

The Himalayas remain one of the most susceptible regions in the world to climate change.

A lake in the Himalayas. Kishor. CC2.0

In order to address the imminent threat of climate change in the Himalayan region, environmental ministers from eight countries had hoped to meet in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu in April. Organized by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), it had taken over two years of convincing environmental leaders to work together as geopolitical tensions in the region continued to rise. An assessment conducted by ICIMOD reveals that the Himalayas are predicted to lose more than one-third of their ice caps by the end of the century, underscoring the importance of international collaboration on this issue. The event ended up being canceled, though, due to the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Passing through Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, the Himalayas act as a barrier between countries. Home to four of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots and more than 35,000 plant and 200 animal species, the Himalayan region is one of the most biodiverse in the world. The Himalayas also contain the world’s third-largest ice deposits (after Antarctica and the Arctic) with over 15,000 glaciers scattered throughout the region. These glaciers, known as the “water towers of Asia,”  are the starting points for many of Asia’s largest rivers, such as the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Mekong, and help sustain over 2 billion people. 

Overflowing glacial lakes pose severe risks for mountain communities, as rising water levels from melted ice caps result in floods of water, ice and rocks down mountainsides, washing away homes, infrastructure and crops. Lake Imja in particular, a high-altitude lake near Mount Everest in Nepal, poses a threat to Sherpa communities living in the mountain valleys. 

A red panda, one of many species endemic to the Himalayan region. Ducker. CC2.0

From a geopolitical standpoint, the Himalayas have served as a political and cultural buffer between India and China since ancient times, which resulted in little interaction between their cultures and governments. As the Himalayas were considered impassable for much of history, the delineation of international borders was not given much importance until recently. Currently, however, nearly all of their 2,500-mile border is disputed. One of the most contested regions is Ladakh in northern India, where the most violent clashes in the last 45 years have recently occurred between India and China. Another region is the Mahakali river basin in northwestern Nepal, which acts as a meeting point between Nepal, India and China. The Himalayan region is also one of the most heavily militarized in the world. 

Dhankar village in India’s Spiti Valley. The Adventurous b3n. CC2.0

Despite the urgency of current climate science research and political action, scientific progress in the region continues to suffer. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth assessment report in 2007, the entire Himalayan region was listed as a “black hole” for data. Although governments tried to address the problem, there still has not been much action, with similar concerns in the IPCC’s fifth assessment report published in 2014. One of the major difficulties is weak data-sharing between countries, which is fraught with secrecy. Although scientists advocate for open data-sharing between countries, many governments disregard their requests for national security reasons. “To be frank, scientific culture doesn’t have deep roots in this region,” says Dipak Gyawali, Nepal’s former water resources minister. “Countries think somebody else will use the science that they are doing. That is wrong. Science ultimately benefits others beyond borders.”

Climate change remains one of the most existential threats to humanity. Working together to address transnational environmental issues in the Himalayas will not only protect its fragile ecosystems but will also foster diplomacy and peace between nations in a politically volatile part of the world. 

Megan Gürer

is a Turkish-American student at Wellesley College in Massachusetts studying Biological Sciences. Passionate about environmental issues and learning about other cultures, she dreams of exploring the globe. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, singing, and composing music.

Activists from the Marshall Islands Fight to Save Their Home

The Marshall Islands are facing the catastrophic effects of climate change. In this climate-vulnerable country, local activists are working to save their nation. 

A beach in the Marshall Islands. Pik Repo. CC BY 2.0. 

The Marshall Islands, one of the smallest countries on Earth, comprises more than 1,200 islands in the central Pacific Ocean. After decades under U.S. control, the Marshall Islands became independent in 1986, though the islands are still home to key test sites in the U.S. missile defense network. This tiny island nation has a population of just under 78,000, with the majority of islanders living on the atolls of Majuro and Ebeye. 

The Marshall Islands are incredibly climate vulnerable. Over the past several decades, this low-lying nation has become overwhelmed by rising sea levels. In October 2019, the Marshall Islands officially declared a climate crisis. Without policy and tangible action needed to prevent rising sea levels, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that sea levels could rise up to 4 feet by 2100, which would make the Marshall Islands uninhabitable by 2050. 

Leading the fight for global leaders to take action is Marshallese youth climate activist Litokne Kabua. Kabua is leading a group of 16 youth activists, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, in petitioning the United Nations to engage with the catastrophic effects of climate change on the Marshall Islands. Under the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child, countries have an obligation to protect the lives of children. Because of the imminent threat of the climate crisis, these conditions are at risk. Through this rationale, youth activists have submitted a petition demanding that nations combat climate change rapidly and actively. 

In an op-ed for The Elders, Kabua writes: “Climate change will play a big role in destroying the future of our children, all of our children, and the children of future generations. If we take action today, while climate change will not go away it could still reduce to a significant level allowing us to live and prosper, we could still live a sustainable life.”

Hilda Heine, former president of the Marshall Islands, giving a speech. Sean Wu. CC BY 2.0. 

The former president of the Marshall Islands, Hilda Heine, is another global advocate for the islands. In an interview with NPR, Heine said:  “Prolonged and unseasonal droughts are hitting us real hard, and salt water is creeping into our freshwater lands. We are on the very front line of climate change. We need resources. We need support.”

The Marshall Islands are struggling with the catastrophic ramifications of climate change. Without immediate change, the islands face submersion. But in efforts to preserve their island nation, activists like Litokne Kabua and Hilda Heine are working fiercely to champion their home. 

Sarah Leidich

is currently an English and Film major at Barnard College of Columbia University. Sarah is inspired by global art in every form, and hopes to explore the intersection of activism, art, and storytelling through her writing. 

Greenland Analyzes Sovereignty Options as Climate Change Alters Nation’s Future

As temperatures continue to climb around the globe as a result of climate change, Greenland, an island nation of approximately 56,000 residents, has found itself at a social, political, economic and environmental crossroads. The Danish autonomous territory is the world’s largest island and is home to an ice sheet which extends for approximately 656,000 square miles, enough solid water which, if melted, could raise sea levels by 24 feet.

This figure is alarming given that between 1992 and 2018, Greenland lost 3.8 trillion tons of ice due to rising temperatures. However, while other countries brace themselves for the impact of rising sea levels, Greenland stands to benefit economically from climate change. While the loss of ice has already hurt the livelihoods of Indigenous hunters and the potential for infrastructure projects which rely on a layer of permafrost, other areas of Greenland’s economy, including agriculture, fishing and potential mineral deposits, have benefited from the changing climate.

This has raised questions surrounding Greenland’s status as an autonomous territory within Denmark. While the island has historically remained under Danish control due to a lack of industry, the potential for an economically independent Greenland has raised questions as to what the future for the nation holds. Below are three potential outcomes due to climate change that could be in Greenland’s future.

Greenland Remains under Danish Rule

Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament. Benson Kua. CC BY-SA 2.0.

The first scenario that Greenland could find itself in is its current reality. While Greenland has been under some form of Danish rule since the 1600s, the island’s modern relationship with Denmark began with the creation of the 1953 Danish Constitution, which formally ended Greenland’s colonial status. Through subsequent policy changes throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st, Greenlanders slowly gained more and more autonomy, including the establishment of home rule in 1979, the nation’s departure from the European Economic Community in 1985, and increased self rule in regards to judicial affairs, policing and natural resources in 2009.

Should Greenland remain a part of Denmark, the island would continue to maintain its autonomous territory status. This includes the nation not formally being a part of the European Union, as it is currently designated under the “overseas countries and territories” category, but still being eligible for support from various European Union financial programs. Likewise, Greenland would still have its military administered by Denmark, and would still elect two representatives to the Danish Parliament.

Greenland: North America’s Newest Country

Nuuk, the capital city of Greenland. Razlan. CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0.

While Greenland is an autonomous territory within Denmark and voted for increased independence from the Danish crown in 2008, the nation is still not a fully independent territory. An independent Greenland would see the island gain full control of its economy, which currently uses the Danish krone and has some trade agreements subject to Danish review, gain recognition as an independent country by the international community, and have complete sovereignty from Denmark.

Greenland faces some barriers to gaining independence. Under the 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government, the nation has the right to declare independence at any time so long as a referendum is held on the issue among Greenlanders. While a 2016 poll saw that 64% of Greenlanders support independence, 78% of polled Greenlanders in 2017 remain against it if it would lead to a lower standard of living.

This concern stems from the nation’s continued economic dependence on Denmark, which is responsible for two-thirds of the nation’s entire budget revenue through an annual block grant, which has coincided with a call for the diversification of Greenland’s economy. This diversification may be facilitated through changes to the island’s geography and climate due to rising temperatures, but for the time being, any major economic reform on the island remains to be seen.

Greenland Under the Stars and Stripes

A mountain and fjord in southwest Greenland. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. CC BY 2.0.

One of the most unlikely scenarios that has recently gained a lot of attention is the potential annexation of Greenland by the United States. Beginning in 1867 after the U.S. annexed Alaska and continuing to today, the conversation of Greenland’s annexation has remained a niche constant of U.S. foreign policy.

This idea came to prominence again in 2019 when President Donald Trump expressed an interest in buying the island from Denmark, with an estimated price tag of at least $200 million. This notion was ridiculed by both Danish and Greenlandic officials, who stated that the island was not for sale and condemned the idea as outdated and colonialist. However, Trump’s idea to annex Greenland directly stems from the results of climate change on the island, which have continued to make accessible more and more of the nation’s currently untapped oil and mineral reserves.

However, given that the international community, Denmark, Greenland and most Americans have ruled out the possibility as a serious proposal, it is unclear what an American-ruled Greenland would look like. The nation would likely not become a full-fledged state, as the nation’s culture, language and geographic location isolate it from the rest of the U.S. Rather, should the U.S. annex Greenland, the island would likely be categorized as an unincorporated, organized territory, which is the classification for the five populated U.S. territories. This would mean that the island’s 56,000 residents would become U.S. citizens, continue to have self-governance, and would elect one nonvoting member to the House of Representatives, but would be ineligible to vote in presidential elections.

That said, given the unpopularity of annexation and the numerous failed attempts at such a change in sovereignty, it is unlikely that Greenland will become a part of the United States any time soon.

Jacob Sutherland

is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.

One of the World’s Natural Wonders, the Monarch Butterfly, is Fighting for its Survival and What You Can Do About It

Raising monarch butterflies in fourth grade science classes may be a thing of the past as the steadily declining rate of North America’s favorite butterfly continues. 

Monarch butterflies in a net. Arlington National Cemetery. CC PDM 1.0

Early spring in the forests of Michoacan, Mexico, the newest monarch butterfly population clusters in the branches to mate by the millions. Each fall the monarchs, which weigh no more than a paper clip, make their way through their 3,000-mile journey from Canada and the northern United States to California and central Mexico for their warm winter months. Steadily gaining traction in Mexico’s tourism industry, the North American migration has become one of the world’s natural phenomena, attracting people to take part in witnessing the inspiring journey.

Monarchs in Michoacan, Mexico. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services-Midwest Region. CC PDM 1.0

Monarch butterflies, a crucial part of our ecosystem, belong to the important group of pollinator insects that allows people to enjoy the pleasures of beautiful flora and an abundance of food.  It has been said that monarchs are like the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” for pollinators.

They are easy to spot and since they share the same habitat as many other animals, it is evident that their decline is most likely synonymous with the decline of other important wildlife.

Monarchs in Michoacan, Mexico. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services-Midwest Region. CC PDM 1.0

The National Wildlife Federation has estimated that the monarch population has declined in total about 80% in the past 20 years. Human-caused climate change and habitat loss are key factors that are pushing the monarchs toward a closely looming extinction. D. Andre Green II from the University of Michigan mentioned in The Conversation that the area of forest in Mexico covered by monarchs has fallen from a high of 45 acres in 1996 to 1.6 acres in 2014. California reported the lowest levels of monarchs ever in 2019.

Higher temperatures for longer periods of time are causing confusion within monarchs’ internal clocks on when to migrate and mate. The increase in temperature is affecting their flight pattern, driving them farther north than they would initially, and is being reflected in the size of the wings grown over the last few generations. Micah Freedman from the University of California, Davis, collected data samples from a variety of museums around the country, dating back all the way back to the 1870s. He was able to measure the average wingspan, finding in his research that there had been a consistent 4.9% increase in size over 150 years. 

Milkweed seedlings. USFWS Headquarters. CC PDM 1.0

Increasing carbon dioxide levels in the air are also a major issue, the consequences reflected in the food monarchs eat. The carbon may be making milkweed too toxic for the caterpillars. Milkweed is the only source of food monarch caterpillars are able to ingest, supplying them with a low-dose toxin, cardenolide, that helps fight against parasites and gives them a bitter-tasting deterrent against predators. In researcher Leslie Decker’s Ecology Letters, she grew milkweed in a greenhouse, simulating the carbon-rich air projected to happen in the next 150 years. In her research she found that the plants produced a different variety of cardenolides, rendering them ineffective in protecting future monarchs from parasites or predators and much more susceptible to die. 

Milkweed planting event. USFWS Headquarters. CC PDM 1.0

But as scientist Orley R. Taylor says, “We have the capacity to save monarchs and other species. The question is whether we have the will to do it.” It seems as if the U.S. heard him because grassroots educational outreach programs, facilitated by public schools and citizen scientists, gained the attention of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, which created a top-down strategy called the Nationwide Candidate Conservation Agreement. It is essentially a business deal with corporate and private landowners to commit a portion of their land to dedicate to the replenishing of monarch habitat previously lost to land development. In return, the government will not place monarchs on the endangered animals list, waiving the harsher regulations that would otherwise have been established. 

Wildlife refuge milkweed planting event. USFWS Headquarters. CC PDM 1.0

This agreement is supposedly going to generate 2.3 million acres collectively of newly protected habitat. Even if the plan only generated 20% of the goal, that is still over half a million acres and a big step in the right direction. If the process succeeds, it could prove as a national and even global model to “bridge the differences of interests to achieve a common conservation goal.”

Butterfly on a flower. USFWS/Southeast. CC PDM 1.0

If you would like to help the movement there are many things that normal citizens can do on a day-to-day basis:

• Research types of native milkweed in your area and plant them in your backyard. It gives the butterflies a much-needed resting place during their migration and provides you with a beautiful butterfly garden right outside your window.

• Become a citizen scientist and help join the mass movement that is actively helping the progression of conservation advocacy. 

• Spread the word about climate change and its importance to everyone you know. The more that people are educated and aware, the more likely we are to band together and make impactful differences. Save the world, one person at a time.

Yuliana Rocio

is currently a Literature/Writing major at the University of California San Diego. Yuliana likes to think of herself as a lover of words and a student of the world. She loves to read, swim, and paint in her free time. She spent her youth as part of a travel-loving family and has grown up seeking adventure. She hopes to develop her writing skills, creating work that reflects her voice and her fierce passion for activism.

China, the World’s Largest Polluter, Commits to Carbon Neutrality by 2060

China is no stranger to climate change and pollution. The country of 1.4 billion is regarded as the world’s largest polluter, a title which was achieved relatively quickly given that the country only began to industrialize in the 1970s. This high level of pollution, along with climatologists raising the alarm about the dire consequences of unchecked climate change, have pushed China to reanalyze its approach to maintaining an industrialized economy.

In 2016, China signed on to the Paris climate accord, pledging that its annual emissions would peak in 2030 before making a steady decline. While some climatologists have previously criticized the accord for having no means to back up the promises made, President Xi Jinping’s Sept. 22 announcement that China would become carbon neutral by 2060 signals that these doubts may have been somewhat unwarranted.

A History of Pollution

Smog over Shanghai in 2010. Samuel Straker. CC BY-NC 2.0.

To date, China is the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide. In 2018, the country emitted over 10 million metric tons of the pollutant which heavily contributes to rising global temperatures. Fossil fuels currently comprise 85% of the nation’s energy sources, with the remaining 15% coming from renewables.

Such a high level of emissions did not appear overnight. Since China began its transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one in the 1970s, the world’s most populous country has seen a booming economy at the cost of polluted skies. Cities like Beijing are known to have some of the worst air quality in the world.

These high levels of pollution have not just created smog in the skies of some of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. Between 1980 and 2018, sea levels along China's coastal areas rose by 3.3 meters annually. This threatens to displace nearly 64 million people living in China’s coastal regions if sea levels continue to rise at this rate. Likewise, several studies have linked China’s air pollution to increased deaths due to respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

Making Carbon Neutrality a Reality

An aerial view of the Three Gorges Dam, which is located along the Yangtze River. Euclid vanderKroew. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

On Sept. 22, President Jinping made a pledge during the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting to enact new environmental policies and regulations so that China will become “carbon neutral” by 2060.

“China will scale up its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by adopting more vigorous policies and measures,” Jinping said during his speech. “We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. We call on all countries to pursue innovative, coordinated, green and open development for all, seize the historic opportunities presented by the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, achieve a green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID era and thus create a powerful force driving sustainable development.”

While Jinping did not outline specific actions that the nation will take to curb its annual emissions, experts believe that the move toward carbon neutrality will be both beneficial for the health of the planet as well as for China’s economy in the long run. China already exports billions in clean energy technology abroad, primarily to developing Middle Eastern countries. This trend is expected to continue with Jinping’s goal, and will likely galvanize other countries to make similar changes.

A Global Effort to Combat Climate Change

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry signing the Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States on Earth Day, 2016. Thomas Cizauskas. CC PDM 1.0.

While China may arguably be the most important country to make a carbon neutrality pledge, 60 others made similar promises in 2019. Notably excluded from the list were the United States and India, the second and third largest polluters behind China. According to The New York Times, the 60 countries which pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 “can either have ‘plans to achieve net zero [carbon dioxide] emissions by 2050’ or have it as ‘a long-term national goal.’”

While a noteworthy goal, the 60 countries which signed on to the pledge account for only 11% of all global emissions. Many nations that agreed on carbon neutrality, such as the Maldives, the Bahamas and the Marshall Islands, already retain small carbon footprints but are at the highest risk for adverse effects due to climate change.

While the United States has not made any similar pledges and began to withdraw from the Paris climate accord in 2019, several states and municipalities have made their own pledges. Notably, both New York and California made their own plans to work toward carbon neutrality over the next three decades.

The European Union has also seen some progress in achieving a greener future, although this has come with some bumps in the road. Last month, an EU commission in charge of the union’s 2050 carbon neutrality goal was accused of cheating by choosing to invest more in “carbon sinks,” efforts to remove carbon from the air by planting new forests, rather than divesting from fossil fuels at large.

As of yet, no major polluting country has made substantive changes in divesting from fossil fuels and transitioning toward a more green economy. However, should China’s latest proposal be implemented, it is likely that other countries will soon follow suit.

Jacob Sutherland

is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.

Disappearing into the Waves: Climate Change Hits the Tiny Pacific Islands of Tuvalu

Tuvalu, a tiny and isolated Pacific island nation, claims the top spot as the world’s least-visited country. Due to its minute size at just over 26 square miles, it is not easy to find on a map. Tuvalu is located in the middle of the vast South Pacific, resting between Hawaii and Australia, and is made up of small slivers of islands. From an outsider’s perspective, Tuvalu is the typical paradise with white-sand beaches, tropical flora and crystal-clear water. So the question remains: why don’t more people go to this beautiful island nation?

A beach on Funafuti Atoll. Mrlins. CC BY 2.0

First of all, Tuvalu has no tourism infrastructure set up. It’s largely a noncommercial environment and is considered to be the world’s fourth-smallest nation in area. Tuvalu has the second-lowest number of inhabitants of any country, at just over 11,000, and is considered by The Borgen Project to be the fourth most impoverished nation in the world. In fact, Tuvalu was unable to join the United Nations until 2000 because it could not pay the $100,000 entry fee. The islands have been classified by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a “least-developed country” that is “extremely vulnerable” to the effects of climate change. 

Tavau Teii, Tuvalu’s former deputy prime minister, at the “Graph of Injustice” in 2007. Oxfam International. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Suffering from food scarcity, lack of natural resources and rising water levels threatening to engulf the country, the effects of climate change are highly evident in Tuvalu. In an interview by The Guardian, Leitu Frank comments on the rising ocean levels affecting her family, her community and her island:

“The sea is eating all the sand ... Tuvalu is sinking.”

Tuvalu is the first country forecast to disappear due to climate change. Scientists predict that it may be uninhabitable in the next 50 to 100 years, but locals feel that it could come sooner. Fish, the mainstay of Tuvaluans’ diets, has also caused issues: 10% of the country’s weekly hospital cases come from ciguatera poisoning, commonly received from eating fish that ingested microalgaes expelled by bleached coral. When the fish are eaten by humans, a fast and severe sickness causing diarrhea, fever and vomiting ensues. 

Tuvalu’s first female doctors. DFAT Photo Library. CC BY 2.0

Rising sea levels have affected not only Tuvalu’s surface area, where two of its nine islands are at risk of total inundation; they have also contaminated all underground water, making it impossible for islanders to farm their own crops. Tuvaluans have resorted to relying on rainwater for their main source of freshwater for drinking. But with rapidly changing weather patterns, droughts are becoming more frequent. The salty soil can no longer sustain crops of pulaka, which used to be a staple food source. Instead, the United Nations and neighboring countries like Australia export starchy, carbohydrate-packed items such as rice and white sugar to serve as alternatives.

Public water collection. DFAT Photo Library. CC BY 2.0

The climate change related problems facing Tuvalu have ultimately put the country on the path toward unavoidable evacuation and relocation. Tuvalu’s government and the UNDP have a series of possible plans in place to protect islanders from that fate, though. Ideas range from constructing a seawall, to raising the island by up to  20 feet, to building stronger housing, to even asking Australian mines to build an energy wall to break up the ocean’s natural power. All of these potential ideas come with problems such as reef protection and financial hurdles. Fiji has offered to give Tuvalu’s citizens land in their country and Australia has given them the choice of full citizenship in exchange for maritime and fishing rights. Both offers have so far been refused. 

Australian aid in Tuvalu. DFAT Photo Library. CC BY 2.0

Moving away from Tuvalu is a fear that locals share because they do not want to lose their sense of identity, culture and traditions. Islanders are proud of their ancestry and enjoy their way of life, even if they face daily challenges. The community is strong, passionate and welcoming to all, but Tuvaluans will not condone defeatist ideas of moving away from their homeland unless it is the last resort. They hope for a long-term solution to the overwhelming problem of climate change; after all, the issue affects both Tuvalu and the world as a whole.

Yuliana Rocio

is currently a Literature/Writing major at the University of California San Diego. Yuliana likes to think of herself as a lover of words and a student of the world. She loves to read, swim, and paint in her free time. She spent her youth as part of a travel-loving family and has grown up seeking adventure. She hopes to develop her writing skills, creating work that reflects her voice and her fierce passion for activism.

Arab World Joins the Space Race with the Launch of the UAE’s Mission to Mars

On July 19, the United Arab Emirates became a new contender in space exploration upon the successful launch of the Emirates Mars Mission’s (EMM) Hope Probe, the first interplanetary science mission led by an Arab country.

The Hope Probe (Al-Amal in Arabic) is an uncrewed spacecraft that is on a mission to orbit Mars and study the red planet’s atmosphere. The Hope Probe will be the first probe to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers upon reaching Mars’ orbit in February 2021. In the past, “probes have only provided snapshots of the Martian climate, (whereas) the Hope Probe will examine how it changes throughout daily and seasonal cycles,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

The mission’s goals include monitoring Mars’ weather dynamics to see how they correlate with climate change on the planet. Mars once contained large bodies of water like Earth, so “the mission will try and unearth the reason behind Mars’ barren, dusty atmosphere and environment by closely studying its weather and climate” in order to solve the mystery of the now-dusty red planet.

Although this is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission, the region has long played a part in space research. Smithsonian Magazine wrote, “During the Middle Ages, Islamic scientists used math and science to refine the movements of the planets and the stars, leaving an indelible mark on astronomy and space science.” In addition, 24 lunar craters were named after Islamic scientists, “including Abbas Ibn Firnas (810-887), an Andalusian inventor, physician, musician, engineer, humanitarian and poet — and the first man to fly,” as reported by Arab News. The poet Mu’min Ibn Said wrote of Ibn Firnas’ first flight, “He flew faster than the phoenix in his flight when he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture.”

The scientist in charge of leading the Mars mission, Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, told the scientific journal Nature that, “It was very important for us to fit into an area of science that was relevant not only to the UAE but the global science community.”

In addition to being in charge of the Emirates Space Mission, Al Amiri is president of the UAE Space Agency, chair of the Emirates Scientists Council and Minister of State for Advanced Sciences. In an interview with National Geographic, Al Amiri said the program “had to develop an entirely new division that was completely foreign to us, and that is space science.” She went on to say, “The Hope science team is 80% women, a figure that reflects the high percentage of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs among the UAE’s youth and in its universities.” Women also make up 34% of the EMM team. According to Nature, “Women make up a much bigger share of the Emirati team than for the U.S. counterpart.” In a field that is generally dominated by men, Emirati women are making great strides toward paving the way for women to enter the field of advanced sciences.

Asiya Haouchine

is an Algerian-American writer who graduated from the University of Connecticut in May 2016, earning a BA in journalism and English. She was an editorial intern and contributing writer for Warscapes magazine and the online/blog editor for Long River Review. She is currently studying for her Master’s in Library and Information Science. @AsiyaHaou

Record Heat Waves in Siberia Act as a Reminder of Global Warming’s Threat

In Siberia, one of the world's coldest regions, record high temperatures have been reported as a weeks long heat wave precipitates wildfires. On June 20, Verkhoyansk, a town north of the Arctic Circle, reached 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. This possible record-breaking number has yet to be confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, but stands to be the hottest temperature ever recorded above the Arctic Circle.  

Natalia Lapteva, a resident of Verkhoyansk, told Al-Jazeera that, “every day our family comes here to swim in our beloved river.” While residents of Verkhoyansk happily flee to their local river to bathe in the heat, many climate scientists are heeding the record numbers as warnings of accelerating global warming. In an interview, climate analyst Peter Pfleiderer recieved a question of whether the coronavirus lockdowns and its effect of reducing carbon dioxide emissions has already had a positive impact on the Arctic. He responded, “it's a reduction of emissions which means that we still emit greenhouse gases, so we are still warming the climate at the moment; it’s just a bit slower than we warmed it before. So for positive effect...we would really need to drop these emissions to zero and this is actually the only way to protect the sensitive environment of the Arctic.” 

The sensitive environment that Pfleiderer refers to is the melting away of permafrost in Russia, which could release “as much as 240 billion tons of carbon by 2100” according to a group of scientists convened by the United Nations. This phenomenon, known as “arctic amplification,” is “a critical reason why the Arctic has warmed at more than twice the rate of the global mean since the mid-1990s.”

 Not only does the thawing of permafrost leave a hefty impact on global warming, but it also leads to the erosion and destabilization of infrastructure and environmental habitats. “Officials [in Russia] say it was the reason a fuel tank collapsed in the northern city of Norilsk in May. More than 20,000 tons of diesel fuel soaked into the soil and flooded a river that feeds the Arctic Ocean,” according to Al-Jazeera. Repercussions for humans and wildlife alike can be felt following a spill to this degree. According to Sergey Verkhovets, the Russian coordinator for Arctic projects of the World Wildlife Fund, "the consequences of such accidents, especially in the north, reverberate for a long time. It means the death of fish, the contamination of birds' feathers and the poisoning of animals.”

These concerns also come with the news of extreme wildfires that are ravaging Siberia. “Russia’s forest fire aerial protection service says forest fires in Siberia have grown nearly fivefold over the past week,” according to The Associated Press. The consequential wildfires had burned about 7,900 square miles of Siberian territory as of June 25 compared to 6,800 square miles as of the same date a year ago. A culmination of these events in the Arctic further corroborates that the accelerated warming of our Earth has major ramifications for infrastructure, biodiversity and human life.

Hanna Ditinsky

is a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is majoring in English and minoring in Economics. She was born and raised in New York City and is passionate about human rights and the future of progressivism.

Super Cyclone Amphan Ravages East India and Bangladesh

Split trees, washed away bridges, dead livestock—this was the scene following Super Cyclone Amphan, which tore through India’s West Bengal region and Bangladesh. From May 16 to May 21, the Category 5 hurricane whipped through coastal villages, ravaging areas with fierce winds and rain. 

 One of the most powerful storms ever recorded in South Asia, Super Cyclone Amphan devastated coastal infrastructure, causing millions of people to flee from their homes to packed shelters. These cement block structures and repurposed community spaces have proven safe in past storms, offering respite and relief to displaced villagers. As Amphan gained momentum, officials urged people to leave their homes. Emergency crews lined the beaches, alerting passersby through megaphones. Television stations, text messages and door-to-door pleas also advised evacuation. 

Crowded shelters pose a public health threat in the coronavirus pandemic. Physical distancing is unfeasible in the packed, enclosed spaces. Extra isolation rooms, masks, and sanitizers have done little to mitigate the rapidly spreading virus, while the need for social distancing has complicated Amphan relief efforts and shelter capacities. "The coronavirus restrictions have obviously made things much more difficult, especially with regards to evacuation to cyclone shelters," said Azmat Ulla, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ office in Bangladesh. On May 20, India reported that it had recorded over 100,000 coronavirus infections. 

Refugee camps, held in predominantly flood-prone areas, raised concerns during the cyclone. In Bangladesh, 306 Rohingya were moved from their refugee camp in Bhasan Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal, to mainland cyclone centres. A few years ago, these refugees fled massacres in Myanmar and built makeshift homes on coastal Bangladesh’s muddy hillsides. Amnesty International advised governments to protect Rohingya refugees stranded at sea. “They are in rickety boats; these are fishing trawlers that they use to take a very dangerous route in the hope of a better life. The Bangladesh government and others must do everything to save their lives,” declared Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner. Fortunately, the cyclone weakened as it made its way down the Bangladeshi coast, unleashing nothing more than heavy rains in the refugee-concentrated city of Cox’s Bazar. The U.N. estimates that, throughout Bangladesh, 10 million people were affected by the storm, and 50,000 people lost their homes. Economic production has been compromised at the region’s croplands and fisheries, striking away people’s long-term livelihoods. 

The storm devastated the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and the home to endangered Bengal tigers. According to Belinda Wright, the Executive Director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, villages on the outskirts of the wildlife refuge have been badly hit. Around 70% of the 4,000-square-mile forest lies at sea level, rendering the animals especially vulnerable to flooding and exacerbating India’s existing wildlife crisis. Urbanization, hunting and illegal animal trade have dwindled the global population of tigers down from 100,000 last century to 4,000 today. In response to the storm, the remaining few hundred Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans have been pushed out of their forest habitats and into human-dominated areas. 

Scientists predict that tropical storms like Amphan will increase in strength and quantity going forward due to climate change.

Anna Wood

is an Anthropology major and Global Health/Spanish double minor at Middlebury College. As an anthropology major with a focus in public health, she studies the intersection of health and sociocultural elements. She is also passionate about food systems and endurance sports.

Coronavirus Shows We Are Not at All Prepared for the Security Threat of Climate Change

How might a single threat, even one deemed unlikely, spiral into an evolving global crisis which challenges the foundations of global security, economic stability and democratic governance, all in the matter of a few weeks?

My research on threats to national security, governance and geopolitics has focused on exactly this question, albeit with a focus on the disruptive potential of climate change, rather than a novel coronavirus. In recent work alongside intelligence and defence experts at the think-tank Center for Climate and Security, I analysed how future warming scenarios could disrupt security and governance worldwide throughout the 21st century. Our culminating report, A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change, was launched in Washington just as the first coronavirus cases were spreading undetected across the US.

The analysis uses future scenarios to imagine how and where regions might be increasingly vulnerable to the resource, weather and economic shocks brought about by an increasingly destabilised climate. In it, we warn:

Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades. Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century.

Little did we know when writing these words and imagining the rapidly evolving shocks to come, that a very similar test of our global system was already brewing as governments sputtered to contain the damage of COVID-19.

Over the first few crucial weeks of this crisis, we’ve seen world leaders take a number of actions that indicate how climate shocks could destabilise the world order. With climate change disasters, as with infectious diseases, rapid response time and global coordination are of the essence. At this stage in the COVID-19 situation, there are three primary lessons for a climate-changing future: the immense challenge of global coordination during a crisis, the potential for authoritarian emergency responses, and the spiralling danger of compounding shocks.

An uncoordinated response

First, while the COVID-19 crisis has engendered a massive public response, governments have been largely uncoordinated in their efforts to manage the virus’s spread. According to Oxford’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, countries vary widely in the stringency of their policies, with no two countries implementing a synchronised course of action.

While traditionally a great power like the US might step forward to direct a collective international response, instead the Trump administration has repeatedly chosen to blindside its allies with the introduction of new limitations on trade and movement of peoples. This mismanagement has led to each nation going on its own, despite the fact that working together would net greater gains for all. As the New York Times’s Mark Landler put it, the voices of world leaders are forming “less a choir than a cacophony”, leading to mixed global messages, undetected spread, and ongoing fights over limited resources.

Politicians have sent mixed messages. Tasos Katopodis / EPA

In the face of climate change, such a lack of coordination could be be highly destabilising to world social and economic order. The mass displacement of people, the devaluation of assets, rising seas and natural disasters will call for shared practices and common decency in the face of continued tragedy. Many climate impacts will raise new questions the world has yet to answer. What do we do with nation-states that can no longer reside in their homeland? How do we compensate sectors for ceasing harmful practices such as fossil fuel extraction and deforestation, especially where national economies may depend on them?

We also face new global governance questions around the use of risky geoengineering technologies, which can be deployed unilaterally to alter local climates, but with the potential for vast unintended regional or even global consequences. These are challenges which, like climate change itself, can only be solved collectively through coordinated policies and clear communication. The sort of wayward responses and lack of leadership in response to COVID-19 would only lead to further destruction of livelihoods and order in the decades to come.

Authoritarian agendas

This historic moment is also offering new opportunities for leaders to further dangerous, illiberal agendas. Authoritarians have long used emergency situations as a pretext to further curtail individual rights and consolidate personal power against backdrops of real or imagined public danger. We’ve seen these actions spiral worldwide in the past month in autocracies and backsliding democracies, alike.

President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines has given security services the directive to open fire on protestors while Vladimir Putin is deploying mass surveillance technologies and new criminal penalties to monitor the Russian population. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has forced new emergency powers through parliament that muzzle political opposition and allow for his indefinite rule. Even the supposed democratic bastions of the US and the UK are seeing worrying signs of autocratic policies, as surveillance drones are deployed to monitor citizens, scientific expertise is undermined, and open-ended emergency powers are granted to police forces for undetermined time frames.

Police across the world have been given new powers. Yuri Kochetkov / EPA

A warming world will only result in more disaster-related events for power-hungry leaders to take advantage of in the years ahead. From the nationalisation of resources to the deployment of militaries in response to climate shocks, it can be all-too-easy for public safety needs to bleed into personal political opportunities. The second-order effects of climate change, from supply chain instability to the migration of peoples, will also provide authoritarian leaders more fodder for their ethno-nationalist ideologies, which inflame divisions in society and could help broaden their personal appeal. Without clear and sturdy limits on executive power, the disruptive impacts of climate change will be used to further chip away at democratic freedoms across the world.

Overlapping shocks are the new normal

Finally, this situation is teaching the globalised world new lessons on the devastating consequences of compounding shocks. Managing a deadly global pandemic is bad enough, even before you layer on the massive unemployment, trade disruptions and economic shutdown that its mitigation sets in motion.

The months ahead will bring about additional crises – some related to the pandemic, like a massive uptick in public debt used to bail out national economies. But other near-term shocks may themselves be climate change-induced, from new forecasts for large-scale floods this spring in the central US, to a prospective repeat of 2019’s severe summer heat waves across Europe.

Recent floods in Mosul, Iraq. Can we handle climate-related disasters during a pandemic? Ammar Salih / EPA

These disasters have the potential to strike just at the time when people are being advised to shelter inside, many in at-risk areas and without adequate indoor cooling. Overlapping, historic shocks like this are becoming the new normal in our climate-changed era. As public disaster response budgets spiral and loss of life mounts each year, governments will continue to struggle to contain their compounding damage.

Scientists and security professionals alike have long warned about the devastating potential of climate change, alluding to how it might rattle our global governance systems to breaking point. But few could have expected that the fissures in our institutions would be revealed so soon, let alone on such a disturbingly large scale.

We can treat the current global crisis as a sort of “stress test” on these institutions, exposing their vulnerabilities but also providing the urgent impetus to build new resilience. In that light, we could successfully rebound from this moment with more solid global security and cooperation than we knew going into it. Decision-makers should take a hard look at their current responses, problem-solving methods, and institutional design with future climate forecasts like our Threat Assessment in mind.

We know that even steeper and more frequent global shocks are in store, particularly without serious climate change mitigation efforts. What we don’t yet know is whether we’ll repeat current patterns of mismanagement and abuse, or if we’ll chart a more proactive and resilient course through the risks that lie ahead.

Kate Guy PhD Candidate and Lecturer in International Relations, University of Oxford

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

Locusts Devastating East Africa

Swarms of desert locusts, caused by cyclones due to warming ocean temperatures, are devastating East Africa and the most apparent solutions only spell further long-term climate damage. 

Since the end of January of this year, swarms of locusts have overwhelmed nations in East Africa: devouring crops, ruining livelihoods and pushing communities to the brink of famine. Locusts are relatives of grasshoppers that tend to travel in swarms; according to the National Geographic, a desert locust can eat its entire weight in plant material each day. Given the size of the swarm currently plaguing East Africa, the locusts are consuming an estimated 423 million pounds of plants daily. Photos depict waves of locusts so thick they appear to be clouds, and farmers are relying on methods such as shaking jars full of rocks and rolling tires through fields in attempts to scare the locusts away from crops, to little avail. 

Climate scientists trace this swarm back to a series of cyclones that saturated the Arabian desert during 2018. As locusts breed in warm, wet conditions, the desert rain storms created a breeding ground for millions of locusts that eventually crossed the Red Sea into the Horn of Africa. Another cyclone touching down in Somalia at the end of 2019 added force to the growing onslaught of locusts. Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia first bore the brunt of the swarms, but the locusts quickly began to migrate into neighboring Uganda and Tanzania, and they have since reached Sudan and South Sudan. 

As the rainy season will begin in East Africa in late March 2020, the locust population only stands to increase exponentially. Over 20 million individuals in East Africa face the very real threat of famine should the devastation continue, and the spread of the swarms proves destabilizing to nations such as South Sudan, still reeling from violence and internal political conflict since 2013. The threat of the crop damage spirals even beyond the agricultural and livestock industries: the Kenyan government worries that damage to national parks and the herbivores that inhabit them could ruin the tourism industry, as well.  

The sudden occurrence of desert locust swarms points to dire climate circumstances, both in its origin and impact. First, temperature in the Indian Ocean fluctuates along the Indian Ocean Dipole, and the Western segment of the ocean was uncharacteristically warm this year--likely due to the fires in Australia--producing the cyclones in Yemen and Somalia. Moreover, the most apparent solution to the swarms is aerial pesticide spraying, which, while immediately attractive in the face of crop devastation and famine, itself carries climate implications which could spiral years into the future. Fipronil, the pesticide most commonly used against locusts swarms, has been linked directly to unprecedented rates of bee mortality, which would have significant long term effects on the East African ecosystem. Moreover, pesticides, especially when used in massive quantities, can pollute water supplies by absorption into the groundwater and by runoff into surface water supplies.  

Given the urgency and scale of the crisis, aerial pesticide spraying may be the only viable, albeit imperfect, option available to disaster relief. The World Food Programme Executive Director, David Beasley, darkly foretold that should the adequate disaster prevention aid not be raised immediately, the international community could face a disaster response that would cost upwards of $1 billion. While the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has raised $22 million to allocate towards prevention and relief efforts, this is only a fraction of the $76 million for which it originally appealed.

Hallie Griffiths

is an undergraduate at the University of Virginia studying Foreign Affairs and Spanish. After graduation, she hopes to apply her passion for travel and social action toward a career in intelligence and policy analysis. Outside of the classroom, she can be found, quite literally, outside: backpacking, rock climbing, or skiing with her friends.

Three Things Historical Literature Can Teach Us About the Climate Crisis

New novels about climate change – climate fiction, or cli-fi – are being published all the time. The nature of the climate crisis is a difficult thing to get across, and so imagining the future – a drowned New York City, say; or a world in which water is a precious commodity – can help us understand what’s at stake.

This is unsurprising in these times of crisis: fiction allows us to imagine possible futures, good and bad. When faced with such an urgent problem, it might seem like a waste of time to read earlier texts. But don’t be so sure. The climate emergency may be unprecedented, but there are a few key ways in which past literature offers a valuable perspective on the present crisis.

1. Climate histories

Historical texts reflect the changing climatic conditions that produced them. When Byron and the Shelleys stayed on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816, the literature that they wrote responded to the wild weather of the “year without a summer”.

This was caused largely by the massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora the previous year, which lowered global temperatures and led to harvest failures and famine. Literary works such as as Byron’s “Darkness”, Percy Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reveal anxieties about human vulnerability to environmental change even as they address our power to manipulate our environments.

Many older texts also bear indirect traces of historical climate change. In Paradise Lost (1667), Milton complains that a “cold climate” may “damp my intended wing” and prevent him from completing his masterpiece. This may well reflect the fact that he lived through the coldest period of the “Little Ice Age”.

Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with Skaters, c. 1608. Rijks Museum

Even literature’s oldest epic poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1800 BC), contains traces of climate change. It tells of a huge flood which, like the later story of Noah in the Old Testament, is probably a cultural memory of sea level rise following the melting of glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.

These historical climatic shifts were not man made, but they still provide important analogues for our own age. Indeed, many cultures have seen human activity and climate as intertwined, often through a religious framework. One of the ironies of modernity is that the development of the global climate as an object of study, apparently separate from human life, coincides with the development of the carbon capitalism that has linked them more closely than ever.

2. How we view nature

Reading historical literature also allows us to trace the development of modern constructions of the natural world. For example, the Romantic ideal of “sublime” nature, which celebrated vast, dramatic landscapes like mountains and chasms, has influenced the kinds of places that we value and protect today in the form of national parks.

When we understand that such landscapes are not purely natural, but are produced by cultural discourses and practices over time – we protect these landscapes above others for a reason – we can start to debate whether they can be better managed for the benefit of humans and non-humans alike.

Past ideas of ‘sublime’ nature have bled into the landscapes we protect today. Hendrik Cornelissen/Unsplash, FAL

Or consider how in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the work of nature writers such as Thomas Bewick, Charlotte Smith and Gilbert White played a powerful role in promoting natural theology: the theory that evidence for God’s existence can be found in the complex structures of the natural world. Past literature has also been crucial in disseminating new scientific ideas such as evolutionary theory, which understood natural phenomena as entirely secular. Literature does not just reflect changing views of the natural world; it shapes them.

Studying historical texts helps us to understand how modern cultural attitudes towards the environment developed, which in turn allows us to perceive that these attitudes are not as “natural” or inevitable as they may seem. This insight allows for the possibility that today, in a time in which our attitude towards the environment could certainly improve, they can change for the better.

3. Ways of thinking

Some of the attitudes towards the natural world that we discover in historical literature are contentious, even horrifying: for example, the normalisation of animal cruelty portrayed in books such as Black Beauty.

But we can find more promising models too. Voltaire’s poem on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, for example, has been used to think about the ethics of blame and optimism in responses to modern disasters, like the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake.

Reading past literature can also help us to appreciate the natural world for its own sake. Samuel Johnson commented of the natural descriptions in James Thomson’s poems The Seasons (1730) that the reader “wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses”. Amid the frenzied distractions of modern life, the work of authors like Thomson, Dorothy Wordsworth and John Clare can help us to slow down, notice and love nature.

Historical literature can remind us of our own vulnerability to elemental forces. The famous depiction of a storm in King Lear, for example, mocks Lear’s attempt:

In his little world of man to out-scorn
The two-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.

Shakespeare might appear to aestheticise dangerous weather, but the play reminds us that the storm is far bigger and messier than any human attempt to represent and interpret it.

Lear and the Fool in the storm, Ary Scheffer, 1834. Folger Shakespeare Library, CC BY-SA

At the same time, literature can remind us of the need to take responsibility for our own impacts upon the environment. We may not want to follow pre-modern and early modern literature in viewing climate change as divine punishment for bad behaviour. But when Milton suggests that it was the fall of man that brought in “pinching cold and scorching heat” to replace the eternal spring of Eden, his narrative has clear figurative resonance with our present crisis.

Historical literature can show us how writers responded to climate change, trace how they influenced modern ideas about nature, and reveal valuable ways of relating to and thinking about nature. The climate crisis cannot be addressed only through technological solutions. It also requires profound cultural shifts. To make those shifts requires an understanding of past ideas and representations: both those that led to our current predicament and those that might help us address it.

David Higgins is a Associate Professor in English Literature, University of Leeds

Tess Somervell is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in English, University of Leeds

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

This Accidental Snow Guardian Tracked Snowfall for 40 Winters

Billy Barr lives a simple life. He enjoys tea, sitting by the fire and reading. He lives alone in a house he helped build in a remote Rocky Mountain location. But what really gets him going is the weather, and more specifically, the snowfall in his neck of the woods. So he started taking notes about it: every winter, twice a day for 40 years. These detailed snowfall notes have become a treasure trove for scientists studying climate change.

The Diet That Helps Fight Climate Change

You don’t have to go vegan to fight climate change. Research shows that small changes to our diets can make big differences. Climate Lab is produced by the University of California in partnership with Vox. Hosted by conservation scientist Dr. M. Sanjayan, the videos explore the surprising elements of our lives that contribute to climate change and the groundbreaking work being done to fight back. Featuring conversations with experts, scientists, thought leaders and activists, the series demystifies topics like nuclear power, food waste and online shopping to make them more approachable and actionable for those who want to do their part. Sanjayan is an alum of UC Santa Cruz, a Visiting Researcher at UCLA and the CEO of Conservation International.

Bushfires: Can Ecosystems Recover From Such Dramatic Losses of Biodiversity?

The sheer scale and intensity of the Australian bushfire crisis have led to apocalyptic scenes making the front pages of newspapers the world over. An estimated 10 million hectares(100,000 sq km) of land have burned since 1 July 2019. At least 28 people have died. And over a billion animals are estimated to have been killed to date. Of course, the actual toll will be much higher if major animal groups, such as insects, are included in these estimates.

The impacts of climate change – in particular, the consequences of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events on all life should be abundantly clear. People finally seem to be taking this seriously, but there is an undercurrent of opinion about the “naturalness” of wildfires. Some are still questioning the role of climate change in driving the Australian bushfires.

It is true that wildfires naturally occur in many parts of the world, and benefit plants and animals in ecosystems that have been uniquely shaped by fire over evolutionary time. And people have been using fire to manage ecosystems for thousands of years. We could learn a thing or two from Aboriginal people and the techniques they have traditionally used to prevent bushfires.

But make no mistake, the scientific evidence shows that human-caused climate change is a key driver of the rapid and unprecedented increases in wildfire activity. What is particularly worrying is the extent to which this is eroding the resilience of ecosystems across wide regions. Yes, it is plausible to expect most plants and animals that have adapted to fire will recover. But the ecological costs of huge, repetitive, high-severity wildfires on ecosystems could be colossal.

A dead Koala is seen after bushfires swept through Kangaroo Island, Australia, 07 January 2020. EPA-EFE/David Marius

Out of control

And it’s unclear how much the natural world can tolerate such dramatic disturbance. Wildfires are increasing in severity around the world. The Australian bushfires are larger than some of the deadliest recorded. Incidences are also increasing in ecosystems where wildfires are uncommon, such as the UK uplands. Not to mention the widespread deliberate burning of areas of high conservation value for agriculture, as has been recently reported in large parts of the Brazilian Amazon for beef production and in Indonesia for palm oil. 

Unsurprisingly, given the shocking numbers of animals that must have perished as a result of these wildfires, many are questioning whether burned ecosystems can recover from such dramatic losses of biodiversity. In Australia, for example, some estimate that the fires could drive more than 700 insect species to extinction.

The world’s biodiversity is already severely struggling – we are in the midst of what scientists describe as the sixth mass extinction. A recent report has highlighted that about a quarter of assessed species are threatened with extinction. Australia already has the highest rate of mammal loss for any region in the world, signalling the fragility of existing ecosystems that might struggle to function in a warming, fire prone world. 

Carcasses of cows killed in a bushfire in a field in Coolagolite, New South Wales, Australia, 1 January 2020. EPA-EFE/Sean Davey

Fears for familiar and charismatic animals affected by the bushfires, such as koala, have been expressed by conservationists. The outlook for already critically endangered species, such as the regent honeyeater and western ground parrot, meanwhile, is uncertain. But to establish the true ecological costs of wildfires it is important to consider biodiversity in terms of networks, not particular species or numbers of animals.

All species are embedded in complex networks of interactions where they are directly and indirectly dependent on each other. A food web is a good example of such networks. The simultaneous loss of such large numbers of plants and animals could have cascading impacts on the ways species interact – and hence the ability of ecosystems to bounce back and properly function following high-severity wildfires. 

A fragile system

And so it’s key that we consider biodiversity loss due to wildfires in terms of entire networks of interacting organisms, including humans, rather than simply one or two charismatic animals. I have studied and recently published research about the loss of plants and animals due to wildfires in Portugal, using new methods in ecology that can examine the resilience of ecosystems to species extinctions. My team found that networks of interacting plants and animals at burned sites became fragile and more prone to species extinctions.

Our study looked at the impacts of a large wildfire in 2012 on one of the many ecological interactions that keep ecosystems healthy – insect pollination. We examined the responses of moths, which are important but often overlooked pollinators, to wildfire by comparing those we caught in burned and neighbouring unburned areas. 

The hummingbird hawk moth. Research in Portugal is revealing the importance of moths as pollinators.Claudio306/Shutterstock.com

By collecting, counting and identifying the thousands of pollen grains they were carrying, we were able to decipher the plant-insect network of interacting species. In this way, it was possible to examine not only the responses of the plants and animals to wildfire, but crucially the impacts on pollination processes. 

We then used these networks to model the resilience of the ecosystem more generally. We found that burned areas had significantly more abundant flowers (due to a flush of plants whose seeds and roots survived in the soil) but less abundant and species‐rich moths. The total amount of pollen being transported by the moths in burned areas was just 20% of that at unburned areas.

Our analysis revealed important differences in the way these species interacted as a result of the wildfire. Although the study was only a snapshot in time, we were able to show that plant-insect communities at burned sites were less able to resist the effects of any further disturbances without suffering species extinctions.

And so as people start rebuilding their homes, livelihoods and communities in Australia following the devastating bushfires, it is crucial that governments and land managers around the world take sensible decisions that will build resilience into ecosystems. To do this, ecological interaction networks need to be considered, rather than specific species. Cutting-edge network approaches that examine the complex ways in which entire communities of species interact can and should help with this. 

Over 45 years ago, the American evolutionary ecologist and conservationist Dan Janzen wrote: “There is a much more insidious kind of extinction: the extinction of ecological interactions.” We should all be concerned not just about the loss of animals, but about the unravelling of species interactions within ecosystems on which we all depend for our survival.

Darren Evans is a Reader in Ecology and Conservation, Newcastle University

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

The Dangers of Depicting Greta Thunberg as a Prophet

She came from obscurity and ignited a global movement. Beginning with a small but persistent act of protest outside the Swedish parliament, she inspired millions to join her. Her fiery speech to the United Nations in September 2019 warned of the end of the world. Her unfailing determination and passion makes her appear otherworldly, even uncanny, an affect largely attributed to her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.

So it’s no surprise that many people – along with media outlets like The Irish Times, The Telegraph and The Washington Times – have cast Greta Thunberg as a prophet.

When Time announced her as “Person of the Year,” it continued the trope, using an evocative photograph of Thunberg standing on a rocky shoreline, staring at the heavens, for the cover.

As a researcher on the history of childhood, I’ve been disturbed to see Thunberg described and depicted as a prophet. To me, it risks distorting her message. And it can easily be exploited by climate deniers seeking to counter the appeal of her activism.

Is a climate messiah even necessary?

To some, Thunberg resembles Joan of Arc, the teenage visionary who led the French army into battle in the 15th century and was later canonized as a saint.

To others, Thunberg exemplifies the Judeo-Christian tradition of prophets who speak truth to power; according to one Christian blogger, she offers “a prophetic voice to shake us out of our complacency.”

Yet presenting Thunberg as a prophet is deeply misleading. Classically, prophets are messengers who communicate the voice of God. They convey divine revelation that was previously unknown or misunderstood. Ezekiel predicted the destruction and restoration of Jerusalem. Moses received the Ten Commandments. Muhammad revealed the Quran. Prophets, in other words, see truths that others cannot. They bring us messages that often defy human comprehension.

Thunberg, on the other hand, is simply telling us what we already know. Within the scientific community, there is an overwhelming consensus – going back decades – that humans are causing global warming.

Framing her as a prophet has opened the floodgates to all sorts of messianic theories. This recently took a bizarre turn when a 120-year-old photo with a girl resembling Thunberg surfaced. Now conspiracy theorists are calling Thunberg “a time traveler sent to save us.”

Depictions like this are fodder for her opponents who dismiss what they call her “doomsday activism.” To them, she is a false prophet, and they can portray the people inspired by her as brainwashed cult followers. David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians who died alongside his followers in Waco, Texas in 1993, after all, called himself a prophet. So did Jim Jones, the founder of the Peoples Temple and orchestrator of the 1978 Jonestown Massacre.

To Thurnberg’s credit, even she recoils at the idea that she should be viewed as some sort of savior.

“I don’t want you to listen to me,” she told Congress in September. “I want you to listen to the scientists.”

Being a kid carries enough weight

I would argue that the best way to think of Thunberg is to simply think of her as a child.

This is not demeaning. Far from it. In recent years, young people have offered numerous examples of their ability to exercise independent thought, visionary thinking and leadership. Melati and Isabel Wijsen were 10 and 12 when they began a successful campaign to ban single-use plastics in their native Bali. Malala Yousafzai was 11 when she began to advocate against the Taliban for girls’ right to education. The list goes on: Jazz Jennings, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the Parkland activists. Like Thunberg, they challenge our culture’s view of children as powerless and dependent.

Thunberg memorably began her September 2019 UN speech with the words, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.” As Thunberg well knows, the fact that a child needs to scold grown-ups to act on an issue that threatens all of humanity is a powerful example of a political system gone horribly wrong.

Even more critically, focusing on Thunberg’s youth highlights a central tenet of her message: fairness. As any parent can tell you, children tend to view the world in terms of moral absolutes – good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair. Indeed, researchers have recently shown that expectations of fairness are deeply ingrained in children, appearing in infants as young as 12 months old.

Ideas of fairness underlie many aspects of Thunberg’s message, from her emphasis on how climate change will affect the poor and marginalized, to her comments about how unjust it is to expect young people to fix a catastrophe caused by generations of political inertia. Her forceful call – “How dare you!” – is not the enraged cry of a petulant child. It is the determined statement of a girl who has not yet developed the moral flexibility that is so often the refuge of adult inaction.

Thunberg is not unraveling the mysteries of our era, or a time traveler sent to stop climate change. Rather, she is a child admonishing selfishness and pleading for fairness.

That’s not prophetic. It’s common sense.

Ellen Boucher is an Associate Professor of History, Amherst College

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION