News from the Human Rights/Climate Change Nexus: +Heat = +Native Cultural Losses, +Conflict

The Dec. 18, 2013, Al-Jazeera article "How climate change destroys human rights" by Jon Letman offers an interesting sampler plate of five recent studies and organizing efforts to illustrate the human rights/climate change nexus.

ARCTIC LOSS, NATIVE CULTURAL LOSSES

The Letman article was brought to my attention by a friend and former colleague, now at Tebtebba, because another friend and former colleague, Rodion Syulandziga from the Russian indigenous rights network RAIPON, contributed to it. (Click here for info on RAIPON in English, from the Arctic Council's website.)

Rodion points out to Letman that "[i]ncreasingly unpredictable weather and unreliable sea ice directly impacts animal migration, which affects subsistence hunting for traditional food sources like reindeer and sea mammals. Warmer temperatures ... also hasten the introduction of plant and animal diseases as southern species of fish and birds move north." And, "[i]n addition to a warming Arctic, Russia’s indigenous peoples also face the rush to exploit vast energy and mineral resources. Oil, gas, coal, nickel, iron ore, platinum and other minerals draw multi-national corporations to Russia’s most remote regions where highly restricted access makes monitoring health and safety practices, damage and pollution mitigation and other conditions difficult or impossible."

Rodion also touches on how RAIPON is being subjected to increasing threats from the Russian government. In 2012-2013 this involved using technicalities of the law to suspend the group's activities during a critical period of time (when a national RAIPON gathering was supposed to happen), ordering the arrest of a staff member on specious grounds when he was abroad at a conference, and using political pressure to increase the influence of Kremlin-friendly indigenous representatives in the organization. Indigenous communities whose cultures are predicated on the existence of permafrost and sea ice are existentially threatened by climate change, and in Russia, also by the government's repression of civil society.

MORE HEAT, MORE CONFLICT

I see another familiar reference in this article-- a link to a study of how heat correlates with aggression in Kenya, led by Solomon Hsiang, now a professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, my alma mater. He did the study with Ted Miguel of the UC Berkeley-based Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), which analyzes the impact of development projects, and Marshall Burke, also at UC Berkeley (in Ag and Resource Economics). The study supports the idea demonstrated in other studies "that climatic events which produce temporary warming are associated with a temporary increase in violent intergroup conflict..." (p. 2). Sol Hsiang has a fascinating body of work on the social implications of climate threats.

• See his personal website's list of publications
• See his list of publications and press coverage of his research at GSPP's website

Some highlights of Sol's work:

• Click here for a six and a half-minute interview where he summarizes some of his findings on heat's correlation with aggression for the PBS Newshour from August 2013.

• Read Climate, conflict, and social stability:what does the evidence say? - a compelling meta-analysis of 50 studies published in 2013 with M. Burke, which finds a possible "causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes..." 

Other studies/articles referenced in the Letman article:

• The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability (Mora et al., October 2013, Nature) - showing how parts of the tropics may experience unprecedented climates within the next 10 years, and how, if GHG emissions aren't brought under control, the "average" place on Earth will experience a radically different climate within the next 35 years.
• A 2012 Human Rights Watch publication on the health impacts of Bangladesh's tanneries, in part authored by Richard Pearshouse, an HRW researcher interviewed by Letman; and a 2009 article on Bangladesh's climate refugees (L. Friedman, Scientific American)

Losing your glacier? Make your own!

This is amazing. Do-it-yourself glaciers: The iceman cometh: If climate change takes your local glacier away, why not build another? (July 13, 2013, the Economist)

This doesn't solve every problem related to the loss of the glaciers, but it gets at one aspect that hurts a vulnerable population-- farmers who depend on snowmelt to irrigate crops in high altitude (short-growing-season) climates.

"[S]ome farms are better-off now than they used to be in the days before the natural glaciers vanished."

Hats off.

Even hardy blue oaks have their limits- KQED coverage of Bay Area climate change

Yesterday KQED's Lauren Sommer aired this 5 min. piece about SF Bay Area climate change impacts, focusing on the plight of the blue oaks of Mount Hamilton and other California live oak species featuring the work of some of my colleague adaptation experts at the Nature Conservancy (TNC), UC Berkeley, and the Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County. Follow that link for maps and other links.

"It could be these oaks are already living at their limit, says [TNC's] Sasha Gennet."

Talking to David Ackerly (UCB) and Pepperwood's Lisa Micheli, the reporter comments: "Think of it as an acorn-by-acorn race with climate change."

System Change not Climate Change- Report-back on the "Climate Space" at the WSF

On May 16, 2013, I had the opportunity to hear two respected leaders in the climate and social justice movements report back on the the California contingent's experience at the World Social Forum, where the U.S. contingent (the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance) hosted the WSF's first "Climate Space."

Maria Poblet, the Executive Director of Causa Justa::Just Cause (CJJC), and Miya Yoshitani, Associate Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), both based in my home city of Oakland, CA, talked about their experience in Tunisia. They also asked the audience (which was a packed room, a mix of old and young, speaking Spanish, Chinese, and I think Tagolog, with three simultaneous translators working at the back of the room) what was the root of climate change. People offered science (the greenhouse effect), mistaken science (the ozone layer), and economics (capitalism). We ate take-out Chinese food and shared in some of the contingent's favorite photos, memories, and songs from their week in Tunisia. They closed out the report-back by leading us in some of their favorite chants, including: 

No war! No warming! Build the people's economy!

In the slide show of photos from the trip, I noticed these signs:

Another World is Possible
REDD+ = Colonialism
NO-REDD IN AFRICA NETWORK
System Change not Climate Change

Climate change was really and truly on the agenda at the Forum. Read the Climate Space declaration produced by its 19 international facilitating organizations at the 2013 WSF. It reads, in part:

We need a new system that seeks harmony between humans and nature and not an endless growth model that the capitalist system promotes in order to make more and more profit. Mother Earth and her natural resources cannot sustain the consumption and production needs of this modern industrialized society. 

To get a flavor for the report-back, read Revolution Under Construction, Maria's post for the blog Organizing Upgrade on the WSF experience. It's not about the Climate Space, but about the particular moment in Tunisia of the WSF, in terms of political change. With a great photo gallery.

Read Miya's blog post about the 2013 WSF: Confessions of a climate denier in Tunisia, about how she came to link the environmental justice movement with the work of  "stopping the world from mass suicide by carbon." She writes:

The point is, that the climate justice fight here in the US and around the world is not just a fight against the ecological crisis of all time, it is the fight for a new economy, a new energy system, a new democracy, a new relationship to the planet and to each other, for land, water, and food sovereignty, for indigenous rights, for human rights and dignity for all people. When climate justice wins we win the world that we want.

We can’t sit this one out not because we have too much to lose, but because we have too much to gain.

Amen.

Sub-Saharan Africa Puts up a Great Green Wall - Viva la Grande Muraille Verte!

This is just amazing: The Great Green Wall of Africa (D. Lieber, Planetsave.com/ Importantmedia.org, Apr. 21, 2013)

The main website for the project is in French with auto-translations to English and Arabic via Google Translate (so, not quite translated). The auto-translate English version of the project's vision describes the two stages of the project:

The major targets of the relevant indicators are:

 (i) in 2020-2025, halting the advance of desertification, restore and enhance the potential of arid and semi-arid and install the conditions for sustainable development and 

(ii ) term, [original: à terme,] achieve the transformation of vast arid Sahel real rural production centers and Sustainable Development (SDPRP) vectors powerful incentive to return to the land forces.

Indeed! May we return to the land forces! Viva la Grande Muraille Verte! Such an inspiring project.

Packing for Denver - the Inaugural National Adaptation Forum

I'm very pleased to be heading to Denver tomorrow for the inaugural National Adaptation Forum from April 2-4, where I'll see many colleagues from around the country. Unfortunately (and confusingly), I won't see my colleagues working for the federal U.S. government, thanks to the sequester. (Read the March 1, 2013, Environmental News Service article on some of the environmental costs of the sequester.) Way to shoot yourselves in the collective foot, Congress. When one of the key people working on adaptation through the landscape conservation cooperatives here in California said she couldn't go to the NAF because of the sequester, an NGO offered to help pay for her trip, and she said she couldn't even be SEEN there, presumably because there are regulations preventing her from accepting the funding to send her there. Our federal employees are not just not being funded to go, they aren't allowed to go! Luckily, conference organizers say, there was time to find replacement speakers for most of the victims of the sequester.

Those of you who will be there, look for me on Tuesday (Day 1) during breaks and between 5 PM and 7 PM by my poster on scenarios for natural resource adaptation planning that I put together for last year's international adaptation conference in Tucson.

I would list the sessions that I'm looking forward to attending, but there really are too many to list. I'm choosing between appealing options in every session. Here's the agenda as of March 29, 2013.

Now, back to watching the astonishing take-down that Louisville's women's basketball team is presently executing on the legendary Baylor team.

President of AMS: climate change is affecting African Americans disproportionately

In a February 11, 2013, article for Ebony magazine, President of the American Meteorological Society Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd points to evidence that African Americans are disproportionately affected by climate change. He gives a few well-known areas of research where African-Americans are shown to be more exposed to climate impacts-- such as the urban heat island effect, air quality impacts combined with the prevalence of asthma ("which affects Blacks at a 36 percent higher rate of incidence than Whites"), social vulnerability, economic vulnerability, and labor market vulnerability, for example:

In the South, lower income African-Americans and Hispanics are employed as wage laborers either directly or indirectly in the agricultural industry, which is particularly sensitive to weather and climate variability, especially drought.

To these factors I would add - at least in some places - a lack of trust in the government and governmental sources of information about health and emergency preparedness. In one study I read looking at indicators by which you can measure a country's ability to recover after a natural disaster (The determinants of vulnerability and adaptive capacity at the national level and the implications for adaptation- Brooks, Adger, Kelly, 2005), a top indicator was the effectiveness of a government. While that study was international in scope, the idea is relevant to communities within the U.S. If your community has a history of being deprived the full protection of the law, and/or your community doesn't believe the government is taking its interests to heart, it is less likely to respond to a call to retreat from an oncoming storm, or take shelter from a heat wave in government-sponsored cooling centers, or to follow instructions about how to create a household emergency kit.

This study and others I've read like it all point to the need to discuss vulnerability at a sub-national level, trying to identify communities with special exposure to climate impacts, just as Dr. Shepherd has done.

The next, step, of course, is to put this research to work improving the emergency preparedness and health care access for African-American communities in the U.S.-- a good thing to do in any case, but particularly in the face of climate change.

"America cannot resist this transition [to sustainable energy sources]; we must lead it."

Standing, applauding. Thank you, President Obama!

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries - we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure - our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

From the January 21, 2013, inaugural speech 

Key to water management adaptation? Mostly good management.

Check out an excellent blog post "Climate change and California water – past, present and future" (Jan. 13, 2013) by Professor Jay Lund from UC Davis' Center for Watershed Sciences.

He makes a few excellent points, with the bottom line that good management for climate change is mostly just good management. He points out the fact that climate change isn't the only signal that managers will have to monitor: "In the past 100 years, California water management has changed tremendously, driven by changes in population, economic structure, technology, and social and environmental objectives."

He also points out that we don't necessarily need any more reservoirs here in California: "with some changes in reservoir management, existing large reservoirs on most of California’s rivers can largely accommodate seasonal shifts in runoff." And, an important detail for those wringing their hands over California's warming climate: precipitation and other unknowns are probably more important to monitor than temperature.

Change in total precipitation is more important than warming alone. The physical, economic and ecological instability of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta probably poses more risk to California’s water supply than climate warming.

Next weekend I expect to be heading up to the California Water Law Symposium at UC Davis, where I'm sure I'll hear more wisdom from Professor Lund's corner.