Category Archives: Nature Speaks

According to Melanesians, nature does speak, but only humans are limited to listen and understand

Nature Speaks

Cyclone Winston Wreaks Havoc on Fiji

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It was one of the South Pacific’s fiercest storms on record.

Source: https://thediplomat.com/ , By Catherine Putz
Cyclone Winston Wreaks Havoc on Fiji
Image Credit: NOAA

Cyclone Winston, which made a direct hit on the Fijian island of Koro over the weekend, was the first Category 5 cyclone to make landfall on Fijian territory in recorded history. The latest reported numbers indicate that 42 people have died as a result of the storm, with aid agencies warning that more may die in the storm’s aftermath as the small country rushes to reach communities on remote islands.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a U.S. agency, the storm’s winds were estimated to have reached 185 mph. Tom Di Liberto, a meteorologist with NOAA’s climate prediction center, wrote that it  “was one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.”

With the storm over, the recovery has begun but the task is monumental. The Fijian government declared a month-long state of emergency and put out calls for assistance. The storm did not make a direct hit on the country’s capital, Suva, but wreaked havoc on Koro and many of the country’s other islands. There are more than 330 Fijian islands, about a third of which are inhabited.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama gave a national address Wednesday in which he said, “Almost no part of our nation has been left unscarred.” Per the Sydney Morning Herald, Bainimarama focused attention on immediate concerns: food, water, and shelter.Cyclone Winston flattened homes, caused extensive coastal flooding and knocked out utility and communication systems. The storm also irreparably damaged sugarcane crops.

Radio New Zealand reports that New Zealand, Australia, and France have sent relief flights and the United States, China, India, and the EU have all offered financial assistance. The New Zealand Navy is dispatching the HMNZS Canterbury, a multi-role vessel,  and the HMNZS Wellington, an offshore patrol vessel, loaded with supplies to assist in recovery efforts.

Numerous aid agencies and international organizations have pledged help for Fiji. The Asian Development Bank committed to $2 million in emergency assistance. The Red Cross says it had mobilized more than 300 staff and volunteers in the islands and is releasing emergency funds to the Fiji Red Cross.

Days after the storm aid still seems sluggish for some, as Kim Baker Wilson makes clear in a report for Radio New Zealand from Rakiraki, a district on the northern edge of the island of Fiji’s main island of Vitu Levu. An estimated 1,000 homes were destroyed in Rakiraki.

And more is needed. Ewan Perrin, the newly-appointed permanent secretary for Communication and Information Technology, said that Fiji would “definitely need more international assistance.” From his comments reported by Radio New Zealand, Perrin said Fiji had “everything that we need at this stage” but that more assistance would be needed in the medium to long term.

Fiji’s economy is built on sugar and tourism, both of which are likely to take a massive hit in the storm’s wake.

Last year, Cyclone Pam made a direct hit on Vanuatu, devastating the country. In the months after the storm, Vanuatu’s political system nearly imploded with a quarter of the parliament jailed on corruption charges.

Pacific island nations–like Fiji–have led the charge on climate change globally, sounding the warning siren because their communities will be among the first affected by rising sea levels and worsening storms. Ahead of the Paris climate change talks last year, Bainimarama warned,“Unless the world acts decisively in the coming weeks to begin addressing the greatest challenge of our age, then the Pacific, as we know it, is doomed.”

Nature Speaks

Sea-level rise ‘could last twice as long as human history’

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Research warns of the long timescale of climate change impacts unless urgent action is taken to cut emissions drastically

Huge sea-level rises caused by climate change will last far longer than the entire history of human civilisation to date, according to new research, unless the brief window of opportunity of the next few decades is used to cut carbon emissions drastically.

Even if global warming is capped at governments’ target of 2C – which is already seen as difficult – 20% of the world’s population will eventually have to migrate away from coasts swamped by rising oceans. Cities including New York, London, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Calcutta, Jakarta and Shanghai would all be submerged.

“Much of the carbon we are putting in the air from burning fossil fuels will stay there for thousands of years,” said Prof Peter Clark, at Oregon State University in the US and who led the new work. “People need to understand that the effects of climate change won’t go away, at least not for thousands of generations.”

“The long-term view sends the chilling message of what the real risks and consequences are of the fossil fuel era,” said Prof Thomas Stocker, at the University of Bern, Switzerland and also part of the research team. “It will commit us to massive adaptation efforts so that for many, dislocation and migration becomes the only option.”

The report, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, notes most research looks at the impacts of global warming by 2100 and so misses one of the biggest consequences for civilisation – the long-term melting of polar ice caps and sea-level rise.

This is because the great ice sheets take thousand of years to react fully to higher temperatures. The researchers say this long-term view raises moral questions about the kind of environment being passed down to future generations.

The research shows that even with climate change limited to 2C by tough emissions cuts, sea level would rise by 25 metres over the next 2,000 years or so and remain there for at least 10,000 years – twice as long as human history. If today’s burning of coal, oil and gas is not curbed, the sea would rise by 50m, completely changing the map of the world.

“We can’t keep building seawalls that are 25m high,” said Clark. “Entire populations of cities will eventually have to move.”

By far the greatest contributor to the sea level rise – about 80% – would be the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. Another new study in Nature Climate Changepublished on Monday reveals that some large Antarctic ice sheets are dangerously close to losing the sea ice shelves that hold back their flow into the ocean.

Huge floating sea ice shelves around Antarctica provide buttresses for the glaciers and ice sheets on the continent. But when they are lost to melting, as happened the with Larsen B shelf in 2002, the speed of flow into the ocean can increase eightfold.

Johannes Fürst, at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany and colleagues, calculated that just 5% of the ice shelf in the Bellingshausen Sea and 7% in the Amundsen Sea can be lost before their buttressing effect vanishes. “This is worrying because it is in these regions that we have observed the highest rates of ice-shelf thinning over the past two decades,” he said.

Avoiding the long-term swamping of many of the world’s greatest cities is already difficult, given the amount carbon dioxide already released into the atmosphere. “Sea-level rise is already baked into the system,” said Prof Stocker, one of the world’s leading climate scientists.

However, the rise could be reduced and delayed if carbon is removed from the atmosphere in the future, he said: “If you are very optimistic and think we will be in the position by 2050 or 2070 to have a global scale carbon removal scheme – which sounds very science fiction – you could pump down CO2 levels. But there is no indication that this is technically possible.” A further difficulty is the large amount of heat and CO2 already stored in the oceans.

Prof Stocker said: “The actions of the next 30 years are absolutely crucial for putting us on a path that avoids the [worst] outcomes and ensuring, at least in the next 200 years, the impacts are limited and give us time to adapt.”

The researchers argue that a new industrial revolution is required to deliver a global energy system that emits no carbon at all. They conclude: “The success of the [UN climate summit in] Paris meeting, and of every future meeting, must be evaluated not only by levels of national commitments, but also by looking at how they will lead ultimately to the point when zero-carbon energy systems become the obvious choice for everyone.”

“We are making choices that will affect our grandchildren’s grandchildren and beyond,” said Prof Daniel Schrag, at Harvard University in the US. “We need to think carefully about the long timescales of what we are unleashing.

Nature Speaks

Collapsing Greenland glacier could raise sea levels by half a metre, say scientists

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Huge Zachariae Isstrom glacier has begun to break up, starting a rapid retreat that could continue to raise sea levels for decades to come

Nature Speaks

Help small island states win their battle against climate change

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Earth’s fate is inextricably linked to 52 nations threatened by rising sea levels – the rest of the world should not let them drown

In this Oct. 13, 2011 photo, Funafuti, the main island of the nation state of Tuvalu, is seen from a Royal New Zealand airforce C130 aircraft as it approaches at Funafuti, Tuvalu, South Pacific. Funafuti is the capital of Tuvalu, a group of atolls situated north of Fiji and northwest of Samoa, in the South Pacific ocean. The atolls are suffering a severe drought and water shortage, coupled with contaminated ground water due to rising sea levels. The governments of Australia, New Zealand and the United States are providing desalination plants to alleviate the critical water shortage for some 10,000 islanders. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)Many of the planet’s most prized destinations, places considered exquisite and idyllic, where nature seems bountiful and people appear at ease, are under threat. In less than a decade, climate change-induced sea level rise could force thousands of people to migrate from some of the world’s 52 small island developing states (Sids).

How Sids respond to threats such as sea level rise, and the degree of support they receive, is indicative of how we, collectively, will adapt to a host of climate change impacts in the coming decades.

When we think of Sids, we may be tempted to imagine small patches of paradise scattered with lightly populated fishing villages, unfettered by the demands of modernity. In fact, almost one in every 100 of us is from a small island developing state.

Sids boast a diversity of cultures, natural resources, biodiversity, and indigenous knowledge that makes them mainstays of our planetary ecosystem. From the multi-billion dollar economy of Singapore, to Papua New Guinea, one of the least explored countries in the world where 1,000 cultural groups are thought to exist, to the very remote Niue, which is one of the world’s largest coral islands – each small island developing state is endowed with its own unique attributes.

Yet what they increasingly share in common are escalating environmental threats that are further aggravated by economic insecurities. Sea level rise is among the most daunting of these threats, which in some regions is up to four times the global average.

According to recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates, if average global temperatures increase by approximately 4C, sea levels could rise as much as one metre by 2100, a scenario that would see nations such as Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu become uninhabitable, while a large share of the population of many other Sids could be displaced or otherwise.

What makes this situation even more grievous is that the climate change threats facing many Sids are by-and-large not of their own making. Their total combined annual carbon dioxide output, although rising, accounts for less than 1% of global emissions.

Sids are suffering disproportionately from acts of environmental negligence of which we are collectively guilty. Larger economies, until recently, have managed better than small ones to mask the impacts of exhausting their natural capital and contributing heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, but the consequences of this neglect are catching up with them too.

Kiribati
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 A girl sits on a log next to the roots of a tree near the village of Teaoraereke on South Tarawa in the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati. The country consists of a chain of 33 atolls and islands that stand just metres above sea level. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

Responses to these threats that apply the business-as-usual economic models that have brought them to the state of economic and environmental vulnerability they are in today will be temporary at best, and catastrophic at worst. That is why Sids are beginning to take the first steps on a blue-green economy transition – a strategy that targets resource efficiency and clean technology, is carbon neutral and socially inclusive, will provide a healthy environment and help conserve resources, while integrating traditional knowledge and giving priority to island community and culture that will build their resilience to the impacts of climate change.

But we should not look at climate change threats in isolation from other influenced by human activities, because climate change is in fact exacerbating problems that we have already created, such as desertification, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity.

Take the degradation of marine ecosystems as an example. A number of studies show that it is overfishing that currently outweighs all other human impacts on marine ecosystems, including climate change. With Sids accounting for seven out of 10 of the world’s countries most dependent on fish and seafood consumption, reducing emissions alone will not be enough to ensure a sufficient supply of fish in the future.

The governments of these small island states are recognising that many policies of the past have left them ill-prepared to respond to the impacts of climate change, and it is this awareness that is motivating them to make sustainable economic growth the cornerstone of their development.

The energy sector, where they are leading the switch to renewables, is a prime example of necessity driving innovation and change. On average, Pacific island households spend approximately 20% of their household income on energy, and can often pay up to 400% more per kilowatt-hour of electricity than the United States.

As a result, many states are now developing their domestic renewable energy markets. For instance, the small South Pacific island of Tokelau is close to meeting 100% of its energy needs through renewables – even powering generators with locally produced coconut biofuel.

And Barbados, already the leading producer of solar water heaters in the Caribbean, is set to save an estimated $283.5m (£171m) through a 29% switch to renewables by 2029.

From valuing and managing their natural resources, to putting the right incentives in place to switch to renewable energy, Sids are leading the blue-green economy transition. And next week, at the third international conference on Sids in Samoa, they will reaffirm their commitment to advancing national sustainable development goals in front of a global audience. What they need from the rest of the world is the solidarity, technologies, and resources to act on that commitment on a scale that will radically change their fortunes.

It is hoped that the new international climate change agreement currently being negotiated, and which will be adopted at the Paris conference in 2015, might help to relieve some of their economic burden of adapting to the impacts of climate change, while also reducing the severity of the impacts by reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Supporting Sids on this journey of transition provides an unprecedented opportunity to be part of game-changing socioeconomic solutions that can be applied in broader contexts and bigger economies.

We should look upon Sids as microcosms of our larger society, and not stand back and allow them to grapple with a threat for which they are largely inculpable.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/