tagged w/ Climate adaptation
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The people of Bangladesh have much to teach us about how a crowded planet can best adapt to rising sea levels. For them, that future is now.
We may be seven billion specks on the surface of Earth, but when you're in Bangladesh, it sometimes feels as if half the human race were crammed into a space the size of Louisiana. Dhaka, its capital, is so crowded that every park and footpath has been colonized by the homeless. To stroll here in the mists of early morning is to navigate an obstacle course of makeshift beds and sleeping children. Later the city's steamy roads and alleyways clog with the chaos of some 15 million people, most of them stuck in traffic. Amid this clatter and hubbub moves a small army of Bengali beggars, vegetable sellers, popcorn vendors, rickshaw drivers, and trinket salesmen, all surging through the city like particles in a flash flood. The countryside beyond is a vast watery floodplain with intermittent stretches of land that are lush, green, flat as a parking lot—and wall-to-wall with human beings. In places you might expect to find solitude, there is none. There are no lonesome highways in Bangladesh.
We should not be surprised. Bangladesh is, after all, one of the most densely populated nations on Earth. It has more people than geographically massive Russia. It is a place where one person, in a nation of 164 million, is mathematically incapable of being truly alone. That takes some getting used to.
So imagine Bangladesh in the year 2050, when its population will likely have zoomed to 220 million, and a good chunk of its current landmass could be permanently underwater. That scenario is based on two converging projections: population growth that, despite a sharp decline in fertility, will continue to produce millions more Bangladeshis in the coming decades, and a possible multifoot rise in sea level by 2100 as a result of climate change. Such a scenario could mean that 10 to 30 million people along the southern coast would be displaced, forcing Bangladeshis to crowd even closer together or else flee the country as climate refugees—a group predicted to swell to some 250 million worldwide by the middle of the century, many from poor, low-lying countries.
"Globally, we're talking about the largest mass migration in human history," says Maj. Gen. Muniruzzaman, a charismatic retired army officer who presides over the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies in Dhaka. "By 2050 millions of displaced people will overwhelm not just our limited land and resources but our government, our institutions, and our borders." Muniruzzaman cites a recent war game run by the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., which forecast the geopolitical chaos that such a mass migration of Bangladeshis might cause in South Asia. In that exercise millions of refugees fled to neighboring India, leading to disease, religious conflict, chronic shortages of food and fresh water, and heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed adversaries India and Pakistan.
Such a catastrophe, even imaginary, fits right in with Bangladesh's crisis-driven story line, which, since the country's independence in 1971, has included war, famine, disease, killer cyclones, massive floods, military coups, political assassinations, and pitiable rates of poverty and deprivation—a list of woes that inspired some to label it an international basket case. Yet if despair is in order, plenty of people in Bangladesh didn't read the script. In fact, many here are pitching another ending altogether, one in which the hardships of their past give rise to a powerful hope.
For all its troubles, Bangladesh is a place where adapting to a changing climate actually seems possible, and where every low-tech adaptation imaginable is now being tried. Supported by governments of the industrialized countries—whose greenhouse emissions are largely responsible for the climate change that is causing seas to rise—and implemented by a long list of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), these innovations are gaining credence, thanks to the one commodity that Bangladesh has in profusion: human resilience. Before this century is over, the world, rather than pitying Bangladesh, may wind up learning from her example.
cont.The people of Bangladesh have much to teach us about how a crowded planet can best... more
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As people continue to sit and "debate," real people's lives are being devastated by the changes taking place on our globe. We cannot sit on our hands for another year wishing it away or denying its existence.As people continue to sit and "debate," real people's lives are being... more
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As glaciers disappear in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, one man is helping farmers irrigate their fields by storing water in an innovative way
In the high-altitude desert of the Indian trans-Himalayas, one man is buying time for villagers suffering from global warming by creating artificial glaciers.
The ancient kingdom of Ladakh is the highest inhabited region on Earth. Wedged between Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, Ladakh consists entirely of mountains and is home to a mostly Tantric Buddhist population.
In the so-called rain shadow of the Himalayas, Ladakh receives just five centimeters of rainwater a year—about the same as the Sahara Desert. The population is entirely dependent on glacier and snowmelt to irrigate crops.
Global warming has hit the region particularly hard. Around the principal town of Leh, most of the glaciers have disappeared in the past 15 years. The snow line has risen more than 150 meters, and remaining glaciers have retreated by as much as 10 kilometers. These glaciers are now at high altitudes, far from the villages, where they don't produce significant meltwater until May or June.
The villagers here are particularly vulnerable because they experience such a brief summer. If they don't plant their one annual crop of barley, peas or wheat by late March, there will be no time for it to mature to harvest before winter begins in September, after which the temperature drops below –30 degrees Celsius.
With villages emptying as people seek a living in Indian megacities, retired civil engineer Chewang Norphel has decided to do something about the worsening situation.
"Water is the most precious commodity here. People are fighting each other for it: in the irrigation season, even brother and sister or father and son are fighting over water. It is against our tradition and our Buddhist teachings, but people are desperate," Norphel, a Ladakhi native, says. "Peace depends on water."
View a slideshow of the artifical glacier at workAs glaciers disappear in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, one man is helping farmers... more
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The polite way of saying, "It's too late to stop global warming, so how are we going cope?
More background information to demystify the climate change debate and reports from the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen can be found at http://www.greendetectives.net/The polite way of saying, "It's too late to stop global warming, so how are... more
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It is unfortunately a given now that certain areas of the world, Bangladesh for example, are already experiencing the effects of climate change. Therefore, it is necessary that methods for adaptation now be employed to prepare the people to survive the floods, droughts, and rising seas that are now already effecting these areas. This initiative also proves that when the solutions are left in the hands of those who live there and know the land and farm it innovation and vision thrive over simply making a profit.It is unfortunately a given now that certain areas of the world, Bangladesh for... more
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This entire area of the world that includes India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and other islands such as Kirabati and Vanuatu are seeing the effects of rising seas already that will threaten not only their livelihoods, but their lives. This is not a drill, this is the real thing. It has begun and yet, what are we really doing to mitigate/adapt? Waiting for some politicians to have a meeting? I can bet you if it were the shores of NY or Florida their butts would be moving.This entire area of the world that includes India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the... more
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Rising seas are threatening to engulf the Maldives, so the president wants to buy a new homeland for his people. But should he instead be looking to build a new one on the grave of the old?
What would you want to do if you lived there? Who should pay for it?Rising seas are threatening to engulf the Maldives, so the president wants to buy a... more
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One of Madeleen Helmer's biggest discoveries in her work as a humanitarian has been that it's ordinary people in Africa who rank among the best experts on climate change.
Until recently, says Helmer, the head of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, climate change was viewed "very much as a scientific research issue".
"But there's another group of experts," says Helmer.
"These are people who've been living in the same place for 20 or 30 years or longer. They observe what's going on with the weather. They don't know about greenhouse gases and might just call it funny weather but they see the rain patterns changing and it's worrying them.
"We found it was very difficult to make people aware of the risk of HIV and Aids in Africa. It was taboo and we lost a lot of time because of that. The good news with climate change is that people themselves are observing what's happening. This is fertile ground to build community readiness programmes."
Helmer was speaking at the 7th Red Cross Red Crescent Pan African Conference in Sandton this week, which thrashed out the pressure that accelerating climate change, HIV and Aids and other infectious diseases were placing on African communities as well as the urgent need for funds to tackle this.
Helmer says that although the science behind the human-induced causes of climate change is irrefutable, how it will manifest itself is harder to gauge.
"We know climate change will bring more floods, droughts and hurricanes. We accept the range of risks increasing and we must plan for surprises," she says of erratic weather patterns and weather-related diseases and pests.
Her centre has invested heavily in "innovative" climactic early warning technology to better prepare for disasters. But it's also about helping the poorest to adapt to future weather changes.
"Our main responsibility is to prepare people to be less vulnerable. We say there are a zillion options to adapt to climate change.
"But if the rain patterns are changing, people stand to lose a lot. For example, in Malawi people are stocking their grains in silos and can't transport their food. But if we put it in bags, we can transport it. It's about knowing the risks. We strengthen the chain at the local level to be more resilient.
"But in certain circumstances, the climate impacts have been so huge and we can't protect people against the devastation. We've saved lives but people have had their houses smashed and lost all their belongings."
Climate change, says Helmer, has robbed Africans of traditional knowledge systems to predict the weather.
"That asset is no longer reliable and it's one of the few the poor have," she laments.
"You want to be sure the rain comes when sowing your seeds. If it doesn't you miss your harvest. That leads to a chain of reactions. You sell your belongings, your children can't go to school. It is pushing people further back into poverty."One of Madeleen Helmer's biggest discoveries in her work as a humanitarian has... more
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A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said Thursday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species.
The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in a remote part of Indonesia's Kalimantan province on Borneo island during an expedition in August 2007, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore.
Bickford surmised that the frog had evolved to adapt to its difficult surroundings, in which it has to navigate cold, rapidly moving streams that are rich in oxygen.
"It's an extreme adaptation that was probably brought about by these fast-moving streams," Bickford said, adding that it probably needed to reduce its buoyancy in order to keep from being swept down the mountainous rivers.
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...I'm curious to see what kind of mutations human beings will develop to counteract the effects of global warming.A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes... more
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New research suggests the genes that contribute to obesity and metabolic disorders today are the ones that may have helped our ancestors survive cold climates. New research suggests the genes that contribute to obesity and metabolic disorders... more
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