Heather Allen's Blog: Environmental Justice

International Women's Day: Empowering Women to Confront Climate Change

2010-03-09T00:51:13Z

March 8, 2010 is the 99th International Women’s Day a time to reflect on the dynamics between women and the environment. In this post we take a look at the disproportionate impact of climate change and resulting water shortages (and floods) on women around the world and at the same time celebrate women as powerful agents of change.

Check out these facts gathered by UNIFEM

Women provide up to 80% of agricultural labor and 45-90% of a household’s food.
Gathering and transporting water typically falls on women and children in developing countries — a task that can take many hours each day in drought prone areas.
Collecting water is already becoming increasingly burdensome with global warming. More regions will experience water shortages as rainfall becomes erratic, glaciers melt and seas rise.
There is a strong correlation between gender equality and women’s survival rate in disasters. Women are up to 14 times more likely than men to die from natural disasters. Poverty and poor access to health care exacerbate these risks.

A 2008 study commissioned by WEDO, shows the plight of women in Nepal as they face the impacts of climate change.

In Nepal, Dalit women are perhaps the most underprivileged people in the country; they face dual discrimination, being considered “untouchable” and being women, and they are particularly vulnerable to violence, including sexual abuse and rape. Since they are deprived of using public infrastructures, they usually have to walk farther to get water––very often of bad quality––and fuel wood.

Srijana is a Dalit widow, mother of a baby girl. She lives in a small mud house in Phoolparasi, Sarlahi District. She is used to coping with regular floods and has learned to elevate the plinths of her house in order to protect her belongings. She says this:

I am very poor and do not have anything except this house. Now the floods are coming more often and the level of the water is higher. Every year, my house is damaged by the water. I do not know what to do now since I am losing more and more of my house. I cannot get any support because I am untouchable and poor. I cannot even get refuge in my neighbors’ house.

(Excerpts from Case Study: Gender and Climate Change in the Hindu Kush Himalayas of Nepal available at http://www.wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/nepalcasestudy.pdf)

We have more to do in advocating for women’s rights and full integration in climate change solutions. Women have a great deal to offer as communities develop solutions to impacts on food and water resources. Yet to gain women's insight and participation special care must be given to ensure women are engaged at every level of decision making related to climate change and sustainable development.

Several champions are working to do just that. Check out the inspiring leaders that IUCN honored today. These seven individuals work tirelessly to empower women around the world to confront climate change. Something to celebrate!

This blog was co-authored by Lovelyn Nwarueze.

Adaptation Tools and Technologies: 100 Billion or Just 25 Cents a Day

2009-12-09T16:59:10Z

Its Day Three of the Copenhagen Climate Talks and adaptation is taking center stage. Delegates at the climate talks are calling for investment in technologies to provide early warning systems, predict crop losses, and provide local solutions. A youth group just called for global investment in adaptation at a level of just 25 cents a day from all developed country citizens to support 100 billion dollars a year for adaptation.

Earlier during a rare quiet moment I had the pleasure of chatting with a representative of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) about the tools needed to predict, understand and adapt to climate change.

The WMO, for those who may not be familiar with it, is a scientific organization within the United Nations which built the tools to allow meteorologists from around the world share their data and create interconnected, real-time systems that predict the weather every day. And to provide fullest disclosure, I myself was unaware of the WMO until I spent several years working for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service.

Dr. Avinash Tyagi, the Director of the Climate and Water Department at the WMO, explained that:

We have had over 100 years to improve and refine the best methods for hydrologic science. Naturally, our water management strategies are based on the presumption that whatever happened in the past will happen in the future. But climate change throws all of our old assumptions about natural systems especially water systems into question. We can no longer base our assumptions on the past. There is an immediate need to adapt our management strategies to the changing climate and the new and emerging climate models.

Unfortunately, according to Dr. Tyagi, Time is not on our side.

Scientists and Negotiators Agree

The urgency of climate change is a significant challenge, but luckily the opportunity matches the challenge. More importantly scientists, and negotiators of both the developed and developing states can agree that one key solution lies in utilizing modern geospatial technology to empower communities.

Over the last two days developing countries said that high quality observations (satellite images, rain measurements, stream levels, temperature records and more) are necessary for adaptation. They called for more funding for the Global Climate Observation System. And the WMO is working to encourage countries to prioritize climate research and science in their own national budgets. There is no debate on the value of data and observations to climate adaptation here at the Copenhagen negotiations.

Making Global Climate Models Useful to You and Me

While we agree in principle the challenge lies in implementation. Existing climate data can be used to build global and regional models, but the most valuable data still needed at the local level. And local scientists around the world need to tap into the best tools, knowledge and methods. So how can we build local knowledge and capacity?

Globally

At the WMO’s World Climate Conference September 2009, Ministers agreed to establish a Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) to facilitate collaboration between sectors, nations and scientists. The GFCS will provide standards for measurement, create guidelines for integration and build capacity. Ultimately their work shall support early warning systems, predict crop losses, and bring local solutions.

Climate models require data from many sectors, beyond the WMO’s usual partners, and GFCS will have to tackle that challenge. No small feat since there is a role for data related to fire, weather, soil moisture, water, biodiversity, energy, air quality, storms and more in climate models.

Nationally

At the national level how can we facilitate communication between meteorologists, hydrologists, health specialists, and the coastal managers about the data needed for climate models and adaptation? Sometimes, if you are lucky, you can bring together the scientific data from a variety of government sectors. For example, the United States is slated to establish the National Climate Service as part of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. While many countries won’t establish new climate services, with the right level of global and local investment they will be empowered to bring together many agencies, scientists and specialists from different disciplines to strengthen their own climate models.

Locally

And then you get to the really good news. Lets say the world’s leaders amaze us here in Copenhagen, make commitments to deep emissions reductions, and put significant short term and long-term money toward adaptation, technology, reducing deforestation and capacity building. Monies directed to building climate observation knowledge can empower local people with the tools they need to collect data (lake temperature data) and combine it with data from other sectors (rainfall data and indigenous knowledge) and predict local climate impacts (the fate of a local fish critical to food security). The integrated data can be fed back to the global framework building a more robust model, improving our efforts to adapt to climate change.

On the Ground

While writing this blog and chatting with my colleagues, I learned that the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) is already using these geospatial information technology tools. They are using integrated data to map herd movements, predict water shortages and floods and adapt their activities to the changing environmental conditions. So please allow me to finish this blog by amplifying their message to the COP 15 about adaptation

All efforts must be made to improve communication between regional, sub-regional and national meteorological agencies and indigenous peoples and vulnerable local communities;
GEF, UNDP and related funding bodies should support transfer of appropriate geo-spatial information technologies which improve the ability of indigenous peoples and vulnerable local communities to document and promote their knowledge of natural and human adaptation
Strengthen and support the UNDP Small Project funding of Community-based Adaptation in Africa; Best practices of Community-based and Ecosystem-based Adaptation should be shared and promoted widely.

Today is World Toilet Day!

2009-11-19T20:36:07Z

It's a fun way to build awareness for a very serious problem. Safe water and sanitation are the world's most pressing environmental health challenges as NRDC has highlighted here and here. Luckily World Toilet Day celebrations in DC did reach lots of people.

This morning on a radio show, Congressman Earl Blumenauer highlighted the importance of safe places for people to defecate and urinate. 2.5 billion people worldwide don't have access to a safe private toilet and as a result millions of people, especially young children, die of diarrheal illnesses unnecessarily.

During lunchtime in DC a variety of health, development, and water and sanitation organizations joined together to create an exhibit in front of the Capitol building showing that sanitation can provide dignity, health and safety. Children from a local school even brought signs and explained why they thought toilets were important.

What would you do if you didn't have a toilet?

Take a minute and check out news about these events around the world that are part of World Toilet Day. And see what you can do to raise awareness about this important issue. We've said it before and we will say it again It's Time to Use Your Potty Mouth.

Happy Toilet Day!

Water and Ecosystems a Focus at Barcelona Climate Change Talks

2009-11-16T19:04:36Z

We tend to think of climate change as an air pollution problem, or a threat to our atmosphere, but in fact water and especially watery ecosystems (wetlands, mangroves, mountainous cloud forests, and more) will play a major role in our ability to both curb climate change and to adapt to that change.

Climate change will stress water resources placing the greatest burden on the world's most vulnerable people, already challenged by the simple act of getting a glass of safe drinking water. NRDC's president Frances Beinecke explored climate change adaptation in the developing world in a radio broadcast today.

At Water Day (held during Barcelona's Climate Change Talks) specialists in the areas of safe drinking water and sanitation, energy, gender, ecosystems and energy discussed how climate change impacts on water will impact these issues. Moreover they explored tools and techniques to respond to the impacts of changes in hydrologic cycle. You can hear all the recorded discussions by clicking on the link above.

The impacts of climate change on water will reduce both the quantity and quality of water available to drink. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a chapter on Water Resources in their 4th report which detailed the impacts of climate change on water:

1) The likelihood of water borne diseases will increase.
2) Floods and droughts will become more frequent, and storms more intense.
3) Water will be in shorter (and more erratic) supply.
4) Sea level rise will result in salt water intrusion in coastal areas decreasing available freshwater.
5) Dry areas will have even less available freshwater, yet rapidly growing populations in these regions need more water.
6) Water pollution will be worsened by higher water temperatures, increased precipitation, and longer dry periods.
7) Aquatic ecosystems will suffer changes in water availability and related extinctions of species sensitive to water temperature and availability.

On the final day in Barcelona a new version of the text shed some light on how a final Copenhagen agreement will consider water and ecosystems. The newest text adaptation non-paper 53 (which combines the two most recent adaptation papers), includes key references that highlight the value of water and ecosystems:

Within National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs) countries may include actions in and across different sectors, including agriculture and food security, water resources, health, ecosystems, coastal zones; [Annex 1, page 28]
Countries shall protect and sustainably managing natural resources and ecosystems, and the goods and services they provide, to facilitate adaptation; [paragraph 7, page 4]

The words in the text are most welcome, as recognition of the importance water and ecosystems as tools for resilience. Yet the evolution of thinking will have to go beyond the language in the negotiating text. When it comes to addressing the challenges of water and the changing climate we must come to understand that the old ways of doing business will not suffice. We need new approaches, new assessment tools, new ways to engage everyone (especially vulnerable communities and women). As a friend said in the sessions yesterday, 'rather than climate change, we should be talking about climate changing.' Impacts and models continue to evolve and we should focus on being as nimble in our approaches and open to new ideas as possible.

The discussion evolving here in Barcelona brings together the tools and principles of adaptive management, sustainable development and ecosystem based adaptation to address the threats of climate change. Yet the concepts of adaptation can be simply understood as three key areas:

1) investing in the natural systems that sustain life (such as wetlands) and
2) ensuring that the services of those ecosystems (like safe drinking water and food) are accessible to all
3) learning from each success and failure and building those lessons into future actions

I look forward to seeing how the negotiators protect these principles as the negotiations continue in Copenhagen.

Retired military general and young creative protestors agree: The US must help the world’s poor adapt to climate change

2009-10-16T22:27:09Z

Yesterday a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee held a hearing to discuss helping the "world's most vulnerable nations" to respond to the droughts, floods and refugees created by climate change.

In general, the Senators and witnesses agreed that the US should contribute significant funds because poor people around the world are already suffering from the increased storms, droughts and diseases resulting from climate change. Not to mention the fact that the world's poor contributed the least to the greenhouse gases causing climate change.

There was one outlier though, Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute (funded by ExxonMobil and noted here for trying to pay IPCC scientists to criticize the seminal IPCC 4th Report) denied climate change and the significance of its impacts. He showed little sympathy for the millions of poor people with no choice but to live in low-lying islands and along the coasts. He suggested that they simply move away.

In response, a few very polite women in the front row donned the snorkels they had snuck into the Senate and raised signs held high saying "Fund Climate Adaptation" and "Global Treaty Now."

Many thanks to Morgan Goodwin of Avaaz Action Factory DC for the photo. dc.actionfactories.org

The snorkels represented the people who live on small islands who have no other land to turn to. The Government of the Maldives will be making the same point this Saturday by holding a Cabinet meeting underwater.

These silent protestors were also standing up for the people who are threatened by more severe storms and flooding. Likewise, they represent Sub-Saharan African nations which may be overcome by spreading deserts. As one African delegate exclaimed at the climate talks in Bangkok last week: "We too will be drowning, in a sea of sand."

The most compelling of the witnesses was Charles F. Wald, a former General in the U.S. Air Force. He indicated that scale of the problem of adapting to climate change is immense and we must act now. He said 30,000,000 Bangledeshis will be displaced and they have nowhere to go. Moreover, he echoed the refrain that investing in energy security and climate change is in our own security interest.

Adaptation investments will prevent a worsening of the global security environment. As the IPCC notes in its 4th assessment report, climate change is a threat multiplier which can worsen the impacts of food shortages, water scarcity, migration pressures and conflict.
Adaptation funding will save the U.S. Government money. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case General Wald noted that the US military will have to respond to more humanitarian disasters as a result of climate change. To illustrate the scale of the costs of such work; deploying 1000 troops to Afghanistan costs $1 billion.

Another witness David Waskow of Oxfam pointed to their new report which shows that US companies will benefit from adaptation investments.

The good news about this hearing is that the range of voices seemed to agree, the US must fund adaptation, at sufficient levels, now. And the benefits will accrue for both the US and the world's most vulnerable people.

Adapting to Global Warming: $100 Billion Says World Bank (Give or Take a Little Social Change)

2009-10-02T17:42:07Z

The typhoon Ketsana is pouring down on Bangkok this morning as I ready myself for day four of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings. Representatives of countries and hundreds of civil society organizations will continue to meet here for another week to identify solutions for December's critical global warming negotiation in Copenhagen.

As the media has reported, the results of talks here are mixed, but there is hope in the conversation about adaptation. As NRDC noted here efforts to build resilience to climate change impacts in developing nations is critical because climate change is affecting vulnerable people around the world now. And there is a growing recognition that this will create global instability that will impact the US national security (as discussed here). So not only is it the right thing to do, but it is also in the US domestic interest.

Today's typhoon ripped through the Philippines, Samoa, Tonga, Vietnam, Cambodia and other nations before it arrived here in Bangkok but the good news is that the storm has become part of the debate, a terrible tangible impact of climate change.

The threat of worsening storms was reiterated last night at a World Bank event about their new report, Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (EACC).

The report indicates that the costs of adaptation to a world 2°C warmer would cost between $75 - $100 billion a year between 2010 and 2050. $100 billion is a big number and delegates from the most vulnerable countries are rightfully concerned that monies must be committed now, at sustainable and sufficient levels to help build resiliency.

And if we don't address global warming the price tag would become even larger so we need invest in solving this challenge. It is always cheaper and easier to avoid the mess in the first place than to clean up after the fact.

It is critical that the US and other countries increase their financial contribution towards helping developing countries address this financial gap. There are some efforts to provide a down payment towards this end (as my colleague discussed here) and the US Administration as begun to more clearly signal that it wants this support in the climate bill working its way through the US Senate (as my colleague discussed here). But more needs to be done to support adaptation in developing countries.

But the report from the World Bank approaches adaptation through a traditional development lens. How much will it cost to replace the dams, seawalls and power plants which may suffer from climate impacts?

These adaptation needs are important. We must make our investments more resilient to global warming and we need to ensure that we are simultaneously pulling millions out of poverty.

But it is no longer appropriate to view adaptation through a 'hard' model which largely does not factor in policy shifts and social responses. Soft tools like capacity building, communication, education, research and planning are perhaps the most critical in our efforts to adapt to climate change. Adaption, even in its very name suggests new innovative approaches, flexible tools and models supple enough to respond to the variety of new scenarios the world will experience. Without major shifts in thinking, the World Bank and other groups are likely to continue with adaptation by ribbon cutting, favoring large concrete infrastructure solutions over flexible sustainable mechanisms which can take many forms.

In 2050 the least developed nations should have cutting edge energy sectors which incorporate the best renewable technologies and social and economic models which promote efficiency. In this ideal world, coastal communities will be protected through participatory costal management which capitalizes on the natural world's resilience through investment in wetland and mangrove rehabilitation, rather than seawalls and other 'hard' tools which often shift vulnerabilities and may not withstand the intensified weather events of a +2°C warmer world. A mix of soft tools (enabling communities to adapt and progress) and hard tools (providing the energy, water and food) are both essential to sustainable development.

Here in Bangkok, once the clouds begin to part, lets hope that leaders of both the industrialized and developing world will use the projected costs of adaptation to shape a climate agreement which supports resiliency with flexible tools.