Author: Cosmo Sanderson

Posted on

Poorer Households Need Support to Move After Natural Disasters, Finds US Study

New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005

26 January 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Households on the Atlantic coast of the United States are moving inland after natural disasters, according to a new study, but those on low incomes are being left behind. 

Poorer households that don’t receive support to leave disaster-prone areas are far less likely to than those on higher incomes, the study found.

It concluded that there is a need for “incentivising and aiding” the migration of vulnerable populations who are less likely to do so on their own. 

Two researchers from the University of South Carolina released the study last year in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

One of those researchers, Tamara Sheldon, an associate professor of economics at the university, recently told US publication The Post and Courier that there is not much empirical research out there on “human migration following natural disasters in developed countries.”

Her study relied on US census data collected in states on the country’s east coast between 2005 and 2017.

The study found that rising sea levels and an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters due to climate change are “increasing the risk” of living in vulnerable areas. It also raises the economic costs of having populations clustered on coast lines.

People are not necessarily more likely to move following less severe disasters, but the study found they are more likely to do so as disasters become “increasingly destructive”. However, households on the lowest 25% of incomes are far less likely to relocate without support from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency.  

Recent hurricanes to batter the US Atlantic coastline include Hurricane Florence, in 2017, and Hurricane Ian, last year.

Other countries to recently be hit by global warming-fuelled extreme weather events include Pakistan, where over 30 million people were displaced last year by historic floods that left a third of the country underwater. Flooding also devastated South Sudan last year, while, on the opposite end of the spectrum, two million people are currently displaced by drought in the Horn of Africa. 

Posted on

Two Million Displaced by Drought in Horn of Africa

10 January 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Over two million people have been uprooted in the Horn of Africa as the region suffers its worst drought for generations. 

UNICEF last month released the latest estimate of how many people have been internally displaced by the drought across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

Other bleak statistics released by the children’s aid agency are that over 20 million children are threatened by severe hunger, thirst and disease – up from 10 million in July. 

Nearly two million children in those three countries are thought to need urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, which UNICEF says is the deadliest form of hunger. A further four million children are at risk of dropping out of school. 

This has been caused through a combination of the climate crisis, conflict, global inflation and grain shortages that continue to “devastate” the region, says UNICEF. 

“While collective and accelerated efforts have mitigated some of the worst impact of what had been feared, children in the Horn of Africa are still facing the most severe drought in more than two generations,” said Lieke van de Wiel, UNICEF deputy regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa. 

In a report published last month, the NASA Earth Observatory went further in saying that the Horn of Africa is experiencing the “longest and most severe drought on record”. 

To make matters even worse, UNICEF says the region is now facing an “unprecedented” fifth consecutive failed rainy season, with a poor outlook for the sixth as well. 

Last year, the International Organization for Migration launched a new project to provide emergency relief to those displaced by the crisis in Somalia. 

Elsewhere in Africa, including South Sudan and Nigeria, erratic weather conditions have led to devastating floods that have also resulted in mass displacement. 

The World Bank has previously predicted that there will be 85.7 million climate migrants in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. 

Posted on

Tuvalu Turns to the Cloud as It Faces Sinking into the Sea 

Tuvalu Funafuti Atoll

30 November 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Tuvalu is planning to create a digital replica of itself in the metaverse as the island nation faces the prospect of sinking into the Pacific ocean.  

Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe told the COP27 climate summit last month that his country was having to create a digital backup – something more often used for protecting precious documents or holiday albums – to save “our culture, our knowledge [and] our history in a digital space.”

Tuvalu, a nation made up of nine atolls and reef islands situated around halfway between Australia and Hawaii, is predicted to disappear completely into the Pacific by the end of the century due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.

“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation,” said Kofe, speaking against a digitally simulated background of Tuvalu. 

Kofe also hopes that recreating Tuvalu in the metaverse will allow the country to continue functioning as a nation if and when it disappears beneath the waves. 

Tuvalu’s former attorney general and current high commissioner to Fiji, Eselealofa Apinelu, said at a recent conference that “when that finally happens, that Tuvalu has disappeared and all they have is this virtual world… we should always be able to remember Tuvalu as it is, before it disappears.”

“It needs to be stored somewhere that there was a country called Tuvalu”.

On the expected displacement of the country’s 12,000-strong population, she said that “if we can slowly allow the people to migrate at their own pace according to the laws of the individual countries they want to migrate to, it’s easier than packing up a whole nation at once and putting it somewhere.”

Posted on

Historic Flooding Causing “Devastation” in South Sudan, says UN

Bentiu, the capital of South Sudan’s Unity State, has become an island surrounded by floodwaters

31 October 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Devastating and historic flooding in South Sudan has affected almost one million people and transformed one city into an island amid rising waters, as the United Nations’ refugee agency pleads for international support.

Speaking in Geneva this month, UNHCR spokesperson Boris Cheshirkov said that while global attention is currently directed “elsewhere” – a possible reference to the ongoing war in Ukraine – South Sudan’s “protracted and chronically underfunded crisis needs urgent support.”

Two thirds of South Sudan is currently experiencing flooding after a fourth consecutive year of record-breaking rains fuelled by climate change, said Cheshirkov. Over 900,000 of its 11 million population are directly affected. 

“Waters have swept away homes and livestock, forced thousands to flee, and inundated large swathes of farmland, worsening an already dire food emergency,” he said. “Boreholes and latrines have been submerged, contaminating water sources and risking outbreaks of diseases.”

Bentiu, the capital of the country’s northern Unity State, has become an “island surrounded by floodwaters,” continued Cheshirkov. “All roads in and out are impassable and only boats and the airstrip serve as lifelines for humanitarian aid.”

Camps for displaced people are below the current water level. Inhabitants are “working around the clock” with pumps, buckets, excavators, and heavy machinery to keep the water at bay and prevent dikes that have been constructed from collapsing, he said.

South Sudan has received less than half of the US$215 million the UNHCR says it needs this year. An estimated 2.2 million people are displaced within the country as a result of the flooding and conflict that has plagued the world’s newest country, which declared independence in 2011. 

“The threat [is] of worse to come as the climate crisis accelerates,” said Cheshirkov. 

Beyond South Sudan, the UNHCR has warned of “surging needs” for more than 3.4 million displaced people following destructive flooding in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon. In the Horn of Africa, Somalia is meanwhile teetering on the precipice of famine following a historic drought that has displaced more than a million people. 

A recent report warned that Africa is receiving a fraction of the finance it needs to reduce emissions and adapt to global warming.

Image credit: UNHCR/Charlotte Hallqvist

Posted on

New Project to Help Those Displaced by Somalia Crisis

27 October 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

As Somalia teeters on the edge of a famine that could cause a rate of child death not seen in half a century, a new project has been launched to provide emergency relief to those displaced by the crisis.  

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced on 18 October that a new US$20 million project had launched to tackle the pressing needs of 71,000 displaced and vulnerable people affected by the historic drought. 

Over a million people have been displaced in Somalia since January 2021, which marked the start of a drought now stretching across four failed rainy seasons. A failed fifth rainy season is thought to be likely, as is a rare formal declaration of famine. The crisis has been driven by global warming. 

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that half a million children are at risk of dying from malnutrition. “Without greater action and investment, we are facing the death of children on a scale not seen in half a century,” said spokesperson James Elder. 

The IOM is partnering with the World Bank and the Somalian government on the new project, which will provide emergency relief and enhance abilities to recover and adapt through long-term housing solutions and infrastructure development.

“The project comes at a critical time as the most severe drought in four decades pushes millions of people further into poverty, starvation and displacement, with thousands at risk of eviction,” said Ewa Naqvi, IOM deputy chief of mission in Somalia.

Many Somalis that have left rural areas are living in informal settlements on the outskirts of cities where they face “fear and intimidation,” says the IOM, with a high risk of forced evictions. 

Ismail Abdirahman Sheikh Bashir of Somalia’s Ministry of Public Works, Reconstruction and Housing said the project would “urgently address the water, sanitation, shelter, health and nutritional needs of drought-affected families.”

Image credit: Flickr/Ivan Radic

Posted on

“Regularization”: Canada Called On To Give All Migrants Residency

boat beside dock

10 October 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

The Canadian government is facing demands to grant permanent residence to 1.7 million migrants living in the country in the interests of climate justice, after it offered fast track applications for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. 

The Migrant Rights Network (MRE), which says it is Canada’s largest migrant-led coalition, joined with other groups last month to demand that prime minister Justin Trudeau implement a “comprehensive regularization program.”

This programme would ensure permanent residence for 1.2 million migrant workers, students, refugees and families in Canada, says MRE, as well as 500,000 undocumented residents. 

Thousands of migrants and their supporters marched in cities across Canada on the 18th of September in support of the demand. 

Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac), a body of more than 100 Canadian environmental groups, wrote to Trudeau and immigration minister Sean Fraser in August arguing that the “regularization” process is essential to climate justice. 

Climate change exacerbates inequalities between rich countries, such as Canada, that are responsible for most of the world’s emissions and the “poorest, already marginalized and racialized groups – who bear climate impacts first and hardest,” said CAN-Rac. 

It continued that the climate crisis causes displacement in a “myriad” of ways, including disasters, droughts and famines. “We urge you to seize this moment to address one of these profound injustices by extending permanent residence to all migrants, leaving no one behind.”

In May, Canada’s parliament passed a motion that the government should publicly release a plan to expand economic immigration pathways so workers at all skill levels can access permanent residency. 

CAN-Rac said in its letter to Trudeau and Fraser that they therefore currently have a “strong mandate and a unique opportunity to correct a deep injustice in Canadian society.”

Posted on

Activists File First-ever Climate Lawsuit Against Russia

Snow storm in the Red Square, Moscow (Credit: Flickr/Vladimir Varfolomeev)

24 September 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

A group of activists have filed the first-ever climate lawsuit against Russia’s government, demanding urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a country that is warming twice as fast as the global average. 

The lawsuit was filed in Russia’s supreme court by plaintiffs including Ekozashita or ‘Eco-defence’ and the Moscow Helsinki Group, founded in the 1970s to expose human rights abuses in the Soviet Union.

In the 13 September filing seen by Reuters, the group says that “while temperatures around the world have risen by about 1°C compared to pre-industrial levels over the past 50 years, in Russia they have risen by 2.5°C and this ratio will continue or even worsen in the future.”

The group says the lawsuit is the first of its kind to be accepted by a Russian court.

Russia has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 70% of their 1990 level by 2030. By 2050, it says it will cut emissions to 20% of the 1990 level. 

But the group says the only way Russia can meet its obligations under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is to reduce its emissions to 31% of 1990 levels by 2030; and to 5% of 1990 levels by 2050. 

Failure to meet those more ambitious targets could seriously imperil a country that has two thirds of its territory in the Arctic North, the group argues.

Those targets will only be made tougher by Russia’s war with Ukraine, which has aside from its immediate environmental destruction also prompted a reported global “gold rush” for new fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Eighteen activists are also signatories to the lawsuit and the group told The Guardian that it faces “considerable risks” in taking a public stand in a country known for brutal crackdowns against dissent – especially following the invasion of Ukraine. 

However, by taking the government to court, the group hopes that it will “save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.”

Posted on

Native American Tribe Members Become First US Climate Migrants

Isle de Jean Charles

17 September 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Members of a Native American tribe have reportedly become the first climate migrants in the United States (US) as they begin a process of relocating from the sinking island their ancestors made home two centuries ago.

The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation has in the last few weeks started leaving Isle de Jean Charles – a slender island around 80 miles southwest of New Orleans in the US state of Louisiana – as part of a long-planned resettlement program. 

When the US government issued US$48 million grant to resettle residents of the island in 2016, it was said to be the first-ever federally funded effort in the country to move an entire community due to global warming. 

Many residents have already left the island, and the 100-or-so who remain are overwhelmingly of Native American descent. 

The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation descends from three Native American tribes that fled to the island to escape forced relocation under the Indian Removal Act passed by the US government in 1830.

Since 1995, however, the island that was once a refuge for the community has lost 98% of its land mass – a 320-acre skeleton of what it used to be. 

The only road connecting Jean Charles to the mainland often floods due to high winds or the tide, leaving the community stranded. 

The tribe says that the resettlement program, which has seen many residents move to the town of Schriever around 60 kilometres northwest, has been beset by years of “delays, confusion, and stress” caused by state and federal governments. 

According to the tribe, the resettlement has also been carried out “without meaningful consultation with, or the explicit consent from” its leadership. This is something the tribe says is “concerning” for many other nations and communities around the US that may soon go through a similar process. 

Posted on

Chile Rejects New Eco-friendly Constitution

9 September 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Chilean voters have rejected the chance to enact a groundbreaking constitution that would have enshrined the “rights of nature”.

Almost 62% of voters turned down what had been described as an “ecological constitution” in last Sunday’s vote.

The proposed text, which was championed by Chile’s leftist President Gabriel Boric, would have made Chile only the second country to recognise the rights of nature after Ecuador.

“Nature has rights,” the text read. “The state and society have the duty to protect and respect them.”

The constitution would have also reportedly seen the creation of autonomous governmental bodies to safeguard those rights and allowed Chilean citizens to bring lawsuits to enforce them.

Aside from its environmental protections, the proposed constitution recognised the rights of Chile’s indigenous populations to their land and resources. It would also have made gender parity across government a legal requirement.

Chile’s existing constitution was entered into in 1980 during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Chileans overwhelmingly voted to update it in 2020, a year after a rise in public transport fees sparked a million-strong march in Santiago against inequality.

Olga Barbosa, an ecologist at the Austral University of Chile, told US journal Science that she was “shocked” by the outcome of the vote, reflecting that there is “still so much fear of change.”

Nicolás Trujillo Osorio, a philosopher of science at Andrés Bello National University, told the same publication that concepts including the rights of nature were too vague and poorly explained.

Boric has announced he will work with Congress and civil society to launch a new constitutional process. “We have to listen to the voice of the people,” he said regarding the rejected text, and develop a new proposal that will “fill us with confidence and unite us all”.

Posted on

Africa Getting a Fraction of the Finance it Needs to Fight Global Warming

17 August 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson

A new report has revealed that Africa is receiving just 12% of the finance it needs to reduce emissions and adapt to global warming.

Africa needs an average of US$250 billion in climate finance annually from 2020-2030, according to a report released last week by Climate Policy Initiative, but received just US$29.5 billion in 2020.

The San Francisco-headquartered think tank says this falls “dramatically short” of what African countries need to implement their Nationally Determined Contributions, the commitments made by states in the Paris Agreement to cut emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.

“Africa is the region that is both least responsible for the climate crisis and among the most vulnerable to its consequences,” says the report.

“It is crucial that sufficient capital is deployed in the continent to simultaneously support economic development, mitigate further environmental degradation, and help the population adapt and build resilience to the changing climate.”

The report says this will require significantly higher levels of investment, especially from the private sector. Due to “real and perceived risks” associated with investing in Africa, the private sector has so far played a “marginal role” in providing climate finance for the continent.

Africa currently accounts for just 3% of global emissions, despite housing almost a fifth of the world’s population according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation.

Global warming is already disproportionately affecting Africans, the IEA says, including through including water stress and increasingly frequent extreme weather events. These effects are in turn fuelling regional instability and mass migration.

A report last year by the World Meteorological Organization warned that Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly likely to suffer “climate conflicts” resulting from climate-induced political instability.