CLIMATE BLOG

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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 00:00 GMT

How understanding climate can help prevent disease
(July 20)
Making high-tech disaster systems work for local people
(July 19)
Why the world isn&${esc.hash}39;t ready for climate change
(July 18)

And there&${esc.hash}39;s a separate article on what celebrity economist Jeffrey Sachs thinks about climate and conflict, with a spotlight on Darfur.

***
How understanding climate can help prevent disease
Thursday, July 20

Does climate have an impact on HIV/AIDS? It may not seem obvious, but researchers at the conference argued that, in some circumstances, it can.

Anthony Nyong, a professor at the University of Jos in Nigeria, said that while the links have yet to be documented, climate events - particularly droughts - could have a two-pronged effect on HIV/AIDS in Africa.

First, drought can cause crop failures that force people to move in search of food and work, often into urban areas. And an increase in mobility among population groups has been shown to boost HIV infection rates, Nyong said. That&${esc.hash}39;s mainly due to higher exposure to prostitution and multiple sexual partners.

Second, inadequate nutrition - which may be directly caused by droughts or floods - can exacerbate the progress of the disease in those already infected or who have fallen ill.

Nyong&${esc.hash}39;s view was that increasing access to information on climate and weather, both among policymakers and local people, could help reduce the vulnerability of those most exposed to natural hazards and thereby stop the population movements that often occur in their wake.

"If we know when droughts and so on are coming, we can try to get food to (the affected) people, so that they can carry on living in the same place," he said.

This could avert new infections and the deterioration of those already living with the virus, according to Nyong.

The main problem - as the conference highlighted over and over again - is that reliable and timely forecasts and other climate data just aren&${esc.hash}39;t getting through to people who need them to help protect their food supplies, health and livelihoods.
Forecasting malaria epidemics
"With a few exceptions, climate information isn&${esc.hash}39;t being effectively incorporated into development decisions in Africa," said Madeleine Thomas, a research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. "This problem is mainly due to what we call &${esc.hash}39;market atrophy&${esc.hash}39; - where there&${esc.hash}39;s a lack of both demand and supply."

She and her colleagues carried out a study in Botswana that showed how the risk of a malaria epidemic increases after a season of heavy rainfall. Malaria, which is a parasitic disease transmitted by mosquitoes, kills more than a million people every year - mainly in Africa.

The research, published in the journal Nature, found that an early warning system based on climate models, average rainfall and seasonal malaria data could be used to predict a major outbreak five months in advance. This would allow health officials to take preventative action such as spraying stagnant water or supplying anti-malaria drugs. Botswana also has mobile clinics that can be pre-positioned where outbreaks are anticipated.

While providing early warning based on climate models might seem like a no-brainer, as with many scientific issues, getting policymakers on board often isn&${esc.hash}39;t easy, Thomas warned. There&${esc.hash}39;s still a lot of uncertainty over the main factors causing malaria cases to rise or fall, and this can lead to government inaction.

Thomas pointed to the example of Kenya, where scientists have produced top research on malaria, but 32,000 people still die of the disease every year and 4 million are affected. "Decision makers don&${esc.hash}39;t know which scientists to trust, and so their research isn&${esc.hash}39;t translated into policy," Thomas said.

Other more obvious factors such as disease control programmes and tackling resistance to malaria drugs are often given priority, meaning that the potential for climate information to help avert epidemics has been neglected up to now.

"Of course, we need to build resilience - and climate information can&${esc.hash}39;t be a subsitute for that. But we do need to develop climate observation and support services," Thomas said.

Yet before that can happen, she added, two major issues still need to be addressed: How should institutions best approach using climate information in development work, and who should fund climate services and observation for the poor?

Big questions that&${esc.hash}39;ll be tough to answer - but at the very least, they&${esc.hash}39;re now being asked.

***
Making high-tech disaster systems work for local people
Wednesday, July 19

No doubt there&${esc.hash}39;s some anguish in disaster prevention circles after this week&${esc.hash}39;s tsunami in Java showed that the implementation of a regional early warning system, conceived after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, still has some way to go, at least in Indonesia.

An Indonesian official told Reuters that the southern Java area had no system to warn local people of coming waves - mainly due to a lack of funding.

There are serious shortcomings in Indonesia&${esc.hash}39;s monitoring systems and communications network, another official told the BBC News website.

That tallies with an observation by Reid Basher, a senior advisor to the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, who told a conference of climate scientists and development experts in Finland this week: "We have ample knowledge of how to reduce disaster risk, but it&${esc.hash}39;s not always applied."

Basher noted that after the 2004 tsunami - in which 230,000 people died - people had been shocked that there was such a big gap in early warning systems. But two years on, in the wake of promises to implement regional and global systems, feigning surprise won&${esc.hash}39;t cut the mustard.

A lack of money isn&${esc.hash}39;t the only reason why technical knowledge about warning systems and disaster risk reduction doesn&${esc.hash}39;t always help the people who need it most.

According to Basher, other key factors are that experts don&${esc.hash}39;t understand how societies function, potential beneficiaries aren&${esc.hash}39;t included in working out what the problems are, and policymakers and institutions fail to incorporate existing knowledge into their decisions.

One positive aspect of this week&${esc.hash}39;s Java tsunami is that thousands of lives may have been saved because, following the 2004 disaster, local people knew the signals that could herald the arrival of a killer wave and headed to higher ground, said Basher.
Local knowledge counts
As Maarten van Aalst from the Red Cross Climate Centre in the Netherlands told a conference seminar on disasters and early warning, it&${esc.hash}39;s often local people who save lives when natural hazards hit because they&${esc.hash}39;re the first to respond - and so it&${esc.hash}39;s essential that communities are trained to recognise danger signs.

While the role of high-tech early warning systems can&${esc.hash}39;t be ignored, experts often stress the importance of the "last mile", or the means by which hazard information actually filters down to local people.

Thomas Loster, the chairman of the Munich Re Foundation, said his organisation sees the "last mile" as the "first mile", and makes an effort to consult with communities when developing projects to help them reduce disaster risk.

The foundation has funded the establishment of a flood warning system in Mozambique, where in 2000 widespread flooding killed 700 people and thousands lost their livelihoods. The problem was that rainfall and water levels were not being systematically recorded, meaning floods could not be foreseen.

Under the warning project set up in 2005, villagers living on the upper reaches of the Buzi river monitor water levels daily. When rain pushes them above a certain threshold, those living lower down the river are alerted by radio, and if necessary volunteers use megaphones to spread the message and evacuate people.

There are plans to draw up hazard maps for flood-exposed regions in Mozambique and to set up a consultancy service for district disaster prevention in conjunction with the government.
Simple and cheap measures
Drawing out local perceptions of the hazards faced by communities and where they are most vulnerable is increasingly seen as important among disaster experts.

Traditional knowledge can be useful to the scientists, as well as the other way round, said van Aalst, but interacting with local communities is a "skill and an art". "You can&${esc.hash}39;t just take along a bunch of maps with seasonal forecasts and expect people to act," he warned.

The Red Cross has launched intensive consultation processes in some villages in Nicaragua and Vietnam, in which local people are asked to assess the dangers they face.

The results are then combined with more scientific data, for example on weather patterns, and used as a basis to draw up disaster risk reduction measures. According to Van Aalst, these are often simple and cheap, such as strengthening homes and finding food storage places that won&${esc.hash}39;t be affected in floods.

Recently the Red Cross has experimented with introducing a climate change element into its consultations - mainly by asking people to identify trends in weather patterns.

Van Aalst said that when the issue of global warming was raised on one of the 33 atolls forming the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, villagers responded by drawing up an extensive definition of what it meant to them, including their own responsibility for the phenomenon - despite the fact that there are only two or three cars on the island.

Not surprisingly, awareness of climate change isn&${esc.hash}39;t high among remote poor communities where there is little access to education. But learning about what may cause extreme weather events and what can be done to prevent them turning into disasters motivates people to act.

"It helps them see that these hazards aren&${esc.hash}39;t just an act of God, but a risk that they can do something about," said van Aalst.

In Nicaragua, communities working with the Red Cross in a two-year programme asked for shelters and radios, and in the last couple of years, their new system has functioned well during hurricanes.
Lack of weather data
In Africa, one of the main problems with predicting weather-related events is the lack of reliable data. For forecasts to be really effective, they need to be as local as possible - and in many African countries the network of weather stations required to provide such information is rather patchy.

Patrick Luganda, who heads the Network of Climate Journalists in the Horn of Africa, is working on a project that could help fill in some of those gaps and educate kids about climate at the same time.

The plan is to work with schools, starting in Uganda, which would install small weather stations on their premises, using donated equipment. The pupils would then be trained to take rainfall measurements, and these would be transmitted up the information chain via computer or radio.

Essentially, the children could then pass on the knowledge and information they acquire to their parents, who could use it make decisions about their farming activities. Children would also learn about wider climate issues.

Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (one of the agencies sponsoring the conference), told reporters that climate and weather predictions can help improve food security substantially. And as with the Ugandan schools project, procuring and distributing information can be done fairly cheaply.

He cited an experiment in Mali, where one group of farmers grew their crops according to traditional knowledge alone and another group had access to information from the met office. The second group&${esc.hash}39;s yields were 30 percent higher.

While all these initiatives sound promising, helping vulnerable communities to better protect themselves against natural hazards or to use climate data to improve food and livelihood security remains a massive task.

Still, as top economist Jeffrey Sachs pointed out at the beginning of the conference, what&${esc.hash}39;s new is that climate scientists, together with the humanitarian and development communities, now have the ability to do something it.

"We have a better understanding of the linkages between climate and society although we haven&${esc.hash}39;t yet been able to put them to use. We are now starting to understand the possible responses," he told reporters.

That&${esc.hash}39;s good news for those who suffer the brunt of climate-related disasters, but only if the promises are met. According to insurers, severe droughts, floods and hurricanes are happening more often, and they certainly won&${esc.hash}39;t wait for scientists, donors and policymakers to get their act together.

***
Why the world isn&${esc.hash}39;t ready for climate change
Tuesday, July 18

Did you know that, globally, this June was the second hottest on record? Or that the first six months of 2006 in the United States were the warmest ever recorded? Or that 2005 was one of the two hottest years on record globally since the mid-1800s (the other being 1998)?

So what, you might say, as you stock up on sun lotion and goodies for the barbecue. But climate change experts would have us - and, crucially, our governments - think a little more deeply about what rising global temperatures mean, especially for the world&${esc.hash}39;s poorest communities, which are particularly vulnerable to the impact of related weather events, such as droughts and floods.

Since 1850, the global temperature has risen by around 0.7 degrees Celsius, and scientists say that trend looks set to continue. Many believe greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are contributing to global warming and the climate changes associated with it.

Prominent international economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University&${esc.hash}39;s Earth Institute, quipped to delegates at a U.N.-backed conference called Living with Climate Variability and Change in Finland this week that, climate-wise, "we&${esc.hash}39;re in for quite a rocky ride in the years ahead".

More sombrely he warned the world isn&${esc.hash}39;t ready for the climatic changes coming our way - mainly because policymakers don&${esc.hash}39;t seem to grasp how climate issues interact with society and thus what they need to do to stop people lives being devastated by climate-linked disasters.

The press release for the conference says (deep breath) that the goals are "to contribute towards the establishment of a global agenda for climate-related risk management and to propose a sustainable course of action for future efforts to optimise societal response to climate variability and change."

Yes, it&${esc.hash}39;s jargon - and perhaps that&${esc.hash}39;s one of the reasons why not much progress has been made so far in protecting people from the negative impacts of natural and not-quite-so-natural disasters. Climate and weather experts haven&${esc.hash}39;t quite managed to get the message across yet...

But they&${esc.hash}39;re now realising the data they come up with - including seasonal and longer-term predictions - could be used in a much more practical and useful way by societies, thereby avoiding preventable deaths and destruction. So it&${esc.hash}39;s time for a bit more cooperation and, one would hope, a bit more plain speaking.
Still too many deaths
Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (one of the agencies sponsoring the conference), spelled out the problem in fairly stark terms: "If you look at a 10-year period, on average you still have well over half a million people dying from natural disasters (every year). There are still too many people dying," he told AlertNet on the sidelines of the conference.

"The way to reduce that is by improving early-warning capabilities, and for many of these weather and water - climate-related disasters - the capacity to provide it is there... But the key is also to make sure these warnings are integrated into proper national disaster prevention mechanisms. A forecast that is not used makes it useless."

But do cash-strapped developing countries have the funds required to set up effective systems to prevent and cope with disasters? Jarraud stressed that the cost of setting up the necessary systems isn&${esc.hash}39;t that high. The main advantage, he said, is that research shows one euro invested in prevention saves about seven times as much in relief.

Nonetheless, Filipe Lucio, director of Mozambique&${esc.hash}39;s National Institute of Meteorology, told AlertNet that there still isn&${esc.hash}39;t enough funding being put into this area in developing countries.

"Governments have to commit themselves to contribute to disaster risk reduction, and there has to be a new approach where there are partnerships and alliances with the private sector and institutions that in the past have not traditionally provided resources," he said. "International solidarity also plays an important role."

Lucio argued that some African countries - including South Africa, Botswana, Ethiopia and Mozambique - have developed good systems to reduce the risk of disasters (as have others in Asia and Latin America). Others lag way behind, and helping them requires better international dialogue on early warning, collaboration on observation networks and support for education, training and technology, he said.
Adapting to climatic hazards
Yet for all this talk to mean something to people on the ground, communication is vital. We need to understand why it matters and how things could work better in practice.

Jeffrey Sachs cited a number of examples to show why it&${esc.hash}39;s important to integrate knowledge on climate into all policy-making:
- The conflict in Darfur, he said, is actually rooted in drought and water shortages that occurred in the 1980s, and which sparked violence between settled farmers and pastoralists. Although it&${esc.hash}39;s rarely recognised, the underlying water shortages and food insecurity continue to play a key role, and there&${esc.hash}39;s no hope of peace unless these issues are addressed.
- In Ecuador, in 1998, when the Super El Nino caused massive flooding in coastal areas, export crops and shrimp farms were destroyed, and because farmers couldn&${esc.hash}39;t repay their loans, and the banking system was already in trouble, this caused a run on banks. In effect the government, which lost power as a result, was forced out by the weather.
- When Hurricane Mitch slammed into Central America, also in 1998, there were only four deaths in Costa Rica, where the government prepared its citizens, but in Honduras some 10,000 people were killed as they continued to sleep in the absence of any warning. Poor people living on lower land near rivers were particularly affected.
- Less wealthy people in rich countries that don&${esc.hash}39;t make adequate provision also lose out when disaster strikes - as happened last year with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Sachs said the poor and vulnerable were abandoned by social support systems, whereas those with access to private transport were able to escape.
In Sachs&${esc.hash}39; view, the measures experts and governments need to take to reduce vulnerability to disasters include better use and analysis of data and forecasting/early warning, the creation of physical and financial buffers (including weather-related insurance) and a more pro-active international relief and response system.

The fancy term for policies of this kind is "adaptation" - making adjustments in order to better cope with the climate hazards and changes heading our way (some of which are likely to be caused or made worse by global warming).

As Sachs put it, "The world has not done a very good job at responding to the ever-growing evidence about anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. So far efforts have focused on mitigation - and with major actors not part of international climate agreements, we haven&${esc.hash}39;t really got a great strategy there.

"But even less have we put together a strategy together for adaptation. There is no post-box for countries such as Chad and others affected by climate change to write to for help."

When I got back to my hotel room after the first day of the conference, the news on TV could hardly have been worse - besides the Middle East turmoil, more than 100 people had been killed in a tsunami in Java, there were forest fires raging in Portugal due to hot, dry weather, and some 200 people had died in floods in China.

The weather man on CNN was encouraging viewers based in Europe to protect themselves and their families from the heatwave that&${esc.hash}39;s making life a bit uncomfortable in parts of the continent. His recommendations included not going out and not drinking alcohol.

It seemed like a very small example of what the climate and weather experts gathered near Helsinki want us to be doing more of...

Megan Rowling AlertNet journalist

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