Study: Global Warming Set To Further Increase Inequality

Independent Australia - Tim Radford

As temperatures rise with climate change, the Earth's natural capital will change too − but there may be few winners, even among the wealthy. Tim Radford from Climate News Network reports.

(Image via Toles / Washington Post)

Climate change could seriously redistribute resources and reallocate wealth — but not in a fair way. In a reverse of the famous Robin Hood folklore, it could rob from the poor to give to the rich, according to researchers. Yet even the rich may not feel any richer.
In one clear instance, as scientists have repeatedly warned, fish stocks are likely to move away from the equator and towards the poles as the tropics heat up and expand.
This means that at least one valuable resource will move away from some of the world's poorest nations and in the direction of societies that are relatively wealthier — if only because economic power has for so long been vested in the temperate zones. And this shift will have economic consequences.
Dr Eli Fenichel, assistant professor of bioeconomics and ecosystem management at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in the U.S., says:

"People are mostly focused on the physical reallocation of these assets, but I don't think we've really started thinking enough about how climate change can reallocate wealth and influence the prices of those assets. We think these price impacts can be really, really important."

Only last month, Dr Fenichel identified a way of calculating a real cash value for what environmentalists call "natural capital".
Now he and other colleagues, in a study for Nature Climate Change, have started to think about where and for whom the cash might start accumulating. He has no immediate answer.
Says Dr Fenichel:

"We don't know how this will unfold, but we do know there will be price effects. Prices reflect quantity and scarcity, and natural capital is hard for people to move. It is just as inevitable as the movement of these fish species."

The researchers say cautiously that climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in the last century or so,

'... can reallocate natural capital, change the value of all forms of capital, and lead to mass redistribution of wealth.'

And it isn't obvious, they suggest, that even the better-off will always benefit from changes of natural capital, such as a shift in the fishing grounds. An influx of desirable species off the more northerly fishing ports could actually reduce the cash value of catches.
Dr Fenichel says:

"If the northern community isn't a particularly good steward or manager, they're going to place a low value on that windfall they just inherited. So the aggregate could go down. To be clear, the gainers here are clearly better off. They're just not more better off than the losers are worse off. The losers are losing much more than the gainers are gaining. And when that happens, it's not an efficient reallocation of wealth."

Climate scientists have frequently warned that climate change could hit the poorest hardest. For example, the world's drylands are likely to become more parched with climate change and many of the world's poorest people are already feeling stress.
Tropical forests and reefs are rich in the "natural capital" of biodiversity, but global warming also threatens some of this.
"We tend to think of climate change as just a problem of physics and biology," says co-author, Associate Professor Malin Pinsky, an ecologist at Rutgers University.

"But people react to climate change as well, and at the moment we don't have a good understanding of the impacts of human behaviour on natural resources affected by climate change."

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CSIRO Looks To Britain To Outsource Climate Research

Fairfax - Peter Hannam | Adam Morton

Australia's climate research is in the spotlight after CSIRO revealed plans for deep cuts to modelling and monitoring research. Photo: NASA

CSIRO is considering outsourcing climate modelling work to Britain - a step a senior executive conceded would reduce Australia's strengths in the field.
Grilled by Labor and Greens senators at a Senate inquiry in Hobart over cuts to up to half its climate research workforce, CSIRO executive Alex Wonhas said the organisation was considering contracting some work to counterparts in the British Met Office.
"I don't think that I can credibly claim that everything [we are doing now] will continue," Dr Wonhas said. "There will be a reduction in our activity."

Alex Wonhas, a senior CSIRO executive, says contracting out climate work to Britain is an option. Photo: Supplied

It is understood CSIRO executives hope signing a contract with leaders in international climate change research at the Met Office will blunt international criticism of its climate research cuts.
That criticism included a New York Times editorial on Friday, which described the cuts as based on "a deplorable misunderstanding of the importance of basic research into what is arguably the greatest challenge facing the planet".
A CSIRO spokesman said the organisation was looking to deepen its existing collaboration with the Met Office, rather than outsourcing work. "It is part of consultation and discussions with stakeholders about how research in the climate area can be maintained and maximised in the future," he said.
In a sometimes testy exchange at the Senate inquiry, Dr Wonhas revealed agency officials had used private email addresses, outside the the CSIRO server, to discuss plans to cut climate and other programs ahead of the announcement.
The CSIRO spokesman later explained: "There was concern that distress may be caused to staff if options for staff reduction, which are not yet finalised, were leaked or distributed."
Opposition industry spokesman Kim Carr described the evidence of the CSIRO executives who appeared before the committee - Dr Wonhas, who oversees environment, energy and resources, and chief financial officer Hazel Bennett - as startling.
"It's extremely concerning that senior executives think they could increase the security of documents about the latest round of cuts by directing staff to use personal emails," he said.
"The motive might have been innocent, but it is just incredibly inappropriate and potentially a breach of the law."
The inquiry had earlier heard that managers at CSIRO's major research partners, including the Australian Antarctic Division and Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, learnt of the cuts either just before or as they were publicly announced.
They agreed they had no idea what the ramifications of the cuts would be, but feared they could dismantle or dramatically reduce scientific programs in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies executive director Richard Coleman said: "I've had discussions with some of the key people at CSIRO in Hobart ... but they can't really tell me."
Senior CSIRO scientist John Church told the inquiry that CSIRO chief Larry Marshall's suggestion that climate change research was no longer needed was "incorrect, naive and misleading".
He said Australia had long been an attractive play to work for the world's leading scientists, but that had already begun to change since the announcement.
"Our reputation is now trashed internationally," Dr Church said. "We could not attract those people again at this time."
Appearing in a personal capacity, Dr Church and fellow CSIRO scientist Richard Matear questioned the leadership of the organisation, saying they did not appear to understand how science worked.
Dr Matear said of the cuts and the way they had been handled: "It's just a really crazy way to run a scientific organisation."
Committee chair Peter Whish-Wilson, a Greens Senator from Tasmania, said the hearing exposed the "catastrophically haphazard nature" of the decision-making process that led to the cuts.
He said the Australian Antarctic Division was still yet to be consulted on the cuts and about 50 doctoral students at the University of Tasmania did not know if their CSIRO co-supervisors would still have a job in coming weeks.
"The idea that CSIRO management are now looking to reduce the impact of the climate cuts by outsourcing climate modelling work to the UK is alarming," Senator Whish-Wilson said.
"How can Australia gain the innovation dividends from our investment by sending the work overseas?"
The Senate inquiry was jointly convened by the Greens and Labor. No Coalition Senators appeared on the committee on Tuesday. The next hearing is in Melbourne on Friday.

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Latai Taumoepeau's 'Disaffected' Puts Climate Change Under The Spotlight

Fairfax - Elissa Blake

Latai Taumoepeau explores climate change in Disaffected, a new multi-disciplinary theatre work premiering at the Blacktown Arts Centre. Photo: Katy Green Loughrey

The best way to make people understand climate change, says performer-activist Latai Taumoepeau, is not to use maps, charts and diagrams. It is more immediate and more impactful, she says, to use the human body.
Taumoepeau is one of three performers exploring climate change in the Pacific region in Disaffected, new multi-disciplinary theatre work premiering at the Blacktown Arts Centre.
"Over the years, I've accumulated a lot of research from climate scientists and economists," says Taumoepeau. "It's such a huge issue on so many fronts. But I've come to the conclusion that the best thing I can do is to show people what it feels like to be impacted by climate change.
"What it feels like to have your homelands swamped. What it feels like to have to leave your land and culture behind, or to see the bones of your ancestors washed away."
Among other things in Disaffected, the human body becomes a metaphor for land and those Pacific nations facing inundation as sea levels rise over coming decades.
"We're trying to give the audience a way into ideas that are overwhelming," Taumoepeau explains. "We want them to come away with an awareness of the urgency of the issue."
Devised by Taumoepeau, who has Tongan heritage, Valerie Berry (an actor originally from the Philippines), Ryuichi Fujimura (a Japanese dancer) and director Kym Vercoe, Disaffected sees the Blacktown Arts Centre turned into a makeshift disaster shelter for an immersive exploration of what it is like at the frontline of climate change.
"It's going to be a very messy, visceral piece," says Vercoe. "The space is an old church hall and as soon as we saw it, we thought this is exactly the kind of place people are brought to in an emergency. It's perfect for taking the audience on an imaginative and emotional journey."
Instead of conventional seats, the room will be a sea of mattresses and tarpaulins, says Vercoe. "The audience is going to be in the same space as the performers while they unpack what it's like to be living in the kind of situation faced by people in the Philippines after [Typhoon] Haiyan, or by people in Fiji right now."
Disaffected is a blend of movement, dance, sound (composed by Tom Hogan) and material taken from interviews with people from Kiribati, the Cook Islands and the Philippines.
"The voices of those communities and what they have told us has very much influenced the piece," Vercoe says. "We are representing the whole Pacific region in this work. The cast is also bringing their own cultural backgrounds to the piece as well as their Australian sensibilities to the performance. So we have people who know what it is to live in relative privilege and wealth in Australia who also have strong ties to the region."
In some ways Disaffected draws on the practices developed by Vercoe with the Sydney performance company Version 1.0.
"But Version was a totally collaborative set up, so me calling the shots as director is a very different experience for me," Vercoe says. "So is working with people with a very strong movement and physical theatre background. But what I've always tried to do in my work is to unlock the doors for people to understand what is going on around them."
Vercoe hopes Disaffected will lead its audience to consider Australia's leadership role in the region and affirm the need for the country to ramp up its efforts in dealing with the effects of climate change.
"We're experiencing record heat and humidity, stronger storms and heavier rains. We've seen records being broken everywhere. But I don't think Australians can say we really understand the harsh reality of climate change. For some people in the Pacific region, life has become a never-ending cycle of devastation, rebuilding, and devastation again."
Disaffected is at Blacktown Arts Centre March 17-20.