12/10/2018

Vietnam's Children And The Fear Of Climate Change

BBC - David Shukman*

The threat of climate change exercises the minds of even the youngest in Vietnam
Can Tho Province, Vietnam
One little girl draws a nightmarish picture of people calling for rescue as they drown in rising water.
Another sketches a huge snake with sharp teeth to show the power and danger of flooding.
These disturbing images are the work of children at a primary school in Can Tho province, a region of Vietnam that is regularly swamped.
They live in the Mekong Delta, a huge plain of rivers and rice-fields that's popular with tourists but lies only just above the surface of the ocean.
The land itself is sinking and, at the same time, the level of the sea is rising, as global warming causes the water to expand and the ice caps to melt.
That's why the delta, one of the world's greatest centres for rice production and home to 18 million people, is recognised as especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Florence Halstead wants to find out more about young people's attitudes to global warming


Prof Dan Parsons: "Silt and sands delivered from upstream offset relative sea-level rise"

The children were asked to draw their pictures as part of a project run by Florence Halstead from the University of Hull, a researcher into young people's attitudes on global warming.
At a primary school, which was itself flooded three years ago, she asked the pupils to close their eyes and think about flooding and then to describe what was on their minds.
Loi, a 10-year-old, leapt to his feet and came out with a shocking image - "people on their houses screaming for help".
His classmate, To Nhu, used crayons to depict a small girl drifting on her own in a boat towards what looked like a whirlpool or tornado.
"I think the flood is so scary," she told me, "and I hope that we will not be swept away in the flood season."
At a neighbouring desk, another pupil, Chau, created a scene that seemed far too horrific for someone so young: bodies were in the water and, below the surface, lurked a monstrous snake. I asked her why.
"Because the snake can live under the water and is very scary so it makes me think about the flood," she said.
The Mekong Delta southeast of Ho Chi Minh City. Copernicus Data 2018/Sentinel-2
Flooding is routine in the delta. Over the centuries, it has played a beneficial role delivering nutrient-rich silt to the fields to make them exceptionally fertile.
But, in recent years, the floods have become more damaging; the projections are for more severe and frequent inundations to come.
Regular flooding was part of the story of why these soils became so productive
Barriers are being built, but on one stretch of coastline more than 100 homes have been lost, along with big areas of precious farmland.
A farmer who saw fields vanish beneath the waves, Lam Van Nghia, said the water level was rising so fast that "there wasn't enough time to build sea defences".

Rice volumes reduced
Getty Images
To add to the stress, seawater pushing inland poisons the soil with salt, either reducing yields of rice or making it impossible to grow this vital part of the food supply.
Many farmers are turning to other crops like hay, which is more tolerant of salt, or shrimp which can cope with more of it, all of which reduces the volume of rice produced.
A leading farming expert even warned that the days of rice may be over for the Mekong Delta, with huge implications for food security and national income.
Thomas Rath, Vietnam director of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, told the BBC that "this is all under threat".
"Rice production is under threat and 80% of the rice is for exports, so it's a big economic risk for Vietnam," he told the BBC.
This is why Vietnam, along with several dozen other developing countries, argues that the main target of the Paris Agreement on climate change - to limit the rise in global average temperature to 2C above the pre-industrial level - does not go far enough. It is pressing for a lower target of 1.5C.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's climate body, is releasing a report on the benefits of keeping global warming in check and on what is needed to achieve it.

Measuring the sediment
To try to understand how rapidly the region is changing, UK and Vietnamese scientists are studying the flows of the rivers and of the sediment they carry.
When silt is deposited on the fields, it raises the level of the land, the one thing that helps to build it up and counteract the effect of a rising sea.


David Shukman looks into how worried we should be about melting polar caps

I met Prof Dan Parsons, of the University of Hull, on a boat carrying sonar equipment to measure the river bed and the quantity of sediment in the water.
Measurements over the past 20 years have shown a marked drop in the amount of sediment being delivered - the water looks clearer than in the past - and this is the result of dams upstream trapping everything in the flow.
"One clear risk is a heightened threat of flooding," Prof Parsons said. "The saline intrusion that's driven by that relative rise in sea level combines to create a perfect storm of issues for people living here."
While he and his colleagues are investigating the physical changes under way, his student, Florence Halstead, is exploring the social implications, particularly for a generation that will grow up having to face more threatening conditions.
She described some of the children's pictures as "harrowing" but said it was important to prepare them for what lies ahead.
"They live in a water world, and that's only going to increase - the water's not going to go away and they need to learn how to adapt."
A flood in Can Tho City. Damaging floods along the delta are increasing

*David Shukman is BBC Science Editor.


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Bangladesh Kids Turn The Tide On Climate Change Aboard Floating Schools

AFP

Bangladeshi students at a floating school operated by the Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS) charity in Chalan Beel -- one of a range of initiatives to adapt to the challenges brought on by climate change. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN
CHALAN BEEL, BANGLADESH - Mosammat Rekha's older cousins grew up unable to read and write, their tiny village so frequently cut off from the nearest school by floods that would rise suddenly in their remote corner of disaster-prone Bangladesh.
But seven-year-old Mosammat is learning her ABCs aboard a boat fitted with a classroom and play equipment that is helping children thrive even as climate change alters the world around them.
"We can attend classes even during the rainy season, when our homes are barely above water," the seven-year-old told AFP aboard the vessel in Chalan Beel, some 175 kilometres (around 110 miles) northwest of Dhaka.
Climate change is already taking its toll across Bangladesh, a densely populated and impoverished country the United Nations has identified as among the most vulnerable to a warming planet.
Millions in the low-lying nation are being forced to adapt to overflowing rivers, rising seas and increasingly extreme weather in a country frequented by destructive storms and cyclones.
In Chalan Beel, more than 20 floating schools chug along rivers and lakes swollen by floods, bringing education to students long denied a chance to learn in one of Bangladesh's poorest locations. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN
Twenty million people there could be made "climate refugees" by the end of the century, a UN panel has warned, turfed out of their homes as rivers swallow towns and seas encroach on coastal communities.
In villages like Kalidaskhali on the banks of the Padma River, these forces are already reshaping lives by the hour.
As much as five metres (16 feet) of riverbank can disappear in a single day, consuming everything in its path, local government official Azizul Azam told AFP.
More than 9,000 people have been displaced by the Padma in just five years, as the main tributary of the Ganges encroaches further and further inland.
"Today my backyard is gone. I had a cowshed over there... now it is just water," said Rukaiya Khatun, watching helplessly as chunks of earth disappeared into the turbid water inching towards her home.
"The Padma has devoured everything."
More than 9,000 people have been displaced by the Padma river in just five years, as the main tributary of the Ganges encroaches further and further inland. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

River erosion -- though long a phenomenon in the delta nation -- is rapidly accelerating due to climate change, said Atiq Rahman, a member of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN climate panel.
A warming planet has made monsoon rainfall more unpredictable across Bangladesh and melted Himalayan glaciers to the north, turbocharging the waterways that criss-cross the country.
Many have struggled to adapt as the river has turned, in the words of one villager, "wild and furious".
- Full steam ahead -
But elsewhere, local ingenuity is finding ways around the turbulent and unpredictable forces of nature.
River erosion -- though long a phenomenon in the delta nation -- is rapidly accelerating due to climate change, experts say. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN
Students at BRAC University in Dhaka last month unveiled a model for a floating bamboo home, one that could survive a flood or be easily relocated elsewhere in case of inundation.
In Chalan Beel, floating schools chug along rivers and lakes swollen by floods, bringing education to students long denied a chance to learn in one of Bangladesh's poorest locations.
"Now, they have year-round education," said Mohammad Rezwan, head of the Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha charity that runs the pioneering project.
Today they run more than 20 "floating schools" in the Chalan Beel area. Other charities have replicated the idea in different parts of Bangladesh, where the world's largest river delta empties into the Bay of Bengal.
The more elaborate floating schools are twin-storey designs boasting slides, monkey bars and swing sets for playtime, while banks of solar panels atop the boats power the school’s laptop computers. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN
Smaller models are equipped with desks, libraries and blackboards while more elaborate, twin-storey designs also boast slippery slides, monkey bars and swing sets for playtime.
Children even learn to use laptop computers, all powered by banks of solar panels atop the boats.
At night, once school is over, adults come aboard to learn new techniques for farming in an extreme climate.
A man walks through the remains of a home next to the eroding banks of the Padma river in Bangladesh's Rajshahi district. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN
Rezwan said farmers were being taught how to plant flood-resistant crops in floating seed beds, a possible lifeline for rural communities who can lose a year's harvest when the waters suddenly rise.
Bangladesh has invested more than $400 million into a new special agency for adaptation projects, including flood embankments, floating farm technology and mobile water-purification stations.
"It shows how seriously we are taking this," said Mukhlesur Rahman Sarker, deputy chief of the government's Bangladesh Climate Change Trust, of the new fund.
Simple local innovations have changed lives in a generation in Chalan Beel.
Mosammat Jharna, a mother of two, spent her youth hemmed in on all sides by water as unpredictable storm surges and fast-rising floods made walking to the nearest school impossible.
She now beams at the floating school anchored near her home -- a symbol of hope for her children, no matter how the landscape changes in the future.
"My dream of educating my children, including my daughter, has come true," she told AFP. "I don't want to see them end up illiterate like me."

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Climate Change Leading To 'Solastalgia', The Feeling You Get When Your Home Is Wrecked

ABC - Richard Yin*

Solastagia is what happens when you remain within the same locality, but that sense of "home", that sense of place, is lost through the destruction of the landscape. (Supplied: Rachael Webster)
Place is important to all of us. It speaks to our identity, our community, our mortality and our destiny argues, social researcher and author Hugh Mackay.
American writer Rebecca Solnit describes it as "the sixth sense, an internal compass and map, made by memory and spatial perception, together".
In 2004, in response to the changing landscape of the Upper Hunter Valley from open-cut coal mining, power station pollution and prolonged drought, Glenn Albrecht, an ecological philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University, went on to describe an unrecognised form of psychological distress in residents that he called solastalgia.
The word has its origins in the word "nostalgia" and is defined as "the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment".
While in nostalgia that pain relates to leaving one's home, in a sense solastagia is what happens when you remain within the same locality, but that sense of "home", that sense of place, is lost through the destruction of the landscape; "it is the homesickness you have when you are still at home".
Symptoms included feelings of grief, trauma, nostalgia, alienation, depression, anxiety and loss.
While we tend to focus on the tangible losses of weather events, the intangible impacts — the psychological distress and grief underlying the loss of sense of place — can be profound and long-term. (ABC Open contributor Rod Evans)
The word has also entered the public arena with the likes of Australian pop artist Missy Higgins, using it to name her recent new album.
Since the early writings of Dr Albrecht, we have had an increasing number of publications that speak to the psychological impacts of a rapidly changing world.
As Dr Albrecht wrote in 2012, the built and natural environments are now changing so rapidly that our language and conceptual frameworks have to work overtime just to keep up. Some of these regional impacts relate to war, terrorism, gas fracking, mining, agribusiness.
But of particular concern are the interwoven impacts of globalisation, population growth and climate change with the disruption to climatic and ecological systems. As the earth warms, so more frequently are local environments destroyed through extreme weather events.

What happens when we lose our inner compass
Despair is one side of the coin, but the other is the acknowledgement of the value and strength to be had when we connect to place and community. (ABC News: Alison Branley)
So what happens when that sense of place is lost or destroyed, when we lose our compass and map?
While we tend to focus on the tangible losses, the intangible impacts from floods, wildfires and droughts due to psychological distress and the grief underlying the loss of sense of place can be profound and often long-term.
Research in the Latrobe Valley following the Black Saturday fires highlight the complexity of emotions in the context of acute loss. Following the fire and escaping from temporary accommodation and rebuilding a new home, one resident aged in his 40s writes:

"But it's sterile, it's still sterile now. The worst thing about — I don't know, everyday it's a different worse thing, but one of the most difficult things about losing everything in a fire, and I guess people lose to house fires all the time, but it totally changed everything about our place, not just the inside, not just the house, not just our stuff, but all our history. Basically it just wiped us, for the last 14 years, off the planet."

But some impacts such as those in relation to drought or greater climatic uncertainty, are more akin to chronic stressors, a natural disaster occurring over a longer time. Recent research findings within the wheatbelt community of Newdegate south-east of Perth, reveal that changes in climatic patterns have compounded farmers' worries about the weather, undermined notions of identity, and contributed to cumulative and ongoing forms of place-based distress. And accompanying this has been a heightened perceived risk of depression and suicide.

'All farmers are good farmers'
Not surprisingly the study has highlighted the intimacy of relationship between ecosystem health and human health.

Drought relief evaporates
Participants' anxieties over the weather were linked to the health of their land. For example, chronically dry conditions can exacerbate the risk of wind erosion (lifting or blowing soil). Wind erosion was perceived emotively by the participants, with many describing it as "horrible", "terrible", "heart-wrenching" and "depressing".
A farmer, who also worked as a nurse at the local hospital, provided an example of the distress caused by wind erosion.

"Years ago we had a really bad dust storm. Had a guy come in for an X-ray at the hospital and he was stressed out of his mind — and it was just the wind, it really bothered him. Farmers just hate seeing their farm lift; it somehow says to them, 'I'm a bad farmer'. And I think all farmers are good farmers. They all try their hardest to be. They all love their land.''

Identity linked to knowledge of the land
For those with a close relationship to the land, their identity is linked to not only its physical features but uses and knowledge of it. The loss of local knowledge, or traditional ecological knowledge, may be a key trigger for ecological grief.
Some Australian farming groups have reported having lost confidence in the seasonal rhythms of the weather and in their ability to know it. Often the loss of confidence is associated with anxieties about their long-term future.
Prolonged drought can adversely affect Aboriginal communities whose identity is intimately linked to their connection and caring of the land.
Aboriginal participants in a study on how prolonged drought in rural NSW had affected their social and emotional wellbeing reported concern that traditional men's roles were threatened by drought-related loss of habitat and wildlife and its impact on seasonal work. This compounded existing socio-economic disadvantages and existing vulnerabilities.
Children represent a uniquely vulnerable group and currently those under the age of five carry 88 per cent of the burden of disease from climate change impacts. (ABC North West Queensland: Harriet Tatham)
Children carry burden of climate change
More recently there has been a focus on the mental health impacts of climate change on children.
Children represent a uniquely vulnerable group and currently those under the age of five carry 88 per cent of the burden of disease from climate change impacts.
Direct psychological impacts caused primarily through extreme weather events are easy to appreciate and can be understood to potentially predispose to adverse future adult mental health outcomes.
But there is a growing body of research for an indirect mental health impact, showing that older children and youths in both developing and developed countries have a higher level of interest and concern about climate change than adults.
Surveys show that many young people express worry, fear and anxiety about its impact on future lives and believe that the world may end in their lifetime because of climate change and other global threats.
Meaning-focussed psychological interventions were cited as being important in promoting wellbeing and environmental engagement.

Our one home is under threat
In 2017, the American Psychological Association published a report, Mental Health and our Changing Climate: impacts, implications and guidance, that sought to draw attention to the diverse psychological impacts of climate change. Furthermore, the report provided recommendations to support individual and community resilience.

A conversation for another day
In the context of climate change, most work around adaptation has focussed on technological solutions and infrastructural solutions, but there requires an acknowledgement of the psychological impacts and a focus also on the "adaptive capacity" of individuals and communities and how this may be supported.
How do we put a value on the land, ecosystems and species as objects that contribute to mental health and wellbeing, community flourishing, and culture?
For Dr Albrecht, while acknowledging the negative impacts of environmental transformation within local and regional communities, his greater concern was for the bigger picture, this one Earth, our one home, under threat by an increasingly hostile climate due to man-made climate change.
For him, the despair was one side of the coin, the other was the acknowledgement of the value and strength to be had when we connected to place and community.
From the strength founded on this sense of place was our capacity to move beyond despair and to respond with head and heart to the destruction happening around us.

*Dr Richard Yin is a Perth GP and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.

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