22/09/2021

(The Guardian) Climate Crisis Leaving ‘Millions At Risk Of Trafficking And Slavery’

The Guardian - 

Droughts and floods forcing workers from rural areas, leading to their exploitation in cities, report warns

Flooding in Lalmonirhat, Bangladesh. Desperate to cross to India for jobs, many victims of traffickers are forced into sweatshops or prostitution. Photograph: Barcroft Media/Getty
Millions of people forced to leave their homes because of severe drought and powerful cyclones are at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking over the coming decades, a new report warns.

The climate crisis and the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters including floods, droughts and megafires are having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of people already living in poverty and making them more vulnerable to slavery, according to the report, published today.

Researchers from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Anti-Slavery International found that drought in northern Ghana had led young men and women to migrate to major cities.

Many women begin working as porters and are at risk of trafficking, sexual exploitation and debt bondage – a form of modern slavery in which workers are trapped in work and exploited to pay off a huge debt.

Children working in an aluminium pot factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Up to 85 million children work in hazardous jobs around the world. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty
One woman, who migrated to Accra from northern Ghana, used to farm until the land was ruined by flooding and she was forced to move. For seven years she has worked as a porter (kayayie), carrying items on her head.

She said: “Working as a kayayie has not been easy for me. When I came here, I did not know anything about the work. I was told that the woman providing our pans will also feed us and give us accommodation. However, all my earnings go to her and only sometimes will she give me a small part of the money I’ve earned.”

She dropped a customer’s items once and had to pay for the damage, which she could not afford. The woman in charge paid up on condition that she repay her. She added: “I have been working endlessly and have not been able to repay.”

A woman from the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, who moved to Kolkata after a cyclone to support her family. Now she cannot return to home without her employer’s permission. Photograph: Somnath Hazra
In the Sundarbans, on the border between India and Bangladesh, severe cyclones have caused flooding in the delta, reducing the land available for farming.

With countries in the region tightening immigration restrictions, researchers found that smugglers and traffickers operating in the disaster-prone region were targeting widows and men desperate to cross the border to India to find employment and income.

Trafficking victims were often forced into hard labour and prostitution, with some working in sweatshops along the border.

Fran Witt, a climate change and modern slavery adviser at Anti-Slavery International, said: “Our research shows the domino effect of climate change on millions of people’s lives.

Extreme weather events contribute to environmental destruction, forcing people to leave their homes and leaving them vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation and slavery.”

The World Bank estimates that, by 2050, the impact of the climate crisis, such as poor crop yields, a lack of water and rising sea levels, will force more than 216 million people across six regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and Latin America, from their homes.
The report is a stark warning to world leaders in advance of the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in November and calls on them to make sure efforts to address the climate emergency also tackle modern slavery.

The report says labour and migrant rights abuses are disregardedin the interests of rapid economic growth and development.

Ritu Bharadwaj, a researcher for the IIED, said: “The world cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking that’s being fuelled by climate change. Addressing these issues needs to be part and parcel of global plans to tackle climate change.”

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(The Conversation) Scientists Still Don’t Know How Far Melting In Antarctica Will Go – Or The Sea Level Rise It Will Unleash

The Conversation -  | 

Torsten Blackwood/AAP

Authors
  •  is Research associate, University of Tasmania
  •  is Adjunct professor, University of Lapland     
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice in the world, holding around 60% of the world’s fresh water.

If it all melted, global average sea levels would rise by 58 metres. But scientists are grappling with exactly how global warming will affect this great ice sheet.

This knowledge gap was reflected in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It contains projections from models in which important processes affecting the ice sheets, known as feedbacks and tipping points, are absent because scientific understanding is lacking.

Projected sea level rise will have widespread effects in Australia and around the world. But current projections of ice sheet melt are so wide that developing ways for societies to adapt will be incredibly expensive and difficult.

If the world is to effectively adapt to sea level rise with minimal cost, we must quickly address the uncertainty surrounding Antarctica’s melting ice sheet. This requires significant investment in scientific capacity.

Australia is vulnerable to sea level rise and associated storm surge, such as this scene at a Sydney beach in 2016. David Moir/AAP

The great unknown

Ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets was the largest contributor to sea level rise in recent decades.

Even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the heat already in the ocean and atmosphere would cause substantial ice loss and a corresponding rise in sea levels. But exactly how much, and how fast, remains unclear.

Scientific understanding of ice sheet processes, and of the variability of the forces that affect ice sheets, is incredibly limited. This is largely because much of the ice sheets are in very remote and harsh environments, and so difficult to access.

This lack of information is one of the main sources of uncertainty in the models used to estimate ice mass loss.

At the moment, quantifying how much the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise primarily involves an international scientific collaboration known as the “Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6”, or ISMIP6, of which we are part.

The project includes experts in ice sheet and climate modelling and observations. It produces computer simulations of what might happen if the polar regions melt under different climate scenarios, to improve projections of sea level rise.

The project also investigates ice sheet–climate feedbacks. In other words, it looks at how processes in the oceans and atmosphere will affect the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, including whether the changes might cause them to collapse – leading to large and sudden increases in sea level.

Ice loss from sheets in Antarctic and Greenland were the biggest contributor to sea-level rise in recent decades. John McConnico/AP

Melting from below

Research has identified so-called “basal melt” as the most significant driver of Antarctic ice loss. Basal melt refers to the melting of ice shelves from underneath, and in the case of Antarctica, interactions with the ocean are thought to be the main cause.

But gathering scientific observations beneath ice shelves is a major logistical challenge, leading to a dearth of data about this phenomenon.

This and other constraints mean the rate of progress in ice sheet modelling has been insufficient to date, and so active ice sheet models are not included in climate models.

Scientists must instead make projections using the ice sheet models in isolation. This hinders scientific attempts to accurately simulate the feedback between ice and climate.

For example, it creates much uncertainty in how the interaction between the ocean and the ice shelf will affect ice mass loss, and how the very cold, fresh meltwater will make its way back to global oceans and cause sea level rise, and potentially disrupt currents.

Despite the uncertainties ISMIP6 is dealing with, it has published a series of recent research including a key paper published in Nature in May.

This found if the world met the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century, land ice melt would cause global sea level rise of about 13cm by 2100, in the most optimistic scenario. This is compared to a rise of 25cm under the world’s current emissions-reduction pledges.

The study also outlines a pessimistic, but still plausible, basal melt scenario for Antarctica in which sea levels could be five times higher than in the main scenarios.

The breadth of such findings underpinned sea level projections in the latest IPCC report. The Antarctic ice sheet once again represented the greatest source of uncertainty in these projections.

The below graph shows the IPCC’s latest sea level projections. The shaded area reflects the large uncertainties in models using the same basic data sets and approaches. The dotted line reflects deep uncertainty about tipping points and thresholds in ice sheet stability.

IPCC reports are intended to guide global policy-makers in coming years and decades. But the uncertainties about ice melt from Antarctica limit the usefulness of projections by the IPCC and others.

The IPCC’s projections for global average sea level change in metres, relative to 1900. IPCC

Dealing with uncertainty

Future sea level rise poses big challenges such as human displacement, infrastructure loss, interference with agriculture, a potential influx of climate refugees, and coastal habitat degradation.

 It’s crucial that ice sheet models are improved, tested robustly against real-world observations, then integrated into the next generation of international climate models – including those being developed in Australia.

International collaborations such as NECKLACE and RISE are seeking to coordinate international effort between models and observations. Significant investment across these projects is needed.

Sea levels will continue rising in the coming decades and centuries. Ice sheet projections must be narrowed down to ensure current and future generations can adapt safely and efficiently. 

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(AU SMH) As Australia’s Climate Policy Disappoints, Hope Is Found In Court

Sydney Morning Herald - Sophie McNeill

Author
Sophie McNeill is the Australia researcher for Human Rights Watch.
She was formerly an investigative reporter with ABC TV’s Four Corners program.
Sophie was also a foreign correspondent for the ABC and SBS in the Middle East.
She has twice been awarded Australian Young TV Journalist of the Year and is a Walkley Award recipient.
For the many Australians deeply concerned about the growing climate emergency, it’s been a tough year.

As nations like the United States and the United Kingdom have pledged to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Australia continues to be a climate pariah – refusing to commit to more ambitious targets despite being one of the world’s biggest carbon per capita emitters and the third largest exporter of fossil fuels.

Instead, the Morrison government has continued to actively support the expansion of fossil fuel industries at the expense of renewables.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In May, the federal resources minister, Keith Pitt, blocked public funding for a new wind farm and battery green energy hub in Queensland. Then in July, he approved a $175 million loan of public money to finance a new coal mine in the state that will extract 15 million tons a year.

Australia’s fossil fuel companies also still benefit from significant tax breaks, with 59 fossil fuel companies paying no tax in 2018 -19.

Where Australia’s political leaders are failing to meet their human rights obligations to address climate change by significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, passionate Australians are doing their best to hold fossil fuel emitters, as well as those who finance or regulate them, to account through the country’s courts.

In many cases, young people are leading the way.

After the United States, Australia has the highest number of climate change litigation cases in the world.

Australians are doing their best to hold fossil fuel emitters, as well as those who finance or regulate them, to account. Credit: Janie Barrett

In May 2020, in an Australian legal first, a youth environment group called Youth Verdict challenged a proposed mega-coal mine in Queensland on the grounds that it infringed on their human rights because of its contribution to climate change.

Youth Verdict argues the mine will contribute to catastrophic climate change and increase the risk of bushfires, drought, floods, heatwaves and cyclones.

They are basing their argument on new protections provided under the state’s Human Rights Act, which came into effect in January 2020, the first time a human rights argument has been used in a climate change case in Australia. A hearing date for the case has been set for February 2022.

In a world-first legal case filed in July 2020, a university student in Melbourne accused the Australian government of misleading investors in sovereign bonds by failing to disclose the financial risk caused by the climate crisis.

If successful, the claim could compel the government to disclose how climate change might affect the nation’s economic growth or the value of the Australian dollar. The case is awaiting judgment.

In a landmark decision in May, the Federal Court of Australia found that Environment Minister Sussan Ley had a “duty of care” to protect children living in Australia from personal injury or death resulting from climate change.

If not overturned, legal experts say the judgment could “constrain the ability of both government and private entities to undertake projects that contribute to net carbon emissions”.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The Environment Minister is appealing the decision, with the appeal to be heard on October 18.

In another major ruling in August, a NSW court ordered the state’s Environmental Protection Authority take steps to safeguard against climate change, requiring the authority to “develop environmental quality objectives, guidelines and policies to ensure environment protection from climate change”.

The case was brought by the Environmental Defenders Office, a non-governmental legal service organisation, on behalf of survivors of the devastating 2019-20 bushfires.

The state’s environment minister says he won’t appeal the ruling.

In late August, the Environmental Defenders Office lodged a new lawsuit against the oil and gas giant Santos, on behalf of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), alleging that Santos breached consumer and corporate laws by claiming to produce clean energy and have a pathway to net zero emissions.

The ACCR says the oil and gas company engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct by telling shareholders in its 2020 annual report that it produced “clean fuel” and provided “clean energy”.

On September 2, news emerged that a Commonwealth Bank investor was suing the lender, demanding to see internal documents on its decisions to finance fossil fuel projects to ensure it has complied with its own environmental framework.

And just this past week, there were two more significant climate litigation developments. In NSW, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision to refuse a coal mine in the Bylong valley, north-west of Sydney.

The state’s Independent Planning Commission had dismissed the plan for the 6.5 million tonne-a-year mine two years ago, and a previous court appeal was also rejected in part because of the climate change impacts of digging up the fossil fuel.

Climate policy
Climate pledges put world on ‘catastrophic pathway’ to hotter future, UN says
Meanwhile in Melbourne, a High Court legal challenge was launched against the state of Victoria, arguing it lacks the constitutional power to tax electric car drivers with a road user charge.

The recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report demonstrates the dire risks to our planet if urgent steps are not taken to reduce carbon emissions.

The climate crisis has become a human rights crisis, and the continual denial and inaction by successive governments in Australia will not go unchallenged.

Scott Morrison should keep this in mind when he travels to Washington later this week, for talks with US President Joe Biden, after the White House confirmed that the climate crisis will be on the agenda.

Federal and state governments, regulatory bodies and corporate actors have been put on notice.

If they don’t take steps to mitigate climate change, they too could end up in Australia’s courts.

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