03/11/2020

Mapped: How Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Women’s Health

Carbon Brief - Daisy Dunne

Women and children collect drinking water from a water logged area in Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 2017. Credit: Mehedi Hasan/Alamy Stock Photo.

From supercharging extreme weather events to boosting the spread of infectious diseases, climate change is already having a huge impact on human health across the world.

 But this impact is not being felt equally. A growing body of research suggests that the world’s most disadvantaged people are also the most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change and the least likely to be able to adapt.

Gender is just one of many factors that can influence a person’s standing in society. This in-depth explainer looks into how climate change can have differing impacts on the health of men and women around the world.

An analysis of 130 peer-reviewed studies – visualised below on an interactive map – finds that women and girls often face disproportionately high health risks from the impacts of climate change when compared to men and boys.

The analysis shows that 68% (89) of the 130 studies found that women were more affected by health impacts associated with climate change than men.

For example, it shows women and girls are more likely to die in heatwaves in France, China and India and in tropical cyclones in Bangladesh and the Philippines. In many world regions, women are more likely than men to suffer poor mental health, partner violence and food insecurity following extreme weather events.

However, in some cases, men can face higher risks. For example, several studies suggest men face a higher risk of suicide following extreme weather events and are more at risk of certain health issues associated with working outdoors.

Mapped

The map below displays 130 studies that investigate how the health of men and women is affected by impacts associated with climate change. These impacts include: death and injury from extreme weather; food insecurity; infectious disease; mental illness; and poor reproductive and maternal health.

On the map, each icon represents one study. The colour of the icon indicates whether the study finds that women (orange) or men (purple) are most affected by the climate change impact. (Grey indicates there is no difference between men and women.)

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The interactive map displays 130 studies that investigate how men and women are affected by climate change.
Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief. Map by Joe Goodman for Carbon Brief.  [The software used to make the map currently only works with a Web Mercator projection (as used by virtually all major online map providers). It is worth noting that this – like all map projections – offers a somewhat distorted view of the world.] 

The data comes from a 2016 research report on gender and climate change authored by Dr Sam Sellers, a climate change and health researcher formerly based at the University of Washington. The report itself was commissioned by the Global Gender and Climate Alliance, a UN-NGO alliance focused on gender and climate change. (The report focuses on the social construct of gender, rather than biological sex.) 

To collect the data, Sellers carried out an extensive literature review to find any study mentioning gender alongside climate change or its associated health impacts from 2005-16. For this article, relevant papers published since 2016 have also been added to the review.

The review also includes studies that do not specifically reference climate change, but investigate impacts that are known to be affected by it.

This includes, for example, a study finding that women were more likely to have died than men in a 2010 heatwave in Ahmedabad, India. (Though the study does not specifically cite climate change as the cause of death, it is known that heatwaves are becoming more likely and intense as a result of warming.)
Pie chart displaying the findings of 130 studies on climate change and health: 89 studies found women were more affected than men, 30 found men were more affected than women and 11 found no difference in how men and women were affected. Rounding errors mean the proportions may not add up to exactly 100%. Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief.

Out of the 130 climate and health studies analysed, around 68% (89) found that women were more affected than men.

Across the world, women are more likely than men to be affected by climate-related food insecurity and are also more likely to suffer from mental illness or partner violence following extreme weather events.
Bar chart showing the proportion of men and women affected by climate change impacts, including: death and injury from extreme weather; food insecurity; infectious disease; mental illness; and poor reproductive and maternal health. Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief.

The heightened risks faced by women most often reflect their standing in societies around the world – rather than a physiological difference between men and women, explains Kim Van Daalen, a PhD student in global public health at the University of Cambridge. (In February, Van Daalen wrote a letter to the Lancet on how women can face disproportionate health risks from climate change.) She tells Carbon Brief:
“It has more to do with societal roles rather than physiological differences. I tend to say climate change is exacerbating existing inequalities, be that gender or other inequalities.”
One exception to this is climate change’s impact on maternal health, she says. The review shows that pregnant women often experience heightened health risks and reduced access to reproductive and maternal care services as a result of climate change impacts.

A pregnant woman is evacuated from her home by rescue workers during a flood in Malaysia. Credit: Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo.
Meanwhile, 30 of the climate and health studies included in the review found that men were more affected than women. 

According to the review, men are more likely than women to face a higher risk of suicide following extreme weather events and, in some regions, are more likely to be killed in floods and during wildfires. Van Daalen says:
“In some places, boys and men face increased risks to the climate change impacts on health – and that is particularly, for example, in regions where they may be exposed to extreme weather events because they are working outside.”
In addition, 11 studies found there to be no difference between how men and women were affected.

Overall, there has been little research into the gendered impacts of climate change – making it difficult to draw firm conclusions, says Van Daalen:
“Most of the studies that are being done are based in low- and middle-income countries. But I think there hasn’t been enough research to assume that gender inequalities are higher for low- and middle-income countries. I think the gender differences are definitely there in high-income countries, we just haven’t researched them enough.”
In addition, there has been even less research into the health impacts of climate change for non-binary and transgender people, she adds:
“For non-binary people, there’s literally no data on that and I think that’s quite problematic.”
Extreme weather

Across the world, climate change is causing many extreme weather events to become severe and more likely to occur. 

This is particularly true for heatwaves. For example, research finds that this year’s long-lasting Arctic heatwave was made 600 times more likely by climate change. Research also shows that the northern hemisphere’s unprecedented 2018 heatwave would have been impossible without climate change.

There is growing evidence, too, to suggest climate change is playing an increasingly large role in more complex extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, droughts and wildfires.

The analysis includes 53 studies that examine rates of death and injury for men and women during extreme weather events.
Pie chart displaying the findings of 53 studies examining the rate of death and injury from extreme weather events: 32 found women were more likely to suffer death or injury from extreme weather than men, 12 concluded that men were more likely than women and six found no gender difference. Rounding errors mean the proportions may not add up to exactly 100%. Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief.

 Almost two-thirds (34) of these studies found that women were more likely to suffer death or injury from extreme weather than men, 13 concluded that men were more likely than women and six found no gender difference.

The factors behind who is most likely to die in extreme weather events vary from country to country, says Van Daalen:
“In a lot of regions, women and girls are more impacted – but in other regions, it’s actually boys and men that are more impacted. It’s very regionally specific and dependent on the roles people take up in society in each region.”
In many low- and middle-income countries, women’s lower societal status can put them at greater risk of dying during extreme events, she says.

For example, some research suggests that, in Bangladesh, social expectations placed upon women could lessen their ability to survive tropical cyclones and flooding events.

According to one study conducted in Bangladesh, cultural expectations for women to wear the sari – a long dress that can restrict movement – could make it more difficult for women to escape from floodwaters.

Women walking on a flooded footpath in Bogura, Bangladesh. Credit: SOPA Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo.
Another study found that, after a 1998 flood in Dhaka, women were less likely than men to leave their homes to seek medical help. The researchers suggest that this was likely linked to cultural norms that restrict women from leaving their homes without a male chaperone. 

In addition, a study published in 2016 drawing on data from 85 low- and middle-income countries over two decades found that women were more likely to be killed by extreme weather events in countries where their socioeconomic status was below that of men.

However, other studies suggest that women in high-income countries could also be more at risk than men of dying in certain extreme events.

For example, a string of research papers have found that women are more likely to die than men in heatwaves in France. One study, published in 2012, found that female deaths were more likely in nine European cities, including London, Paris and Rome.

A woman shelters from the sun in downtown Rome as a heatwave hits Italy. Credit: Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo.

The reasons why women in Europe could be more at risk from heatwaves are not yet fully understood. However, several research papers suggest that older women with underlying health conditions could be particularly vulnerable to increasing heat in Europe.

By contrast, several studies in the US and Australia have found that men are more likely to die in heatwaves than women.

For example, a US national health report found that, from 2006-10, the death rate from extreme heat was 2.6 times higher for men than women across the country. 

One reason men could be more at risk from heat in the US is the country has a high proportion of socially-isolated elderly men, Sellers says in his review:
“In the US, the vulnerability of males to heatwave deaths is attributed in part to the social isolation that many elderly men experience.”
Another reason could be that, in the US and other high-income countries, men more frequently work and spend leisure time outside and so could be more exposed to increases in heat, says says Prof Kristie Ebi, a researcher in public health and climate change from the University of Washington. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Retired men can be in the category of people more at risk from heat. Often they go out in the afternoon, sit in the park and spend time outdoors – and so have higher heat exposure than women who stay indoors.”
A study published in 2018 found that, across 50 different US cities, men faced a higher risk of outdoor heat exposure than women.

Men in the US, Australia and China can also face a higher risk than women of dying in floods, according to several studies. One reason for this could be that men are more likely to assist in rescue efforts, research suggests.

Two men are rescued by the National Guard after their canoe tips over in the flooded streets of Guernville, California. Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo.
In addition to raising the risk of death, extreme weather events can also raise the risk of injury and personal safety issues. The review finds that women are often disproportionately affected by many of these health impacts. 

For example, after Hurricane Katrina struck the US city of New Orleans and its surrounding areas in 2005, researchers found that women faced higher rates of partner violence and sexual assault.

Further research in New Zealand found that cases of domestic violence increased after flooding in 2004. A study for ActionAid Bangladesh also observed an increase in violence against women after flooding in 2007. 

Food insecurity 

Climate change is affecting food insecurity across the world in a number of ways. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are affecting crop yields, while extreme weather events, such as droughts, are causing unpredictable harvest losses.

In low- and middle-income countries, food insecurity can be strongly linked to poor health. 

The review finds that, in low- and middle-income countries, climate-driven food insecurity can have a disproportionately large effect on the health of women.
Pie chart displaying the findings of 14 studies examining the links between climate change, food insecurity and health: 11 found women were more likely to suffer food insecurity than men, two concluded that men were more likely than women and one found no gender difference. Rounding errors mean the proportions may not add up to exactly 100%. Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief.

Out of 14 studies examining links between climate change, food insecurity and health, 79% (11) found that women were more affected than men. (Two studies found men were more affected than women and one found no difference in the impact on men and women.)

Understanding why women are more affected by climate-driven food insecurity requires an understanding of historic social hierarchies in many low- and middle-income countries, says Dr Raman Preet, a global health researcher at Umeå University in Sweden. She tells Carbon Brief:
“If there is less food available, then who gets to eat more food? In a lot of cases, it’s men. That’s not new, these gender roles have been around for thousands of years.”
Girl returning from a days work on a large farm in Niger, West Africa. Credit: Mike Goldwater / Alamy Stock Photo.
Studies show that, during times of climate-driven food insecurity, women were more likely than men to forgo food in India, Iran, South Africa, Ghana and Nicaragua.

In many regions, female children are also more likely than male children to go without food, says Preet:
“There’s always a preference for how you feed. This has gone on for centuries. Are we ready to accept that if there’s food insecurity then the girl child gets lower priority?”
For example, a study in the Philippines found that, in the months following typhoons, female children face a greater risk of infant mortality, whereas male children do not face a heightened risk. The researchers attribute this to the preferential feeding of male children when resources are scarce.

Though women are often more affected by food insecurity, there are certain cases where men can bear the brunt of the impacts.

A study in South Greenland found that men are finding it more difficult to hunt Arctic prey as a result of population declines linked to climate change. According to the study, this is increasing men’s economic reliance on their female partners. (However, the study also found that hunting failures were linked to increases in domestic violence.)

Sealer transporting two dead seals on his dog sledge, Greenland. Credit: Blickwinkel / Alamy Stock Photo.
Infectious disease

Rising temperatures are causing wildlife and the diseases they carry to move into new areas. This, in turn, is heightening the susceptibility to some vector-borne and other infectious   diseases. 

For example, research published in 2019 found one billion more people could become exposed to mosquito-borne diseases by 2080 as result of rising temperatures.

In May, Carbon Brief reported on how warming temperatures could also heighten exposure to thousands of novel animal-borne – or “zoonotic” – diseases. (Covid-19 is an example of such a disease.)

In addition, research shows that sea level rise could also play a role in heightening exposure to infectious diseases.

Young man in water as low lying island Funafuti Atoll is flooded by sea water. Credit: Nature Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo
.
This is because some infectious bacteria thrive in slightly salty – or “brackish” – water. Sea level rise is causing brackish water to move closer to where people live, heightening their exposure to disease.

Ocean warming could also aid the spread of marine bacteria, research shows.

The review looks at how several infectious diseases that are known to be affected by climate change are currently impacting men and women.
Pie chart displaying the findings of 14 studies examining how infectious diseases currently impact men and women: nine found men were more likely to suffer from infectious diseases than women; four concluded that women were more likely than men; and one found no gender difference. Rounding errors mean the proportions may not add up to exactly 100%. Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief.

Out of 14 studies, 64% (9) found that men faced a higher risk than women of contracting infectious diseases. (Four studies found women faced a higher risk, whereas one study found no difference between the genders.)

Men are often at a greater risk of being exposed to infectious diseases because they more frequently work and spend leisure time outdoors, Sellers says in his review:
“There is some evidence that males are at greater risk of schistosomiasis infection than females, particularly at younger ages as boys tend to spend more time playing near water where the disease is transmitted.”
Schistosomiasis – also known as “bilharzia” – is a debilitating disease caused by parasitic worms that pass from person to person in contaminated water. It mostly affects tropical Africa. Research shows that rising temperatures are likely to increase transmission of schistosomiasis.

Several studies in North America have also found that men are at a greater risk of suffering from Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread through tick bites. One reason for this is because men spend more time working outdoors in wild environments and so are more likely to come into contact with ticks.

Research finds that Lyme disease exposure could “substantially increase” further northwards in the US and Canada as a result of warming temperatures.

A tick embedded into human skin. Credit: Chris Robbins / Alamy Stock Photo.
While men face a heightened risk of disease when outside, women can face heightened risks at home, the review shows.

Several studies have found that women face a greater risk of malaria than men. One reason for this is that, in low- and middle-income countries, women can come into contact with contaminated water sources in and around the home, says Van Daalen:
“If you are surrounded by a lot of stagnant water sources, you are more likely to be exposed to the mosquitoes that carry malaria.”
Mental illness

The links between climate change and poor mental health are complex. Research suggests that extreme weather events can aggravate the risk of mental illness through bereavement, injury and economic losses. 

Prof Helen Berry, inaugural professor of climate change and mental health at the University of Sydney, explained the links in a guest post for Carbon Brief in 2018. She said:
“Climate change is increasing the frequency and ferocity of weather-related extremes year-on-year. More people are being exposed – or, worse still, the same people are exposed more frequently – to injury, loss of homes and businesses, environmental damage and even loss of lives.
“All of these have profound, often long-term effects on mental health. Yet there remains relatively little research on this topic and even less commitment to doing anything about it.” 
The review includes 28 studies that examine links between climate change, mental illness and gender.
Pie chart displaying the findings of 28 studies examining the links between climate change and mental illness: 19 found women were more likely to suffer from mental illness than men; six concluded that men were more likely than women; and three found no gender difference. Rounding errors mean the proportions may not add up to exactly 100%. Data source: Global Gender and Climate Alliance (2016). Additional analysis by Carbon Brief.

Out of these studies, 68% (19) found that women are more affected than men. Meanwhile, six studies found men were more affected than women and three studies found no gender difference.

A woman stands at the wreckage of her home, in Banshkhali, Bangladesh. Credit: Majority World CIC / Alamy Stock Photo.
Studies show that women faced a greater risk than men of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following tropical cyclones in the US, Australia and Myanmar, and following flooding in the UK and China.

The reasons why women tend to be more likely than men to suffer from PTSD after extreme weather events are not fully understood.

The World Health Organization notes that women are the largest single group of people to be affected by PTSD – and that this is linked to a high prevelance of sexual violence worldwide. Studies show that the risk of sexual violence can rise during and after extreme weather events (see: Extreme weather).

In addition to PTSD, studies also show that women tend to face a higher risk of depression and emotional distress following extreme weather events.

By contrast, several research papers have found that men can face a higher risk of suicide than women following extreme weather events.

Research in both India and rural Australia suggests that male farmers could be at a particularly high risk of suicide after events such as droughts, which can cause rapid crop failures.

For example, one study in Australia found that the risks facing male farmers could in part be attributed to “a dominant form of masculine hegemony that lauds stoicism in the face of adversity”. A study in India, meanwhile, found the risks facing male farmers were linked to unfavourable cash-crop prices and debt.

Farmer stands over his failed wheat crop on his farm near the town of West Wyalong, Australia. Credit: Reuters / Alamy Stock Photo. 
In addition, research in South Korea found that increases in daily temperature were associated with increases in suicide rates for men from 2001-5. 

Across the world, the suicide rate for men is twice as high as for women.

(In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international hotlines are also available.)

Reproductive and maternal health

Women and others that carry children are uniquely threatened by climate change’s impact on reproductive and maternal health.

Climate change threatens reproductive and maternal health in two main ways. First, it can raise the health risks for expecting mothers and foetuses. Second, it can limit access to reproductive and maternal health services, explains Van Daleen:
“Climate change is increasingly putting strains on healthcare systems. It can quite directly destroy hospitals through extreme weather events, but it can also just indirectly put more strain on healthcare services.
“When this happens, what we generally see is that reproductive and maternity health services are most impacted because they are already undervalued in comparison to other services and so not prioritised.”
The review includes 21 studies that explore how climate change can affect reproductive and maternal health.

Studies show that exposure to extreme weather events can heighten health risks for expecting mothers and their foetuses.

Pregnant woman sitting in the shade under water vaporisers on a hot day. Credit: Davide Zanin / Alamy Stock Photo.
For example, maternal and newborn health problems have been linked to hurricane exposure in Texas and Florida and heatwave exposure across 19 African countries, Italy and Spain.

The exposure of expectant mothers to heat, in particular, is known to have an impact on newborns, says Ebi:
“We do know there’s an impact on the growing foetus from studies that are showing that there is an increased incidence of problems such as low birth weight.”
In addition, studies in Haiti and Thailand show that exposure of pregnant women to infectious diseases, such as malaria, could heighten the risk of miscarriage and other serious maternal health issues. 

(Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that is being boosted by climate change in some regions. See: Infectious diseases.)

A study published in 2007 found that young women struggled to access reproductive health services following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

However, further research into how climate change could affect access to reproductive healthcare is so far lacking, Sellers says in his review. 

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(AU) Australia Will Lose More Than $3 Trillion And 880,000 Jobs Over 50 Years If Climate Change Is Not Addressed, Deloitte Says

ABC News - Kathleen Calderwood

The report warns higher average temperatures will put labour-intensive industries like construction at risk. (ABC News: Chris Gillette)


Key points
  • Report author Pradeep Philip warned that Queensland in 50 years could represent half of Australia's job losses, "if we don't get this right"
  • Trade, tourism and mining are some of the industries most exposed to the effects of climate change
  • The Federal Government has promised to deliver net zero emissions in the second half of this century

The Australian economy will lose more than $3 trillion over the next 50 years if climate change is not addressed, according to a new report from Deloitte Access Economics.


Report author Pradeep Philip, who was a policy director for former prime minister Kevin Rudd, said there is also a lot to be gained if warming is kept below 1.5 degrees and Australia achieves net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

"If we do act over the next few years then in just 50 years there is a benefit to the economy of $680 billion," he said.

"We'll have an economy 2.6 per cent bigger, generating 250,000 jobs, so this tells us if you are pro-growth and pro-jobs then we need to act on climate change now.

"We know that there are new sectors around renewables, hydrogen, electric vehicles that can be created."

Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia will feel the effects most acutely, with trade, tourism and mining some of the industries most exposed to the effects of climate change.

"As things get hotter because the planet warms up it makes it really difficult for those labour-intensive industries to work," Dr Philip said.

"If you work outside, in construction, higher average temperatures make it quite unbearable to work, so we get a loss of productivity, we get adverse health affects, and this translates across the board into retail, manufacturing, transport and mining. 

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"Queensland in 50 years will represent half the country's job losses if we don't get this right, but will gain 70 per cent of the jobs if we do get this right."

North Queensland tourism operator Paul Crocombe said he wasn't surprised by the findings.

He's been taking people scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef from Townsville for 30 years, and while he says the reef is resilient, climate change is making it harder for it to bounce back.

"Things like cyclones, when they go through they tend to break the more fragile corals in the shallower parts of the reef and it can take up to 15 years for the plate coral to grow," he said.

"If we start to get more severe cyclones more often it makes it harder for those reefs to recover — coral bleaching is a similar thing."

He said more erratic weather would also impact the more practical elements of the business.

"If we don't do anything there are going to be impacts on the reef, impacts on the weather and therefore our ability to access the reef and even the infrastructure such as hotels, motels, port facilities, vessels, all those can be impacted if we get more severe weather events," Mr Crocombe said.

"Another big impact will be the attitude of travellers, people are looking for a low-carbon option for their travel and holidays … Europeans are certainly thinking twice about doing long-haul travel now and it is something that will have an effect on tourism in Australia in the future."

Businesses 'moving despite Government inaction'

Sheep grazier and chair of Farmers for Climate Action Charlie Prell said the pressure is already being felt in his industry, but opportunities are available to help agriculture businesses get by if climate change is addressed.

Mr Prell said the Government needs a plan to get to a carbon neutral economy. (Supplied)


"Most particularly in hosting renewable energy infrastructure but also the opportunity to be paid for sequestering carbon in trees and in soil," he said.

"During the last drought, the last two years, 2018-19, I reduced my stocking rate by about nearly 60 per cent … and the only reason I could do that and remain viable was because I was receiving income from the company I'm in partnership with for the wind turbines (that are on my land)."

Last week, ANZ Bank announced its climate policy.

The bank will stop lending money to new customers that earn more than 10 per cent of their revenue from thermal coal mining or generation.

ANZ will also abandon its thermal coal investments within 10 years, and has explicitly supported "net-zero" carbon emissions by 2050.

Mr Prell said businesses will push ahead regardless of the Government's approach.

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"Transport, buildings, businesses, even oil companies and miners are moving despite the Government's … inability to take action on climate change and to have some kind of a plan to get to carbon neutral," he said.

"The National Farmer's Federation have a net zero emissions by 2050 policy to achieve that.

"A lot of them are not left-wing, looney, greenie organisations, they're actually capitalists, the ANZ Bank is not a left-wing institution … so they're looking to ameliorate and address risk."

A spokesperson for the Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said in a statement that the Government's Technology Investment Roadmap, which prioritises hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, soil carbon, storage options and 'low-carbon' steel and aluminium production, will reduce emissions and "make net zero achievable".

It said the Government would guarantee reliable and affordable energy, without imposing new costs on households.

The Federal Government has promised to deliver net zero emissions in the second half of this century.

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2020 Likely To Be One Of Warmest Years On Record Despite La Niña


Climate crisis exacerbates extreme weather during natural events, say experts
Jakarta, Indonesia. The seasonal rainy season may be exacerbated by the effect of La Niña in south-east Asia. Photograph: Donal Husni/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock


La Niña climate event is under way, heralding a colder and stormier winter than usual across the northern hemisphere, but 2020 remains likely to be one of the warmest years on record.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has declared La Niña event – a cooling of surface ocean water along the Pacific coast of the South American tropics – to help governments and humanitarian agencies plan for extreme weather events around the world.

La Niña (the little girl in Spanish) is the “cold” phase of El Niño southern oscillation, a series of oceanic and climatic events in the Pacific which exert a global influence on temperature, storms and rainfall.

Possible impacts in 2020 include drier than usual conditions in east Africa, adding to food security challenges in the region, wetter conditions across large parts of south-east Asia and Australia, and increasingly intense Atlantic hurricanes. In the Caribbean, the 2020 season has been one of the most active on record.

Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the WMO, said: “El Niño and La Niña are major, naturally occurring drivers of the Earth’s climate system. But all naturally occurring climate events now take place against a background of human-induced climate change which is exacerbating extreme weather and affecting the water cycle.”

While El Niño, the warm phase of the climatic phenomenon, can trigger drought in Australia and India, and increase cyclones in the tropical Pacific, La Niña can cause eastern Pacific sea temperatures to fall by up to 3-5C, which has a cooling effect on global temperatures.

According to Taalas, however, this is now more than offset by global heating, and 2020 “remains on track to be one of the warmest years on record”, with 2016-20 expected to be the warmest five-year period on record.

“La Niña years now are warmer even than years with strong El Niño events of the past,” said Taalas.

This year’s La Niña is expected to endure into the first quarter of next year and is rated by the WMO as “moderate to strong”. The last time there was a strong event was in 2010-11, which contributed to the 2010 Pakistan floods and the 2010-11 Queensland floods.

La Niña events are defined by sea surface temperatures falling by more than 0.5C for at least five successive three-month periods.

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02/11/2020

(USA) Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Is The Climate Leader We Need

Outside - 

The marine biologist has become as a leading voice in the movement by deftly communicating what few people understand: that cleaning up the planet requires a commitment to social justice



It’s amazing that Ayana Elizabeth Johnson found the time to talk to me. To cite just some of the things the 40-year-old Brooklynite has been up to in the past year: running a conservation consulting firm, Ocean Collectiv; founding a coastal-cities think tank, Urban Ocean Lab; advising Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign on the Blue New Deal, an ocean-focused strategy for reducing carbon emissions and boosting the economy; taking over Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Instagram account to guide a dialogue on environmental justice; editing an anthology of essays by women climate leaders; and launching a podcast with industry heavyweight Alex Blumberg ambitiously titled How to Save a Planet.

So, yes, she’s been busy. And with good reason. With her expertise, personal story, and collaborative grassroots approach to problem solving, Johnson has emerged as a uniquely powerful voice in the environmental movement. She is one of a small number of scientists who operates at the nexus of climate change and racial justice, and the only one who has been able to connect the dots between those issues in a way that might actually get us somewhere.

Plus, she’s a natural entertainer. “Ayana is genuinely funny,” says Blumberg, the cofounder of podcasting juggernaut Gimlet Media, which sold to Spotify last year for a reported $230 million. As cohosts of How to Save a Planet, they examine achievable solutions to climate change. A common question they ask guests: How screwed are we? (Spoiler: It depends. We have a choice of possible futures.) “She’s an actual subject-matter expert who’s charismatic and can crack a joke and think on her feet. That’s rare.”

When I spoke to Johnson during a gap in her schedule, she described a life and career journey that began when she was on a family vacation in Florida at age five, sitting on the back of a glass-bottom boat with other kids throwing cheese popcorn to the fish. She is allergic to dairy and was covered in hives by the time her mom pulled her into the boat’s cabin to rinse off. There she found herself alone staring down through the glass at the life below. “I had a private view of this underwater magical world,” she says. That was all it took: she fell in love with coral reefs. 

Johnson’s father was an architect, her mother a public-school teacher, and she was a brainy kid who spent hours digging up worms in their Brooklyn backyard. She studied environmental science and public policy at Harvard University, then earned her Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2007, she began her graduate field work, in Curaçao and Bonaire, by redesigning fish traps to reduce bycatch and getting local officials to require their use. Her low-tech solution cut the capture of ornamental fish by some 80 percent and also convinced her that she “didn’t want to just write research papers that nobody was going to read, that wouldn’t result in any action.” 

In that spirit, her dissertation on sustainably managed coral reefs was informed by interviews with hundreds of Caribbean fishermen and divers. The core of what she asked them: “If you could write the rules to manage fishing in the ocean, what would they be?” Their responses showed her the importance of engaging communities in the creation of policies that would alter their lives. “The hours I spent interrupting dominoes games and hanging out at the docks really changed the way I see the world,” Johnson says. She later applied that collaborative model in her work with the Waitt Institute, a nonprofit focused on restoring fish populations, where she cofounded and directed an initiative that supported the citizens of Barbuda as they crafted their own marine regulations. The result was one of the most progressive and comprehensive ocean management policies in the region.
“My love of nature and humanity drive my work. It’s not some abstract interest in policy or science.”
In 2016, Johnson moved back to Brooklyn to seek a career that would enable her to have the biggest impact in ocean conservation and climate change. She took on a series of freelance gigs: working with XPrize on a contest for the best use of ocean data, aiding Greenpeace on a coral-reef initiative, and authoring a report for the World Wildlife Fund on waste in the seafood supply chain. She was getting so many offers she couldn’t handle it all alone—and she didn’t want to. So she called up “a dozen of the coolest people I knew” and in 2017 formed Ocean Collectiv with the goal of supporting conservation groups “that are trying to do something differently—and in a way that is always really careful about the justice implications of the work.” 

Returning to New York gave Johnson a new appreciation for the city’s shoreline and eventually spurred her to cofound the think tank Urban Ocean Lab with entrepreneur and designer Marquise Stillwell and veteran congressional policy advisor Jean Flemma. Their hope is to cultivate policies that help America’s coastal cities adapt to the threats of rising sea levels and more powerful storms. Johnson points out that the role the oceans play in climate change is often overlooked: when congressional Democrats released the Green New Deal, the oceans were barely mentioned. This prompted her to coauthor an op-ed for the environmental outlet Grist calling out the “big blue gap” in the plan, and that led to her being tapped to work with Warren’s campaign.

Even after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Johnson was a swirl of activity. Then came George Floyd’s death and the country’s explosive response. Suddenly she wasn’t able to get anything done, a fact that she expressed in a passionate op-ed for The Washington Post that sharply identified the intersection of environmentalism and racism: “How can we expect Black Americans to focus on climate when we are so at risk on our streets, in our communities, and even within our own homes?” 

“I wrote that out of fury and grief,” she told me. “To say, ‘White environmentalists, I know you just want to ignore racism because our environmental challenges are already massive. And I, too, wish we could ignore it, but I am proof that you can’t ignore it and still get this work done.’ ” 

The piece elevated Johnson to a new level of intellectual leadership in the environmen­tal movement. There was perhaps no one who better understood what needed to be explained—or who was more capable of doing the explaining. On that same family vacation where she gazed in wonder at a coral reef, her father taught her to swim in a hotel pool. It was a joyous trip, but decades later her parents let her know that it had been tainted by racism. “My dad’s Black and my mom’s white,” Johnson says. “When my dad showed up, none of the white people would get in the pool.” 

For Johnson, the environmental and civil rights movements are linked by a shared moral clarity and a relentless effort to make things better. “When I was five, I wanted to be a marine biologist,” she says. “And then at ten I wanted to be the lawyer who got the next Martin Luther King out of jail.” 

She’s bringing that same urgency to How to Save a Planet, which launched on August 20. She and Blumberg have an odd-couple-like dynamic, which may well help them in their bid to produce “the podcast about climate change that people actually want to listen to,” Johnson says with a laugh. The anthology she coedited, All We Can Save ($29; One World), offers another unexpected approach to climate activism. The contributors include scientists, lawyers, and think-tank policy experts, but also farmers, artists, designers, and poets. 

“My love of nature and humanity drive my work,” Johnson says. “It’s not some abstract interest in policy or science—those are tools for understanding the world and shaping it into something that is verdant and fair.”

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Net-Zero Carbon Emissions Won’t Be Sustainable If Social Inequalities Aren’t Addressed

The Conversation -   | 

Willy Barton/Shutterstock
Authors
is Professor, Department of Anthropology and Co-Director of Durham Energy Institute, Durham University

 is Associate Professor in Global Governance and Deputy Director of the Global Governance Institute, University College London
With COP26, the UN’s climate change conference, on the horizon next year in Glasgow, all eyes are on securing the decarbonisation of the global economy. What this will mean and how it will be achieved will be hotly debated before, during and after the conference.

Thanks to COVID-19, the world has experienced an extraordinary simulation of what abrupt decarbonisation might look like. At least in relation to transport, lockdown has revealed the enormous improvements in air quality and wildlife habitats, which result from curtailing fossil-fuelled transport.

But, at the same time, hastily implemented lockdown measures, including enforced confinement, have worsened inequalities that affect quality of life, access to food, education, work and mental health.

Growing public protests against pandemic restrictions, including road closures to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists, have also mirrored the febrile and often polarising public debate around carbon-mitigation policies.

While evidence indicates that some of these anti-lockdown protests are funded by shadowy conservative groups also pushing climate denial, other protests have been driven by legitimate grievances. Both highlight the importance of designing policies that are equitable and improve people’s lives – as well as explaining those policies to citizens.


Global and local inequalities

These recent events underscore how any transition to a net-zero society must take into account social conditions. Measures that worsen social inequalities and injustices are intolerable, causing serious harm, and are likely to provoke significant popular resistance – ultimately jeopardising any sustained climate action.

COP discussions have rightly focused on the difficult task of striking the right balance of duties between countries, especially between wealthy countries and emerging economies that did not benefit from the era of unrestricted industrialisation. But it is important to remember that the effects of climate change and mitigation are also unequal within countries. Intersecting differences, such as those related to gender, ethnicity, class, age, ability and more, affect the impact of policy interventions, as we have seen throughout the pandemic.

In the UK, research shows that those who lack access to affordable energy (living in poorly insulated housing, for example) are also more likely to live in areas with worse air pollution from traffic and industry.

In our COP26 briefing paper Just Transition: Pathways to Socially Inclusive Decarbonisation, we flag the important social justice concerns that a transition to a post-carbon economy must address.

Seven key messages

  1. The transition to net-zero will not be sustainable or credible if it creates or worsens social inequalities. A social justice approach can facilitate the transition globally.

  2. Costs and benefits of climate policies and the ability to shape such policy is not extended equally to those who suffer the greatest costs. Inclusion is vital to ensure that policy is socially equitable.

  3. Job creation does not guarantee just outcomes. It must take into account what jobs are created, how secure they are, who has access to them and the skills and education required.

  4. Just transitions will look very different in developing countries. They will need additional support to develop, plan and implement the necessary policies.

  5. A backlash is likely if the transition is not perceived to be just. Policymakers need to encourage widespread public debate and involvement to ensure that everyone gets on board.

  6. A range of policy tools exist to address just transition concerns. These include taking a holistic approach to policies; addressing social and environmental aspects of economic policy; making sure that interventions are adapted to local contexts and are responsive to change; building democratic engagement platforms, such as citizen assemblies; and open and transparent communication on the political and ethical choices involved in decarbonisation.

  7. Governments should also incorporate just transition provisions into their nationally determined contributions (national targets to meeting the Paris Agreement goals) and include opportunities to review progress and learn from one another.

Key investors are now beginning to move out of fossil fuels, which sends an important message about reducing carbon emissions. Igor Hotinsky/Shutterstock


What needs to be done

Without a robust bedrock of public support, radical measures will prove difficult to implement. The early part of lockdown showed that collective responsibility is possible, and that solidarity can be generated as long as it is not undermined by those in charge.

Shoring up badly eroded trust in public authority at local, national and global levels is vital. Basic democratic principles suggest that including a range of voices in making policy means more diverse concerns are reflected.

Besides individuals making changes, it’s clear that business and investors have a key role to play in achieving net zero. Although painfully slow, there are signs that fossil fuel companies are changing their strategies. Key investors are beginning to move out of fossil fuels following a sea change among high-profile industry leaders such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Brunel pension fund, which both withdrew investments in fossil fuels.

There is a long way to go. But changes in the way that energy futures (financial instruments in which the underlying asset is based on energy products such as oil, natural gas, and electricity) are defined – according to speed of transformation to net zero rather than by rate of economic growth – show that major industrial narratives are changing.

It will also be vital that businesses account for their potential impact on social inclusion and inequalities, an agenda which is gaining ground in the influential voluntary environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards.

We know that only unprecedented levels of collective action will be enough to limit global warming to 2°C. Decarbonisation of the economy is daunting but essential. Emphasis on a fair transition to net-zero could rally public support for the dramatic changes to come, promote social solidarity and mobilise communities to take action.

As our COP briefing details, there already exists a broad set of policy tools and strategies to move us quickly in the direction of an integrated, whole-economy approach to an inclusive, just transition. Policymakers must prioritise measures that promote social and environmental justice, strengthening the political trust on which achieving our net-zero goal depends.

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