A Call to Action (Asynchronous Session)
The Global Water Crisis as a Climate Emergency: Water Wars and International Security, Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jenny Rebecca Kehl
Water scarcity disrupts food supply, distorts economic development, jeopardizes public health, decreases political stability, and threatens regional security. The purpose of this research is to examine water scarcity as a climate emergency, rather than a slow drip of incremental leaks. From the water wars of the Middle East to the food insecurity that triggered the Arab Spring, to the role of water scarcity in radicalization in Syria and Iraq, to the volatile conflicts over dwindling water recourses in India and China, to increasing tensions along 120 international borders marked by rivers that are running dry, water security is becoming an urgent issue. “The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over water,” stated Ismail Serageldin, former World Bank Vice President (2000). The Lightning Talk will assess the relevance and implications of this statement for modern water wars and climate emergencies. This study develops a valuable new dataset on water disputes provides a systematic analysis of conflict and cooperation in the twenty largest transboundary lake systems and river systems in the world. The results identify specific triggers, thresholds, and policy strategies that are effective in mitigating water wars. One of the great paradoxes of water scarcity is that it can provoke conflict or promote cooperation. Scarcity can lead to increasing competition over scarce resources, or scarcity can clarify the need for cooperation and facilitate improvements in sustainability. Our work is motivated by the prospect of reducing the imminent threat water scarcity poses to regional stability, international security, and environmental sustainability.
Vulnerable Populations: Climate Change and Weather Threats Facing Urban Communities View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Karen "Kara" Consalo
This paper explores increasing weather-threats facing coastal cities due to global climate change, including hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and wildfires. Discussion of these threats includes their adverse impacts on built and natural systems as well as human health and local economies. After discussion of these weather threats, the paper considers case studies of the response and resiliency measures being undertaken by the cities of New York, Miami, and San Francisco to prepare for weather disasters. Such case studies will include the laws, policies, and infrastructure which have been developed by these urban communities as well as the financing tools necessary to enact such resiliency measures. The study concludes by providing guidance and recommendations for policy-shapers seeking to develop urban resiliency measures in the face of long-term effects and short-term emergencies created by climate and weather extremes. Public input from policy-shapers in the fields of emergency response and land development are welcome.
Smallholder Farmers’ Adaptation Responses to Climate Change in the Olifants Catchment, South Africa
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Funke Olabanji
Scientific evidence suggests that climatic conditions are changing with severe impacts projected for agricultural and food production systems. The increased variability of climate parameters such as rainfall and temperature has continued to raise concerns among crop producers particularly the smallholder farmers. As majority of smallholder farmers in South Africa largely depend on rain-fed agriculture, thus making them most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This study assessed the perception of smallholder farmers on climate change and their adaptation responses. A Purposive sampling technique was used to select a total of seventy three smallholder farmers from five selected municipality located in the Olifants catchment, South Africa. A combination of descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse the data obtained in this study. Findings revealed that smallholder farmers have an in-depth knowledge of the climate shift happening in the area: with increasing temperature and declining rainfall as the most noticeable change observed. The most significant adaptation strategies adopted by smallholder farmers included adjusting planting dates, planting of drought tolerant crops and the use of improved seed varieties. The main barriers to the adoption of adaptation measures were access to irrigation facility, access to market, lack of storage facility, access to loan and farm inputs. The implication of this study is to provide information to policy makers on the current adaptive responses adopted by farmers and ways in which adaptation responses to climate change impact can be improved in order to ensure food security.
Featured The Climate Crisis Re-interpreted as the Apartheidocene: The Foundational and Continuing Role of Anti-black Violence through Climate Apartheid View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Samuel Grant
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognizes that Africa will experience among the worst impacts of the climate crisis due to its lower adaptive capacity in world-ecology. Recognizing the climate crisis as essentially weaponized through structural violence, an examination of it through the lens of the Apartheidocene (Leguizamon Grant, forthcoming, 2021), makes it easier for us to both trace these dynamics and consider how to stop the violence. Whether we are looking at France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, or other locations of Diaspora with large Africana populations, we recognize specific ways in which anti-black violence is orchestrated – both historically and contemporarily as a pattern in the climate crisis. Black lives have historically faced the inhospitable climate of racism expressed through colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and hetero-patriarchy. We see all of these as manifestation of an ecologically imperialist form of world-ecological organization. By renaming the climate crisis as the Apartheidocene, we focus our examination on metabolic flows in world-ecology and the specific ways in which Black space and Black ecology as theorized by Nathan Hare (1970) is relevant in the context of the climate crisis. We propose options for action that eradicate the pattern of anti-black violence and move all of us along substantive just transition pathways by 2050 to exit the Apartheidocene and enter new world-ecological norm of ecological democracy by 2050.
Understanding Public Risk Perceptions of Sea-level Rise and Its Possible Impacts View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chang Liu, Sisi Meng
One of the consequences of climate change is rising sea levels, and the risk is particularly high for low-lying coastal communities around the world. Meanwhile, attracted by the landscape, habitat, and recreational activities, the population in coastal cities is still growing fast. So there might be a lack of perception of the future risks and challenges caused by climate change. This study aims to understand public concerns and perceptions of sea-level rise and its possible impacts. Using a household survey conducted in Florida, the findings show that coastal residents were divided – almost 50/50 – between “high/moderate concern” and “low/no concern” about the projected impacts of sea-level rise. Florida residents were mostly concerned about higher insurance premiums, followed by increased contaminants in water and destructive storms. In contrast, they were comparatively less concerned about the loss of tourist revenue, private property, and public land. In addition, multivariate regression analyses are used to identify the most important factors that shape heterogeneous risk perceptions. These results are expected to provide useful information to guide the sea-level rise adaptation strategies in the coastal areas.
