socioeconomic and environment
How has climate change affected Vietnam?
In 2016, the consequences of climate change in Vietnam were evident with 10 typhoons and seven tropical depressions in the South China Sea, more than the average of many years ago. Of these, four storms and two tropical depressions directly affected the mainland.
VietNamNet Bridge - In 2016, the consequences of climate change in Vietnam were evident with 10 typhoons and seven tropical depressions in the East Sea (internationally known as the South China Sea), more than the average of many years ago. Of these, four storms and two tropical depressions directly affected the mainland.
In 2016, Vietnam also experienced 24 cold spells. During the cold spell in January 1, 2016, 40 sites were reported with snow – a phenomenon that had not occurred in hundreds of years in many places. The cold spell on January 21st recorded the lowest temperature for 40 years, causing widespread snowfall and frost in the northern mountainous region.
Typhoons, downpours, droughts, and saline intrusion were complex, contrary to all rules, difficult to forecast. In 2016, 22 large downpours across the country devastated many homes and fields.
Particularly, from October to December 2016, heavy rains caused severe floods in the central region. Five serious floods, seven flash floods and landslides were reported in the North. The flash floods and landslides caused by typhoons No. 2 and No. 3 caused serious damage in the northern mountainous provinces of Lao Cai and Yen Bai.
The 2016 also recorded 16 floods on the rivers in the Central Region and the Central Highlands. Serious, widespread floods were prolonged, causing severe flooding in Central Vietnam.
Material damage was also great, especially in the fields of agriculture, industry, infrastructure, health and the environment.
In 2016, the irregularities of the weather were increasingly severe, occurring throughout the country. Specifically, in the dry season of 2016, many places in the South and the Central Region suffered from drought due to the drop in rainfall by 30-40% and the small water flow of rivers, leading to saline intrusion coming one month earlier in the estuary areas of rivers in the central region and especially in the Mekong Delta, where the salty water entered 80-100 km deep into the mainland. In these areas, farmers were disturbed by salinity, and lack of fresh water for daily life and production.
In the central region, the rainy season and the floods came late but they occurred repeatedly and lasted longer than usual during the last months of the year, causing huge damage to property and people. In the North, the first cold spell came early compared to previous years, but people did not feel the cold air of winter as the cold spells alternated with hot days.
In the dry season, the South as well as Ho Chi Minh City saw out-of-season downpours. The number of rainy days and the total rainfall in the dry season also exceeded the average of the same period of many years ago. Out-of-season rain caused damage to the winter-spring crop as well as fruit trees.
According to weather experts, there were many causes, particularly climate change, that changed some natural rules. Meteorological experts said the weather was in the neutral period and tended to move to El Nino (often associated with drought), so the rainy season in the South arrived earlier than it had many years ago.
It is undeniable that the weather in Vietnam in recent years has become increasingly abnormal. Droughts, floods, landslides, and storms have seriously affected the economy, which depends on agricultural production.
In particular, Vietnam is considered one of the countries heavily affected by climate change due to its long coastline. If the sea level rises by 1 meter, 40% of the area of the Mekong Delta and 10% of the Red River Delta will be inundated, which will directly affect 20-30 million people.
For Ho Chi Minh City alone, it is forecast to be one of the top 10 cities in the world most threatened by climate change. The strongest impact on the city is temperature, rainfall and tides. Flood in urban areas, sea water intrusion deep into the mainland, rising sea levels affecting production and clean water supply, infrastructure and people's life.
Climate change is the most serious challenge to sustainable development of all countries in the world, from developed to poor countries. Without effective response to climate change, socio-economic development will suffer, and sustainable development will face difficulty, or even fail.
To cope with climate change, since 2015 Vietnam has had 61 urgent projects with total budget of VND19,000 billion. Priority projects in the medium term were approved by the National Assembly and the Government, totaling about VND15,000 billion, focusing on the construction of a system of freshwater reservoirs; development and protection of protective forests, watershed forests, and mangroves; investment in environmental monitoring systems, and hydro-meteorological forecasting systems; and moving people out of dangerous areas.
In the long run, to develop a low-carbon green economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as Vietnam committed in the Paris Agreement, the country needs huge investment. Therefore, we need to quickly study and promulgate appropriate policies and measures to promote the participation of the private sector, in order to increase investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change, then gradually transforming the economy that now depends largely on non-renewable fuels to renewable energy, improving energy efficiency.
In Ho Chi Minh City, many policies and measures to cope with climate change and integrated in many areas such as planning, energy, transportation, construction, waste management, water management, and agriculture have been issued. Specifically, Ho Chi Minh City has been involved in the C40 (the organization of leaders of cities in the world that are committed to climate change mitigation and adaptation) and has taken part in activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ho Chi Minh City is currently working with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to study and design legal institutions, and create a legal corridor to, step by step, implement the Paris Agreement 2015.
The city has also cooperated with Osaka (Japan) in a program to develop low-carbon cities and with the city of Rotterdam (the Netherlands) in the program "HCM City develops towards the sea to adapt to climate change".
According to the latest information, Ho Chi Minh City will be built into the first smart city of Vietnam, becoming a place that gives special attention to protect the environment for all people.
Natural calamities in 2016:
- Total economic loss is estimated at about VND39,726 billion
- 264 dead and missing people; 5,431 houses were collapsed or swept away; 364,997 houses were flooded and damaged; 828,661 hectares of paddy and crops were damaged
- Landslides occurred on hundreds of kilometers of roads and traffic works, with millions of cubic meters of rock and soil swept away; 115km of dykes and embankments, 938km of canals, 122km of riverbank and coast affected ...
(Source: Central Steering Committee for Disaster Prevention and Control)
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Panelists: Dangerous inaction on rising seas.
Experts on coastal policy said during a recent forum in Raleigh that state and local officials are doing too little to adapt to and head off damage from sea level rise.
RALEIGH — “Bottom line is we should not be building big buildings next to the beach.”
These were the words of Orrin Pilkey, an expert on coastal geology, during a panel discussion at a community forum on the effects of sea level rise on North Carolina last week. Pilkey and other panelists voiced strong opinions on how little state and local officials are doing to adapt to and prevent damage from sea level rise in the coming decades.
Orrin Pilkey
The forum, “Rising Seas: How will climate change affect the NC Coast?,” was part of a Community Voices series hosted by The News & Observer and WTVD-TV of Raleigh. The discussion took place at the North Carolina Museum of History on the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 27.
In addition to Pilkey, professor emeritus of earth and ocean sciences at Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, panelists included the following:
Astrid Caldas, senior climate scientist with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Stanley R. Riggs, professor of geology at East Carolina University.
Greg “Rudi” Rudolph, Carteret County shore protection officer and a member of the Coastal Resources Commission’s science panel.
Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation.
Ned Barnett, an opinion column and blog contributor at The News & Observer, moderated the panel. Barnett noted at the beginning of the forum that the panel included no climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science.
“We cannot devote the little time we have tonight to a debate that there is even a problem to discuss,” he said.
Barnett emphasized the topic of sea level rise is relevant to the state and not talked about enough.
“The rise can seem too small to matter, a few inches a decade,” he said, “but that rise becomes more ominous when we consider that it is relatively new, starting around 1800, that it is accelerating, and that its effects can be compounded by the other consequences of global warming, heavier rainfall and more powerful storms.”
A report released in July by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization Caldas said jokingly calls itself the union of pissed-off scientists, found that some coastal regions, which currently only see a few floods a year, will likely see frequent and destructive floods in coming decades.
Astrid Caldas
“Science is telling us that lots of localized floods are going to occur in the near term,” Caldas said, “and that substantial areas are going to become part of the tidal zone in the long term.”
She said that the research projected that Wilmington will go from experiencing a few tidal floods a year to as many as 150 by 2035. By 2045, the number of floods may be in excess of 350. She added that Duck is projected to see about 30 flooding events by 2035, and that the water will cover extensive expanses of land. By 2045, she said, Duck may see up to 150 extensive floods annually.
One of the biggest problems, Caldas said, will be the effect of this phenomenon on poor and minority communities, who feel the effects by sea level rise in different ways. Vulnerable communities, she said, tend to live in distant areas. Flooding on roads can make it difficult to get to resources and to their jobs.
“Many socially, economically vulnerable communities are at the frontlines of this whole mess, with very few resources to cope,” she said.
Rudolph said that people in poor agricultural communities are also vulnerable to sea level rise as they may not be able to afford increasingly expensive flood insurance premiums.
Greg Rudolph
“They’re in the flood zones,” he said, “if not, they’re going to be. Premiums going up because of storms. I see that as a big socioeconomic crisis, and it’s going to impact North Carolina hard.”
Pilkey said that the scientific consensus is that sea level will likely rise 3 feet by the end of the century and possibly another 6 inches, depending on the behavior of the west Antarctic ice sheet. In theory, he said, a foot of sea level rise could create 2,000 feet of shoreline retreat, or as much as 10,000 feet along parts of the Outer Banks.
“Which means that 1 foot of sea level rise could bring the shoreline back 2 miles,” he said regarding the Outer Banks.
Stan Riggs
As sea level rises, Riggs said the coast is becoming increasingly vulnerable to storm surges, but that society must develop new economies around the natural dynamics. Storms are a part of life, he said, and we must learn to live in harmony with them.
Natural approaches to storm management are still possible in North Carolina, as only half of the state’s coast is developed, Rudolph said.
“There’s a huge what’s called opportunity,” he said, “to advance a mixture of natural flood management, living shorelines and new infrastructure.”
The panel supported the idea that preventing damage from sea level rise should be done sooner rather than waiting until after a devastating event.
Todd Miller
“Don’t expect enlightened policymaking in the aftermath of a storm,” Miller said, “everybody’s attention at that point is on recovery.”
Pilkey said that he believes that after 2 feet of sea level rise, beach re-nourishment will no longer be possible, leaving communities with two choices: Move buildings back or build a seawall. The best we can do now, he said, is to stop building large structures that cannot be moved.
As for people who are interested in owning coastal property, Riggs said a lack of information may make them vulnerable to make risky purchases.
“Let’s at least require some statements on a deed that’s out there in the high-hazard areas,” Riggs said, “so a person who’s not familiar knows what they’re buying into.”
The final version of the state’s five-year update to the original 2010 sea-level rise report was released in March 2015.
Panel members expressed frustration at the gap between science and policy, with Pilkey saying the Coastal Resources Commission appears to be doing everything it can to promote development on the state’s coast.
Riggs referred to the 2010 sea level rise report produced by the CRC science panel, which predicted 39 inches of rise during the next century. The North Carolina General Assembly famously rejected the report, prompting nationwide attention and late-night TV jokes about the state “outlawing climate change,” and the panel was instructed to create a new report in 2015 that looked only 30 years into the future.
Riggs resigned from the panel in 2016, saying “I believe the once highly respected and effective science panel has been subtly defrocked and is now an ineffective body.”
He said during the panel discussion that education is key to putting pressure on policymakers to use science to craft coastal management policies.
“If we don’t have an educated public, we’ll never get off the ground with any of this,” Riggs said.
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One more thing for Puerto Rico to worry about: Disease-ridden mosquitoes.
Experts say the combination of natural disasters and persistent socioeconomic inequality creates an environment where mosquito-borne diseases — such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika — can spread.
The images and reports coming out of Puerto Rico show an island in crisis. Many ports remain closed, airports are damaged, and roads are blocked by debris or have been washed away by floods. Electricity will likely be gone for months. Internet and phone service have become luxuries. Homes lie in ruins across the island.
The natural disaster has drawn attention to deeper political and financial inequalities between Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory — and U.S. states such as Florida and Texas, which are having an easier time returning to normal after their recent hurricane experiences. Unfortunately, there could be more trouble ahead, in the form of tiny tropical mosquitoes. Experts say the combination of natural disasters and persistent socioeconomic inequality creates an environment where mosquito-borne diseases — such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika — can spread.
All those diseases exist in Puerto Rico in the background of everyday life, occasionally flaring up into full-blown epidemics. Dengue, a virus that causes fever and joint pain, was diagnosed in 174 people in Puerto Rico in 2016 and none in the first half of 2017. But in bad years — 1994, 1998, 2007 and 2010, among them — it has infected more than 10,000. The same is true of other mosquito-borne diseases on the island. Zika, infamously, was epidemic in 2016, with more than 40,000 people diagnosed in Puerto Rico. By this June, though, cases of the disease had fallen to nearly nothing, and the epidemic was declared over.
It’s not always clear what factors make the difference between a year in which mosquito-borne disease is negligible and one in which it’s epidemic. But hurricanes alone aren’t necessarily big predictors, said Ben Beard, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases. The floods and winds that come with a storm kill mosquitoes and wash away their breeding grounds, and it’s not uncommon for a big hurricane to disrupt an outbreak in progress by temporarily cutting the local mosquito population off at the knees. But that effect is short-lived. “Within a week or so, you tend to see the situation come back to where it was before the storm,” he said. “Several weeks after that, you’ll see some increase.”
At that point, it starts to matter how a society has weathered the storm and how quickly it is recovering. The longer people live without solid roofs, intact window screens and air conditioning — and the longer they’re forced to spend large amounts of time outdoors rebuilding — the more likely it is that a storm will, indirectly, bring people and insects together.
Take, for instance, the connections between Hurricane Katrina and West Nile virus. This virus, carried by mosquitoes, already existed in Louisiana and Mississippi. But a 2008 study by Tulane University found that, in the weeks after Katrina passed through, hurricane-affected counties saw a two-fold increase in cases. Meanwhile, in counties that avoided the worst of the storm, cases of West Nile either went down or stayed the same. The increase was probably partially due to a burst of mosquito breeding in stagnant pools the storm left behind, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University.
But mosquitoes don’t create an outbreak by themselves. To spread disease, you need people coming into contact with those mosquitoes. As the Tulane study noted, tens of thousands of hurricane survivors spent weeks in damaged homes or outside, waiting to be evacuated. The storm gave mosquitoes breeding grounds. Political disorder ensured that those new insects had access to humans.
Socioeconomic inequality — and the quality-of-life differences it creates — can have a big impact on who contracts mosquito-borne disease, even in the absence of a natural disaster, said Samuel Scarpino, a math professor at the University of Vermont who studies disease surveillance.
In 2003, researchers in the U.S. and Mexico analyzed the spread of mosquito-borne dengue virus in Laredo, Texas, and its cross-border neighbor, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The two towns had, effectively, the same climate and geography, though the Texas town had more mosquitoes breeding around local homes.
But it was the Mexican town that had much higher rates of residents whose blood tested positive for dengue exposure. Researchers connected that difference to disparities in living conditions between the two Laredos. Texans were much more likely to have central air conditioning, intact window screens and other little luxuries that created a barrier between them and the local mosquitoes.
Findings like this have big implications for Puerto Rico, Scarpino said. The loss of electricity on most of the island could mean that most Puerto Ricans — even those who escaped the worst of the storm — will spend the next few months with no air conditioning. Instead, like the citizens of Nuevo Laredo, they’ll rely on windows to cool homes, schools, offices and government buildings — windows that are likely to have screens damaged by the storm.
What’s more, Scarpino told me, the loss of electricity and other forms of infrastructure is also likely to affect Puerto Rico’s mosquito-borne disease surveillance system. Scarpino recently published research analyzing that system, and he said it was one of the most impressive in the world because of its mosquito control and capture, high rates of disease testing and reporting, and molecular diagnostics that allow for quick, accurate test results. But those things rely on infrastructure lost to the storm: passable roads for trapping and collecting mosquitoes; intact hospitals and money for people to visit when they have fevers; electricity to power the diagnostic laboratories.
In other words, the impact of a hurricane isn’t just about the storm, it’s also about the place it hits. Puerto Rico’s political status, and its long-running economic and infrastructure crisis, could put its residents at risk of health problems that a U.S. state with a stronger economy wouldn’t have to worry about. And that’s not a huge surprise. Ultimately, Scarpino told me, this fits squarely into what we know about how diseases, in general, spread: “The biggest predictors are inequality and socioeconomic status.”
Maggie Koerth-Baker is a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight.
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Pipeline 'man camps' loom over British Columbia's Highway of Tears.
A B.C. First Nation prepares for a possible influx of thousands of temporary energy industry workers over the next decade to try to prevent increased violence and crime.
Pipeline 'man camps' loom over B.C.'s Highway of Tears
By Brandi Morin in News, Energy, Politics | September 21st 2017
Drummers participate in the Nak'azdli Whut'en's All Nations Gathering between Aug. 4 and 6, 2017. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en on Facebook
Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation is nestled on the banks of Stuart Lake in north-central British Columbia, surrounded by rolling foothills and tall trees.
It is a relatively remote community, breathtaking in scenery and dependent on economic opportunities in forestry, mining, and pipeline development. It is a community bracing for major change.
Over the next decade, as many as 6,000 new energy industry workers could descend upon the region. The prospect of such a big influx of workers living in nearby “man camps” has aroused fears of increased violence and drug use.
The influx could more than double the population of about 4,500 in the Fort St. James area, which includes the municipality, rural communities and First Nations. Nak'azdli has just 1,972 members living both on and off reserves. The nearest city, Prince George, is 160 kilometres away.
To get ahead of the documented challenges that accompany an influx of temporary workers from outside the region, the Nak’azdli and Lake Babine First Nations are creating two full-time positions, funded by the B.C. government, to help them prepare.
Nak'azdli Band Councillor Ann Marie Sam says if several industrial project proposals go ahead as planned over the next decade, as many as six new work camps, housing up to 1,000 workers each, could be built within 60 to 100 kilometres of the community.
Among the proposed projects are TransCanada’s: the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the North Montney Mainline pipeline and the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline. The company is reviewing the Prince Rupert project, however, because Pacific NorthWest LNG announced in July that it would not proceed with a proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal near Port Edward, B.C. due to economy uncertainty.
The Nak’azdli band had also expressed opposition to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have run through its territory had it not been rejected by the federal government last year.
The danger of bringing in "man camps"
The “man camps” are precisely what their name implies: work camps housing mostly male employees working on resource development projects.
There were more than four men for every woman working in the forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas industries in Canada in 2016, according to Statistics Canada.
The federal Liberal government is now reviewing Canada's conservation laws and is expected to tackle this issue. In June, it recommended changes to environmental assessments to require a gender-based analysis of an industrial project's impacts.
When the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission project was under review, community members expressed concern about two camps slated for construction in the traditional territory of the nearby Lake Babine First Nation. The Lake Babine and Nak’azdli nations found common cause, as Nak’azdli’s traditional territory hosts mining and forestry camps already.
The two nations commissioned a joint report, funded by B.C.’s Department of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, with research by the consulting company Firelight Group. Statistics from the study, released in February 2017, indicate that industrial camps are associated with increased rates of sexual assault and violence against Indigenous women, along with addiction, sexually transmitted infections, and family violence.
“The potential for sexual assault, violence, disappearances, (sexually transmitted diseases), increases with the number of trucks on the road,” study author Ginger Gibson told National Observer. “There’s a whole whack of issues that don’t get considered until construction is happening and that’s too late.”
The final report recommends governments and agencies consider legislation, programs and services to address problems associated with industrial camps, and plan for integrated service delivery in advance of resource development projects. It also states a need for governments to allocate new financial and human resources to health, social services, and housing in the region.
Specific recommendations, from provision of addiction counseling to building recreational facilities, are designed to prevent problems and to address them when the do occur.
In an email, a spokesperson for TransCanada wrote that the company regularly engages with Indigenous communities and would continue to do so throughout the life of the proposed Pacific NorthWest LNG project. Although TransCanada says it attended an info session during the research phase of the industrial camp report, it wouldn’t provide further comment on the findings.
The B.C. government didn't respond to requests from National Observer for comment for this article.
A view of Stuart Lake in north central British Columbia. This area is home to the small Nak'azdli First Nation, which is bracing for challenges that can accompany an influx of energy workers. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en First Nation
'Rigger culture' puts Indigenous women at risk?
The Firelight Group's research included discussions with local community members about the experience of Indigenous women living near construction camps.
“There’s a ‘rigger culture’ that exists, where a lot of people are working together in a hyper masculine context and they’re not really taking care of themselves — they might be drinking and doing drugs, and then they’re blowing off steam,” said Gibson.
“They’re not in their home community and they don’t think about the (local) people as their family or neighbours so they don’t treat people very kindly.”
Following the findings of the study, Nak’azdli leadership is looking at ways to prepare for the next influx of workers. Community members talk about preparing to welcome newcomers to their territory. Industry representatives talk about working with Indigenous groups to provide local cultural competency courses to their employees.
The Nak'azdli Health Centre is assembling rape kits to gather physical evidence after assaults.
Coun. Ann Marie Sam says planning for assaults is an unfortunate necessity.
“When we started developing rape crisis plans the first question for me was, ‘Why do we have to tell our women we can’t protect you and sexual assaults are going to happen? And when they do, we’re going to have a plan for you,'" she said in an interview. "I thought it was so unfair for our community to have to do that."
Community leaders worry that nearby women and children could be a target for workers who parachute into the area.
Sam recalled seeing an unfamiliar woman in town about a year ago when she was out walking with one of her daughters.
“I watched her, wondering who she was. One of the delivery trucks from the (Mount Milligan) mine was coming through town, driving fast, saw her, slams on the breaks, dust on the road and stops beside her. She gets in the truck and I don’t know whose daughter that was — if she was a mother, or whose sister that was. But that really struck me.”
Sam said she wondered if the driver solicited the young woman for sex. “Who do you report that to? I didn’t report it because I didn’t know who she was and I didn’t know what happened to her."
Among risks identified in the Firelight report are increased rates of sexually transmitted infections. The Nak’azdli Health Centre is launching an awareness campaign and promotes STI testing for both workers and community members.
“We want to welcome workers to our town but we also want to let them know that these are the rules of our town,” community health nurse Liza Sam, the councillor’s sister, told National Observer.
“They (workers) don’t have any ownership to our town, so we really want to keep our community intact with less disturbances,” she explained. “If the mine’s gonna be here or other industries, we want them to be the best they can be for community members.”
The proximity of Nak’azdli to the infamous Highway of Tears only adds to the community’s safety concerns.
Since the late 1960s, dozens of women and girls — most of whom are Indigenous — have gone missing or disappeared along Highway 16, an east-west highway spanning northern B.C. that eventually leads through Edmonton and Saskatoon before meeting the TransCanada Highway at Portage la Prairie, Man. The “Highway of Tears” takes in smaller roads in the vicinity too, explains Highway of Tears Walkers co-ordinator Brenda Wilson.
Women reach for an embrace during the Nak'azdli Whut'en's All Nations Gathering between Aug. 4 and 6, 2017. Photo courtesy of the Nak'azdli Whut'en on Facebook
Away from home with 'a lot of money'
Mia is a First Nations woman in Alberta. A former sex trade worker, she said camp workers and sex go hand-in-hand. She worked in Fort McMurray for 10 years during the oilsands boom and was on call "23 hours a day."
Mia's name has been changed to protect her identity.
“I think the guys are maybe lonely," she told National Observer. "They’re away from home, they have a lot of money — disposable income if you will.”
She came from what she describes as an abusive, broken home, and said adversarial circumstances led to the sex industry at age 17. She said she was encouraged to tell clients that she was Spanish or Italian, because Indigenous women were considered trash.
“The men became angry if they knew (you were Indigenous), and your value goes down significantly, so we didn’t reveal that.”
Mia described many dangerous encounters, including one with a client she said threatened to hang her in his apartment in Fort McMurray — a memory that haunts her. Employers know full well what’s going on, she added. But they don’t get involved.
“In that industry, nothing would surprise me. I can see people that may be running the camps turning a blind eye to this kind of thing.”
Mia said local women and girls in Alberta are recruited to the sex industry to service camp workers on a regular basis by pimps and escort agencies, and that locals in communities like Nak’azdli wouldn’t be passed by.
“We already know of cases where our young people have been recruited right off the reserve through the Internet. But if (a camp's) in their own backyards, I would be very concerned,” she explained. “It’s scary. I hope that the communities are looking at ways of preventing and also educating on exploitation.”
Industry challenges
The Mount Milligan ore mine has been operating on Nak’azdli territory for the past four years. It’s roughly 60 kilometres from the Nak’azdli town site and has around 300 men working there at any given time.
A representative from Mount Milligan said the work camp mostly hires locally, so they go home every night.
“We do have a camp, but it’s not a big camp,” said company spokeswoman Joanna Miller. “Compared to a construction camp, they bring in a transient group of people — that’s not the case that happens at Milligan. Seventy per cent of (the miners) live in our local communities. For those who don’t live within a regional community the transportation is by bus.”
Mount Milligan works with local Indigenous groups to strengthen relationships by providing cultural competency courses to workers and teaching them local First Nation history. Miller sits on the community sustainability committee, which brings together representatives of nearby municipalities, regional districts, First Nations, educational institutions and economic development organizations.
“We work with the community to deal with concerns regarding social effects. Since I’ve been on that committee we have not had a single issue come forward. I have not had a conversation with an emergency personnel or RCMP in an instance where the mine has been a factor,” she said.
Mount Milligan’s practices align with the co-operation recommended in the Firelight Group report authored by Gibson.
“Everybody has to work jointly to take care of this issue,” Gibson said. “Siting is a big thing — where (communities) can control how often and who can get into your community. Making (workers) immobile at the camps so they’re not able to get into their trucks and be out looking for sexual services, makes a difference.
An undated photo of the Mount Milligan mine site in northern British Columbia. Photo courtesy of Centerra Gold
'Don't let it happen'
Tribes south of the border are familiar with the side effects of industry booms and influxes of workers living in "man camps."
Since the North Dakota Bakken oil boom began in 2008, reports of violence against Indigenous women have increased in the vicinity of the Fort Berthold Reservation, which is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations.
In 2013, North Dakota’s Uniform Crime Report showed an annual increase of 7.2 per cent in the total number of reported violent index crimes such as murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The report showed an increase of 17 per cent in rapes alone to 243 reported in 2012.
In response to those findings, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem told the Bismarck Tribune in 2013 that 12 of the state’s top oil-producing counties accounted for much of that crime. He also said that the North Dakota legislature increased funding for state law enforcement agencies to put more officers in the field.
Kandi Mossett, 38, has seen the effects of man camps first hand. She is with the Indigenous Environmental Network from North Dakota and is from New Town in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where more than 1,500 oil wells sprouted when the boom came.
“We definitely didn’t know about the man camps and how that was going to play out,” she told National Observer. “It was something that took over and shocked the community as far as how quickly the violence escalated and how it’s continued to cause problems in our community in this past decade.
“It’s a totally different place to live. It’s gross, the men are everywhere looking at women like they’re meat. We never used to have to lock our doors... but now people are scared for their safety. You make sure you have mace with you when you walk home at night.”
Her advice for the Nak’azdli and Babine First Nations as they deal with the prospect of more industrial camps is: “don’t let it happen.”
Since camps will be built if projects go ahead, she encourages the communities to get their police force involved and on site to monitor them.
The RCMP declined an interview request, but said in an email statement that the police force works with the Province of B.C. before industrial projects are approved to conduct socio-economic impact studies in First Nations and other communities.
Ultimately, industrial development is not something that Nak’azdli wants to abolish. They just want to make sure it will be safe when it comes.
Activist Kandi Mossett waits to smudge during Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Photo provided by Kandi Mossett
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Move over malaria: Mosquitoes carrying Zika, dengue may thrive in warmer Africa.
Hotter weather and migration to cities may make different diseases the scourge of the future in Africa, scientists say.
by Kieran Guilbert | KieranG77
DAKAR, Sept 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - From deadly droughts and destroyed crops to shrinking water sources, communities across sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to withstand the onslaught of global record-breaking temperatures.
But the dangers do not end there. Rising heat poses another threat - one that is far less known and studied but could spark disease epidemics across the continent, scientists say.
Mosquitoes are the menace, and the risk goes beyond malaria.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads debilitating and potentially deadly viruses, from Zika and dengue to chikungunya, thrives in warmer climates than its malaria-carrying cousin, known as Anopheles, say researchers at Stanford University.
In sub-Saharan Africa, this means malaria rates could rise in cooler areas as they heat up, but fall in hotter places that now battle the disease. In those areas, malaria - one of the continent's biggest killers - may be rivalled by other vector-borne diseases as major health crises.
"As temperatures go past 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), you move away from the peak transmission window for malaria, and towards that of diseases such as dengue," said Erin Mordecai, an assistant professor at Stanford.
"We have this intriguing prospect of the threat of malaria declining in Africa, while Zika, dengue and chikungunya become more of a danger," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Besides a warming planet, scientists fear growing urbanisation across Africa could also fuel the transmission of diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which flourishes in cities and slums - the opposite of the country-loving Anopheles.
One in two Africans are expected to live in cities by 2030, up from 36 percent in 2010, according to World Bank data.
A soaring number may become prey to vector-borne viruses like dengue, which have struck Africa at a record pace in recent years, fuelled by urbanisation, population growth, poor sanitation and global warming, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.
"We see poorly planned development in Africa, not just with megacities but smaller settlements ... which often lack proper water and sanitation," said Marianne Comparet, director of the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases.
"Climate change, disease and the interaction between man and habitat - it is a crisis going under the radar ... a time-bomb for public health problems," she added.
NEGLECTED DISEASES
Last year was the hottest on record, for the third year in a row, with global temperature rise edging nearer a ceiling set by some 200 nations for limiting global warming, according to the European Union's climate change service.
Parts of Africa were among the regions suffering from unusual heat.
As temperatures keep rising, mosquitoes in low-latitude regions in East African countries are finding new habitats in higher altitude areas, yet malaria rates are falling in warmer regions, such as northern Senegal in the Sahel, studies show.
So as cooler parts of sub-Saharan Africa gear up for the spread of malaria, hotter areas should prepare for future epidemics like chikungunya and dengue, experts say.
While not as lethal as malaria, chikungunya lasts longer and can lead to people developing long-term joint pain. Dengue causes flu-like symptoms and can develop into a deadly hemorrhagic fever.
There is a danger that the global drive to end malaria, which absorbed $2.9 billion in international investment in 2015, has left African countries ill-prepared to deal with other vector-borne diseases, said Larry Slutsker of the international health organisation PATH.
"Diseases such as dengue and chikungunya have been neglected and under-funded," said Slutsker, the leader of PATH's malaria and neglected tropical diseases programmes. "There needs to be much better surveillance and understanding."
Malaria kills around 430,000 people a year, about 90 percent of them young African children.
Dengue, the world's fastest-spreading tropical disease, infects about 390 million annually but is often badly recorded and misdiagnosed, health experts say.
Some experts believe the global alarm triggered by Zika, which can cause birth defects such as small brain size, may see more money pumped into fighting neglected tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, especially after outbreaks in Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau during the last year.
Although 26 African nations - almost half of the continent - have strategies in place to fight vector-borne diseases, most of them only target malaria, according to data from the WHO.
Malaria rates have been slashed in recent decades through the use of bed nets, indoor spraying and drugs. But there are no dedicated treatments or vaccines for chikungunya and dengue.
"The most important preventive and control intervention is vector management, particularly through community engagement," said Magaran Bagayoko, a team leader for the WHO in Africa.
DISENTANGLING DATA
However, efforts to beat back mosquitoes are hampered by a lack of quality and affordable climate data that could help predict outbreaks and indicate risks, said Madeleine Thomson of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
"What countries really want to know is what they can do to improve their programmes, as well as the capacity of their health workers," said the scientist at the Columbia University-based institute.
But to do that, "climate information must be put into practice", Thomson added.
African nations also must improve coordination between their health ministries and meteorological agencies, said the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a new continent-wide public health agency launched this year by the African Union.
"They are not linked, or talking to each other," said Sheila Shawa, a project officer at the Africa CDC headquarters in Ethiopia. "There needs to be better communication in order to model neglected diseases, such as chikungunya, across Africa."
Yet climate scientists and health experts warn of the difficulty of analysing the impact of rising temperature on mosquito-borne diseases without looking at other factors.
"We have a major challenge of isolating effects of rising temperatures – which are really variable – from all the other aspects like rainfall patterns, humidity, mobility and migration, as well as socioeconomic factors," said Stanford's Mordecai.
"They are all changing at the same time, making individual drivers very difficult to isolate and disentangle for analysis."
(Reporting by Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Laurie Goering and Megan Rowling; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit https://news.trust.org)
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Could CO2 make the Amazon more resilient?
Forests play an ever-more vital role in regulating the climate. But what if rising carbon emissions actually helped them to grow and weather the impacts of global warming?
Levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere are rising rapidly as we burn fossil fuels. We know the danger that poses in terms of climate change. But scientists are less sure about the direct effect of more CO2 on tropical forests like the Amazon.
One intriguing theory is that more CO2 might actually make forests more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
A quick recap on photosynthesis: Plants use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar molecules, as well as oxygen, which is released back into the atmosphere.
So, if they receive an extra dose of carbon dioxide will that make them more productive?
David Lapola of the State University of Campinas in Brazil says there is "great uncertainty" about what will happen to the Amazon, and it's time that changed. Studying the impact of carbon dioxide on growth could add an important piece to the puzzle.
"We can't just rely on theories without evidence any longer," he told DW.
Testing the impact of future CO2 levels
At a research station near Manaus, the capital of Brazil's Amazonas state, Lapola's international team of scientists will use Free-Air CO2 Enrichment - or FACE - technology to increase carbon dioxide in areas of forest with a 30-meter diameter, by 50 percent - bringing it to the level expected around 2050.
The experiment will last 10 years, over which time they will observe how ecosystems react in comparison with control areas.
In a best-case scenario, the rise in carbon dioxide would stimulate forest growth, making it more resilient to warmer weather and drought, and going some way to counterbalance the impacts of climate change.
At the same time, if plants use up the extra carbon dioxide, there will be less of it in the atmosphere to cause climate change. The extra growth could increase the Amazon's utility as a carbon sink.
Will nutrients put the breaks on growth?
This will be the first study into the "CO2-fertilization effect" on a tropical forest. But similar research has been carried out in the United States on pine forests.
"Initially, they saw a good increase in forest productivity," Lapola says. "That means the forest absorbed the extra carbon and gained biomass."
But CO2 alone isn't enough. Extra growth also requires an extra intake of nutrients, and after seven years, the soil's nitrogen levels began to run low and growth fell back to normal levels.
Lapola says there's no shortage of nitrogen in the Amazon, but limited phosphorus could have the same result.
"If we observe this limitation, this will be terrible news for the Amazon," he said.
Too small an effect?
Adalberto Veríssimo, co-founder of Brazilian research institute Imazon, welcomed the "AmazonFace" project as contributing to greater understanding of the complexity Amazonian ecosystems.
"If the forest has a role of capturing excess carbon when it is increased in the atmosphere, it's important that we understand it," he told DW.
However, the ecologist doubted this effect would be significant enough to have any real impact on global carbon emissions or, therefore, climate change.
"The forest fulfills many roles," Veríssimo said. "I can't imagine that it will also fulfill the role of mitigating the insane carbon emissions that humanity is throwing in the atmosphere."
He was also skeptical that CO2-fertilzation would have a marked impact on resilience compared to the amount of rainfall and risk of extreme weather events.
Preparing for an uncertain future
Still, Lapola believes his research can contribute to environmental policy. "The program can reduce a lot of the uncertainties about what will happen in the Amazon, so we can plan adaptation policies and start preparing people for the future," he said.
The project is currently winding up its initial phase, which monitored the forest before CO2 enrichment and evaluated socioeconomic impact of its degradation on communities in the region.
The results of the FACE experiment should then help scientists and policymakers understand more about what the future holds for the incredible number of plants and animals that live in the Amazon - including 30 million human beings.
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More than a week after Irma, St. Martin is still trying to survive.
A Times reporter on one of the Caribbean islands hit hardest by the hurricane describes life without fuel, electricity, schools and a dependable food supply.
AMERICAS
More Than a Week After Irma, St. Martin Is Still Trying to Survive
By AZAM AHMEDSEPT. 15, 2017
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People on St. Martin waited to be evacuated by the United States Air Force on Monday. Credit Carlos Giusti/Associated Press
GRAND CASE, St. Martin — The woman carried a small suitcase, enough for her and her child to try to start over.
The arduous passage to evacuate her broken island was nearly done — through the chaos of a port filled with capsized boats, the traffic-choked drive lined with buildings and homes torn from their foundations, and the desperation of the masses at the airport, hoping to flee the wreckage as armed soldiers kept order.
But as the evacuees finally prepared to board their flight, the airline announced that they could not take their suitcases with them. The woman, a civil servant, fell apart.
“I can’t take it anymore,” she screamed, crumpling onto the tarmac and pounding it with both hands. Her home destroyed, her child forced to seek even the most basic things elsewhere, and her country reckoning with the staggering task of rebuilding and, in the much more immediate term, simply surviving.
A soldier rushed to comfort the woman while her daughter broke into tears, fighting with the attendant to keep her mother’s bag, a final indignity in a world stripped of its moorings.
Life, for now, is a fragile thing on St. Martin, one of the Caribbean islands hit hardest by Hurricane Irma. I first came here shortly after the storm, when severe food and water shortages were tearing at the social fabric, leaving residents to scavenge for food and, in some cases, fight over what little remained. Now, more than a week after the hurricane, a delicate order has been restored, for the most part.
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A Dutch military plane flew over St. Martin on Wednesday, documenting the destruction.
Marineschepen via YouTube
But there is still almost no fuel or electricity, and food delivery, for now, remains erratic. A near total communication blackout throttles the island. Almost all of the schools are destroyed and will be closed for months, at best.
Hourslong lines wind through the port, as families, tourists and migrant workers alike wait for aid, receiving an odd assortment of items that on some days include frozen chicken and a three-pound bag of mozzarella cheese — on an island with no power and few working appliances to cook or refrigerate them.
With little phone or internet service, residents rely on chance encounters to learn the fate of their neighbors and loved ones. Just outside the local government’s makeshift emergency headquarters, a shriek rang out above the blare of car horns. Luce Kabache, the principal of a kindergarten who survived the storm with her family by hiding in a closet, saw one of her students and her parents passing in a vehicle. They stopped instantly, threw open the doors, ran into the street and embraced, weeping with relief.
“There’s no news, no way to communicate,” said Ms. Kabache, 56.
The island will have to start from scratch, creating itself anew, physically and psychologically. Tin roofing and smashed concrete line practically every street and alley, the disembodied bits of what was once a haven.
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Rubble from collapsed buildings in Grand Case, St. Martin. Credit Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Well beyond the urgent needs — distributing water and food to those without, restoring power and communications, repairing roofs and addressing the trauma inflicted by the storm — a faint possibility for the island’s rebirth is emerging.
For many, though, the future is confined to making it through the day.
“We have the chance to start back from zero,” said Daniel Gibbs, president of the local government on the French side of St. Martin. “It’s going to be tough for my population. They are suffering. But today we have the chance not to rebuild, but to build.”
The island — split between a French and a Dutch side, with a population of 75,000 over 34 square miles — has only just begun to take stock of its losses. The government on the French side has reported an official death toll of 11, but an assessment of the full extent of the islandwide destruction may be weeks or months away.
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A man examining the remnants of his home on the Dutch side of the island. Credit Jose Jimenez/Getty Images
To many residents, including some doctors working in the emergency room on the French side, the death toll seems much too low. It is widely seen as unfathomable that so many people could have survived the harrowing Category 5 winds, which tore through the eastern Caribbean at speeds of up to 185 miles an hour. Some officials suggest that hundreds may have died in the storm.
“I have no idea how high the death toll will go, but I don’t think it will be in the hundreds,” said Mr. Gibbs, adding that the number of bodies recovered and people reported missing is small for now. “This thing was just so big, I think people believe the death toll has to be higher.”
Whatever new form the island takes, tourism will remain the heart of its economy. How long that will take is anyone’s guess. The storm did not differentiate between the island’s stark socioeconomic differences. Poor areas flooded and suffered the same as the high-cost, pastel-colored communities of Orient Bay.
Along the coastline of Marigot, the nerve center of the economy on the French side, the storm toppled restaurants, shops, banks and open-air markets, leaving them desolate, practically abandoned in the midday heat.
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A sail boat beached last week in the cemetery of Marigot, on St. Martin. Credit Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Rémy Thibaud sat on his battered patio in the shade of the only palm tree left standing, yelling into the phone. Around him were the splintered remnants of his restaurant and bakery. The sea, an inviting cerulean once again, offered a cruel contrast to the chaotic mess where he sat, alone and facing economic ruin.
A creditor had called, checking on his next payment for the baking equipment he’d bought two years earlier. What baking equipment, he wanted to know? The oven was filled with seawater when he came to check on his restaurant after the storm.
He hung up.
“Vulture,” said Mr. Thibaud, 48, adjusting the motorcycle gloves he was wearing to clear debris. His insurance, he discovered, would not cover anything on the terrace, which was pretty much the entire restaurant. But he would stay, he had decided, and rebuild what he lost.
Many others are leaving. Two of his waiters had already fled. Others, too, have made the difficult choice to abandon their homes, at least temporarily.
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Lex Kools left food and water for his neighbors’ dogs in the island’s Cole Bay community on Tuesday. Credit Carlos Giusti/Associated Press
Christiane Carvigant sat near the makeshift government offices with her three children, ages 17, 16 and 9, as they prepared to evacuate. The children cannot afford to miss school, she said, especially Emeline, a high school senior who is meant to graduate this year. Her two girls and little boy will stay with family on the French island of Guadeloupe, a little less than an hour away by plane.
The family had survived the hurricane in the bathroom of their home, huddled in the tiny space for four hours as the wind howled and tore at the roof. Ms. Carvigant would rebuild as her children studied. Who knew when they could come back?
A bus came past to collect the children for their flight. Ms. Carvigant began to cry.
“It will be a long time before we can live normally again,” she said, “but at least we have our lives.”
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Ludmen Vincia, a Haitian woman whose children were born in St. Martin, is trapped. Her son, Michael, has special learning needs, and their social worker says he must leave the island to continue studying. But her residency permit expired two years ago, meaning that she cannot leave the island on one of the flights chartered for evacuees. And she cannot send the boy alone — there is no family in Guadeloupe to care for him, and she does not have the money to place him with one.
“I’m not really sure what to do,” she said.
The island’s physical scars — hillsides robbed of their lush greenery, disemboweled homes stacked on the roadside — are a constant reminder of all that has been lost, and the unrecognizable transformation the island endured in just a few hours of Irma’s fury.
But the smashed storefronts from robberies that occurred in the aftermath of the storm have created a different kind of crisis.
The lawlessness that prevailed in the first days after the storms — when some people moved from scavenging food for survival to pillaging appliances, jewelry and cellphones — shattered the image many residents had of their island.
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French military personnel patrolling the island’s streets on Tuesday. Credit Jose Jimenez/Getty Images
“I’m so angry for what those people did to this country,” said Rosette Francillette, a 55-year-old resident of the lower-income neighborhood of Sandy Grounds, clutching her granddaughter in her arms. “I understand stealing groceries, but these wicked people destroyed everything that wasn’t already destroyed.”
The beauty store where she works, called Lipstick, was ransacked, she said, leaving her jobless.
“I love my country, but I hate that people did this,” she said.
Still, having peered over the precipice of natural catastrophe and social disorder, others have found reasons to be hopeful.
At a storm shelter in the neighborhood of Concordia, a motley crew assembled in the emptied classrooms of a converted elementary school. A Dominican mother quietly bathed her children over a drain in the playground, while homeless men reeking of rum stumbled around the hallways and the windswept parking lot.
Alvin Carrasco squatted beneath a tree, manning a grill fashioned from a metal tray and fueled by the branches and detritus left from the storm. Meat donated by a store owner near to where Mr. Carrasco has been cleaning the streets sat atop the metal grating, lightly sizzling.
“This is the best time to stay,” he said. “I was here before the storm, suffering, not getting any work.”
With the cleanup and construction in the months and years to come, he might rebuild his life, too.
“This is my chance to start all over,” he said.
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The heavily damaged neighborhood of Concordia. Credit Lionel Chamoiseau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A version of this article appears in print on September 15, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: On a Broken Island, Surviving to Start From Zero. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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