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(C) Action Aid Climate Change And Development Secondary
Climate change is having severe negative impacts on poor communities in Africa and Asia. The document describes how increased flooding and droughts due to climate change are damaging crops and property and leading to debt and health issues for villagers in rural communities that depend on consistent rainfall for agriculture. It calls for global assistance to help these communities adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.
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(C) Action Aid Climate Change And Development Secondary
- 1. Lessons for lifeClimate change and development
- 2. ‘ The poorestpeople in Africa and Asia are sending a mayday message to the rest of the world. Please help us fight climate change.’
- 3. ‘ It’s becomedrier and drier. Our life is on hold, waiting for clouds which promise less and less rain.’
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- 5. Source: EM-DAT graphic:ISDR in Disaster Risk Reduction: 2007 Global Overview, Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction Number of reported disasters 1980-2006
- 6. Climate change hot-spotsSource: German Advisory Council on Global Change ( WBGU), 2007 Hot-spot Decline in freshwater Decline in food production Mass migration Increase in storms and floods
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- 12. Beginning August Themonsoon rains lighten and paddy is planted . End August Torrential monsoon rains return. Paddy is washed away . Floodwater enters house. Lose possessions. Mid September The rains stop. Borrow money to buy more seeds. Re-plant paddy . End September Unexpected monsoon rains return, heavier than before. Several homes are washed away , some villagers die , many children get diarrhoea . October In debt . Borrow more money for medicine and paddy seed. Family is poorer and weaker to cope with more extreme weather. July Monsoon rains are heavier than usual. Floodwater enters the house. Some possessions are washed away.
- 13. ‘ I am60 years old and I have never experienced so much flooding, droughts, hot winds and hailstones as in recent years.’
- 14. Disaster Risk Reductionproject (DRR)
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- 24. Climate change ishappening as the world warms up. It’s not too late to do something about it! The good news is…
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- 26. Turn downthe heating. Unplug your mobile phone as soon as its charged. Flip the light switch whenever you leave the room. Turn off the TV, DVD player, computer, stereo when you’re not using them. Stretch your legs by walking or cycling whenever you can.
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- 28. Mitigation Reducing thecauses of climate change, e.g. greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation Changing the way we do things to lessen the impact of climate change, e.g. be better prepared for a disaster.
- 29. The world’s firstclimate change election ‘ The trees are dying, the crops are failing and the rivers are drying up. We need to act with urgency on the great challenges of climate change and water.’
Editor's Notes
- #2 Lessons for life – climate change and development Visiting teachers’ secondary school session Assam slide show from QCA website Quick discussion What did you find most interesting / surprising about the film?
- #3 FACT Climate change is bringing about more floods. 2007 has been one of the worst years ever. This picture was taken in Uganda, which experienced one of the worst floods in living memory in 2007. Heavy rains created inland seas, causing food shortages. Harvests have been destroyed and water sources contaminated. The quote is by an ActionAid programme coordinator in eastern Uganda. 2007 includes Africa’s worst floods in three decades, massive floods in South Asia, unprecedented flooding in Mexico, as well as heat waves and forest fires in Europe, Australia, and California. By mid November 2007, the United Nations had launched 15 ‘flash appeals’, the greatest ever number in one year. All but one were in response to climatic disasters. Extra Africa’s biggest floods in three decades hit 23 countries from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east and affected nearly two million people. In West Africa, the July-October floods affected 13 countries and 800,000 people; floods in Central and East Africa during the same period affected ten countries and over a million people. Nepal, India and Bangladesh were hit by the worst flooding in living memory, affecting more than 41 million people. As of August, some 248 million people were affected by flooding in 11 Asian countries. Two category five hurricanes (Felix and Dean), several tropical storms and unusual heavy rains in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean affected more than 1.5 million people in ten countries. Heat waves and forest fires in Greece and Eastern Europe affected more than 1 million people – reinforcing climate change models that predict that Southern Europe and the Mediterranean will become hotter and drier. Severe drought continued in Australia with extensive bush fires, and subsequently, wildfires set California ablaze.
- #4 FACT Climate change is bringing about more droughts. In many places where ActionAid works, people tell us the same thing: the weather is changing. It’s unpredictable. This is Kaila Nampaso from northern Kenya. He has lived through one of the worst droughts in history. In 2005, communities across East Africa experienced a serious food crisis. They lost several harvests in a row and 13 million people were severely hungry. Extra 27-year-old Kaila Nampaso: ‘Since its got drier the cattle have been left with nothing to graze on. They have to compete with wild animals for the shrubs that are left. As everything was finished I went in search of grass and water. Along the way the animals died. We depend on the cattle for their milk, when the cattle die we have nothing else. My clan used to have 200 cattle, now we are down to just 17’.
- #5 FACT Climate change is bringing about a rise in sea levels, more floods, droughts, extreme weather, and unpredictable seasons. Late in 2007, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned, ‘The impact of climate change is likely to be among the biggest humanitarian challenges in years and decades to come. Action has so far been slow and inadequate compared to needs’. Scientists warn that it will be a major international challenge to keep below a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in global temperatures. It does not sound much but it will have a major effect on the climate particularly in the most vulnerable countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The Stern Report (2006) states that if temperatures rose by 2 degrees: 4 billion people could suffer from water shortage 200 million people could be exposed to hunger 60 million more Africans could be exposed to malaria 40% of the world’s species could become extinct. Currently, temperatures are on track to go much higher than this. The report goes on to say that a 6 degrees rise is a ‘plausible’ estimate of how much world temperatures could rise by the end of the century if CO2 emissions are unchecked.
- #6 FACT There has been an increase in extreme weather events and an increase in the number of people affected. Well over a billion people in 100 countries face a bleak future (IPCC, 2007). The total number of natural disasters has quadrupled in the last two decades – most of them floods, cyclones, and storms. Over the same period the number of people affected by disasters has increased from around 174 million to an average of over 250 million a year (British Medical Journal, 29 January 2005). Extra The total number of natural disasters worldwide now averages 500 a year, up from an average of 125 in the early 1980s. The number of climate related disasters is rising far faster than the number of geological disasters. Between 1980 and 2006, the number of floods and cyclones quadrupled from 60 to 240 a year, while the number of earthquakes remained approximately the same, at around 20 a year, (Centre for Research and Epidemiology of Disasters – CRED, 2007)
- #7 FACT Climate change hits the poor hardest. The map highlights hot-spots of intensive risk. Poor countries are most vulnerable to climate change. They are experiencing a double hit from climate change – first, they are doing little to cause it, and second they are being hit hardest. 1 person in 19 living in the world’s poorest countries is at risk from climate change, compared to 1 in 1,500 in the rich west (UN HDR, 2007). Many of these countries are already weak from poverty. The harsher, more frequent, climate disasters that are predicted could tip them over the edge. It may result in the forced migration of tens of millions of people, for example, from the low-lying delta and coastal regions of Asia and Africa. Extra The UN HDR (Nov 07) warns that climate change is likely to have the heaviest impact on small low-lying island and coastal states, African nations, Asian mega-deltas and the polar regions. It could reverse attempts to tackle poverty by reducing food production in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, exacerbating water shortages in areas such as the Middle East, raising sea levels in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam, and damaging health by increasing the chances of diseases such as malaria. Describing the effects of climate change on the poorest as apocalyptic, the report states, ‘It is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the most immediate and severe human costs’.
- #8 IMPACT Poor people suffer most because they are more vulnerable. This graph shows the risk of being affected by a natural disaster. Each dot represents 100,000 people who have been affected. The pink ones are for people in poor countries and the black ones are for people in rich countries. ‘ Affected’ means losing crops, possessions, livelihoods, or death. It clearly shows that you are more likely to suffer from a disaster if you are poor. It includes all disasters, not just the big ones that we hear about in the press. Extra Poverty increases the death-to-disaster ratio. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, between 1991 and 2000 in the richest countries there were 23 deaths per disaster, compared with 1,052 deaths per disaster in poorer countries. But the damage can be proportionately more crippling. Between 1985 and 1999 the losses of the richest countries due to natural disasters were just over 2% of GDP, while the poorest countries’ losses were 13% (UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction – ISDR). In general, dramatic weather in the rich world results in large economic losses and few deaths. In the poor world the impact is the other way round – greater loss of life and less economic damage (because they don’t have much to start with).
- #9 IMPACT Focus on one hot-spot – South Asia in 2007 In 2007, an estimated 30 million people in South Asia lost their homes and livelihoods after the worse floods for 30 years. Then, when the people of Bangladesh were beginning to recover from the floods, on 15 November, Cyclone Sidr swept through the Bay of Bengal with winds over 150mph triggering a 15-foot-high tidal surge. Thousands more lost their lives and many more have been left without food or shelter. We’re going to hear the stories of people in Bangladesh and India – particularly from Assam and Bihar states. Can you find these on the map? Extra According to the IPCC (2007), climate change is expected to have the following effects in South Asia: Glacier melt in the Himalayas will increase flooding and avalanches. This will be followed by decreased water supplies as glaciers recede. Sea-level rise and cyclones will threaten settlements around the Bay of Bengal. Increased death and illness from diarrhoeal disease due to flooding and drought, and also cholera due to higher sea temperatures.
- #10 IMPACT The impact of a natural disaster is anything but natural. It is based on poverty and inequality (1). Natural disasters like floods and cyclones have a much bigger impact in poor countries where the people don’t have as many resources to protect themselves. Meet the Hawlader family from Bangladesh. They have been living in the open air since Cyclone Sidr destroyed their home on 15 November. They have the clothes they are wearing and wooden boards to sleep on. Everything else was swept away including their 3 fishing boats and nets and all of their animals (1 cow and 3 goats). The dad is called Mohammed Salem Hawlader and this is what he told us … Extra The Hawlader family are from Raienda village in the Bagerhat District of southern Bangladesh. Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely populated countries, with 153 million people crammed into a delta of rivers that empties into the Bay of Bengal. Regularly occurring floods, storms and cyclones combine with growing numbers of people living in poverty. 47% of children are malnourished. Poor people and countries suffer most from extreme weather. This, in turn, can undermine the development needed to deal with future disasters. The risk that they face can be understood with the following formula: Risk = hazard x vulnerability. And vulnerability = a reflection of poverty + powerlessness.
- #11 IMPACT The impact of a natural disaster is anything but natural. It is based on poverty and inequality (2). (Mohammed Salem Hawlader continues…) …‘ It was drizzling in the evening on the day of the cyclone and there was a strong wind. We didn’t eat because we were so worried, we live right by the river and wondered if we would be alright. First a branch fell on our house and it collapsed, so we moved to another house, where about 50 or 60 people were sheltering. Suddenly a 15 foot wave came and washed away the river embankment. Water was coming in from every direction. Another tree fell on the house so people climbed on to the roof. My wife was washed under the house and Riddoy, my 6-year-old son was washed away. I managed to grab my wife but he floated away. I tied my other children to the trees high above the water. Hassan, my 8-year-old, lost consciousness. We stayed there cold, wet and shivering till dawn.
- #12 IMPACT The impact of a natural disaster is anything but natural. It is based on poverty and inequality (3). ‘When the water went away we got everybody down. Three days later we found Riddoi’s body and buried him in a communal grave just by the river. The children scream in their sleep. They are searching for something, for rice, for Riddoy.’
- #13 IMPACT Smaller ‘shocks’ can be more damaging than mega-disasters. Picture 1: July, Monsoon rains are heavier than usual. Floodwater enters the house. Some possessions are washed away. Picture 2: Beginning of August. The monsoon rains became lighter and paddy rice is planted. Picture 3: End of August. Torrential monsoon rains return. Paddy is washed away. Floodwater enters house, lose possessions. Picture 4: Mid- September. The rains stop. Borrow money to buy more paddy seeds. Replant paddy. Picture 5: End of September. Unexpected monsoon rains return, heavier than before. Several homes are washed away, some villagers dies, many children got diarrhoea. Picture 6: October. In debt. Borrow more money to buy medicine and paddy seed. Family is poorer and weaker to cope with more extreme weather. Sometimes when we hear about a mega-disaster like Cyclone Sidr on the news it is reported as an isolated event – a ‘here-today-gone-tomorrow’ experience. We don’t often hear about smaller shocks which can be more damaging than mega-disasters. This flow-chart shows some of the shocks the area faced in 2007. It started with the monsoon which always brings rain to the region between June and August. In 2007, it was unusually heavy. Flooding in June, August and September caused widespread devastation. Ruined crops, sickness and debt can knock a family down time and time again. No social safety net or insurance makes them poorer. So, can you imagine just how devastating it was when Cyclone Sidr hit in October? Extra A rise in small- and medium-scale disasters is a particularly worrying trend. When a lot of small shocks occur at the same time, or follow one another very quickly, they can merge into a ‘mega disaster’. This can push poor communities into a downward spiral of poverty, making them even more vulnerable and less likely to recover.
- #14 IMPACT Women suffer most because climate change increases poverty and inequality. These shocks hit women like Chandrika hard. She is from Nepal, and like most women in South Asia, depends directly on farming. She plants paddy, harvests food to feed her family, collects water, but doesn’t own land and has little access to money. Women are often last to be told of changing weather and they are least able to access emergency aid after a disaster. This adds to their poverty and unequal status. (You could show the ‘Midwife’ or ‘Woman’ 3-minute-wonder film here) Extra Women make up 70% of the world’s poor. They have less access to financial resources, land, education, health and other basic rights than men, and are rarely involved in decision-making processes. Women are, therefore, less able to cope with the impact of climate change and are less able to adapt.
- #15 SOLUTIONS ActionAid supports communities to adapt to climate change. ActionAid started a ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’ project, called DRR, in 2006. It works with over 3 million people in 7 countries affected by climate disasters. DRR looks at how communities can adapt to living with extreme weather so that it doesn’t devastate them. It works with schools to educate children and their families about how to protect themselves in a disaster. Extra The 7 DRR countries are Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Haiti. ActionAid believes governments must put poor people first e.g. through providing water, sanitation, health and education, so people are stronger and more able to cope in a disaster. The UN HDR (2007) states that climate change needs to be at the centre of all development programmes. Failure to tackle rural poverty, for example, is one reason for increased rates of deforestation in many countries, increasing greenhouse-gas emissions and raising the risk of mudslides and flooding.
- #16 SOLUTIONS DRR (1) This is Karchua Bori School in Assam, North East India. It was destroyed by floods in 2000, 2004 and 2007. In 2004, water rushed through the school like a white torrent. Desks, benches and books were swept away. Some people couldn’t hold on in the strong currents. Others died from snakes bites or diseases. Extra You could show the QCA ‘Saving lives – Karchua Bori School’ slideshow here.
- #17 SOLUTIONS DRR (2) Through the DRR project, children are learning how to react in a disaster. If there is a cyclone shelter near by – they must go there. The small picture here is of a shelter in Bangladesh. Assam doesn’t have any of these. Instead, students are taught to get onto a raised platform in their houses. They learn about putting their valuable possessions in a safe place above the floodwaters, and to go to higher land if the floodwater reaches the platform. Extra There have already been big improvements in dealing with big disasters. In Bangladesh, for example, over 138,000 people perished in the 1991 cyclone. Subsequent cyclones, even the devastating Sidr, the biggest since 1991, killed far fewer people. This is due to cyclone shelters, community-based evacuation plans, early warnings and the mobilisation of volunteers. In the countryside, raised villages and flood shelters to which whole communities can retreat from the foods are common sights.
- #18 SOLUTIONS DRR (3) Creating a human chain to help people move from their villages to safety during a flood.
- #19 SOLUTIONS DRR (4) People will need boats to get to higher land in an emergency. Here, some of the older students are trying out a canoe they made from banana plants, bamboo and tarpaulin. First Aid training is important. They learn how to rescue people from trees, especially if they have injuries like broken arms or legs.
- #20 SOLUTIONS DRR (5) The men are making a life-jackets from recycled bottles. They are showing a group of young people how to make their own, and use it, to help them swim to safety in a flood. Swimming lessons happen most days with the older students teaching the younger ones. They learn how to understand currents and how to swim to safety in a disaster. This is an older student testing out his life-jacket made from recycled bottles.
- #21 SOLUTIONS DRR (6) The students investigate why the floods might be getting worse. They know about the glaciers in the Himalayas melting and water and mud travelling down through Assam. And they have used newspapers to trace melting glaciers to global warming. They also know that more flooding is likely to continue so they need to find more ways of adapting to live with it. They created maps to look at where the floods were worst. They decided to remove trees immediately next to buildings and to plant new ones along the banks of the river to stop the force of the water and protect the village.
- #22 SOLUTIONS DRR (7) The students pass on this information they learn to their families. This has led to several community meetings with everyone discussing how to protect their livelihoods from flooding. In 2007, all of the crops were washed away and many of the villagers are in debt. They have decided to switch to cultivating crops that can be harvested before the flood season. Many plan to grow off-season vegetables and bananas, and varieties of rice that will grow high enough to remain above the water when the floods come. Others are talking about setting up specialist fisheries as these are more likely to survive the flooding.
- #23 SOLUTIONS DRR (8) Community elders also come into school to teach about the warning signs of disasters. Students learn how to check the sky for different colours or cloud patterns, and about the clues that animals and birds give, e.g. when Kora birds sound ‘Dub Dub’ during sunset it means floods are on the way. Students are also documenting this knowledge so that future generations can benefit from it, or when monkeys howl high pitched sounds …
- #24 SOLUTIONS DRR (9) Do you remember Imrana from the PowerDown activities. We called her a ‘Climate heroine’ because she decided to teach the younger children to swim in order to save their lives in a flood.
- #25 FACT Climate change is happening as the world warms up. Climate disasters are on the increase as the Earth warms up. But we can make a difference and slow down global warming. And it’s not that hard. Can you think of any ways to do this at school or at home?
- #26 SOLUTIONS How can you make a difference? INTRO Recap PowerDown To understand this learners will need to understand some basic facts about climate change and what is causing it so a discussion or quick quiz about the DVD should bring this out. The key messages about climate change that will be used in all PowerDown materials are given below. Trigger questions: What is causing climate? What are the solutions? Who should be helping find solutions? What do you feel about climate change? (worried/bored/want to do something about it) Key messages on climate change: Key messages: Climate change is being caused by an increase in global temperatures. This is happening because of an increase in what are called greenhouse gasses that are present in the atmosphere around planet earth. They act like the glass in a greenhouse letting energy in from the sun but blocking some of the heat that bounces back off the planet from escaping into space. People also compare this to a blanket keeping the planet warm. The blanket around planet earth is just the right thickness for life to exist on planet earth. On Mars the blanket is too thin and on Venus the blanket is too thick – no life exists on those planets. The problem is the blanket around planet earth is now getting too thick because the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere around earth are going up dramatically. The vast majority of the world’s scientists agree that human activity on earth is causing this to happen. There are several types of greenhouse gasses that are causing the problem but the ones we humans could have the biggest effect on are carbon dioxide and methane. Take carbon dioxide for example – the levels in the atmosphere are going up because of the way we make and waste energy. Most of our energy comes from burning what are called fossil fuels – oil, coal and gas. We use this energy for electricity, for transport and to heat our homes and buildings. Cutting down on the energy we waste and finding ways of making energy in a way that does not cause climate change would have a dramatic impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- #27 Did you think of these?
- #28 FACT If every person in the world had the same carbon footprint as someone living in a high-income country we would need 6 planets to cope (UN). The UN has estimated that in order for our planet to be ‘in balance’ each person can emit 2.3 tonnes of CO2 a year. This is often called our carbon footprint. Has anyone used a carbon calculator to work out how much CO2 you use? The 100 most vulnerable countries have contributed least to total global carbon emissions. For example, small island developing states (SIDS) + Africa emit 4.67% of global emissions (3.2% excluding South Africa), whereas the EU emits 24.7% and the US, 23.3% (IPCC). An average dishwasher in Europe emits as much CO2 in a year as three Ethiopian people. An average air conditioning unit in Florida emits more CO2 in a year than a person in Afghanistan or Cambodia emits in a lifetime. Texas has higher emissions of greenhouse gasses than the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa.. The 60million people in Britain produce more CO2 than the 472million people living in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam combined. Source: UN HDR, 2007
- #29 SOLUTIONS It is not too late to do something about climate change if we act now. We need a twin-track approach – mitigate and adapt. The challenge of cutting levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses is one of the biggest challenges ever faced by humans but all around the world people are working on solutions. The people who can make the most difference are world leaders and governments who can make big changes by doing things like making electricity from renewable sources like the sun, wind or waves or stop people wasting energy, like banning energy wasting light bulbs. Businesses have a big part to play too because they use a lot of energy to make things and move things around the world. Individual people are also important, they elect governments, they buy things from businesses and they use and waste precious energy. PowerDown is about being part of the solution. Extra The UN HDR (2007) calls upon the world to adopt a twin-track approach with measures to mitigate future warming while helping at-risk nations to adapt to climate change.
- #30 SOLUTIONS First climate change election ever! Things can and do change. You could include any up-to-date news item here. At the end of November 2007, Kevin Rudd became Australia’s new Prime Minister. The election came down to one thing – climate change. People labelled each other green-friendly or climate change dinosaurs. The first thing Rudd did was go to the Climate Change Conference in Bali and sign the Kyoto Protocol. Anyone know what this is? This agreement bound 36 industrial countries to cut GHG emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Extra The UN HDR (2007) said the international community needs to invest two thirds of what is currently spends on arms to keep temperatures below 2 degrees (around £800billion a year). It stressed that failure to act now would be the 21 st century equivalent to the lack of leadership that created the 20 th century’s two world wars. The report added, ‘Business as usual scenarios will trigger large scale reversals in human development, undermining livelihoods and causing mass displacement’. It continued, ‘radical new policies such as carbon taxes, higher vehicle excise duty for gas-guzzling cars and tougher regulations to phase out coal-fired power stations would need to be introduced.