‘There is no coming back from disappearing coastlines’

The landscape is changing drastically in Alaska, where the climate is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.

Kotlik Natives in Alaska survey usteq damage on the riverfront (Photo: ANTHC)

In the past, Alaska Native communities on the Bering Sea coast had miles of solid ice in their bays and harbors most of the year, and they built their homes on tundra that stayed permanently frozen. Now, the ice is gone except for a few months, and the permafrost is thawing.

However, Alaska Natives have a long history of resilience, and they are working together to manage the adaptation of their communities through the collection of data on a new environmental hazard: usteq.

As Alaska’s natural buffer – ice – disappears, the coast is battered by a combination of storm surges, rising seas, and river flooding. This combines with the melting of the fragile tundra to frequently cause instances of catastrophic land collapse, otherwise known as “usteq”. It happens much faster and more severely than natural coastal erosion; villages have seen up to three meters of land collapsing into the sea in one night.

Usteq, which is a Yup’ik word, is a different and more serious environmental hazard than simple erosion. The changes to the landscape as a result of usteq are so dramatic that they have forced indigenous communities to face a difficult decision: whether they should leave their land, and if so, how they can relocate together as a community.

“We do not have the funding to move the whole village away from the water banks, so we started with the buildings most in danger of collapsing because of the erosion,” said Harold Okitkun of the Kotlik community.

Kotlik is just one of around 12 Alaska Native communities that participate in regular teleconferences where they discuss cost-effective ways to help deal with usteq. “We work on erosion monitoring, measure the bank and keep records of how many feet we are losing per year, and mark the bank along the village comparing it to previous years,” Okitkun said.

Villages have begun documenting their usteq damage in order to help make the case for government support with their adaptation and relocation. Since 2017 usteq monitoring devices have been installed in eight communities, as well as permafrost monitoring in two.

“These are great changes to the landscape, miles of thick ice is melting, it is a huge ecosystem shift in the Bering Sea that will have worldwide consequences,” said Delbert Pungowiyi, the tribal council president for the Native village of Savoonga.

Savoonga is one of two coastal communities located on St Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Pungowiyi has seen how the island’s shoreline has changed over almost 60 years. Winter arrives late and leaves early. Where the island used to have up to nine months of solid ice, it is now down to just three months in recent years.

Coastal erosion between 2006 and 2016 as a result of usteq in Newtok, Alaska (Photo: Sally Russell Cox/Romy Cadiente)

The ice is essential for the traditional livelihoods and food security of communities like Savoonga. Hunting and fishing methods rely upon ice, as do many of the animals hunted. With shortening winters and more unstable ice, hunters face greater risks when traveling and more difficulty reaching food sources.

The food yield has dropped to less than half in the last ten years, said Pungowiyi. “This affects our way of life, which we have done for thousands of years living on the island,” he said. “We’re really working hard adapting to the changes that will face us, but we want to be careful to ensure that there will be little to no impact on the environment.”

Currently, there is no governing framework to help communities decide if they should stay where they are located. Neither does the key national disaster response policy, called the Stafford Act, recognize usteq as a hazard. This means that the communities critically affected by usteq are not eligible for emergency funding, because coastal erosion is considered an ongoing environmental change process, not an emergency.

It is this lack of a framework that underscores the severity of usteq, and the need for it to be recognized as a hazard has pulled Alaska Native communities together to monitor change and share experience in preparation for community-wide relocation.

“We are working to change the laws that currently are inadequate to address the crisis upon us,” said Robin Bronen, the Alaska Institute for Justice’s (AIJ) executive director. AIJ has been helping Kotlik and other coastal communities monitor usteq in order to get it legally recognized as a hazard. This would, in turn, help communities obtain government funding to relocate.

AIJ has had success in getting usteq included Alaska’s hazard mitigation plan and in turn recognized by Fema, the agency that oversees emergency funding. “Being able to define usteq through indigenous knowledge holders was huge and the identification of it in Fema was critical,” she said. The next step is for usteq to be included in the Stafford Act.

The organisation also works to facilitate tribal engagement with state and federal agencies in the United States to provide these agencies with insight on how they could enable community-wide relocation. “There is no coming back from disappearing coastlines,” said Bronen, who added that millions of people worldwide who live on coastlines will soon have to deal with their lands disappearing.

It is important for Pungowiyi that the efforts of Native communities to protect the environment are noticed. “We need to be self-generating, self-sustaining economies so that we can better take care of ourselves and Mother Earth,” he said. “We are not seeking protection for our people or for Alaska alone, we are seeking protection for all of humanity, for all human beings on our Mother Earth.”

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.

Indian farmers tap old and new knowledge to cope with erratic monsoons

A volunteer writes the local five-day forecast and agro advisory in West Bengal (Photo: Linus Kendall)

Automated weather stations, data collection and organic farming science – mixed with indigenous knowledge and traditions – are helping Indian farmers work with an increasingly unpredictable rainy season.

A weather forecasting project in the north-eastern state of West Bengal aims to collect data that farmers can generate into five-day forecasts. Unlike the usual regional forecasts, transmitted by text message or on television, here people discuss their interpretations of the data to create community-specific forecasts that are written on a chalk board in the village.

The automated weather stations track wind speed and direction, while volunteers record the temperature, humidity and rainfall every day. The Development Research Communication and Services Centre, which is leading the project, also creates “agro advisories” to accompany the forecasts. These warn farmers about problems such as fruit fly attacks, for which they’re advised to spray their crops with a mix of neem oil, water and bar soap.

“Because you have the data, it allows people to have their own understanding and sense of whether forecasts are accurate, and allows them to generate the data themselves,” said Linus Kendall, a technical consultant working with the Development Research Communication and Services Centre. “Then you’re building the capacity to look at seasonal forecasts and even longer-term, which is what you need with climate change.”

It’s an example of how farming communities in India, and around the developing world, are combining science and technology to adapt to the effects of climate change – while shunning less helpful innovations such as hybrid seeds and chemicals.

The monsoon season in West Bengal has grown fickle with climate change, with heavy rainfall and dry gaps, said Kendall. The forecasts can help farmers judge whether it will rain enough to flood their rice fields when it’s time to transplant the seedlings, and the best time to cut and dry the harvest in the sun, he said.

Farmer Hermanta Murmu, for instance, saved about 325 rupees ($4.70) in pumped water and labour costs when he decided to delay irrigation of his mixed crop fields, because he saw rain in the forecast. “The incident helped to enhance faith among fellow farmers on this weather forecast system,” according to the centre. Mongal Kisku also saved about 470 rupees by irrigating his vegetable field with rainwater, while others have used the advisory to fight off insect infestations in their mango and potato crops.

But not all advancements help people adapt to climate change. Some — like cash crops that can be exported for money — can make farmers more vulnerable.

In the drought-prone western state of Maharashtra, farmers have switched to cash crops such as sugar, cotton and soy over the past decade. These take longer to grow than cereals or vegetables, and need more water, according to the grassroots women’s organisation Swayam Shikshan Prayog. The use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides also increased during the longest dry spell in the region’s history, between 2012 and 2016, which decimated the land forced the government to send water in by train.

Swayam Shikshan Prayog researched sustainable and nutritional agriculture in the state over three years, then turned to teaching women farmers to work with less water. The aim is simultaneously empower women in Maharashtra, who are traditionally treated as labourers rather than decision-makers, but carry the responsibility of feeding their families.

“We’re trying to connect women and traditional knowledge with research scientists, so they can adopt additional knowledge,” said Nasreem Shaik, from Swayam Shikshan Prayog. “It keeps the cash flow in women’s hands, because they can sell the excess like eggs and milk.”

The initiative provides women with small plots of land and encourages them to grow nutritious food such as cereals, corn, pulses and vegetables, plus livestock feed. Swayam Shikshan Prayog has also helped farmers create bore wells and farm ponds to manage their water, and use more efficient drip irrigation, bio-fertilisers, and vermicompost (where earthworms turn organic waste into compost).

“We go from lab to land,” Shaik said of the research they are applying. “First they see it work on the land, and then they use it more.”

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.

Empowered Communities Adapt to Climate Change

By Hilary Heath

The rains have been slow to arrive this season. In Kenya, the “long rains” historically fall March to May. Not anymore. When I traveled to Kenya in April, the rain still hadn’t come. Communities feel the burden of this unpredictability. Almost everyone that we spoke with had the same lament: without the rains, we struggle. This situation reflects an all-too-common story. As weather changes, communities seek stability.  

Situations like this underscore the importance of gatherings like the 13th annual Community Based Adaptation Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. CBA13 brought together practitioners, grassroots representatives, local and national government planners, policymakers and donors to discuss the best ways to empower local communities in building and implementing their own solutions for climate adaptation. After attending the conference, I visited organizations in Ethiopia and Kenya demonstrating the power and effectiveness of community-based adaptation measures.

Community buy-in is key for adaptation measures to succeed. In Kajiado County, Kenya, CJRF partner Il’laramatak Community Concerns hosts community dialogues about climate change so that community members can better understand the issue and come up with solutions that work for them. These dialogues also allow for solutions that integrate traditional community knowledge. I heard participants raise concerns about the extended dry period and the many ways the water shortage was affecting their lives.

Longer and more extreme dry seasons are not unique to Kenya, and they’re not the only climatic changes East Africans are contending with. Farmers in Ethiopia have implemented small-scale water interventions that respond to both droughts and flooding brought on by climate change. In 2015, the Global Resilience Partnership awarded Mekelle University and MetaMeta with a Global Resilience Challenge grant to transform the way roads are planned and built. Now, carefully designed roads channel water runoff so that rains recharge ground water instead of flooding fields. MetaMeta and Mekelle University have worked with local authorities to help plan road locations so that they help farmers harvest rainwater, prevent soil erosion, and improve the use of roadside land. By using heavy rains for recharging the ground water, farmers have a water source during the dry seasons.

Terracing on the mountainside allows farmers to control runoff and direct water.

Additionally, farmers have been implementing simple technology interventions, such as terracing the mountainside, and digging trenches and ponds, all of which control runoff. The trenches and ponds also have the added benefit of recharging the groundwater. Small-scale irrigation has also become an effective stability tool for many farmers. By using the water from a nearby dam, farmers have been irrigating their crops, leading to green and productive lands, even during the dry season.

Trenches on the land collect run off, decreasing flooding and recharging the groundwater.

In Abreha Weatsbeha, which was historically one of the most food insecure areas in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, these interventions have been truly transformational. The community has been able to use wells and water storage ponds to effectively recharge the groundwater. The result? Over 80% of households benefiting from water harvesting in Abreha Weatsbeha are now food secure. 

A pond filled by a nearby dam supplies water for farmer-installed irrigation pumps.

A farmer’s land shows the benefits of small-scale irrigation. This picture was taken during the dry season, yet the land remains green.

Back in Kenya, Agnes Leina, Executive Director of Il’laramatak Community Concerns and community leader, has become the go-to woman to consult on community-based adaptation efforts in Kajiado County. Leina, who in the past was instrumental in the creation of Kenya’s first county law prohibiting female genital mutilation (FGM) and made Kajiado County the national lead in FGM reduction, has now turned her attention to climate adaptation.

Leina’s community, faced with the diminishing returns of a traditional pastoral lifestyle, has turned to alternative livelihood measures. The results have been dramatic. No longer must the community depend solely on the weather for their livelihoods. Instead, the community creates products that do not depend on a stable and predictable rainfall. At a new community-built center, women sew garments. The community also makes traditional Masai jewelry and mats. All the goods get taken to market and sold via a newly paved road.

Women sew garments at a new community center. Garments will be taken to market.

Additional adaptation measures allow communities to continue to maintain livestock. Solutions address the challenges and costs of feeding animals during extended dry periods. In Leina’s community they grind down corn and bean stalks left over from harvest to store for feeding the animals when fresh grass is scarce. This approach provides security when the community needs it most.

When the rains do not fall in East Africa, communities immediately feel the devastating impacts. A long dry season means loss of livestock, decreased food security, and crop failures, among other things. Despite this, with support for community-driven initiatives, people find simple and powerful ways to adapt.

Freshly ground animal feed will nourish the community’s livestock during the dry season.

Climate justice can't wait

By Heather McGray and Heather Grady.

A young girl interviews a local fisherman in Bangladesh. Picture credit: COAST

A growing public and political awareness and a growing grassroots power base is shaping 2019 as a year of expanded opportunity around climate change solutions.  

Impatient with federal policies, U.S. states, cities and the private sector are stepping up like never before.  Consider that 29 states plus the District of Columbia have adopted specific greenhouse gas reduction targets to address climate change. In parallel, individuals and organizations working on climate change at the local level have claimed ever-greater room to speak on national and international stages. The Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, youth strikes around the globe, and the Green New Deal all represent this new energy and action.

This new momentum on climate solutions comes in part from a powerful shift in how the public thinks about climate change. Where once it was a facts-and-figures matter for scientists to debate, it is now a set of increasingly immediate concerns about the safety and wellbeing of people across the U.S. and the wider world. 

Everyone has seen the news of thousands displaced by fires in California. They feel the heat in their hometowns, or the latest extreme storm. The risks have become tangible, and personal, and along with this we hear a growing call for “climate justice.”

Linking climate change and equity

The core of climate justice is giving those people and communities that feel the impacts of climate change first, and worst, a central role in how political, business and non-profit leaders take action. It ensures that solutions are driven by those who know the problem first-hand, and that the risks and benefits of climate change are shared equitably across the divides of class, gender, race, ethnicity and age.

For example, in coastal Bangladesh, teenage girls are especially vulnerable when storms hit. A stressed farming family with a damaged home and flooded fields may pull their daughter out of school to save money or arrange an illegal early marriage in hopes of finding her a better home.

The long-term consequences of these actions are dire, so organizations like COAST are re-writing the equation by putting girls on air with local radio stations. As members of radio clubs, the teenagers have researched and reported on climate change in their communities, helping to raise awareness around emergency protocols and highlighting techniques for farmers and fishers to adapt to their changing environment. 

The reality is those hit first by climate change are not only the first to suffer; they are also the first to respond and the first to adapt. As they confront climate change in their daily lives, those on the frontlines are hard at work crafting creative solutions, through technology, policy and new forms of investment in their communities’ welfare and safety.

Climate solutions are also coming from outside local communities, whether closing coal plants or erecting large wind and solar farms, there is a need to respect the rights of those communities. For example, safeguards requiring a mining company to obtain prior and informed consent from local communities before using their land. 

Climate justice advocates are calling on businesses and policymakers to make certain the era of renewable energy unfolds equitably, without harming or displacing communities as other forms of energy often have. 

Optimism and action

In a convening of philanthropic funders committed to climate justice in New York this winter, Former Irish President Mary Robinson called for “a moonshot level of ambition” that combines a focus on local leadership and an exponential expansion of innovation and investment in developing new climate-friendly technologies and industries.  

We saw a potential step toward just such an investment last year when 29 philanthropies committed over $4 billion to addressing a host of climate challenges. But for this investment to achieve its maximum potential impact, taking a climate justice approach will be crucial. 

We need to capitalize on both the UN Climate Convention and the Sustainable Development Goals as unifying frameworks, recognizing that we share one planet and one atmosphere. And we need to more rigorously apply principles of gender equity, indigenous rights, human rights and transparency to all of our climate change efforts. 

Heather McGray is the director of the Climate Justice Resilience Fund. 

Heather Grady is a vice president for Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 

This article was originally published in The Hill

Beekeepers and seaweed farmers bring entrepreneurial flair to climate adaptation

A seaweed farmer in Zanzibar (Photo: IIED, which supports the Zanzibar Climate Change Alliance)

Mahfoudh Haji, a climate change activist from Zanzibar, left a conference in Ethiopia earlier this month charged with fresh ideas for helping beekeepers, farmers and children on his island earn money while restoring the environment.

The inspiration came from efforts to deal with a very different problem in Malawi – the influx of refugees. The project, which Haji heard about from fellow conference delegates, assigns plots of unused land for refugees to farm. This gives them a source of food and income, helps reduce costs on the government, and quells tensions with locals.

In Tanzania, Haji hopes to create new work from unused land and forests in eco-friendly ways.

“What I have learned is that there are people in the world dealing with similar problems,” he said, sitting with his mother by the Zanzibar Climate Change Alliance’s exhibition stand in Addis Ababa. “I can apply this knowledge to my society; even the youth can establish projects on unused land in Zanzibar to plant and increase incomes.”

The 13th annual Community-Based Adaptation Conference (CBA13), organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), brings together environmental advocates and community organisers from around the developing world to talk about how they’re responding to the weather extremes and seasonal changes linked to rising global temperature.

The impacts vary widely, from shortages of water for farming, drinking and hydropower; to floods that wash away crops; to heat so intense that people can’t work. But they all impede development and contribute to poverty in some of the world’s poorest and least developed areas.

Delegates came to CBA13 looking for ideas on how to adapt, and support from funders, aid agencies and non-profits. But rather than listening to speakers or watching PowerPoint presentations, at this conference it was the audience that did most of the talking and brainstorming.

People compared indigenous climate forecasting to new technology, shared stories of overcoming obstacles or failures in their work and perfected pitches for funders. They showcased their projects in an exhibition area, with local products such as traditional jewellery, essential oils and Zanzibar honey.

“This has grown out of a bottom-up, vulnerable communities-based agenda of how they can understand climate change, understand adaptation, do adaptation and help each other do adaptation,” said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development and a senior fellow at IIED. Huq started the CBA conference in Bangladesh 15 years ago.

But funding remains a big challenge, getting stuck with governments rather than trickling down to projects that are conceived and driven by communities.

“Local solutions are grounded in local realities and build local capabilities,” said Heather McGray, director of the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, a sponsor of the conference. “This makes for adaptation that is more effective and more sustainable. Channels for getting finance from the global level into local hands exist, but they need strengthening.”

Faced with funding shortages, community projects in Kenya, Uganda, India, Nepal and elsewhere are designed to adapt to the climate changes they’re feeling while also promoting development.

The Zanzibar Climate Change Alliance, a network of civil society organisations, created cooperatives to help seaweed farmers, beekeepers and others cope with changes such as rising sea levels and temperatures.

The warmer water is blamed for killing seaweed. So the alliance has provided boats for the farmers – many of them women who don’t know how to swim – to venture into deeper water. It has also encouraged tree-planting in deforested areas. More trees help beekeepers expand their business and reduce water evaporation in catchment areas that are drying up.

Similarly, in rural eastern India, the Development Research Communication and Services Centre combines science with indigenous traditions to grow food and generate income. It teaches people to garden nutritional plants, harvest water for drought periods, store seeds and forecast the weather.

And in Kenya, community organisers are helping women sell their colourfully beaded jewellery and cloths online, while the private Africa Agency for Arid Resources buys natural gum and resins from locals to make hair and skin oils, drinks, vitamins and other products to sell in Asia and Europe.

By growing their income and diversifying their livelihoods, these communities create options beyond their traditional farming and herding activities, which are becoming less reliable under increasingly erratic weather.

“We would like to be self-reliant,” said Agnes Leina, executive director of the NGO Ill’laramatak Community Concerns, which supports Kenyan pastoralist women and girls. “We would like to have capacity to become entrepreneurial – to do our own businesses and to earn our money, so that we can use our money to do our development, so that we are not always dependent and asking for handouts.”

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.

Harnessing the power of on-the-spot media to achieve change

This article originally appeared on Global Geneva.

With the rising impact of climate change, ranging from flash floods, landslides and ocean surges, coupled with the urgent need to implement more effective – and long-term – disaster risk reduction, credible journalist initiatives are increasingly playing a crucial role of informing the public.      

Fishermen talk to a young radio club member about natural disasters. The India-based COAST radio programme empowers young women to tell local climate stories through girls’ radio clubs. (Photo: © COAST)

Rachel McKee of Oak Foundation in Geneva recounts how Asian journalists are working together to spur essential changes through their reporting from the field.                               

Deep in the heart of the Himalayas, the Koshi River begins its journey as a tiny stream. It makes its way down the northern slopes of Tibet, gains momentum as it traverses Nepal, joins the River Ganges in the northern Bihar region of India, and then, finally, rushes into the Bay of Bengal.

For thousands of years, people have lived on its banks, thankful for its life-giving waters, but in recent times, that has begun to change. Development activities and climate change have meant disrupted weather patterns, causing flooding, landslides and prolonged periods of drought. “We used to bring water from a spring a few kilometres away, but now it has dried up,” says Laxmi Magur, a local woman living in the Muktin district of Dhankuta, Nepal. “We have taps in every house, but no water. It has been so hard.”

In addition, Nepal’s largest hydropower project is being built on the Tamakoshi River, one of the tributaries of the Koshi. In this earthquake-prone zone, this causes unrest among the villagers in the region. “If it bursts in the future, our area will be swept away,” said 81-year-old Sarimaya Rai, from Barah Kshetra in the Sunsari district, where the dam is being built.

Laxmi and Sarimaya’s stories were two of several recorded by and made into a series of reports by Ramesh Bhushal, an environmental journalist based in Nepal. Currently a correspondent and coordinator for thethirdpole.net, a South Asian environmental online magazine, he travelled along the tributaries of the Koshi River in 2016 with photographer Nabin Baral. Together they reported on the challenges faced by people living in the region. (You can read more about their adventures here: https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/koshi-basin/.)

Reporting by local journalists is crucial for creating greater awareness of climate change impacts. (Photo: © Internews)

Climate change impact across three countries

The effects of what happens upstream on the Koshi can be felt over an enormous area spanning three countries. The reporting on climate change effects by locally-based journalists is helping to bring these far-flung issues to the attention of government officials, who have the power to do something about it, as well as into the homes of people around the world. Because, let’s face it, without on-the-spot reporting, those far removed from the scenario are less likely to confront the issue. Furthermore, journalists need to use a form of story-telling that everyone understands.

Indeed, Bhushal’s series designed to raise the concerns of ordinary people in this remote region has made some impacts at higher levels. While it is impossible to draw a causal link, it is thought that some related pieces published in The Hindu may have inspired India’s Union Ministry of Water Resources to file an affidavit to the Indian Supreme Court opposing the building of any more dams in the Himalayan northern Indian State of Uttarakhand. (See The Hindu story)

In addition, one of Bhushal’s stories pointed out the risk of floods in a region around the Nepal-Tibet border and that an early warning system that had been installed was in poor condition. Thereafter the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology fixed the problem quickly. A hydrologist at the department told Ramesh, “I was following your story, and as you pointed out, the early warning system wasn’t functioning during that time due to some technical problem. It’s working now and regularly sending warnings.”

Internews, an international media development organization, has established the Earth Journalism Network to strengthen support for journalists like Ramesh Bhushal. “Media hubs can be credited with getting these stories to larger, more diverse audiences,” says James Fahn, Global Director of Environmental Programmes at Internews.

Local journalism is key for sharing local climate solutions at the global level, bringing local climate solutions into the homes of people around the world. (Photo: © Rachel McKee/Oak Foundation)

Today, as ordinary people are starting to feel the startling impacts of climate change effects on their lives, on-the-spot journalists are essential in highlighting its human dimension, particularly in developing countries. Not only are they well-positioned to raise awareness of the hardships people are facing at regional, national and international levels, but they are also central to raising awareness about community-led efforts to build resilience in the face of climate change devastation.

On-the-spot reporting enables ordinary people to share their experiences

It is also crucial for donors, governments and aid organizations to incorporate credible if not critical, solutions-oriented approaches as part of their support for journalistic outreach in the public interest, rather than PR. This is particularly important at a time when disaster risk reduction precautions could significantly limit the impact of earthquakes, floods, landslides and ocean surges on towns, villages and countryside.

Because, if you are a farmer who can no longer grow rice on the land you inherited from your great-grandparents, wouldn’t you want to know what others in a similar situation are doing? On-the-spot reporting provides a platform from which ordinary people can share how they are adapting to these challenges, and allows them to share what they are learning.

“Those hit first by climate change are in a really important position of leadership, as the first to respond and adapt,” says Heather McGray from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF), a grant-making initiative dedicated to helping women, youth and indigenous peoples create and share their own solutions for resilience. “Instead of calling them the ‘canaries in a coal mine’, we need narratives that help people see how they’re actively creating powerful solutions that others can learn from. Media hubs are invaluable in helping to raise their voices.”

When locals are able to contribute to the narrative and tell their own stories, climate journalism is more accurate and equitable. Here a Bangladeshi man points at where his house used to be before the rising seawater washed it away. (Photo: © Internews)

The growing role of philanthropy in helping journalists to reach out

Philanthropy and not-for-profit organizations working on climate justice recognise the power of timely journalism and are getting behind media hubs that support strong local reporting in developing countries. For example, through the Earth Journalism Network project, local reporters in regions around the world can help raise awareness of the concerns of ordinary people in the face of climate change. It also trains journalists to report more effectively on such issues, and gathers them together at events so that they can learn from each other.

For example, Malu Pedersen works as a radio reporter for KNR Radio, the largest radio network in Greenland. “There is virtually no coverage of climate change issues in local Greenlandic media,” Malu told Internews’ Fahn. “While we have reporters in the larger towns, it is difficult to travel to more remote parts of the country to find out first-hand how climate change is affecting individuals.” Internews brought her to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in September 2018. Upon returning to Greenland, she vowed to improve domestic coverage of climate change issues at KNR Radio.

“It is still early days,” says Fahn, “This will take a lot of time and effort and, dare I say, investment, but I really think we may have planted a seed here that could blossom into more and better local coverage of climate-related issues in Greenland in the future.”

Reporting that tells the climate story through the lens of local solutions is much more powerful than stories that frame the narrative around “climate victims.” (Photo: Open)

A growing public realisation that independent – and trusted – journalism is crucial

Those on the frontlines of circumstances, often outside of their control, are the ones who know the truth about what is really going on. “If you want to know what really happened in history, ask the underdog”, has been said over the years in many different ways. Or, in more concrete terms: don’t just check the records of the Romans who ruled, but try to find traces of records from those whose villages were pillaged. There is a need today to go right to the roots of the problem, to talk with the ‘underdog’ too, so that balanced, informed reporting can once again win back the trust of civil society.

The ways that information is created and consumed is undergoing a profound transformation in recent years, which, while creating some challenges for traditional media platforms, is also opening up many new opportunities for people near the action to raise their voices so that they are heard. As the need grows more urgent to inform communities in a trustworthy manner about how to build resilience in the face of challenges posed by a changing climate, new modes of information distribution have led to an explosive growth in the types of tools and technologies that help analyse, visualize and understand our world.

These technologies – digital media and social networks, for instance – are creating opportunities for local media to cover climate issues, with a depth and breadth unimaginable even a decade ago. Many media hubs are supporting journalists to adapt to and benefit from this changing landscape. And finally, too, more and more philanthropies, as well as not-for-profit organizations working on climate justice are getting behind media hubs that support strong local reporting around the world.

Rachel McKee is a communication officer at Oak Foundation in Geneva. This article was compiled with additional input from US-based Oak Foundation staff, the Climate Justice Resilience Fund and Internews. Rachel McKee worked for more than 10 years at RTE, Ireland’s national broadcasting station and she also has 10 years’ experience in communicating about human rights and social justice issues.

For further information 

Some media outlets around the world that are strengthening people’s resilience to climate change are listed below. Plus if you would like to know more about what philanthropy is doing to support the coverage at grassroots levels, please contact the Climate Justice Resilience Fund: https://www.cjrfund.org/contact.

Internews believes that a strong, independent press and an informed, engaged citizenry forms the underpinnings of democracy. This organization works with citizens and local media in more than 100 countries, supporting the development of thousands of media outlets, including radio and television stations, newspapers, mobile news networks and online news sites. Find out more: https://www.internews.org/

thethirdpole.net is a multilingual platform dedicated to promoting information and discussion about the Himalayan watershed and the rivers that originate there. It is a registered not-for-profit organization based in New Delhi and London, with editors also based in Kathmandu, Beijing, Dhaka and Karachi. The Asian partner of Internews, it works work with an international network of experts, scientists, media professionals and policymakers to share knowledge and perspectives across the region. Find out more: https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/

India Climate Dialogue, a partner of thethirdpole.net, is a media hub that communicates about how climate change is affecting people in India specifically, and how the people are proactively trying to build resilience in the face of it. It aims to provide impartial and objective news and views on all aspects of climate change, how it affects India, and what can be done about it. Find out more: https://indiaclimatedialogue.net/

Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, based in Alaska, is building a climate change desk to produce more radio stories and web-based media focused on strategies used by Alaskan Natives to adapt and build resilience. Koahnic aims to increase understanding and awareness about the realities of climate change and the ingenious ways people find to adapt in the face of it. Koahnic’s own station (KNBA) covers an area home to more than half Alaska’s population. In addition, more than 350 US public radio stations air the news station’s programmes, including all 57 Native stations. Find out more: https://koahnicbroadcast.org/ and https://www.cjrfund.org/koahnic

The Earth Journalism Network (EJN) connects more than 6,000 journalists covering environmental issues around the world. Together they have developed a rich and diverse media hub that puts vulnerable and under-represented people at the centre of climate discourse. EJN’s approach is people-centred, focusing in particular on training women, youth and indigenous journalists, and on empowering and amplifying local, frontline voices. Find out more: https://earthjournalism.net/

Doc Society/Mothers of Invention (MOI) is an innovative podcast where Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and climate justice champion and Irish comedian Maeve Higgins discuss climate justice and interview female climate activists from around the world. Check out their podcasts here: https://www.mothersofinvention.online/.

Coastal Association for Social Transformation Trust (COAST) works to prevent early marriage in Bangladesh, where adverse climate hazards have increased levels of poverty, which has led to more families marrying girls off at an early age. COAST has created girls radio clubs, which enable girls to report on issues around child marriage. In addition, the radio clubs are key networks for girls who may be facing pressures at home to marry early. http://coastbd.net/

‘We amplified our voices’: women lead the charge on local climate effects

Violet Shivutse plants trees with students in Kenya (Photo: Huairou Commission)

In rural western Kenya, it’s the women farmers who feel the biggest loss from unusual crop seasons, increased flooding and previously unseen plant diseases – while the men set off in search of urban jobs.

In response, these grassroots women are leading efforts to adapt to the disruptions linked to climate change, and make their farming communities more resilient. And many of those answers come from the examples set by their mothers and grandmothers, rather than modern agriculture.

“It’s the role of women to bring food on the table. When the season is affected and women are not able to get very good yields, they don’t have food,” said Violet Shivutse of the Shibuye Community Health Workers organisation in western Kenya, which is part of the international Huairou Commission representing grassroots women.

“What women have been doing is to ensure that, whether it’s a very heavy rainfall or a long drought period, they can at least have innovations that will make them able to continue planting and growing food for their families,” Shivutse added.

Broadly, climate change hits under-developed and vulnerable communities first and hardest. But the effects on daily lives, work and families vary widely according to location, traditional gender roles, culture and other factors.

In Bangladesh, for example, families are marrying their daughters younger to ensure financial stability. In South Sudan, deforestation is forcing women and girls to travel farther for firewood, leaving them less time to prepare meals and making them more vulnerable to abuse from husbands, according to a report last year by the Global Greengrants Fund and Prospera International Network of Women’s Funds.

Now there’s a small but growing movement to help women and girls share their own solutions for climate resilience.

“There was never any kind of engagement on what women and girls were experiencing in their communities, but they might create solutions that would be meaningful and culturally appropriate for them,” said Diane Ives of the Kendeda Fund in the US. The Kendeda Fund supports programmes to help women and girls respond to climate change, including the Global Greengrants Fund and Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF).

“We’re starting the conversation with lifting up the voices of women and girls, rather than coming in with solutions – like, ‘We’ve got this pump that we can use in your fields’, when perhaps in that community women aren’t supposed to be fixing pumps but doing something else,” Ives added.

Often, the projects are aimed at spreading knowledge and education.

The international Frida Fund, also backed by Kendeda, supports an online magazine called the Young Feminists for Climate Justice Storytelling. Its second edition looks at how women who organise climate action in their communities can respond to the harassment, violence and other backlash they might face. The answer: greater self-care.

In Kenya, the Shibuye Community Health Workers organises groups of 25 to 30 women to share practices many of them have been using for generations, Shivutse said. Rather than using the “western ways” of planting hybrid seeds and using pesticides, they’re learning to make fertiliser out of compost manure and irrigate the land, and storing older and more durable seeds.

With a grant from CJRF last year, the Shibuye organisation has expanded to restore the nearby Kakamega rainforest after years of encroachment and rehabilitate the soil near Lake Victoria. The women of the community are managing the grant and leading the project.

This is raising awareness in the region and among government officials, agriculture industry stakeholders and others, Shivutse said.

“These practices were being done with individual women in small silos,” she said. “But when we came together as strong groups of grassroots women who brought different skills and practices together, and strengthened what each group was doing, we amplified our voices.”

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.

Laughter helps deliver sobering messages on climate change

Mary Robinson and Maeve Higgins, hosts of Mothers of Invention (Photo: Ruth Medjbe/ Doc Society)

Upon hearing stark numbers on how cows contribute to climate change, comedian and podcast host Maeve Higgins boils the problem down: “We mustn’t let them get their own nation,” she exclaims. “We have to stop them from organising.”

Her response – to the news that a nation of all the world’s cows would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter after China and the US – garnered laughs in the recording studio and a jokey rebuke from former Irish president Mary Robinson: “Maeve, we want some intelligent solutions, please.”

It was a moment of levity in a mostly serious discussion of how changing food production and diet can help stem climate change. But it’s with this balance of humour, every(wo)man questions and sober facts that the Mothers of Invention podcast – which launched its second series on Tuesday – helps push feminist climate solutions into the mainstream.

This, advocates say, is what’s needed to help people internalise their role in cutting emissions and build resilience to climate change.

“Climate issues can feel overwhelming to make eye contact with, let alone explore deeper,” said Thimali Kodikara, the Mothers of Invention series producer at the non-profit Doc Society. “The use of Maeve’s warm, relatable and humorous voice immediately dissipates many of these anxieties for our listeners, and makes dense subject matter more approachable.”

The key is to engage people in the serious information they’re receiving – not make light of it, said Pablo Suarez, associate director for research and innovation at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

The centre and its partners have designed some 45 games to help people learn about humanitarian issues such as disaster preparedness, food security and migration. Its players include government officials, volunteers, children, farmers, meteorologists and climate negotiators. Suarez has given workshops in Vanuatu, Africa, Singapore, at the White House and elsewhere. For example, instead of discussing how people should prepare for a flood, he had them act it out.

“When people are having such a good time, neuroscience demonstrates that what happens is more strongly committed to memory, and the positivity makes it more likely to be embraced when the time comes,” Suarez said.

Mothers of Invention drew more than 70,000 podcast subscribers to its first series last year.

The idea started when Robinson, now a climate justice advocate and chair of The Elders non-profit, approached Doc Society about making documentaries to help people understand the implications of the Paris climate agreement.

After discussing Robinson’s aims – to quickly shift the focus from government to public action – the group suggested she go for a more widely accessible and faster-to-produce podcast, said Jess Search, Doc Society’s chief executive.

However, the producers saw it wouldn’t work with Robinson as a solo host. A veteran in formal speeches and press conferences, the former president wasn’t familiar with podcasts or their casual, conversational tone. Doc Society considered a long list of co-host candidates from developed and developing countries, until they met Higgins, a New York-based Irish comedian.

Now she plays the socially conscious “ordinary punter” to Robinson’s authoritative expert.

“It all just worked,” said Search. “You can hear over the series that Maeve has worn her down like a bar of soap, and now Mary is very comfortable in actually relaxing … it was definitely a learning curve for her, because it’s so different from, say, speaking at the UN.”

The Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF), which provided a grant to Mothers of Invention, sees humour as way to make the climate change narrative more positive, impactful and solutions-oriented, rather than negative, said Heather McGray, the fund’s director. CJRF supports projects that help communities deal with the impacts of climate change, with a focus on women, youth and indigenous peoples.

“Those hit first by climate change are in a really important position of leadership, as the first to respond and the first adapt,” McGray said. “Instead of calling them the ‘canaries in a coal mine’, we need narratives that help people see how they’re actively creating powerful solutions that others can learn from. I believe humour can help.”

The article originally appeared on Climate Home News, and is the result of a partnership between CJRF and Climate Home.