Climate adaptation - views from the ground

Climate scientists estimate that three billion people already feel the worst impacts of climate change – impacts concentrated in the Global South. What does that look like; how are climate-vulnerable communities coping with harsher times? The Environment asked three experts in Jamaica, Somalia and Malawi about life on the frontlines of climate change

Professor Tannecia Stephenson is a Jamaica-based environmental physicist, head of department at University of the West Indies and a lead author for the IPCC’s sixth assessment report

What does climate change look like to people in Jamaica?

Our new normal is more intense heavy rains and flooding. The rains have changed; the patterns are more variable. Sea levels have risen. Hellshire Beach in St Catherine has lost 120m of shoreline. In the last 30-40 years, the beach has disappeared.

Jamaica’s mean temperature is rising, which means more frequent extreme temperatures; 2021 was the warmest year on record. Apart from 2018, every year since 2014 was among the ten warmest. We have more frequent, longer droughts. And the wider Caribbean region has more rapidly developing tropical cyclones.

Our mean temperatures will continue to increase – some models suggest +3˚C to +4˚C by the end of this century, with implications for people and for animals. It means heat stress. Our studies with cattle show that milk production and reproduction rates decrease with higher temperatures.

The models agree that Jamaica and the Caribbean will be drier. Before, rainfall in summer replenished our aquifers before the climatological drought of December-March. We’ll be going into the dry period without that relief.

That has implications for water, agriculture, food security – even for energy supply from hydropower.

How well do people understand these events as climate impacts?

Climate change is our lived experience. People feel the climate is warmer – at night we used to have some relief. We no longer have it. Water availability is a more frequent challenge. We have more, longer droughts. Our agricultural production has declined.

Because people see these changes and feel the impacts of a changing climate, there’s an opportunity for government and academics to say; alright, what you see, we can relate to changing climate. We’ve come far, relating what people see to climate change.

The water available to agriculture, the tourism impacts, the coral bleaching – these are all things that persons are living. The average person in Jamaica and across the Caribbean has a good appreciation of climate change, and how it’s already impacting us.

What are Jamaica’s adaptation priorities?

The government is taking steps to adapt, through community-adaptation programmes, some with international partners. These include water management and promoting sustainable farm practices to reduce flood risk.

The government has mandated all sectors to develop adaptation plans. Vision 2030, our national development plan, speaks to adaptation, disaster risk reduction and the UN’s sustainable development goals. Jamaica aims to integrate climate into all its plans, policies and governance.

It could be more streamlined. We could have fewer instances of maladaptation. We need a national adaptation plan to integrate across sectors. The Green Climate Fund is helping the government to determine what a national adaptation plan looks like and to streamline priorities against limited resources. It will look at how we engage private-sector partners and at financing strategies.

Tourism will be a priority – it’s so important to Jamaica – but so will water. So will agriculture and food security. Our updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) include adaptation, making space for land-use change and afforestation – securing land from erosion, supporting biodiversity and reducing the negative impacts of climate change.

What are the challenges?

Even +1˚C of warming above pre-industrial levels has had serious impacts on Jamaica, the Caribbean and small-island developing states. If we see higher temperatures, longer droughts, higher sea levels and more intense storms at +1.1˚C, imagine what we will see at +1.5˚C.

We have growing evidence to support full loss-and-damage payments to small-island states. We are heartened that this will start to make progress – certainly in terms of evidence to support such claims. We’re improving our responses when climate negotiations address loss and damage. So things look more hopeful for COP27.

Responding demands stronger partnerships and financing remains a constraint. Government must identify and access finance within Jamaica. We are responsible for our own actions, to position ourselves to respond to our changing climate.

We need new technologies, and mechanisms to explore which solutions and adaptation strategies are useful in a Jamaican, a Caribbean and a small island context. We need developed countries to offer better partnerships, and to build regional capacity.

We are willing to lead regional climate efforts – but sometimes that agenda, that funding is defined for us. Jamaicans recognise we need to take responsibility, personally and as a community. We all have a part to play in responding to climate change.

With the right partnerships, we can accomplish so much more.

‘CYCLONES IN MALAWI? WE DID NOT SEE THESE STORMS INLAND’

Malawi-based Chikondi Chabvuta is an advocacy advisor for southern Africa at NGO Care International, a specialist in gender and women’s land rights

What does climate change look like to people in Malawi?

It’s been a tough year for southern Africa for cyclones. In Malawi, normally the rainy season starts in October-November. For the last eight years, it’s started late.

Last November, it rained for two days so people went out and planted. But we had no more rain until late December and the heat was so intense that crops wilted. People, including my grandfather, had to replant, but we felt hopeful: the rains had come at last. Then Cyclone Ana hit.

We heard Ana was coming three-four days before. Rescue teams went out in advance. Around 500,000 families ended up in camps and now – March – 200,000 are still there. The camps are overcrowded; conditions are dehumanising. Madagascar and Mozambique suffered worse. Rainwater swelled the Zambezi, flooding Mozambique.

Our reference point for climatic disasters is Cyclone Idai. Although Ana was far more destructive, fewer people died than in 2019. We’re waiting for the post-disaster needs-assessment report, that will calculate the destruction to property.

But a week later, we heard Cyclone Batsirai was landing. That brought destruction to Madagascar, killing 100 people. Malawi escaped the worst of that, too, despite heavy winds and rains. Now we’re preparing for Cyclone Gombe* to hit – we don’t know how strong it will be.

All these cyclones hit southern Africa in the first weeks of this year.

How well do people understand these events as climate impacts?

Governments and NGOs are raising awareness. But the people who’ve lived longest testify to it. People who’ve lived 60-70 years have never seen such rapid changes. They say, we know about bad weather. But cyclones in Malawi? We did not see these storms inland in Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.

The weather forecasts were wrong this year – we expected a bumper harvest. But our oceans are monitored for cyclones, warning us when they will approach and hit land. People with phones receive WhatsApp warnings to move.

There was so much criticism after Cyclone Idai that when Ana approached the government and Red Cross went out with megaphones, telling people to move. You only have time to move a few items. If you have livestock, you have to leave it and pray. Too often people believe the warnings only when it starts to rain – and the unpredictable weather has fuelled those doubts.

People want reliable mechanisms to predict when cyclones will come and when rains will fall late. Our scientific models are not coping. The government purchased insurance based on a drought-weather index because parts of Malawi are forecast to become drier. That didn’t help us through these latest disasters.

People in the camps want to go home – conditions are so bad that they’d rather sleep at home with no roof. Civil society and aid organisations do what they can. But between what we prepared for and what is happening to us, we cannot cope. The government has moved funds from the budget into emergency response. It’s still not enough.

What are the adaptation priorities?

Deforestation is a problem for us. Malawi urgently needs to invest in agroforestry. At least then, when cyclones come, trees will help to reduce the impact. Because the IPCC reports are telling us that this is just the beginning. We can expect more cyclones.

And we need small-scale irrigation. Malawi was always a rain-fed country; we had all we needed for our harvests. We need to manage rainwater and improve our soil health through agro-ecology. Farms that practice agro-ecology suffered far less storm damage. When the rains came late, they managed moisture levels into January to save their crops.

What are the challenges?

Malawi focuses too much on modern, big-scale agriculture. But farmers who attend field-business schools are starting to find ways to adapt, experimenting with small grains and drought-resistant maize. We need to scale this up, to provide seed types that need less chemical fertiliser – we can’t do that alone, or through NGOs.

But other challenges are beyond our control. The Global North must reduce its use of fossil fuels. The more destructive your consumption patterns, the more climate impacts we face. Countries talk about delivering their sustainable-development goals. The Global South can’t deliver when it constantly has to respond to climate impacts.

The history of the industrial era is a history of taking away from Mother Earth. Now we are paying the price – and the most vulnerable feel the worst impacts.

The time for taking should be long gone. We must act now to heal the earth.

‘SOMALI ELDERS ARE TALKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE’

Walter Mawere co-ordinates advocacy and communication for CARE Somalia. He has worked in South Sudan and Yemen, having graduated from Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University

What does climate change look like to people in Somalia?

Somalia is undergoing a drought that we fear will become a famine if things don’t improve. The drought affects 4.3 million people; 3.6 million people have no clean water after three seasons of failed rains. And 1.2 million children are acutely malnourished. Yet last year’s humanitarian-response fund was only 70 per cent funded.

Some communities face their fourth consecutive failure. This hasn’t happened for 40 years. Severe water shortages mean no pasture – most Somali communities make a living from livestock. One report says 700,000 livestock were lost in two months.

People can’t sell their surviving livestock. The price of a goat has fallen by half. People have lost their buying power.

Somalia was always dry, but erratic rainfall has increased the threat of drought. Yet some areas flooded late last year. Somalia is seeing both extremes of climate change.

There’s a woman who is seven months pregnant, a pastoralist whose family had 80 goats and camels. The drought killed all her animals. She walked with her four children for nearly 200km to a camp for internally displaced people.

Climate-induced drought is breaking families apart. Women feel the worst of it. Parents send children to relatives because they have no water or can’t afford to care for them. Villages rely on trucks to deliver water. I visited one where the local water was so contaminated it turned green. People fall sick from drinking water.

How well do people understand these events as climate impacts?

Community elders talk about climate change. It surprises me how much they know.

Perhaps the difference is that richer countries – Europe and the US – have safety nets. Their systems and political structures can adapt to extreme weather.

Somalia has no safety nets. When extreme events happen, people feel the impacts. People cannot ignore climate change. It takes everything.

In the past, people worked with a difficult climate. Agricultural communities grew maize and timed their sowing to the rain patterns. They used to know when rain would come. Now they don’t know. Now, when the rain does come and the crops start to grow, the locusts arrive too.

Women say they can’t afford to send their kids to school. It costs US$10. With girls, especially, families take them out of school and marry them off. Families do it to survive. It’s distressing.

What are the adaptation priorities?

Care International focuses on education in Somalia, on climate-smart agriculture. We want to address the challenges to food and water security. Climate-smart agriculture is a way to develop community-drive climate resilience. We are working with farmers to introduce drought-resilient crops and manage grasslands for conservation, to sustain pastoral communities.

We also see diversity as an adaptation measure. We are working with women to set up community-based voluntary saving into lending associations (VSLAs). It’s a trial project. We give women’s groups capital, they contribute too. Women have used VSLA funding to start shops.

What are the challenges?

Somalia urgently needs better early-warning systems and technology. And the number of people needing support is overwhelming, compared to the funding to adapt to climate change.

Somalia’s is a forgotten crisis – it is not getting the international attention it needs. Last year ended with the humanitarian-response plan only 70 per cent funded – its lowest funding in six years. And that funding was already too low. Somalia needs US$1.46 billion – it has received just 3.3 per cent of the funding it needs.

In 2020, we needed to support 5.4 million people in need here. By 2021, it was 5.9 million. And by February, it went up to 7.7 million. The funding gap shows how far Somalia is from getting the attention it needs.

We need to act now before it’s too late.

*Cyclone Gombe hit southeast Africa in mid-March. The fourth intense tropical cyclone of the region’s 2021-2022 cyclone season dropped 800mm of rain in 24 hours, killing 72 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar and damaging tens of thousands of homes. Ten cyclones hit the region during the November 2021-May 2022 cyclone season

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