World Water Day: Water scarcity challenges under climate change in East African drylands

Climate change presents great challenges for dryland regions, especially in communities where socioeconomic livelihoods are tied to the consistency of seasonal rainfall. In the dryland regions of East Africa, drought is a major threat to rainfed agriculture and to drinking water supplies, and regional climate is projected to increase drought frequency and severity.

Since 2000 alone East Africa has been struck by 10 droughts, which generated three severe famines affecting millions of people in the region. Although there is often consensus about the growing regional threat posed by drought, there is a major disconnect between the climate science (meteorological drought) and assessments of usable water resources (hydrological drought) that support livelihoods.

Affected communities need straightforward answers to a practical set of questions: How will regional climate change affect soil moisture required to grow crops or the water table in wells that provide precious drinking water in a parched landscape? How will the water stores change season by season and over coming decades? Furthermore, what adaptation strategies are available to address this challenge?

Through a series of funded projects, we have been working at better understanding how climate and climate change translates into useable water in the ground in East African dryland regions, and how people use and access relevant information to make livelihood decisions towards adaptation. We have developed an interdisciplinary team comprised of dryland hydrologists, climatologists, hydrometeorologists, computer scientists, pastoralist experts, and social scientists (both in the UK and Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia) to develop a holistic perspective on both the physical and social aspects of drought. We are developing new regional modelling tools that convert past and future rainfall trends into soil moisture and groundwater. These models will underpin a new mobile phone app that aims to deliver forecasts of crop yields and soil moisture to remote agro-pastoralists. Simultaneously we are working with drought-affected communities in Kenya and Ethiopia to better understand barriers and opportunities for improving resilience to climate change, information use, and feasible adaptation strategies.

We hope that through these research endeavours we can contribute to improved climate adaptation efforts in these dryland regions and to long-term societal resilience to climate change.

Read more about Katerina’s work.

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This blog is written by Dr Katerina Michaelides, Head of Dryland Research Group at the School of Geographical Sciences and Cabot Institute for the Environment, University of Bristol.

Katerina Michaelides

World Water Day: Climate change and flash floods in Small Island Developing States

Pluvial flash flooding (otherwise known as flash flooding caused by rain) is a major hazard globally, but a particularly acute problem for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Many SIDS experience extreme rainfall events associated with tropical cyclones (often referred to as hurricanes) which trigger excess surface water runoff and lead to pluvial flash flooding.

Following record-breaking hurricanes in the Caribbean such as Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the severe risk facing SIDS has been reaffirmed and labelled by many as a sign of the ‘new normal’ due to rising global temperatures under climate change. Nonetheless, in the Disaster Risk Reduction community there is a limited understanding of both current tropical-cyclone induced flood hazard and how this might change under different climate change scenarios, which inhibits attempts to build adaptive capacity and resilience to these events.

As part of the first year of my PhD research, I am applying rainfall data that has been produced by Emily Vosper and Dr Dann Mitchell in the University of Bristol BRIDGE group using a tropical cyclone rainfall model. This model uses climate model data to simulate a large number of tropical cyclone events in the Caribbean, which are used to understand how the statistics of tropical cyclone-induced rainfall might change under the 1.5C and 2C Paris Agreement scenarios. This rainfall data will be input into the hydrodynamic model LISFLOOD-FP to simulate pluvial flash flooding associated with hurricanes in Puerto Rico.

Investigating changes in flood hazard associated with different rainfall scenarios will help us to understand how flash flooding, associated with hurricanes, emerges under current conditions and how this might change under future climate change in Puerto Rico. Paired with data identifying exposure and vulnerability, my research hopes to provide some insight into how flood risk related to hurricanes could be estimated, and how resilience could be improved under future climate change.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Leanne Archer, School of Geographical Sciences,  University of Bristol.
Leanne Archer

Climate change displacement: a step closer to human rights protection

On 20th January this year the United Nations Human Rights Committee released a landmark decision on people seeking international protection due to the effects of climate change. The decision did not include specific guidance as to where the tipping point lies, but it nevertheless remains highly relevant to future similar potential cases around the world.

The case and the plot twist

The case deals with the individual communication made by Ioane Teitiota, a national from the South Pacific country of Kiribati, under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Based on this Protocol, he claimed that New Zealand had violated his right to life by rejecting his request for refugee status and returning him and his family home in 2015.

Flooded sea wall by a village on Tarawa, Kiribati (UN)

Teitiota argued in his case that the effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise, had forced him to migrate from Tarawa (the principle island in Kiribati) to New Zealand. He claimed that freshwater on Tarawa had become scarce due to salinization and that eroded inhabitable lands had resulted in not only a housing crisis but also land disputes. These, combined with social-political instability, created a dangerous environment for him and his family.

New Zealand’s judicial system did not find evidence that Teitiota had been involved in a land dispute or that he faced a real chance of being harmed in this context – that he was unable to grow food, find accommodation or access to potable water; that he faced life-threatening environmental conditions; and that his situation was materially different from other residents of Kiribati.

The Human Rights Committee supported the decision adopted by New Zealand and rejected almost all arguments brought by Teitiota. However, it specifically acknowledged that “without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to a violation of their rights under Article 6 or 7 of the Covenant, thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending states […] given that the risk of an entire country becoming submerged under the water is such an extreme risk, the conditions of life in such country may become incompatible with the right to life with dignity before the risk is realized.” (Parag. 9.11)

This paragraph has caught international attention. To be clear, the Committee is not expressly banning the return home of someone requesting international protection due to the impacts of climate change. But it indicates that states, individually and/or collectively, could be prohibited from sending people back to life-threatening conditions if they don’t cooperate to tackle the adverse effects of climate change in those countries. If the conditions in those countries are not thoroughly analyzed before discarding risk, they could breach the powerful international obligation of non-refoulement.

Landmark decision or a passing storm?

Despite delivering an important message, the Human Rights Committee ruling does not provide explicit guidance for its implementation. Nevertheless, assumptions can be extracted from the document that shed light on its relevance and growing significance.

To begin with, it is the first-ever ruling adopted by a UN Committee regarding the claim of a person seeking refuge due to climate change. It also reinforces the idea that environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development can compromise effective enjoyment of the right to life, as stated previously in the General Comment No. 36 and the case of Portillo Cáceres et al. v. Paraguay.

Furthermore, despite not being legally binding, the decision is based on international legal obligations assumed by the 172 States Parties to the ICCPR, and almost 106 States Parties to the Optional Protocol. The latter allows individual claims against the ICCPR such as Teitiota’s.

Contrary to media reports, such as those by CNN and The Guardian, the Human Rights Committee did not address Teitiota as a climate refugee. Instead it considered him a person under the protection of the ICCPR whose life could be at risk of being exposed to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment due to the impacts of climate change. This means that the Committee´s examination was based on factors and standards intended to consider if there was a threat to Teitiota’s life in Kiribati from the perspective of International Human Rights Law, which is wider and more inclusive than that of International Refugee Law.

Sandbags attempt to prevent village huts flooding on Tarawa, Kiribati (Brad Hinton)

The Committee established that individuals seeking refugee status are not required to prove that they would face imminent harm if returned to their countries, implicitly relaxing the probatory standard required for pursuing international protection under a human rights scope. It argued that individuals could be pushed to cross borders looking for protection from climate change-related harm, caused not only by sudden-onset events but also slow-onset processes (Parag. 9.11).

The Human Rights Committee has continually raised the standard of states’ analyses of protection requests. In this ruling, it recognised that New Zealand’s courts carried out a careful and in-depth examination of both Kiribati’s and Teitiota’s situations before proceeding to deport him. But alongside this it highlighted factors that must be considered in future similar cases: for example, the prevailing conditions in the person’s country of origin; the foreseeable risks; the time left for authorities and the international community to intervene; and the efforts already underway (Parag. 9.13).

In this way, the Committee’s ruling represents a significant step forward. It has established new standards that may lead to the eventual international protection of people impacted by climate change. From now on, states should examine in detail the climatic and environmental conditions of a migrant’s country of origin under the possibility of breaching the non-refoulement obligation. As the former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox, said: “If the crisis continues to worsen, a similar case in a few years may reach a very different result.”

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This blog is written by Ignacio Odriozola, who is studying the MSc in Migration and Mobility Studies at the University of Bristol. He is a lawyer for the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a researcher for the South American Network for Environmental Migrations (RESAMA). This blog has been republished with kind permission from the Migration Mobilities Bristol. View the original blog.

Reconnecting the civic university with the climate agenda: thinking globally acting locally

As someone who has spent the last decade leading a research programme encouraging partnerships between universities and communities, I very much welcome the publication of the new Civic University Commission report from the UPP Foundation. There is much in here to applaud: the call for strategic commitment by universities to civic engagement; the demand for a new approach to adult education and widening participation; and the need for sustained national funding for civic collaborations. But it is hard to avoid the fact that there is a glaring blind spot in a report that claims to be making a case about the future of universities. Namely, there is no reference to climate change. This is surprising given the significant and far-reaching implications of a changing climate not only for universities but for the communities in which they are based. For a report on the civic role of the university not to engage with climate change – when issues such as Artificial Intelligence, ageing populations and the ‘Asian Century’ are prominent – is a significant omission.

This gap in the report matters. It matters because it overlooks the significant positive impact that universities could make, working with their partners, to prevent and adapt to a changing climate. It matters because it underestimates the significant negative impacts that are already being felt by communities and cities as a result of disruptive weather events. It matters because it ignores the huge intellectual, social and practical innovation needed to allow our towns, cities and rural communities to live well with a lively planet, a civilizational shift in which universities should play a lively and creative role. Finally, it matters because young people and students across the UK as well as the rest of the world are looking to universities to provide them with an education that recognises the reality and the consequences of climate change.

The concerns of the authors of the report are clearly oriented toward the role of universities in softening the blows of past and future economic and technological changes. This is important. But even if this were the primary goal of the civic university, couching discussion of labour market futures primarily in terms of the fourth industrial revolution is on shaky environmental ground. The huge and currently unsustainable energy costs of artificial intelligence and machine learning, for example, suggest that the shift towards a brave new techno-enhanced future might be somewhat more dependent upon boring matters such as planetary sustainability than even the most ardent Prime Ministerial advisor in search of wacky ideas might imagine.

The entanglement of economy and environment, after all, is something the Stern report pointed out 14 years ago. If one of the agendas of the Civic University report is to rebalance the attention of universities towards the radical economic inequalities at play in their communities, then climate change and its impacts have to play a role in these calculations. Moreover, at a time when the UN Sustainable Development Goals (however flawed) are increasingly making their way into local government decision-making; at a time when many cities and towns are themselves taking the lead in setting ambitious carbon reduction goals, this absence in the report is hard to explain. It ignores what is already a defining challenge for many of the cities and communities in which universities are based.

There is, moreover, a clear opportunity to align the civic university and climate change agendas. Not least because civic collaboration of the sort envisaged by this excellent report works best not when it is a vague hand-waving memorandum-of-understanding type endeavour, but when people from different organisations come together to roll their sleeves up, learn from each other and figure out how to work on a shared matter of concern. And working out how to prevent and adapt to climate change is the mother of all shared concerns.

There are at least four clear areas for potential alignment:

  1. Climate change provides a creative motivation for research and education collaborations between universities and communities. Let’s look at what is happening in the city where I am currently working in Sweden. Here in Uppsala, universities, city leaders and business leaders have begun working together to actively reduce their carbon emissions 14% year on year. This sort of hugely ambitious challenge – far greater and faster than anything in the UK at present – brings significant educational and research opportunities from practical partnerships with the community. Elsewhere, in universities and cities in the UK with a similar shared agenda, as in Bristol, we see researchers, business leaders and community leaders coming together to begin to work out what it means to create cities that are carbon positive, create employment and provide housing and energy for everyone.
  2. A changing climate provides a powerful rationale for investing in adult education. Taking climate change seriously also aligns closely with the report’s calls to reinvigorate adult education. Any serious attempt to reconfigure the UK’s energy and infrastructure systems in lines with the Paris agreement, will involve significant shifts in employment. Adults in carbon intensive employment will need to be supported to develop new skills. The university system will need to adapt, welcoming older adults, supporting them to rapidly learn and innovate. Any Green New Deal requires Green New Universities able to respond to the interests and needs of older adults. Irrespective of Brexit, universities seeking to remain part of the European Research Area will need to engage with the challenge of green skills and innovation.
  3. A changing climate brings an urgent demand to re-localise education. Understanding that a changing climate is the condition in which we are now living also has implications for the trend that has seen some British universities detach themselves from the cities that first funded them in order to become finishing schools for wealthy international students. The sort of international travel habits encouraged by this trend (one student I recently spoke to told me of the nine transatlantic flights every year that she and her West Coast American boyfriend take to see each other) is unlikely to be compatible with any university or city seeking to reduce its emissions. In an era in which international travel becomes an increasingly unacceptable choice both for increasingly carbon literate younger age groups and for city leaders with an eye on their carbon budget, understanding what replaces international students will become an increasingly compelling concern for university leaders – a re-localisation that fundamentally connects with a renewed civic role.
  4. A changing climate demands that universities recognise their material and economic role in the local community. Understanding universities as anchor organisations in their communities, as this report recommends, means paying attention to how university money flows, where it flows, who benefits, what is invested in, how buildings are built and how land is used. Universities with landholdings, with investments in student accommodation, with thousands of staff and students everyday moving into and around the city, have the potential to make a major contribution to both preventing and adapting to climate change. Thinking through climate change therefore, only strengthens the commitment to local economies, cultures and communities. It encourages a respectful and careful stewardship of land and resources and of the people in those communities.

Taking climate change seriously, in other words, is not something that detracts from the civic role of the university, it brings a much-needed focus and purpose to this agenda.

Thinking globally, acting locally is an old slogan from the environmental movement but it is one that also captures the essence of a civic university. These two movements for change – the civic university and the university of the climate emergency – need urgently to align to create the universities we actually need today.
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This blog post was written by Cabot Institute member Professor Keri Facer. Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol and Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University. The blog has been reposted with kind permission from HEPI. View the original blog.

Keri Facer