The Conversation Global invited scientists in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America to discuss climate change and its impact on their lives.
Maty Konte: Climate change is not gender neutral
The UN’s goal to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth across the globe by 2030 is impossible if women are not involved in developing countries, including Africa. It will be impossible to empower women if we do not take action to reduce the effects of climate change.
Climate change is a barrier to the empowerment of rural women and girls. In Africa, women make up more than half of the agricultural workers. Climate change is also a factor in this sector, as it increases the inadequacy of infrastructure.
The women also walk miles every day to get firewood and clean water and to bathe and drink. Water and firewood are becoming scarcer due to climate change, so women and girls have to walk further to find the few places where they can find freshwater or wood.
As woodlands shrink, it is harder to gather firewood for the school day. Antony Njuguna/Reuters
These vital journeys carry a high risk of being kidnapped or raped. The longer the trip, the higher the risk.
Climate change also affects girls’ education, especially in rural areas of developing countries. The fact that girls have to fetch water and wood before school in the morning increases absenteeism. This slows their learning as well as the fatigue caused by increasingly difficult morning and weekend routines.
Zulu Carnival in Durban before the COP17. Rogan Ward/Reuters
All of these things impede women and girls from achieving their full potential. The economic impact of climate change and the loss of female capital will be negative for the next generation.
Climate change does not discriminate against gender. Climate change reduces the economic opportunities of the most vulnerable in the world. These are often women and children.
Inaction is a barrier to women’s empowerment, and a further handicap for inclusive development efforts.
Shobhakar Dahakal – Asia has warmer days and nights
Asia has already shifted between extremes. Droughts in the monsoon seasons are evidence that heatwaves have increased in many areas. But we also see wetter weather in Central Asia as well as frequent flooding in Eastern Asia and India.
Since the 1960s, temperatures in Southeast Asia have increased at a rate of 0.14 – 0.2degC every decade. This has been accompanied by an increase in hot days and nights and a decrease in cooler weather. Scientists predict that temperatures in Asia will rise by 3degC or 6degC if nothing is done.
The seas will also rise by 0.4m – 0.6m in 2100. They are expected to become warmer and more acidic.
This would be very dangerous for those who live in the affected areas. There is a possibility that extensive damage to human settlements will occur due to sea level rise projected and extreme climate events. Heat-related deaths and water and food shortages due to drought are also possible.
Southeast Asia is responding to these threats in a limited way by developing early warning systems for climate events, reforesting the mangrove forests, better managing water resources and protecting coastlines from flooding.
Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva Statue during Typhoon Dujuan, Quanzhou. 2015. China Daily China Daily Information Corp. – CDIC/Reuters
The region also actively cooperates to achieve ambitious renewable energy targets set forth by the Paris Agreement.
If the US administration reverses Obama’s environmental efforts and promotes fossil fuels in the US, this will put Asia and the rest of the world on an irreversible, dangerous path. This will erode US credibility when making international commitments and harm the much-needed American leadership in the fields of science and environment.
Climate change is caused by humans, and the changes are evident. The scientific community has expressed concern about business as usual. If we act quickly and work together , we have a good chance of keeping global temperatures below 2degC from pre-industrial levels . I hope that the Trump administration gives this crisis serious consideration.
Sandrine Maljean Dubois: It’s “a race against the clock”
Science is sending a clear message: We are racing against time.
Adopting the Paris Agreement states from around the globe agreed on clear, ambitious goals to contain global heating and limit global temperature rises. They set out a path to decarbonise our societies gradually by the end century.
After years of chaotic negotiations, the markets finally got the message they were looking for. Businesses, banks and investment funds, local governments, individuals, so many economic players follow world leaders down this path . They are being pushed to innovate, and they are ahead of their competition. They will be creating the technologies and employment of tomorrow.
Undoing Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, as Trump did recently, will only have a limited impact on the environment. The long-term effects of reactivating coal power plants are negative, but coal is not competitive anymore. This is why the decision is short-sighted and impractical.
It sends out a negative message to the rest of the world. It is second largest producer in the world of greenhouse gases, and had previously taken a decisive lead in the COP processes with the top-producer China. The US’s disengagement from international organizations such as the UN Climate Action branch secretariat, the Green Climate Fund, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change threatens this fragile, too-timid, dynamic.