We can’t isolate from climate change

 

The irony of it all is that, in a climate change scenario like this, the “rich” tends to spend more to protect themselves while the “poor” becomes more vulnerable. Climate change is coming to a stand point where money will be devalued.

by Oladosu Adenike (oladosuadenike32@gmail.com)

We can’t isolate or quarantine from the impact of climate change (1)

Climate change is not an unmasked crisis that we can neither isolate nor quarantine from its impacts. Also, there are no vaccines against climate change if we can’t recover greener. Around the world, there is now unprecedented rise in temperature even in polar regions like New Zealand, Canada, America and the likes. Invariably, climate change is a global phenomenon and an existential crisis. Examples are the mega-drought, heat waves, floods and desertification. Also included is the migration of persons & other living organisms. The death accrued to climate change is more than any other form of crises. How do we isolate when there is heatwave and drought is fast-taking over our farmlands? How do we quarantine when our house is on fire? Nor when our house is submerged with floods? Even the slightest route called migration that should be an adaptation strategy is now leading to new conflicts. The climate crises have gone beyond declaring climate emergency to acting on the emergencies.

Last year November the ice berg known as A-68 but this year world largest ice berg has broken from an ice-shelf in Antarctica called A-76 – roughly the shape of Manhattan but more than 70 times bigger. This will have profound impact on the people and the planet. From a UN report, there is now a 40 percent chance that global temperatures will temporarily reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the next five year. It is expected that La Nina weather phenomenon will develop between September and November but tends to be affected by global warming. The WMO Chief Petteri Taalas warned in a statement that even if a La Nina event does develop, its cooling signal will not be enough to counter balance the impact of human-induced climate change. Furthermore, research on the vicious circle of warming stated that, the loss of billions of tons of ice from Earth’s frozen spaces is likely to increase global temperatures by an additional 0.4 degrees Celsius. Likewise, researchers have looked into the recorded deaths that occurred during summertime’s & implicated them on the impact of climate change crises. According to recent research more than one in three heat-related deaths can be pinned on climate change crises.

Moreso, climate change in itself is a pandemic. Due to the incidences of heatwaves, there has been closure of schools and businesses – having a negative impact on the economy too. In Nigeria, we are now experiencing an unprecedented new trend of the climate crisis – abduction as majority of these come with huge ransom which invariably means that, as people are losing their livelihoods due to adverse effect of global warming, the more our society is becoming vulnerable to insecurity because it increases the rate of crimes. Nigeria hosts the bulk of the migrants from the Lake Chad region including the highest displaced persons. This exact pressure on the limited natural resource as migrants move north central leading to increase in crime as well as the rise of insurrectionists - including it surrounding countries.  From Klamath Basin to Lake Chad region, intense increase in temperature is drying up water bodies from different continents. Unfortunately, as climate change fuels ever worsening drought communal tensions arise. In North America where Klamath Basin is located, water has long been a source of contention in the basin putting farmers against other who rely on the resources including local nature America tribes. Like in Klamath Basin, so is the Lake Chad basin reeling from the impact of adverse effect on increasing temperature. The Lake Chad basin has lost more than 90% of its biomass since 1960s; leading to increasing communal tension. One of the causes of Boko Haram crises is climate change induced as million of livelihoods are disrupted due to drying up of the lake. These crises have spread out from the North eastern part of Nigeria to other zones. The loss of vegetative land in other part of Africa has led to farmer-herdsmen conflict leading to loss of live. Natural disaster such as cyclone, extreme drought & low agricultural productivity has been a driver to mass migration to the Americans and Northern Europe. The negative impact of climate change on mass migration cannot be over-emphasized.

According to IPCC, the greatest single impact of climate change will be on human migration. Nearly 600,000 people for the Honduras, Guatemala & Nicaragua have displaced last year due to hurricane Eba & Iota. In the Lake Chad region more than 10.7 million have been displaced due to effect of climate change crises. On March 14, 2019, tropical cyclone Idai struck the Southeast coast of Mozambique. The UN commission for refugee reported that 1.85 million people were internally displaced. In 2018, the word bank estimated that three region (Latin America, sub Saharan Africa & Southeast Asia) will generate 143 million more climates migrates by 2050. It has been stated that whether in terms of limited access to clean water, food scarcity, agricultural degration or violent conflict, climate change will intensify their challenges & be significant push factor in human migration patterns.

Climate change crises have shown itself as a major disaster difficult for humans to quarantine or isolate. If you are not negatively impacted from the effects of climate change, your next generation might be. IPCC has set a timeline of 2050 as a year of no return for its disastrous impacts on humans. Do not wait until then. It may be too late.