Recently I have been asking myself exactly what happened in October 2019. The rage unleashed, the tear gas in the air, the eyes mutilated by the police, the territorial assemblies, the banging against saucepans. The open-air museum that the walls of Santiago de Chile turned into: new constitution or nothing. Our legacy will be to erase your legacy. Until dignity becomes customary.

I have experienced many social mobilisations in my life. I was 14 years old when I first took to the streets to protest against Chile’s unequal teaching system. As a journalist, I covered the fight for the recovery of water in Petorca, the massive marches against the privatised pension system providing payments below the poverty line, the feminist mobilisations of 2018.

Each one ended, in one way or another, clashing with Chile’s 1980 constitution, inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship: the constitutional court barring progressive changes; the text itself, the only in the world that guarantees private water rights and the need for a two-third majority in Congress to change anything in the constitution.

For 30 years, Chile was held up as an example of economic growth and democratic stability in a highly conflicted region. But inequalities and extractivism deepened in a model focussed on high economic profits and low environmental protection, as Chilean political scientist Pamela Poo says.

Now, we are about to begin a constituent assembly. For the first time in our history, it will not be elite white men writing the constitution. It will be teachers, women, indigenous people: the real Chile. In the midst of the climate crisis and a global pandemic, the country has the chance to restructure its social contract as human beings, how we conceive the territory, how we relate to nature.

The different faces of a constitution

The country of Chile has more than six thousand kilometers of coastline. It is a long, narrow strip of land.

Chile and its neighbours Argentina and Bolivia together hold 85% of the world's lithium reserves. A few weeks ago, days before being elected with the highest vote in the region as a constituent in the new assembly by the city of Antofagasta, I spoke with Cristina Dorador, a microbiologist and expert in the microbial life of the salt flats, about how the economic calculation is to exploit100% of these ecosystems. His position is clear: “I hope that we do not become a territory that destroys itself to satisfy the demands of the northern hemisphere. Climate change is not going to stop because they have electric cars.”

We are the most centralised country in Latin America, but we still have an enormous diversity of climates, territories, peoples and conflicts. A few years ago, after more than a thousand children suffered massive poisoning in Quintero and Puchuncaví, we became accustomed to talking about the “sacrifice zones”.

These sacrifice zones led the “yes” votes for a new constitution in the referendum last October. And it is perhaps the people of Tocopilla and Mejillones, where Chile’s coal-fired thermoelectric plants are concentrated and the chances of developing a malignant tumour are 2.7 times higher than in the rest of the country, who want a radical change more than anyone else. Or at least to have the option to decide what happens in their territory.

Petorca is another example. Avocado capital of Chile, it is also the origin of Modatima, an organisation for the defense of water that popularised the slogan that accompanied the country's mega-drought: "It's not drought, it's looting." A study established that 50% of the Petorca river drought can be attributed to mismanagement: overexploitation of the rights which give favour to private interests alongside outright theft of water. Modatima took a leap in the last elections. One of the organisation’s founders, Carolina Vilches, became a member of the constituent assembly and another, Rodrigo Mundaca, the new governor of Valparaíso. Both have received death threats. Chile has refused to sign the Escazú Agreement, which seeks to guarantee access to justice for environmental defenders in Latin America.

In the elections we had for the first time seats reserved for indigenous peoples in the constituent assembly. Francisca Linconao, a traditional Mapuche leader, received the most votes for the Mapuche's seat in the assembly. Linconao’s own history mirrors a 500 year long conflict that remains without resolution. In 2009, she won a lawsuit using the International Labour Organization’s 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention to protect a local native forest against the advance of the forestry industry. Then came the worst: the state accused her of terrorism for orchestrating a fire that ended in the death of two settlers in the area. She was jailed and went on hunger strike. She was later acquitted of all crimes.

The last elections were a debacle for the politics of the past 30 years. The right wing, which currently governs Chile with businessman Sebastián Piñera as our president, did not get the third it hoped for to block radical changes. The traditional center-left came in behind the left-wing coalition formed by the Frente Amplio (“Broad Front”) and the Communist Party. 

Overall, 77 elected constituents out of 155 come from lists that say they will push for radical changes to the neoliberal system: 92% want to guarantee access, protection and distribution of water as a fundamental human right, 41% want to establish an national energy system which guarantees equal access to clean and pollution-free energy, and 70% are in favour of Chile officially becoming an plurinational state.

Academics Antoine Maillet and Francisco Martínez have identified 21 members as the “ecologist bench”. They are people who not only say they agree with the protection of the environment, but have histories marked by socio-environmental conflicts.

One proposal on the table considers reordering  the country according to the 101 hydrographic basins in order to confront Chile’s water crisis. Another is to appoint an environmental ombudsman who would be in charge of enforcing the newly enshrined constitutional rights  and help to avoid what happened in Ecuador and Bolivia, where the letter of the constitution has not been sufficient to protect the environment. A further proposal looks at how to reveal the ecosystem services provided by forests, glaciers, rivers and others in order to establish environmental limits to private property.

Since a group of students decided to jump the turnstiles and say "it's not about 30 pesos, it's about 30 years", major mobilisations have also taken place in Peru and Colombia. 

Latin America, it seems, is taking new pathways.

Francisco Parra is a Chilean freelance environmental journalist. He worked as editor in chief in El Desconcierto and is co-founder of the environmental media outlet MediAmbiente. He also works for Climate Tracker. Follow him on Twitter at @frparrag.

This post was translated from Spanish by Jocelyn Timperley.

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

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Colapso - Dromómanos

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Las mujeres que le ganaron al desierto - Isabela Ponce, GK

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What else I’m reading

“The ecological collapse has already arrived: a compass to get out of evil (development)”

I am immersed in this recent book by Argentine authors Maristella Svampa and Enrique Viale. It is a guide for anyone who wants to jump right into the uncomfortable discussions about ecological collapse that we urgently need to have.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romerois an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

On 15 April, the Philippines submitted its updated national climate pledge to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

These pledges, officially called NDCs, capture the national plan and actions of countries to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Philippines, known for being vulnerable to extreme and slow onset weather events, vowed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030, relative to its business-as-usual (BAU) levels.

The new pledge is a slight increase on the previous 70% reduction against 2030 BAU emissions that the country pledged in 2015. This pledge was already compatible with a lower than 2C world, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Most of the emissions cuts (72%) of the new pledge are conditional, meaning they will only be achieved with the assistance and support of other countries — the big emitters in particular — in the form of climate finance and technology transfer. Just 3% is unconditional, meaning the Philippines will meet this reduction target on its own. 

But no matter where the funds come from, it is absolutely essential to ensure the Filipino people and workers are brought along in this transition.

No one should be left behind

Reporting on these UN climate pledges, which were in theory due at the end of 2020, often centres on how ambitious a target is.

This is of course a salient point, considering that countries need to prevent a race-to-the-bottom on emissions in order to avert climate catastrophe. 

But while we talk about the numbers, I hope we can talk about the lives behind the target too. By this, I’m referring to the people from the specific sectors and industries where the carbon emissions will be mainly slashed. 

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These sectors will be agriculture, waste, industry, transport and energy. Looking at these, it’s safe to say the transition to clean energy will have an immense impact on everyone from farmers and coal miners to waste collectors and drivers of public transport. Earning minimum wages, these people are the ones both vulnerable to climate change and the potential job cuts in the transition to clean energy, if done unjustly. 

To illustrate what I mean, allow me to go back to the debacle brought by the order in 2017 of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to phase out the Filipinos’ main form of public transport, the jeepneys.

Jeepneys are modelled after the American military jeeps, with the vehicle’s bodies painted with colorful designs. They can seat 10-12 people and have been the go-to form of public transport for the everyday Filipino commuter.

Duterte wanted them to be replaced with a modernised version of the same vehicle, those that are Euro-4 compliant or are running on electric engines. 

The jeepney drivers, some of whom have been depending on this source of livelihood for 30 years, have been holding transport strikes since February 2017 because Duterte said the replacement of jeepneys that are 15 years and older should be made within two years, by 2020, no ifs or buts. The deadline, however, has not been met with the onslaught of COVID-19, but the order to have them replaced soon stays in place.

Duterte told the protesting jeepney drivers then, in the vernacular - “You're poor? Suffer hardship and hunger, I don't care,” with his usual expletives. 

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I interviewed these drivers back in 2019, and what’s worth stressing from these conversations was that the drivers told me they don’t oppose the shift to clean energy per se. They know that jeepneys have contributed to pollution and run on dirty fuel, namely gas and diesel.

What they want is to be given the subsidies necessary to switch to cleaner vehicles and the time to do it gradually. After all, we’re talking of hundreds of thousands of jeepney drivers whose families will be affected by an abrupt loss of a source of income. 

What the pandemic portends

When the pandemic struck in 2020 and the Philippines was placed under a lockdown, the jeepneys were prohibited from plying the roads. The country’s “king of the road” suddenly was king no more. 

Consider this reality when transitioning to clean energy and when thinking of climate impacts. It is a similar story for many other workers who are at the bottom rung of the labour force from these sectors. They must be trained for skills that will make them employable for green jobs.

The transition should be inclusive and just. Make this move more pro-people. 

I hope the Philippine government remembers this as the country endeavours to reach its climate target. The numbers should be ambitious, the climate actions humane.  

As young leaders from Climate Reality Philippines said in reaction to the NDC target “this mitigation target must be met through a just transition to renewable energy, ensuring that the most affected people will not be left behind.”

If we focus on improving the future for all, in ensuring that workers equitably benefit from a green deal, we will be able to get the support we need from the public so we can reach the NDC target. The people will see that it’s not just about the numbers, but about lives, ultimately.

Must reads from the region:

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For South Korea’s ‘youngest sea women,’ warming seas mean smaller catch , Hyun YoungYi and Josh Smith, Reuters

Warmer waters and ocean desertification have made it more difficult for the haenyeo, or sea women, to gather seafood.

Asia-Pacific, the Gigantic Domino of Climate Change, Vitor Gaspar and Chang Yong Rhee, The IMF Blog

A green deal in Asian economies can do wonders in reducing global emissions.

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I’m currently trying to finish Bad Science, a book which dispels myths and fantastical claims made by pseudo-science.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romerois an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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A carbon neutral India is a dream that few have dared to entertain - until now. A fast growing, coal-driven economy, India is adding more renewables to its energy basket by the day, but shows little sign of letting go of coal, which currently makes up for 70% of the total mix.

India is the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US. A full decarbonisation of its economy is both important to curb global climate change and politically smart for India, which wants to match the ambitions of China, the US and other major economies. Last week, reports suggested that the government was taking the idea seriously, planning to announce a net zero target by 2050 or 2047, to mark one hundred years from British independence. But just yesterday news emerged that the plan may not even be on the table after all. 

The loud debate sparked in India by what is effectively  a series of contrasting rumours, at least for now, may seem futile. Two dense research papers modelling what it would take to get to net zero by 2050 in the country were released back to back; countless opinion pieces were penned about an announcement that may never come.

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Lessons from net zero dreams

But the simple possibility of such fast, drastic energy transition has put into sharper focus a detail that activists all over the world seem to forget: revolutions come at a price, and it’s never the rich and privileged who pay it. India’s poor have the tiniest carbon footprint, but are also disproportionately dependent on polluting industries, such as informal waste management, construction work - responsible for a significant amount of urban air pollution - and coal. 

The country is home to half a million coal miners, who are already starting to suffer as Indian coal giants start to shut down the smallest, least productive sites. “It's easy to say that many more new jobs in solar will be created, which is true,” says Vaibhav Chaturvedi, an economist with the non profit Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in Delhi, and author of an analysis on potential net zero pathways for India. “But that's a very different skill set,” he explains. “Solar jobs are much more technical in nature, even if it’s just a matter of mounting solar panels. Indian mining is not a high-tech form of mining at all, it’s very labour intensive because [here] labour is cheap”.

The Indian Railways are another coal dependent giant which Chaturvedi says would hugely suffer from a sudden move away from fossil fuels. 

With 1.4 million workers, the government-owned company is one of the largest employers in the world, and keeps India moving - providing an essential service to the millions who don’t own a car and can’t afford a plane ticket. In air conditioned carriages passengers enjoy a 12 hour journey for around $15, but in more modest back carriages the same distance will cost around $4. 

“Coal is a big component of the Indian railways’ revenue,” Chaturvedi says. “It has exclusive rights for hauling coal from the mine mouth to all industries across the country, especially to the power plants.” Revenue from coal transportation in turn helps cross subsidise passenger traffic, and “the moment you take out coal, you have taken out a very big income stream from them”. 

Experts in India suggest a different approach. Instead of going for an overhaul of the entire economy, they recommend targeting the more polluting sectors first, including steel and iron production, and coal power. Instead of shutting them down, India should look for ways to remove as much carbon as possible from their production chain, replacing fossil fuels with clean energy. 

The cruel irony of climate change

In a cruel catch-22, the poorest and marginalised in India are also those who are bound to suffer the most from the impacts of climate change. A recent study found that deadly heat waves will become more common across South Asia even in a best case scenario in which global warming is kept within 1.5C above pre industrial levels., Should temperatures reach 2C or more - a threshold that we are currently on track to breach - their occurrence will nearly triple. 

It’s not hard to tell who will be damaged the most - people who work outdoors and those who don’t have access to air conditioning and plenty of freshwater to drink. In India, this means tens of millions of people, from farmers and street vendors to construction workers.

The debate over net zero in India may or may not lead to a formal climate pledge, but it has shown us the paradox that comes with simple, catchy solutions for our warming planet. On the one hand, addressing climate change is an imperative that India, one of the countries more at risk from climate change, takes very seriously - to the point of contemplating unrealistic goals. On the other hand, as a developing economy and the world's second most populous country, it has too much to lose to embark in haphazard endeavours just to appease its international partners.

Must reads from the region:

Bangladesh at 50: Why climate change could destroy my ancestral home, Qasa Alom, BBC - A British-Bangladeshi embarks on a journey to his motherland, where he is struck by the brutal impacts of climate change in Bangladesh, an extremely vulnerable country that a local scientist describes as “God's laboratory for natural disasters”.

Crisis in the Himalayas: climate change and unsustainable development - Benjamin Parkyn, Financial Times - The disastrous flood that hit the northers state of Uttarakhand last month has brought into focus what locals and scientists say is a crisis unfolding in the Himalayas, an explosive cocktail of climate change and aggressive road and dam building in geologically unstable terrain.

Unfair trade barriers will hinder climate consensus - Charmi Mehta, Down to Earth - A developing world perspective on carbon border agreements. In this piece, the author argues that these deals “are in many ways modern instruments of imperialism that punish developing nations for making slower progress towards greening their economies,” and that for many countries the “transition to coal may not be a matter of choice”.

What else I am listening to:

I can’t wait to dive into the second season of Atmospheric Tales, a podcast delving into the multifaceted realities of climate change from hard science and communication, to peacemaking and religion. Every episode pairs up an expert with a keen interviewer, and every season features a bouquet of truly diverse voices from all over the world.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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In January 2021, Rahmad Mulyadi decided to flee his house, along with his family, after seeing his two daughters shivering in their bed due to strong winds and the gush of cold floodwater. Incessant rains had caused massive flooding, and knee-deep water had reached their house. 

“I did not dare see my daughters shivering," the 49-year-old farmer told us by phone.

Limamar Village, in Astambul District, where Mulyadi lives, was one of the areas in South Kalimantan most affected by the flooding. Outside Mulyadi’s house, water rose  to waist level as rains continued nonstop for two days. 

The floods killed 21 people and forced more than 20,000 residents to flee their homes. Mulyadi and his family evacuated to Banjarbaru city,  an hours drive from his village. They stayed for 12 days at the shelter. Banjarbaru was one of just a few local cities that were not ravaged by the flash floods.

Mulyadi said that flash floods are not something common in his village. The last time they happened was 14 years ago, in 2006, he says. At that time, the water level went no higher than their knees. 

When flash floods happened for about three straight days in January this year,  rainfall reached 300 mm/day, exceeding the extreme limit of 150 mm/day, according to data released by Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG). The average rainfall in January in the area last month reached a staggering 394 mm/day. 

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Indroyono Soesilo, previously director of fisheries and aquaculture resources at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and now deputy senior minister for Indonesia’s welfare ministry, wrote back in 2014 how global warming could affect the country’s precipitation patterns.

“Global warming takes its course in Indonesia with surface temperatures increasing from 0.2 to 0.3C per decade,” he wrote. “This impacts precipitation patterns, causing a wetter climate in Sumatra and Kalimantan but drier seasons in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara. Decreased rainfall during critical times of the year may increase high drought risk, while increased rainfall during already wet times of the year may lead to high flood risk.”

Arie Rompas, the leader of forest campaigners of Greenpeace Indonesia, said South Kalimantan among the many parts of the earth where the climate has drastically changed. Conversion including deforestation has worsened the impact of climate change.

“The heavy rainfall comes while the environment is deteriorating due to massive exploration by palm plantation and mining industry and farming activities,” he says. “The environment can not contain the water.”

Forests and mining

Indonesia, one world’s top carbon emitters in large part due to its land-use emissions, has also continued to aggressively promote mining,  an industry which experts and environmental groups said has contributed to the decrease in Indonesia’s forest cover.

The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), a non- government group, says that the forest area in South Kalimantan has declined because of mining. Kisworo Dwi Cahyono, executive director of Walhi in South Kalimantan, said there have been 814 mining pits dug by some 157 mining companies in this area. While some of the mining companies left already, many mining pits remain unreclaimed or not rehabilitated.

Overall, half of the 3.7 million hectares of land in South Kalimantan are controlled by mining or palm plantation companies.

“We have voiced that South Kalimantan is in an emergency of ecology disaster,” Cahyono said. “Fifty percent of the total land has been divided to this — 33% for mining, 17% for palm plantation.”

But the government seems to neglect or ignore this reality. 

Lana Saria, the environmental director at the Indonesian Ministry of energy and mineral resources has defended the mining industry. In January, she argued that the 212 permits granted to mining companies in South Kalimantan covers no more than 14% of South Kalimantan’s land.

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“Land clearing in South Kalimantan happened just on a small scale,” she said.

Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo also did not mention deforestation in his response to the disaster. He blamed 10 days of rainfall for the inability of the Barito river, the watershed in South Kalimantan, to contain the water.

In normal days, the river can contain 230 million cubic meter of water, he said. But the heavy rainfall in January exceeded 2.1 billion cubic meter of water, which was cited as the main cause of the flash floods in some areas in South Kalimantan.

Deforestation

Bambang Hero, a forestry expert from the Bogor Agricultural University, does not agree however. He said that extreme weather is just one of the factors that caused the floods in South Kalimantan. It was deforestation which compounded its effects, exacerbating the disaster.

He said that while heavy rainfall increased the water level in rivers, the flash floods in South Kalimantan ultimately showed that the Barito River watershed can no longer hold as much water as it used to because of reduced forest cover.

The Barito River watershed can usually take up 238 million cubic meters of water. But due to the high rain intensity, the river was overwhelmed with two billion cubic meters of water, the environment ministry said. 

“I think it gives a glimpse of ecosystem interference in South Kalimantan, especially in its watershed area,” Hero tells us. “And the rain was just a trigger.”

Bambang referred to data from Indonesia's National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN). The agency’s data shows the number of primary and secondary forest, shrubs and rice fields in the Barito river watershed area has shrunk in the last 10 years. An estimated 13,000 hectares of primary forest have been lost, and 116,000 hectares of secondary forest. 

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The government has recently changed its tune, the police have said they are now considering probing coal mining companies for their alleged contribution to deforestation.

But Mulyadi, who has come back to his house after staying 12 days at the shelter due to the disaster, said the government also needs to reclaim and reforest the areas used for open pit mining as soon as possible.

“If they are not reclaimed it will trigger other disasters.”

Johanes Hutabarat is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta. He writes about society and the environment.

Aryo Bhawono is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta. He writes about politics, corruption, and environment.

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others

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Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is a climate and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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When I became an environmental reporter in 2017, I thought I’d have a break from the violent news I had to cover as a justice reporter in Colombia. I was wrong. In the last four years, I’ve seen how violence against environmental and social leaders keeps escalating. 

After occupying the third and second places in Global Witness’ “deadliest countries for environmental leaders” list in 2017 and 2018, in 2019, my home country, Colombia, became the deadliest place on Earth for those who defend nature. I knew things were bad. But when in January of this year, that violence reached an 11-year-old environmental leader, it felt like we were descending towards a new, darker path as a society. 

On January 17, Francisco Vera Manzanares received a death threat on his Twitter account after he asked the president to guarantee internet access to all children in the country so that they could go to school during the pandemic.

“This is a symptom of a society that has completely lost its understanding of humans rights,” says Lourdes Castro García, director of Somos Defensores, a non-profit which studies the threats that human rights leaders face in Colombia. “The fact that an 11-year-old is threatened instead of admired for his deep understanding of human rights shows how stigmatized human rights advocacy is in this country.”

Public youth

Vera became a public figure in 2019, when he spoke in front of the Colombian senate. A few months earlier, he and six other children from his fourth-grade class started the activist group Guardianes por la Vida (Guardians for Life) to bring attention to environmental problems in their home town, from water pollution to the mistreatment of animals. In their first protest, they marched from Vera’ house to the central square of his home town in central Colombia, picking up waste. Vera’s grandmother followed them to make sure nothing bad happened –after all, they were just kids. 

Vera’s activism was partially inspired by his mum, Ana María Manzanares, a feminist and animal rights advocate. His father wasn’t always supportive. “My dad told me, ‘son, think about this, people might think badly of you because of this,” Vera recalls. “But when he saw the video my grandma took of me giving a speech that no one listened to [he laughs], he got me a megaphone.”

Guardianes por la Vida started growing slowly. Now it has 220 members all over Colombia, 40 members in Mexico, 20 in Argentina, and ten in Venezuela. The pandemic made Vera realize the harsh conditions other kids face. “One of our members lives in a house that has no internet; he doesn’t have a mobile phone either. So one of the older members in his city has to go all the way to the kid’s home so we can talk,” Vera explains. Other kids from indigenous communities are having the same issues. This reality is what partially inspired the tweet that got him threatened.

Outside the radar

The threat against Vera caused a national and international uproar. Michelle Bachelet, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, sent Vera a letter expressing her support. On February 24, the European Union made him a goodwill ambassador.

But not all young activists have the same luck. Unfortunately, as Castro explains, most of the environmental leaders in the country fight hyper-localized battles which leaves their cases outside everyone’s radar. 

“The worst part is that the official version always attributes the violence to drug trafficking or armed groups in the regions, but that’s just too simplistic,” Castro says. “Often times, a [youth] leader is a pebble in the shoe for a very particular web of interests.”

That’s the case of the young leaders from AguaWil. They oppose the arrival of fracking to their town, Puerto Wilches, a village on the banks of the Magdalena river heavily hit by the decades-long Colombian internal conflict. 

The group was founded in December 2020, and their protests consist mainly of painting street art, pacific marches across Puerto Wilches, plastering the town walls with posters, and meeting with people in remote rural settlements to explain the negative consequences of fracking.  In the three months they’ve done this work, five members of the group have received death threats. 

One of them, 20-year-old Natalia Morales, had to move out of town after a man entered her house one night and threatened her in front of her 8-year-old sister. Others have received phone calls. The day before one of the largest marches they’ve led, the group says that one of their core members had a gun pointed at her while walking down the street with her father. They told her not to go the march the following day, or she’ll face the “consequence for her actions.” She went anyway, “as an act of resistance,” Morales told me.

“This is a systematic attack, and it has made many kids scared,” Morales says. Many parents have asked –or straight-up forced– kids to stay away from the movement because of the town's violent past. “In my case, I had to leave [Puerto] Wilches because some members of my family started telling my father that I was going to get him killed because I was talking about fracking,” she explains.

A way out of this situation is not easy. Despite calls from the European Union and the UN, the Colombian government seem uninterested in protecting environmental and human rights advocates, says Castro. Almost all cases go cold before they’re solved. “This will not stop until the government actually tries to understand what’s going on,” she says.

Meanwhile, Vera and Morales told me it’s their intention to keep working. “I’m convinced that what we’re trying to do is good and important,” Vera told me. “Consciousness about these issues has arrived in Latin America, and we understand now that you can’t measure development using just one lens.” 

In early 2019, I marched on the streets of New York City alongside thousands of young climate activists that followed Greta Thunberg. In my reporting, I found that most of the climate strikes from 2019 took place in the northern hemisphere. “Where were the young environmental leaders from my region?,” I kept wondering, “Why didn’t they take the streets?” Now, after talking to Vera and Morales, I think I finally have an answer.  

María Paula Rubiano is a Colombian freelance science journalist. She started her career in El Espectador newspaper and in December 2020 graduated with a master’s degree from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting program. She is currently an early-career fellow at The Open Notebook. Follow her on Twitter at @pau_erre

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Must-reads from the region

In Ecuador, nine girls stopped Chevron-Texaco from burning natural gas near their communities in the Amazon forest, José Antonio Paz Cardona (@antoniopazc), Mongabay LatAm

In February, the Provincial Court of Sucumbíos ruled in favour of nine girls who argued that Chevron-Texaco was violating their right to a safe and healthy environment with 447 flares that burn natural gas all day, every day, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. But while the ruling is good news, it’s uncertain when or how the companies will turn off the flares. 

The story of a climate correspondent exiled from Bolivia because of his reporting against silver mining in a Unesco Humanity’s Heritage site, Juan José Toro (@Torojj), El País

The Potosí Hill, in the Bolivian Andes, is the world’s largest silver deposit, and was key in establishing Spain’s colonial power during the 1500s. In 1987, the hill was declared as a Unesco Humanity’s Heritage site worth preserving and restoring because of its historical significance. In this story, reporter Juna José Toro explains how his reporting on how silver mining is still destroying the site forced him into exile.

To save Colombia’s inland fisheries, researchers are listening fish songs,Daniela Quintero Díaz (@DanielaQuinterd), El Espectdor

Bocachicos are the most important freshwater fish for inland fisheries in Colombia. Still, climate change, hydropower development and water pollution have reduced catches of the species, endangering the livelihood and food security of millions. Researchers just described, for the first time, bocachico’s mating songs. With this information, they can now map the sounds of the rivers where bocachicos move, looking for key conservation hotspots. 

Understanding the illegal trafficking of Jaguar parts in Latin America,Yvette Sierra Praeli (@yvettesierra), Mongabay LatAm

Mongabay just published an interview with John Polisar, a biologist who has studied jaguar illegal trafficking in Latin America for over 20 years. In the interview, Polisar explains how the pandemic, the decline of Asian big cats, and human-jaguar conflicts are bringing the species to a dangerous low.  

What else I’m reading

If you want to gain a deeper understanding of what’s going on with environmental leadership in Latin America, I can’t recommend enough the collaborative effort called “Land of Resistants.”

In it, over 30 journalists from ten Latin American countries created the most comprehensive database about violence against environmental leaders in the region. Additionally, they’ve reported 29 individual stories on specific communities that deserve special attention. Do not miss them! Their stories are available in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romerois an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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I first met Mohamed Adow at the annual UN climate talks in Marrakech in 2016. COP22 (as it’s known) is probably best remembered for Donald Trump being elected smack bang in the middle of the conference. But many people worked tirelessly to ensure the conference didn’t get derailed.

Mohamed was a prominent voice who stuck to his aim --  to ensure developing countries that have done the least to cause climate change but face the worst impacts didn’t get forgotten about on the international stage. I was little more than a cub reporter at the time, but while much in demand working as Climate Policy lead for Christain Aid, Mohamed was always generous with his time and words, patiently explaining complex negotiating points. Such sources are invaluable to journalists desperately trying to fathom the ins and outs of the opaque negotiations, and I am forever grateful to him for his insight. 

Now, as Founder and Director of Power Shift Africa, Mohamed was recently awarded the prestigious, multi-million dollar, Climate Breakthrough prize to continue his groundbreaking work. He agreed to tell me his story and outline his vision for the continent. This is an edited transcript of our interview.

Mohamed, many thanks for agreeing to talk to me. For those that don’t know, could you just outline who you are, and what first piqued your interest in climate change?

I grew up in a pastoral community in the northeast of Kenya, a part of the country that has been ravaged by extreme weather events, including droughts. And growing up in northern Kenya gives you a certain clarity about the climate crisis; not the kind of thing that you learn abstractly, but a lived experience of your family, your neighbours. Everybody’s livelihoods getting destroyed by climate change.

At the beginning of 2000, there was a major drought in that part of the country that killed not just my father's herd, but destroyed my neighbours’ and everybody in that location’s livelihoods. After school, the first job I took was to distribute parcels of food to starving people, knowing that whatever supplies we provide them may actually keep them alive only until the next inevitable droughts. 

That challenged me and started bringing into question what it is that we’re doing as an international community. And the challenge that came to me was: if the best of the world, including humanitarian agencies, can provide our people, is food parcels to people affected by droughts and not address the root causes, then I needed to challenge that and change that.

So how did you face up to that challenge? 

My approach to the climate challenge was: how do we help these people actually articulate the problems that they're facing, but in the way that the rest of the world can take more seriously, and address at the source. 

A good part of my job at the beginning was just communicating that fact and appealing for more global cooperative action that allows us to bring together more countries and more voices so that we can actually address climate change. Christian Aid gave me a global platform when I moved to London in 2011, and then I worked on a series of international climate change issues such as the U.N. climate negotiations, where I was promoting the voice of the voiceless and climate vulnerable.

I realised we needed to engage decision makers at the highest level. We needed to ensure that we could show the human cost of climate change that the industrialised countries’ actions will actually cause so that poor people in developing countries, including children who have been hit hardest, can effectively get support. 

What made you decide to come back to Kenya? 

I felt my services were required much closer to home. And so I decided to come back to Nairobi and set up my own organisation, Power Shift Africa. We set it up to provide support to the African governments and African civil society organisations. I’m now trying to be much closer to the people of developing countries and help mobilise and create climate action in Africa.

We can help build the collective moral, economic and political voice of Africa so that we can exert pressure in the international community around climate action and help this continent transition away from dirty fossil fuels to renewables. We can also prioritise lifting the population that is currently poor out of poverty on the back of tapping the incredible potential of renewable energy that is available.

On a continent where many political decisions, such as the recent agreement to let the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline proceed, are based on short-term economic gains, how do you persuade leaders to embrace low-carbon development?

African policymakers can lift their people out of poverty while at the same time tackling climate change. They can do both things simultaneously and be able to deliver greater progress, greater prosperity, and clean air at the same time.

What I'm trying to do is create a vehicle that we can use to deliver a new compelling set of African voices that can make the case for rapid and equitable phase out of fossil fuels, and that can promote people-centred, social and environmentally appropriate, renewable energy investment. And for us to reclaim the notion of development in terms of well-being, equity and sustainability, rather than what the World Bank, for example, uses as its benchmark for short for development policy.

The biggest challenge we face on this continent is that we don't have African-owned, native, climate analysis. So we jump into the climate bandwagon based on what development partners tell us, and what the climate conferences tell us. Power Shift Africa can help this continent become not just informed, but one that recognises the urgency of climate change in a way that helps shift Africa’s direction. And in shifting its direction, it can carry the rest of the world with it. 

So we can grow this continent to become a leader. When we do that, we can build on that momentum so that Africa races ahead and becomes an example for other places to follow in their efforts to transition away from fossil fuels and into renewables.

You asked for what i’d change in one word, but i’ll give you two: African leadership.

Some argue that the most effective way to combat climate change is through economic development, even if it is driven by fossil fuels. What do you say to them?

This continent is fortunately incredibly blessed with renewable energy potential. If you take the vulnerability that Africa faces seriously, then you realise that to be able to keep it safe and allow it to continue to grow and prosper, we need to prevent the creation of coal, oil and gas. The way to do that is to end the exploration and production of fossil fuels, but also phase out all fossil fuels.

Now, if you go for such a thing, which effectively results in the non-proliferation of fossil fuels, then you need to provide an alternative. The alternative that we have is renewable energy. And so we need to foster green solutions and a just transition for every community, every worker, and every country.  We need to realise if we're going to be able to build adaptive capacity and limit the global temperature rise to a safe level, then we need to help this continent tap the clean energy resources that it has available. And these are currently largely untapped. 

There are, of course, fossil fuel lobbyists and laggards that would like to put Africa on a dirty fossil fuel path. They are looking for a new market because the rest of the world is moving away from fossil fuels. So we need to counter that and build political support and grassroots demand and try to motivate the kind of policies and investments that aim to advance renewable energy development through a shift away from fossil fuels. And the way to do that is to ensure we can have communities up in front of climate advocacy efforts.

Disclaimer: Mat Hope is Editor of DeSmog UK, and Mohamed Adow sits on the Board of Directors of DeSmog UK Ltd.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

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Must reads from the region:

Putting climate change at the center of Covid-19 recovery plan in Nigeria,  other Africa countries, Sam Onuigbo, Vanguard

The Nigerian government has shown its commitment to ‘building back better’ in its new Economic and Sustainability Plan, says a former chairman of the House Committee on Climate Change. Through its commitment to ending energy poverty through renewables and using indigenous materials for building, it shows Nigeria remains committed to sustainable growth despite the economic impact of COVID-19.

In West Africa, Climate Change Equals Conflict, Robert Muggah, Foreign Policy

By increasing food insecurity and accelerating displacement, climate change is becoming a key driver of conflict in West Africa, this report claims. Combine that with delicate ecosystems and pastoralists competing for new lands and you can see hotspots of conflict emerging from Burkina Faso, to Mali, to Nigeria. Natural climate solutions such as the continent’s Great Green Wall plan can help, but it’s unclear if they’ll be sufficient to counter the growing security impacts of climate change in the region.

Lessons from Africa on climate change adaptation, Declan Conway and Katherine Vincent, Carbon Brief

From Malawi to Zambia, new ways of gathering and sharing information are informing climate adaptation strategies. Here, two academics share case studies of innovative ways communities on the continent are adopting ‘participatory scenario planning’ and other risk methodologies to make the right adaptation choices.

A Surprise in Africa: Air Pollution Falls as Economies Rise, Shola Lawal, New York Times

Levels of dangerous nitrogen oxides in the northern part of sub-Saharan Africa have declined sharply as wealth and population in the area have increased, a new study has found. This goes against what is often assumed: that economic development means more pollution. The reason for the inversion of that expectation appears to be simple: As pollution from industry and transportation has increased, farmers have been burning less biomass to clear the land for planting -- a situation that isn’t guaranteed to continue.

What else I've been reading: 

The first factsheet in a series from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on climate insecurities, with this one focussing on Somalia. It’s a detailed analysis of how climate change is driving insecurity in an already unstable country. It says climate-related displacement is likely to significantly increase, and that armed groups like Al Shabaab can take advantage of climate impacts by positioning themselves as service and relief providers following droughts and floods. As the world is understandably distracted by the short-term challenge of tackling COVID-19, it is a sobering reminder of the long-term challenges some people face.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is a climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Clothes in Urmilla’s house go through a cycle. They change purpose and shape, and are allocated different space around the house. Once the garments are cherry picked from the stores, they are worn for several years and belong to the ‘almirah’ (the wardrobe). Then they undergo as many repairs as possible to keep them from becoming unwearable. After that they reach the “corner of the floor” stage— where they lie around as dusters and mops. And when they are finally completely useless, she turns them into art.

Urmilla Maurya learnt the art of converting old pieces of clothing into mats and rugs about three or four years ago. Sitting in one of the many unauthorised slum colonies of New Delhi — in Shyam Vihar, Najafgarh – Urmilla takes about 2-3 hours every week to finish one mat. “It dependson the size and design, but it's fun to make the mats”, says the 28-year-old. Urmilla is accompanied by other ladies on her street in making door or table mats and rugs from useless torn clothes. With precision they tear the cloth, turn them into long narrow strips, whirl them in a ball and use knitting needles to shape the mats.

Reducing waste

Some years earlier, before the community’s women discovered the art of textile recycling, , most of the clothes piled up in the empty plots of the colony. “We would just gather the piles of useless clothes and throw it with other waste in the empty plot, or use them to stuff our pillows,” chuckles 50-year-old Meera, another artist and resident of the colony. 

Most of the unauthorised colonies in Delhi co-exist with the filth, with no disposal unit for the rubbish they generate. Water from the drains spreads on the ground, garbage from kitchens and houses sits in piles at the street corners and eventually is burnt down to ashes when the area becomes too full. “This art at least saves the clothes from burning or [becoming] filth in the street. And since it gives a source of income, it adds icing on the cake,” says Tripti, who lives in Shyam Vihar and sells mats at a minimum price of 80 rupees ($1.1) 

By creating 8,700 tons of garbage each day, Delhi ranks second in India after only Mumbai for solid waste generation, according to the Central Pollution Control Board, a government pollution watchdog. “For the last few months, a van has been coming every morning to pick up the garbage,” informs Meera. However, all the waste produced  goes into the truck, with no segregation. Delhi has three waste to energy generation plants — in the Okhla, Ghazipur and Narela neighbourhoods, and one waste to compost plant is operational at Okhla. However, none of them has performed as expected.. 

India and other developing countries in Asia produce more organic and paper waste than most other nations, according to a World Bank report. This makes the combustion of waste difficult for the waste to energy plants, which perform best with dry materials that burn easily. Along with this, lack of proper management and  technological capacity means India is unable to utilise the wet organic waste to produce  manure or compost. In the absence of any waste segregation methods, the waste ends up on street corners or in the three giant landfills of Delhi — Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalswa. 

Textile is terrible

The textile industry releases about 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere annually. “Depending on the fabric and the microplastic used, a textile item can take anywhere from 5-15 years to decompose”, says Sahadat Hossain, director of the Solid Waste Institute for Sustainability at the University of Texas Arlington. Recent studies found that microfibers from synthetic plastic-based textiles such as polyester, nylon, acrylic as well as cotton clothes have reached as far as in the Arctic ocean. 

The textile industry has undergone tremendous change in the last two decades. With fast fashion becoming the trend, cloth production has doubled and clothes are worn 36% less as they used to be 15 years ago. “These local community initiatives are innovative and interesting, but for this to be successful, the volume has to increase,” informs Sahadat. “It is important that the communities are informed that their work is not only creative but also helps the world to be a better place.” he adds. “Communicating about the initiatives beyond their geographical region and making them talk of the town is how we address the component of social responsibility in climate change.” 

If the pieces of clothes were not converted into mats, they would likely end up in the garbage piles. According to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, about 90% of the waste produced in India is collected, but only 20% is recycled. The rest of the waste is either incinerated or added to the landfill. Garbage heaps such as the 65 metres tall Ghazipur, compete with the highest structure in Delhi— the Qutub Minar mosque, which stands 73 metres tall in one of the most elegant neighbourhoods of the capital city. 

The women of Shyam Vihar are unaware of terms like “waste management” and “climate change”, and they practice the artform of converting the waste clothes into mats as an age-old practice of reusing products as much as possible. Only a few decades back, many Indians and especially the middle class reused and recycled everything that they bought, from glass bottles to carton boxes. However, with the advent of fast fashion and adaptation to a more globalised world, what’s known in India as a “use and throw” culture is now widespread. With increasing wealth, a new  social stigma around reusing or recycling products is changing the way Indians  treat their waste. 

Initiatives based on the principle of a circular economy, like that developed by the women of Shyam Vihar, have immense potential to address the current waste management crisis of the city as a whole, both by reducing the waste at hand and also nudging behaviours, encouraging people to question whether the things they throw away are really waste after all.

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Monika is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. Her areas of focus are sustainability, environment and agriculture. More of her work can be found here.

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

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Must reads from the region:

Najafgarh jheel to nala — How Delhi and Gurugram ruined their second-largest waterbody, Ritu Rao, The Print

The Najafgarh jheel is the second largest water body in Delhi NCR after the Yamuna. But due to encroachment, sewage, canals, and negligence, it has shrunk from 220 to just 7 square kilometres.

Out Of Breath: The Ghazipur Landfill,  Sumit Krishna Yadav, The Bastion

In 2017, two lives were lost when part of the landfill collapsed; yet, it still exists and grows bigger by the day. On average, between 2500 and 3000 metric tonnes of garbage are dumped and left to rot here daily. 

Delhi's Air: Why Does No One Care About Unmanaged Waste?, Pratibha Sharma, EPW

While 94% of Delhi residents know that improper waste management causes pollution; the majority of residents of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation [area] and New Delhi Municipal Council believe that burning waste is safe as long as it is done outside the home. 

Mountain of waste in Aravallis casts a shadow in villages nearby, Hridayesh Joshi, Mongabay India

Bandhwari, one of the biggest landfills in north India is situated in an ecologically sensitive Aravalli forest region. Several hundred trees were cut for this landfill and a dug-out area – left after mining – was chosen to dump the solid waste. 

What else I've been reading: 

My companion these days is "The good girls" by Sonia Falerio — a story about two teenagers who were found hanging dead from a tree one fine morning in UP, India. For me, the pages unfurl how gender violence and environmental injustice are entangled.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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The drought at the end of 2012 is a sad story that will likely never be forgotten by residents of Patemon, a village at the foot of Mount Merbabu in Java, Indonesia. But it has also left them with insights they continue to carry today and are especially important since climate change could further reduce the availability of a fundamental resource: water. 

Climate change is already causing varying rainfall patterns , in turn affecting water availability in Indonesia, according to several experts interviewed for this piece. This could exacerbate the situation in Patemon, where residents, as far back as 2012, have already suffered from water shortages as springs started to dry up. 

In response, the villagers have implemented a simple but effective technology: the building of infiltration wells to store rainwater and thus replenish groundwater aquifers in dry periods. 

Their story can serve as an inspiration and reference for people everywhere as an adaptation effort to the impacts of global climate change.

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Declining water

Patemon, a village located around 750 metres above sea level, is inhabited by some 4,000 people who largely work as farmers and breeders. During the drought in 2012, Joko Waluyo, their community leader, began to hear complaints from residents about the lack of clean water.

The 60-year-old is responsible for managing the residents' access to potable water, both for their everyday food and drink and for the nourishment of their livestock. Joko tells me that he remembers very well how the people struggled and fought over clean water. Every time clean water supplies were delivered, it was only a matter of hours before people ran out of water again. About six to seven tanks of water, each with a capacity of 5,000 litres, were distributed every day.

The decline in spring and river water discharge in the Central Java region has reached an alarming level, according to Asep Mulyana, a water adaptation specialist at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

This is due in part to the land’s decreasing capacity to absorb and store rainwater, he says, but another aggravating factor is the effect of climate change on the frequency and volume of rainfall. 

Climate change can lead to drought in at least two connected ways in Patemon, says Rizaldi Boer, head of the climatology laboratory at Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia. By changing rainfall patterns, it can reduce the sources of water in the first place. At the same time, longer term changes can lead to a decline of water resources such as groundwaters which would otherwise provide a buffer to these periods of reduced rainfall. 

Joko says his village’s water shortage problem was the opposite of what he experienced as a child. The river then - which is 200 meters away from his house - was overflowing with water. He has never experienced drought as severe as the one seen in 2012. “I couldn’t just keep quiet, conditions could not be left like this,” he says.

Infiltration wells

In 2014, Joko decided to gather several village leaders to find a solution. They came up with an idea to make their own rainwater catchment by digging up a part of their own backyards. At the same time, the Qarryah Toyyibah Farmers Association (SPPQT) and water service and sanitation program run by USAID entered Patemon village and introduced the water conservation technology of building infiltration wells.

Infiltration wells are structures made to collect, capture and absorb rainwater. The wells in Patemon are two meters long, two meters wide, and two meters deep. The sides of the well are walled with bricks. On the floor of the well, a 30cm thick layer of gravel is placed and covered with palm fibre. The opening of the well is covered with concrete, so that the land above it can still be used as an open space. Rainwater enters through a special ditch, which passes into a control tub to filter rubbish and settle the sludge.

Such wells are one of the most inexpensive and efficient ways to increase groundwater sources. The water seeps into the aquifer, the layer of soil that can store water, and can be used during the dry season to fill shallow wells commonly used by the community. The water that is caught in this upstream area also increases the flow of the spring below to meet the needs of the people living downstream.

Patemon was the first place the technology was implemented in Central Java. Following its success, USAID's Indonesia Urban Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (IUWASH) project is now replicating water conservation programs through infiltration wells in 35 districts and cities throughout the rest of the country.

"This simple technology is very promising in restoring water sources. The infiltration wells made by the residents have a direct impact on the Senjoyo spring which is downstream from the village of Patemon," Mulyana from USAID said.

Fast benefits

Mulyana argues building infiltration wells is considered a more efficient way of conserving spring water than tree-planting. Within three years, real changes were felt by the community.

No more runoff water flows or stagnates in residents gardens because the rainwater is directed to the infiltration wells. Not all villagers were immediately on board with the idea of building wells across their land, Joko recalls. Some even asked for compensation for the land used for construction, he says. But thanks to a small group of early adopters, most changed their mind and started to appreciate the regenerative benefits of this simple technology.

“By 2020, there were 320 infiltration wells in Patemon village," says village head Puji Rahayu.

This water conservation movement was also followed by neighbouring villages, such as Tingkir, Need, Jetak, Noborejo, Kedungduren and Jethak. At least 870 infiltration wells have been built throughout the Tengaran District. 

The new water conservation technique has spread across the Mount Merbabu area, but can be replicated in many other parts of the world where the land is similarly flat and climate change poses similar challenges to the lives and livelihood of the locals.

When I visited Patemon around a year ago, I felt that the people there were now much more open-minded than six years before, when most of them effectively refused to build infiltration wells in their own yards. 

Their achievement is extraordinary, because they are thinking not only about the good of their own community, but also the future of the people living in the downstream areas.

Hartatik is an environmental journalist from Indonesia. She writes for the local news site Suara Merdeka. In 2018 and 2019, she was awarded a reporting grant for Asia Pasific from the Earth Journalism Network. 

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Share From a Climate Correspondent

Must reads from the region

Bali’s Kuta Beach faces ‘grave’ erosion, Sigit Purwono, Hanggar Prasetio, and Komang Robby Patria, Ekuatorial

According to data from the local authority, about 230 kilometres of the 633 kilometre coastline in Bali has been lost to erosion, with development and climate impacts contributing factors. The Bali administration has built embankments but experts fear these efforts are only temporary solutions.

Palm oil plantations, coal mines linked to deadly Indonesia flood,  Hans Nicholas Jong, Mongabay Indonesia

Activists say heavy floods in early January in southern Indonesian Borneo could have been exacerbated by widespread deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines in recent decades. 

Indonesia braces for more weather disasters. Climate crisis will make them worse, The Jakarta Post, Budi Sutrisno

The series of weather disasters Indonesia experienced in early January could indicate that the country faces an increased risk of hydrometeorological hazards amid the ongoing climate crisis.

Indonesia gets U.N. funds to fight climate change, deforestation, Reuters

Indonesia has received an injection of cash from the United Nations Green Climate Fund to help reduce carbon emissions and tackle forest fires at a time when the country has had to scale back spending in the area due to coronavirus budget pressures.

What else I’ve been reading

Not only is there a lot of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and other issues, you even have to be careful about reading science articles from well-known publications. I find this 2020  article from The Conversation useful in adding resources that can help you spot fake news and understand which sources to trust.

In my spare time, I pursue photography and cooking as my hobbies. I am currently in the mood for the popular TV series Grey's Anatomy: if you need some light relief, check it out. 

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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For me, walking through La Sabana is like travelling back in time.

La Sabana is Costa Rica’s main metropolitan park, in the centre of its capital, San José. This was one of the places I most frequented while growing up, but it feels different now. The soil is drier.

Today, I marched through the football fields, where I celebrated my 11th birthday with a friendly match. I passed by the hills where I used to hang around with my cousins on summer holidays. After walking for a few minutes, I came back to the present.

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In front of me, a puddle of water lay in the centre of an empty lake. The structure is there, like an empty container, but the water is missing. After years of droughts, this has become the standard view of this lake during the dry season.

Climate connections?

It wasn’t always this way. Growing up in the 2000s, I used to visit this lake with my grandparents during summer holidays in January. We would buy loaves of bread and feed ducks of all colours and sizes. Boats even took people for rides around the lake.

The lake first dried up back in 2013. The west side of the lake started to lose water during the dry season, leaving a large part of the bottom exposed. Then, during 2015’s El Niño event, the lake went completely dry. This happened again during 2019’s El Niño. These events cause extremely dry conditions and they may be getting stronger because of climate change.

As I write this, I’m standing in front of the empty lake. By now, it’s part of the landscape during the dry season. There are no formal studies in this particular lake, but climate change may well be driving its drought, and may mean it gets worse in the future, Hugo Hidalgo, director of the Center of Geophysical Research at the University of Costa Rica, later tells me.

Hidalgo’s concerns are not due to an expected lack of rainfall:  in fact, climate models show a lack of rainfall in this part of the country happening only at the very end of the century.

The problem, says Hidalgo, is the rising heat. Models have shown temperatures in the area could increase by 3C to 4C compared to pre-industrial times, he says. When the atmosphere heats up, it starts to absorb more water. “Imagine the atmosphere getting thirsty. It absorbs water from the ground and makes it drier. Vegetation ends up more arid.”

Urban adaptation

In cities like San José, these arid conditions could end up altering the urban landscape to a more yellowish vegetation. It may also contribute to drying up small lakes like La Sabana’s, as well as rivers, aquifers and other sources of water.

To face these new conditions, cities will have to adapt. La Sabana’s lake, for example, depends only on rainfall for its water; it's forbidden to use drinking water to fill it up. But some scientists have now proposed the use of nearby rivers as a  water source during the dry season. The park administration has said that another possibility is connecting the lake to underground wells. But no formal plan is yet being implemented.

La Sabana is not the only park in Costa Rica with this issue. La Paz park’s lake, which lies on the eastern side of San José and is another recreational hotspot for urban citizens, also went completely dry in recent summers. Here, it was first recorded to happen in 2018.

This may seem like just an aesthetic problem, but healthy recreational parks have become more important as the climate crisis progresses. Green infrastructure such as city lakes can help cool down urban areas from increasing heat.

But, for me at least, this also has emotional implications. I did not expect to feel a sort of nostalgia coming back, nor anticipate feeling so saddened to witness the degradation of one of my childhood’s favourite places.

As I left the spot where a few months ago a big body of water had stood in the heart of Costa Rica’s largest urban park, I now saw a small group of pigeons, scrambling in between the muddy ponds in their search for water.

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Sebastián writes about climate and biodiversity issues from San José, Costa Rica. Find him on twitter @sebastianrodvar.

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

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Must reads from the region

Lithium's grays, Yasna Mussa, Revista Late 

Lithium is a fundamental component of the batteries in electric vehicles. However, mining activity for this element relates to a dictatorship in Chile and environmental impacts in the Atacama desert.

Family men or forest destroyers? Meet the miners living off the Amazon's gold, Lucas Landau and Fabio Teixeira, Thomson Reuters Foundation News

Reporters Lucas Landau and Fabio Teixeira accompany a group of illegal gold miners for an extraction trip in the Amazon. The miners describe themselves as family men supporting their families.

Land of Resistants, Andrés Bermúdez and other writers, Tierra de Resistentes

A group of over 70 journalists from all over Latin America set out to track all of the attacks on environmental defenders in the region. They find special impunity for crimes against black and indigenous minorities.

What else I’ve been watching

I'm reading David Quammens' The Tangled Tree, which tells the story of how a group of scientists redefined the history of life with the discovery of Archaea, a brand new domain of living beings. He manages to tell a very human story behind the scientific breakthrough, while explaining extremely complex concepts with very simple words.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter exploring the climate crisis from around the globe run by four journalists. We regularly feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Willis Omulo,a flood victim and climate change activist at Aluora Makare CBO poses in what used to be his compound. Behind him are submerged houses in Chuowe Village. Credit: Leopold Obi.

After spending months strapped under water, buildings that once defiantly stood along Chuowe Beach in Homabay, on the Kenyan shore of Lake Victoria, now seem set to surrender to the unlikely fate of never being inhabited again. Those that called the semi-permanent structures home would have loved to have kept living there, but apocalyptic floods made their choice for them.

The rising waters began in early 2020, and more than 200,000 people were displaced in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania - the three countries relying on the Africa’s largest fresh water body. According to the Lake Victoria Basin Commission, the lake hit a new record level of 13.42 metres – marginally higher than the 13.41 metre mark recorded in 1964.

The rains in the region were unusually heavy due to the Indian Ocean Dipole, a weather phenomenon caused by differences in sea surface temperatures between the eastern and western tropical Indian Ocean, according to Dr. Lydia Olaka, a geoscientist at the University of Nairobi,.

More than a year on from the worst flooding, many people remain without a home, or any sense that help is coming.

Washed away

“The flash floods were so fast and strong that we only rescued our children and a few belongings. Everything else was lost,” Alice Kiche, a fish dealer and mother of eight from Chuowe village, told me.

Her two-bedroom bricked house was marooned and destroyed by the floods.

On that night, she recalled, everyone was comfortably asleep, and nothing out of the ordinary was anticipated. Then suddenly the lake swelled, before furiously tearing its ways into the homes and farms that sat nearby. Her poultry and 13 cows were drowned by the ravaging floods that shook the village.

The villagers thought the floods would disappear in a week or two. But more than a year later, Kiche and her three daughters-in-law remain without a permanent place to call home.

“We were staying in a classroom at a nearby school. But moved out when schools reopened,” she explains, adding that all her plots have been swallowed by the new part of the lake.

Before the floods, the beach was a very a lively spot, a fish landing bay and a convenient market for dealers like Kiche. Yet now it has been submerged by waist-high waters, sinking all the business in the process.

It’s not just those that rely on the lake for their livelihoods that have been affected. Like Kiche, farmer Elijah Ng’ong’o, 54, has spent seven months living in his neighbour’s kitchen.

Towards the end of 2019, as farmers in Kenya prepared for planting during the October-December short rains, Ng’ong’o and his fellow villagers also prepared their farms. All went well until extreme rainfall came and flooded and swept the farms away, leaving farmers hungry and homeless.

 “We are living in very desperate conditions. I’m a farmer who doesn’t like living at the mercy of others. But I’ve become helpless after floods drowned all my harvest,” he says.

Higher Ground

The flood victims say the government promised them building materials. But over 12 months later, they’re still waiting. It was only two weeks ago that the government released funds to reconstruct schools destroyed by the floods.

Apart from destroying infrastructure, farmland and properties, the floods also increased the spread of pollution and potential for disease.

Prof Richard Muga, health chief executive officer in Homabay, says the area was lucky to have escaped a public health crisis amid the floods and COVID-19 pandemic. The lake’s backwash flooded toilets, which posed a deadly risk to the communities who lack piped water. He tells me the county had to spend millions of shillings in distributing water treatment tablets to avert water borne diseases.

Chuowe Vilalge has been submerged by floods and the expanding lake. Villagers have been forced to abandon the homes and seek refuge elsewhere. Credit: Leopold Obi.

So far, the national government has provided little help beyond advising residents to move, says Willis Omulo, a flood victim and environmental activist at Aluora Makare CBO.

“The government keeps telling us to move to higher grounds, yet they are not telling us where on the higher grounds they have reserved lands for us”, he says.

And experts say this is unlikely to be a one-off occurrence. The high water levels in the lake will be more frequent in the future due to heavy rainfalls, Dr Olaka warns – barely giving the region time to recover from one crisis, before another hits.

Leopold Obi is an award-winning science and environment journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. He mainly writes for the Daily Nation and Business Daily. Find him on twitter @finallyobi.

This post was funded by a climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

***

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

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Must reads from the region

Studying the deadly storms at Lake Victoria, Sophie Mbugua, The Star

On Lake Victoria, deadly thunderstorms build up at night as fishers go out. The International Red Cross estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 fishers lose their lives annually in the violent storms. This article explores how climate change contributes to the issue, and what needs to be done.

Nairobi concrete jungle turning city into oven, Leopold Obi, Business Daily

Thanks to rising temperatures and the urban heat island effect exacerbated by concrete developments, average air temperatures in Nairobi have increased from 18.8°C in the 1950s to 19.5°C in 2000s. Climate change is only going to make the problem more unbearable for one of Africa’s fastest developing cities.

Experts - Why the Water Levels of Rift Valley Lakes Are Rising, Stella Cherono, All Africa

Some of Kenya’s lakes are overflowing and others are drying up. Why? Tectonic activity, increased rainfall, and rising temperatures all play a part. As geologist grapple the issue, the Rift Valley lakes appear to be reclaiming territories they had lost millions of years ago.

Who should care for the forest? In Kenya, the question sparks violence, Geoffrey Kamadi, CS Monitor

This article explores an increasingly important issue: what happens to indigenous communities that live in forests which have become a battleground for anti-deforestation campaigns and carbon sequestration projects? “We have now become synonymous with evictions from our ancestral land,” says Daniel Kobei, a Mau-Ogiek community representative, who recently saw 300 homes destroyed by the Kenyan Forestry Service.

What else I’ve been watching

And now for something completely different. Kenya has been experiencing lots of climatic and environmental stresses, which can be too much to report about. I unwind by listening to music or just watching movies. I’m currently watching Emily in Paris, a comical drama series about an American who despite not being able to speak French travels to France for work. If you need some light relief, check it out.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

Purple Romero is an climate change and human rights journalist based in Hong Kong.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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What does a tropical country have to do with the polar ice caps? India, with its erratic seasons, heatwaves touching a scorching 50°C and its warm waters seems to have little in common with the Arctic. 

And yet, after learning that India is about to launch an Arctic policy that will shape its presence in the North, I was intrigued to discover that the relationship between the two regions is rich and complex.

Vijay Sakhuja, a pioneer of Arctic studies in India who spent 26 years in the Navy while pursuing academic studies says that India and the Arctic face similar challenges due to climate change, but more importantly their struggles are connected. 

“When I sat back and looked at a map of the globe, I realised there is a direct line, almost a straight flight, which runs from the north pole to the Himalayan mountains,” he says. “If the Arctic winds are warmer, or just not cold enough, then they would impact the Himalayas too.” 

A warmer polar circle, he explains, will affect temperatures in Siberia and in turn the Chinese side of the Himalayas, the mountain range also known as the Third Pole. This is something we don’t talk about enough, he says, but the impacts of a warming Arctic are far reaching - they touch Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, even Myanmar - and affect communities across all regions, particularly indigenous people.

India’s Arctic policy is a hefty document that includes a vast range of topics, from business opportunities opening up as ice retreats to scientific research on climate change. While this may seem rife with contradictions, the policy does lean more towards the science side  than towards exploitation, Sakhuja notes. And more importantly, he says, it doesn’t leave indigenous people behind, like many economic development plans do.

Both the Arctic’s indigenous inhabitants and the Himalyan peoples are being “inexorably” impacted by climate change as well as by industrial development and improved connectivity, the policy says. “The disruption of unique ecosystems and erosion of traditional knowledge are common to both.” And with its substantial expertise in addressing such issues, the document adds, India is uniquely placed to make a positive contribution in assisting the Arctic’s indigenous communities cope with similar challenges.

Parallel challenges

In different ways, both India and the Arctic are among the most vulnerable places on the planet. Both are disproportionately affected by rising temperatures which threaten their biodiversity and the way of life of their communities.

In India, climate change is changing the monsoon cycles, so farmers can’t adjust to seasons that are too warm, too wet, or too dry. Take the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, where I spent a few weeks last summer. Here, apples are found everywhere. Not just in the orchards, protected by a thin mesh which from a distance looks like morning dew, but also along the roads, stored in cardboard boxes stacked in trucks too big for the narrow mountain roads, before starting their journey across the Indian subcontinent. They are used to make wine and jam, they are gifted to tourists. They too are threatened by climate change. 

India is the world’s fifth producer of apples, and because winters are not cold enough, harvests are getting scarcer, threatening the local economy and way of life. Visiting Himachal and seeing how a simple fruit shapes the identity of a place has helped me grasp the extent of this subtle yet monumental threat all around the people living here.

Sakhuja assures me that the same goes for the Arctic region: you have to be there to understand. Thousands of miles away from India, the Arctic is melting fast. As the ice becomes thinner and more brittle, ancient lands are being exposed to new forms of resource exploitation, such as mining, or to the development of new infrastructure such as ports, railway and airports. Traffic through new northern routes is projected to quadruple by 2025, with more fuel burned, more pristine environments spoilt by industries and human settlement, and more local communities affected by these changes. 

Sakhuja remembers the first time he felt a deep connection to the Arctic, after studying it for many years as a theoretical subject. He was in Tromsø, in Norway, and decided to take a stroll on a frozen lake. As mundane as that scene may have looked, Sakhuja says that from that moment on he could never forget what was at stake for the Arctic, all that the region stands to lose.

Over many years of work in both regions, Sakhuja says, “I realised that there is a kinship between indigenous people living in the Nordic countries, and our people who live in the mountains.” There is a connection, he says, in terms of ecosystems, lifestyle and the struggle to preserve the unspoilt environment that has sustained both communities for millennia.

***

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Subscribe now

Must reads from the region

India’s Biggest Spenders Cause 7 Times More Emissions Than The Poor, Manu Moudgil, Indiaspend

The top 20% of high-expenditure households in India are responsible for seven times the emissions traceable to the poor who spend less than $1.9 a day, according to a recent study. The mean carbon footprint of every Indian was estimated at 0.56 tonne per year--0.19 tonne per capita among the poor and 1.32 tonne among the rich.

Could climate adaptive, saline water-resistant Pokkali be rice of the future?, KA Shaji, Mongabay India

When Super Cyclone Amphan hit West Bengal, rice fields were among the casualties. Contaminated with saltwater, the crops withered away. Researchers decided to seek rice varieties that could withstand a similar disaster, something that climate change makes increasingly likely. This piece follows their journey.

Safe water costs 40 times more in coastal Bangladesh than cities, Riyan Talha,The Third Pole

In coastal Bangladesh, sea level rise and the consequent intrusion of saline water means that access to drinking water is declining, leaving citizens poorer. But a new business is emerging: potable water is now sold on the streets at a huge markup.

2020: China’s climate breakthrough year, Wu Yixiu, China Dialogue

Despite the pandemic – and to some extent because of it – last year proved more positive for China’s climate response than many had predicted.

What else I’ve been reading

India coronavirus: How do you vaccinate a billion people?, Soutik Biswas, BBC News

When it comes to vaccine making, India is a powerhouse. It runs a massive immunisation programme, makes 60% of the world's vaccines and is home to half a dozen major manufacturers. And this year, India plans to receive and utilise some 500 million doses of vaccines against the disease and immunise up to 250 million people.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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But in the background of the raging pandemic, another slower, quieter, equally frightening crisis continued to mount. Throughout the year, climate change kept breaking new records, irreparably altering ecosystems and ways of life, and ultimately working with Covid-19 to change the world as we know it.

Over the past 12 months, our letters have captured some of the small and big stories of our warming planet, and we hope you enjoyed the journey with us as much as we enjoyed writing for you. We’ll take a break for the last weeks of the year, and we hope to meet you all in 2021 with renewed energy.

Meanwhile, here are six of our favourite dispatches to wave goodbye to a tumultuous year.

The unique mountain landscape threatened by climate change - by Diego Arguedas Ortiz in Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica

“There is a special kind of sadness in writing about these mountains and knowing how vulnerable they are. We often go to nature to heal and to renew, yet the very places we seek for comfort often end up reminding us of what’s at stake.”

In our last story of 2020, Diego Arguedas Ortiz contemplates the environmental threats to one of Costa Rica's rarest ecosystems, the mountain páramo.

Africa closed to climate science deniers - By Mat Hope in London, United Kingdom

“Unlike a decade before, when the climate and energy debate was ripe for the GWPF’s misinformation interventions, energy experts on the continent were not going to take the group’s falsehoods at face value.”

Mat Hope, our Africa editor, lays out how a report taking aim at organisation that give international aid and financing to renewable energy projects was rejected by African energy experts.

The Amazon’s secret carbon garden - By Jocelyn Timperley in San José, Costa Rica

“They found that dark earth areas continue to have a set of species that differ from the surrounding landscape, contributing to a more diverse ecosystem.”

Jocelyn Timperley, our Latin America editor, wrote about the historic use of “dark earth” agroforestry patches by indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and how these continue to influence the biodiversity of the Amazon today. 

After the lockdown, imagine a cleaner India - By Lou Del Bello in Delhi, India

“As we enter the second week of national Coronavirus lockdown in India, temperatures are on the rise. But while around this time Delhiites start dreading the hot spells that will keep them indoors for weeks on end, this year things are different.”

Our South Asia editor Lou Del Bello wrote this thoughtful piece about the collision of lockdown, poverty and air pollution in Delhi.

How lockdown in Nigeria relies on fossil fuel generators - By Justice Nwafor in Ibadan, Nigeria

“My hands clasped to a silver steel rail and my face smacked with tiredness, I stand on the balcony of my apartment and agonise in silence. It’s 2pm and there is no end in sight to the loud noise from electricity generating sets at adjoining apartments.”

Justice Nwafor’s story about the heavy reliance on generators in lockdown in Nigeria showed a different side to the interaction between emissions and the pandemic. Experts have advised that embracing clean energy is the way out of this puzzle, he concludes, but the initial one-off cost of solar panels is an impediment. 

Hope against the odds - By India Bourke in Hong Kong

“The vast and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests have bled into daily life in countless ways since I arrived in June, so it only feels right that they seep into this letter too - not least since the echoes with the climate movement are increasingly on my mind.”

This essay from India Bourke, our Asia-Pacific editor, discusses the links she saw between climate action and the Hong Kong protests: “in their shared currents of fellow-feeling, in the effort to stand up for future generations, and in the pursuit of hope against the odds”.

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Our favourite stories

Oil-backed trade group is lobbying the Trump administration to push plastics across Africa - Emma Howard, Unearthed

The American Chemistry Council, a trade group that lists some of the world’s largest polluters as members, recently founded a $1bn initiative that pledges to create “a world free of plastic waste”. It has also been lobbying against changes to an international agreement that puts new limits on plastic waste entering low- and middle-income countries, this story reveals.

Indigenous best Amazon stewards, but only when property rights assured: Study - Sue Branford, Mongabay 

It’s a perspective which is often on the fringes of climate action - neither denied nor embraced as a solution. But there is mounting evidence of how powerful indigenous land rights can really be in protecting forests. Sue Branford’s story also highlights another part of this important story - the importance of acknowledging the Amazon as a forest long influenced by humanity.

The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from? - Shannon Osaka, Grist

Here, Grist unpacks the mystery of the invisible emissions during the great lockdown. Skies are clear, the streets are empty and global emissions have gone down by just a 5.5%. Where is the rest coming from? Entertaining and essential read to understand why putting the brakes on global pollution is not as straightforward as it seems.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Cerro Ena at sunrise. Photo by Diego Arguedas Ortiz

We left the coffee-growing town of San Jerónimo de Pérez Zeledón before sunrise and quickly entered that mind-numbing state that comes with long hikes. Our guide, Rolando, made calm and comforting talk that eased our journey up the mountain. The destination was Cerro Ena, a peak towering at 3,126 meters in the Talamanca cordillera in southwestern Costa Rica; awaiting us were three days of muddy shoes, aching muscles and no mobile phone reception. Bliss. 

There is a healing property in the Talamanca peaks, situated in the southwest of the country midway between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, that you don’t find elsewhere in the country. Yes, the sandy beaches are relaxing and fun, and no song beats a sunset serenade from cloud forest birds, but I find no other ecosystem really unplugs me as much as the tropical alpine landscape known as páramo and the trails that lead to it.

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Once here, it becomes impossible to think about what one leaves behind; there’s no mental space for the kitchen sink’s broken pipeline or the morning commute just a day before. The mind is blank. I feel as though this sudden mental space resembles the moment a tree falls in a rainforest: the light and space in the new clearing allows for new things to grow. 

A highland garden

The páramo might feel to some like an unexpected landscape to highlight. Costa Rica is more easily connected with golden beaches or lush rainforests. Foreign friends often ask me whether I surf (I do not, sadly), but no one has ever enquired about my hiking habits (passionate, yet undisciplined). Yet here we are, talking about my favourite ecosystem in a climate newsletter. 

There is a special kind of sadness in writing about these mountains and knowing how vulnerable they are. We often go to nature to heal and to renew, yet the very places we seek for comfort often end up reminding us of what’s at stake. 

The shrubby landscape of the Talamanca páramo. Photo by Diego Arguedas Ortiz

The páramo is the rarest of ecosystems in Costa Rica, existing only above the 3,000 meter line, which makes it highly vulnerable to changes in temperature. In the tropics, the altitude of an ecosystem is a crucial variable in determining its landscape and climate If you stay in one place all year long, there’s barely any temperature difference between January and July (can’t say the same for rain). But once you climb a mountain, you notice different plants and new kinds of birds and beetles. 

The páramo harbors lifeforms specialized to its very specific combination of moisture, clouds and temperature. Plants grow here that live nowhere else in the country and they in turn attract birds, insects and other animals that would find no food or shelter elsewhere. 

In fact, the wider mountainous region which stretches across southwestern Costa Rica to eastern Panama is considered “habitat islands", as they have no connection to highland areas to the north or south. Once a bird or plant adapts to this region, it finds it hard to migrate elsewhere. As a result, there is a high level of endemic species with over 30% of the ecoregion's flora only existing here. 

This uniqueness makes for amazing views. The landscape is dominated by low shrubs, meter-high ferns and dwarf trees that can barely block your vision (but clouds and mist do, on most days). Flowers take different shapes and the tweets of hummingbirds are more audible. 

But for me, first among the marvels of the páramo is the turberas, a highland wetland where rainfall accumulates in sizes that vary from ponds to small lagoons. Their mirror-like waters have a magnetic attraction as you walk the trails. 

Feeling the impacts

Climate change is already altering this ecosystem. Our guide Rolando’s has lived in this area and hiked to Cerro Ena all his life. He was part of the founding group of the local tourism cooperative that maintains the trails and the shelters. He tells us about lowering water levels in these mountain wetlands and of species that have become increasingly hard to find, such as a local kind of snail. 

A large turbera on a trail off Cerro Ena. Photo by Diego Arguedas Ortiz

Globally,  the effects of climate change in mountain areas is relatively well known: as temperatures rise, climate zones will shift upwards and entire ecosystems might be displaced. Species that live near the mountaintops might have  nowhere to go as they get pushed out of their ecosystems. 

The specific effects in Costa Rican páramos are less explored, but local scientists are pushing ahead. Experts from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica studied shifting patterns in pollinators and ecologist Andrea Vincent from the Universidad de Costa Rica is currently leading a team exploring how higher temperatures might affect Chirripó, the country’s highest peak. Most of them expect to confirm first hand accounts from guides like Rolando. 

This is a heart breaking microcosm of climate impacts in Costa Rica. Around the country, tourism workers livelihoods will be compromised; ecosystem services will be altered; cultural values will be diminished. And for those of us trying to combat climate change who want to wander into nature to renew and forget, we will be reminded. 

Diego Arguedas Ortiz is a climate change reporter and communicator from Costa Rica. Find him on Twitter @arguedasortiz

***

This post was funded by climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Share From a Climate Correspondent

Must reads from the region

Storms, coronavirus and drought spread hunger to millions in Central America, Sofia Menchu and Stefanie Eschenbacher, Thomson Reuters Foundation

"The combination of emergencies makes the emergency quadruple," said Felipe Del Cid, operations manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, based in Panama. "The recovery could take years."

2 Hurricanes Devastated Central America. Will the Ruin Spur a Migration Wave?, Natalie Kitroeff, The New York Times

Some years ago, many outlets traced the 2014-2015 migration surge from Central America to the US to droughts in the region. Can the recent hurricanes cause another exodus?

'Stranded' power? Mapping Latin America's thermoelectric energy, Andrés Bermúdez Liévano and other writers, Diálogo Chino

A constellation of climate writers from across Latin America take a good look and which fossil fuels plants are active, on the pipeline or unused. 

What else I’m reading

After devouring his 2017 novel New York 2140 in a matter of days last year, I’m now reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future. I’m barely a few pages in, but the setting has already trapped me again and the premise is promising. Once I’m finished, I want to try A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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A new coal plant, right next to a UNESCO world heritage site, on a piece of Kenyan coast famous for its coral, fish, and mangroves, planned to be built just as the countries financing it are meant to be taking climate change seriously. The idea always seemed a bit incongruous.

The Lamu plant was part of the Kenyan government’s “vision 2030” development plan to install 10,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity by 2030, a target recently brought down to 7200. It was a key component of the controversial Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor plan, which would see large amounts of high-carbon infrastructure including oil pipelines, airports, and a new port built in and through Kenya. Those plans always sat uneasily next to Kenya’s climate targets. The country has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 30% by 2030, which leaves little room for fossil fuel expansion in its carbon budget. 

As was reported last year, hundreds of Lamu residents — whose lives and livelihoods were under threat from the planned coal plant — feared they would be displaced by the plant’s construction, that fish and other marine life would be poisoned, and the air polluted.

But campaigners are now celebrating because it looks like the Lamu coal plant may finally have reached a hurdle it can’t jump. Where environmental impact assessments, public protests, legal challenges, and new environmental impact assessments as a consequence of those legal challenges have failed, money (inevitably) seems to have been decisive.

Because in mid-November, local campaigners learned that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) was planning to withdraw its financing from the Lamu coal power plant project. And that might be that for the dirtiest of elephants in the room.

Environmental impact

According to a statement by Save Lamu, one the groups at the forefront in opposing the power plant, the ICBC had decided not to finance the project after all due to the environmental and social risks associated with it. 

“We are very happy and grateful to hear that the ICBC will no longer fund Amu Power for the coal project,” Is’haq Abubakar, Save Lamu Vice Chairperson, told my DeSmog colleague Maina Waruru. “We as Save Lamu will always be there to defend its people and our environment; we don’t want a coal project in Lamu County and in Kenya at large.”

But in June 2019, local communities got some respite when the National Environment Tribunal revoked a license granted to Amu Power, a consortium of Centum, Gulf Energy, and Chinese firms building the $2 billion coal plant, due to a technical fault with its environmental impact assessment. But communities weren’t convinced the companies wouldn’t find a way to work around the issue. 

They are more confident now.

Citizens v Corporations

This was a victory for “dedicated Kenyan campaigners up against the might of financial heavyweights and global corporate interests”, Mohamed Adow, founder of the Nairobi-based thinktank Power Shift Africa, wrote in an op-ed in The Daily Nation.

That was symbolised not just by the names of the companies that backed it, but by the firm they chose to represent the Kenyan-American-Chinese consortium. According to reporting by regional newspaper, The East African, the group was represented by FTI Consulting, a company that has recently been making negative headlines across the world for its fossil fuel work.

The firm was the subject of a recent investigation by the New York Times that showed it “helped design, staff and run organizations and websites funded by energy companies that can appear to represent grass-roots support for fossil-fuel initiatives.” 

For groups such as FTI, and the polluting interests they work for, the Lamu coal power plant was just another project; to proceed or stop depending on economics and little else. But for the residents of the astonishing piece of coastline, and for millions of Kenyans, it symbolised much more than that. 

If the powerplant plan really is dead, Kenyan can once again claim to be one of the region’s climate champions. As the residents of Lamu have found, that status, and the environmental safety it implies, is very hard won.

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If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Must reads from the region

Environment award for man who stopped new coal power plant in Ghana, Huong Ly and Trystan Young, BBC News

Environmental campaigner Chibeze Ezekiel has won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for leading a grassroots campaign to stop a new coal-fired power station being built in Ghana. The BBC has a nice video profile of him and how his efforts made a nationwide impact.

Africa And Electric Vehicles: Overtaking Mere Hype For Rare Vibe, Elizabeth Ajao, Wee Tracker

A long feature from business outlet Wee Tracker somewhat bursts the hype-bubble around the launch ‘of the all-electric Hyundai Kona, unveiled by Lagos state Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu this week. It points out that all the normal obstacles remain to EV adoption —  reliable electricity, charging infrastructure, competitive prices — but that these are writ particularly large in Africa.”Africa still has quite a long way to go on the journey to the adoption of electric vehicles. However, it’s great to see that work has begun on that front, however slowly,” the article concludes.

Climate change, migration and urbanisation: patterns in sub-Saharan Africa, Roman Hoffmann, The Conversation

An article by a postdoctoral researcher at the Potsdam Institute says counters the narrative often promoted by politicians “that ‘waves’ and ‘rising tides’ of climate migrants are crossing the border to Europe and the US.” In fact, most environmental migration is internal and, in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s from pastoral or agricultural areas into cities, putting massive strain on already stretched urban resources.

Africa must declare a climate emergency, urges Greenpeace report, ESI Africa

A new report from Greenpeace summarises the science around climate impacts on Africa. Ndoni Mcunu, climate scientist, founder of Black Women in Science and co-author of the report calls for the science to be better understood and reflected in policy decisions, as well as African researchers  being “more involved in leading the development of new databases and models rather than being dependent on countries outside Africa.”

Cape Town could experience another 'Day Zero' this century as water supplies dry up, Kim Harrisberg, Thomson Reuters Foundation

In 2018, a drought in South Africa that nearly caused Cape Town's taps to run dry, which became known as Day Zero. New research says Cape Town faces an 80% higher chance of another 'Day Zero' drought by the end of the century if greenhouse gas-emissions keep rising at current rates. The study also showed that the 2018 drought was made five-six times more likely by human-caused climate change.

What else I’ve been reading

I’m gradually making my way through a series of visual reports by Paraguayan outfit El Surti (with a lot of help from Google translate) on the power of the country’s oligarchy. The journalism is of a type i’ve never seen before — heavily visual but still incredibly detailed and informative. Check out their reports on how more than 100 state suppliers avoided legal obligations to declare their assets, and why Paraguay keeps having substantial power cuts.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The aftermath of Typhoon Ulysses. Photo by Basilio Sepe / Greenpeace

Two weeks ago I received a Facebook message from Laine Magno, a schoolmate of my brother in the Philippines. A powerful typhoon had unleashed itself upon the country, killing dozens and demolishing thousands of homes – and leaving many, like Magno, doing everything they can think of to help.

Magno’s family owned a small water station in Antipolo, a province bordering the city of Marikina, where some residents had been forced to climb onto their roofs to escape the mad gush of floodwaters on 11 November.

The 29-year-old engineer, along with other volunteers operating from Antipolo and other parts of Metro Manila, was now collecting and filling up water containers to provide clean drinking water to communities in need. Another group, bata.ph, then delivered these to the people stranded in damaged homes, their communities still swamped in mud, fallen trees and debris.

But even as Magno and other Filipinos do their best to recover from the devastation wreaked by Typhoon Vamco (known locally as Ulysses), they also fear their efforts being once again taken for granted by their government.

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“I used to really like the word ‘resilience’ before, because it means standing strong amidst anything. But when you see people, especially those that have power and means to help, deliberately not doing anything so people have to rely themselves instead, it really triggers me,” she told me in a mix of Filipino and English.

“I couldn’t really express what I’m feeling now because it’s really frustrating. But people shouldn't really have to be resilient if others just do their job,” she said, cursing.

Faith and power

Magno also fears that Filipinos’ religious faith can sometimes get in the way of demands for government accountability. 

“To seek hope and courage from God is okay,” she said. “But it shouldn't stop there, especially when it comes to physical things […] we face in the real world. We are governed by those people in power so we must seek or demand actions from people who said they would if given the opportunity to serve.”

The aftermath of Typhoon Ulysses. Photo by Basilio Sepe / Greenpeace

Another Filipina, Mela Habijan, said she felt similarly. Habijan and her family live in Marikina, where they also had to brave floodwaters in 2009, when 23-meter high floods during Typhoon Ketsana subsumed parts of greater Manila. 

“We can never address a problem by just merely praying. God has mercy, but people should also do something. The Supreme Being favours people of action,” she told me over Facebook.

"In the last 11 years, we are seeing more devastating effects of climate change, yet our leaders still don’t focus on addressing the problem — they focus more on politicking instead of public service.”

Laudato si’ in action

It’s not just memories of Typhoon Ketsana which were brought back, however, with this latest disaster. Typhoon Ulysses pummelled the Philippines just days after the country commemorated the 7th anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm to make landfall in recent history.

Groups such as Living Laudato Si’ Philippines, an interfaith movement calling on financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels, have held events, such as a candle-lighting, to remember some 6,000 people who perished from the tragedy in 2013. And the organisation’s executive director, Rodne Galicha, said he understands why Filipinos would want to cling to their faith in times of hardship.

“When our communities are suffering the Philippine Church is there to extend her loving arms, to any sector of the society, whatever faith tradition or religion, to every human being - no discrimination,” he said.

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But he added that Filipinos do now want to see more being done on the ground, with Laudato si’, Pope Francis’s famed 2015 encyclical on the climate crisis, yet to be seen in action in Philippine communities. “We still need to see ecology ministers embracing the social approach of Laudato si’,” he said.

Galicha stressed that the Filipinos’ call for more responsible governance is a step in the right direction - but that they must also show opposition to activities which harm the environment, such as mining, building highways in protected areas, land use conversion and the killing of environmental defenders.

“As Laudato si’ number 49 says: ‘Today, however, we have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

Purple Romero is a multimedia journalist who has written about climate change and environmental issues for local and international news organizations such as Alertnet Reuters, Eco-Business, Asia Sentinel and Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @purpleromeropo

This post was funded by climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Must reads from the region

Climate Actions Started to Blossom in Various Fonts Amid the Prolonged COVID-19 Winter Muhammad Rizki Kresnawan, Rika Safrina, and Zulfikar Yurnaidi, ASEAN Centre for Energy

Some good news - a number of Southeast Asian countries have started to update their nationally-determined contributions or NDCs

Eco-resurgence for Asia: Invoking Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophy to Shape Economic Recovery and Sustainable Living, Nanda Kumar Janardhanan, Shuzo Nishioka, Eric Zusman, IGES

This paper discusses why indigenous knowledge and practices are important in shaping a green post-COVID-19 economic recovery.

Flooded Asia: Climate Change hits region the hardest, Nithin Coca, Nikkei Asia

An insight into the factors that make Asia especially vulnerable to flooding, and why this necessitates urgent adaptation and mitigation.

What else I’m reading

I’m currently reading a series of short stories produced by Filipino writers as a crowdfunding effort for families affected by Typhoon Ulysses. People can request that they write about certain topics - most of which tackled LGBTQI relationships - in exchange for cash donations to the victims of the disaster.  

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Members of the Sahsa community in Bilwi, Nicaragua, leave their homes, uncertain of would happen to them after the passage of Hurricane Eta. Photo by Maynor Salazar.

Part 2 of 2. Read part 1 here

By Maynor Salazar in Bilwi, Nicaragua. Translated from Spanish by Jocelyn Timperley.

This article continues the story of Maynor Salazar’s journey to visit communities impacted by Hurricane Eta, which hit Nicaragua two weeks ago. As we publish it, a second major storm, Hurricane Iota, continued to barrel through Nicaragua and other Central American countries.

Our last night in Bilwi, in the northeast of Nicaragua, we spent in the town of Okonwas. 

We were unable to advance towards Rosita, a city in the North Caribbean also impacted by Hurricane Eta, because the rising river flooded the only exit route. Hurricane Iota, the storm which entered Nicaraguan territory in the same area this past Monday, just two weeks after Eta and with an even higher intensity, is thought o be causing even worse impacts in the same area.

Our original idea for the next stage of our reporting trip on Hurricane Eta had been to go to Rosita, another impacted area, but a flooded river stopped us from going further. In the evening, lacking baths and completely exhausted, we decided to ask the community members of the area to host us. This proved complicated because the community was distrustful of us, but in the end a pastor helped us.

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It had been three days since Eta had hit and she was still within national borders. Eta had lost strength, but the winds and rain did not stop. At Okonwas we were all afraid, the community members, the stranded truck drivers and the journalists who had come into the area. But while everything seemed to indicate destruction could be imminent, the damage was ultimately minimal.

Trapped

Okonwas is located 10 kilometers southeast of the town of Rosita, but from Tuesday to Wednesday morning the road to get there was closed. A motorway under construction means they had just started moving earth to prepare it before the road was to be built, cutting off the community’s communication.

Neither the driver of the largest truck nor the driver of the most "equipped" van dared to cross the huge pool of water that formed in the middle of the road. They all backed off and preferred to wait, some in their vehicles, others in the houses which offered some spaces to host locals and foreigners.

Okonwas community members try to cross a road flooded by the rising River Okonwas. Photo by Maynor Salazar.

We all waited for the next day. Sleeping in an area affected by a hurricane raises several questions. The first, without a doubt, is the anguish of believing that the worst could still happen. The houses in this area are not made of concrete: most are made of wood and while their structures can seem solid, they can succumb to gusts of hurricane-force winds. Add to that the fact that many are over ten years old, and the risk increases.

After the uncertainty of risk and destruction, there was insomnia. You cannot sleep when the wind raises the roof or enters through the spaces in wooden beams. Those cracks also gave way to a cold which increased through the night.

The community, owners of the houses, did not seem to be scared by the whole scene: perhaps that is why most decided to stay at home. "It was worse with Felix. By now you had the water up high, you couldn’t see the floor," said the owner of a house serving as refuge for several foreigners.

The other side of the water

The wind had not stopped blowing by early morning, but the rain had subsided. Here in the shelter there was no electricity or battery-powered radio, and the phone signal was unstable. People guessed that Eta was moving away because the gusts of wind became less and less intense, and the breeze became light, similar to good morning just when you realise it will be a good day.

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At around 6am, many of the vehicles again approached the huge pool on the road. Its level had decreased, but still none ventured to cross it. "An ambulance went by, but it was one of the big ones. It wasn’t inundated at that level of depth," explained a driver who had arrived minutes before.

As the hours passed, the level dropped bit by bit. First, a community member who came from another area to visit some friends in Okonwas crossed. Next, a young man on his horse passed by. Despite the falling water level, there was still concern. Finally an Isuzu truck advanced, then a big pickup truck, followed by two more vehicles.

More to come

Nicaragua has been one of the countries most impacted by extreme weather events over the past few decades, especially due to the major impact of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. As this article goes to print, another storm, Hurricane Iota, had just hit Nicaragua at Category 4 strength in the same area of the country which had just been impacted by Hurricane Eta.

Residents of the El Naranjal community, in Bilwi, were evacuated to shelter in a school in the town. They asked for medicine and food which was rapidly running out. Photo by Maynor Salazar.

The double impact has left indigenous communities with no time to recover. The villagers had to leave their houses, again, in search of a refuge. This time the government was better prepared, but the aid has reportedly still not arrived due to the speed with which Iota reached the North Caribbean.

Although the water level dropped considerably, people in the community were not very enthusiastic. The lack of joy was due to the fact that with this weather and the storm, it was likely that in the next few hours the floods would arrive again.

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We finally managed to pass through the water, leaving Okonwas behind and deciding to return to the capital. Fortunately for us, our team returned home safe and sound, but the same cannot be said for those who lost their homes in Bilwi. Eta had left havoc, with more than 30,000 people evacuated from their homes and many houses left damaged. 

The outlook for indigenous communities in the North Caribbean is grim. Hurricane Iota will cause more damage than Eta and recovery will be slower. By Tuesday the government said it had evacuated 40,000 people, with many homes already destroyed or flooded. And as if that isn’t enough, there is a chance yet another storm could form in the next few days and impact the Nicaraguan coast again.

Maynor Salazar is a Nicaraguan investigative journalist who writes for Divergentes.com. He has written for international media such as Univision, the Connectas platform and various national media. Find him on Twitter @Maynorsalaz.

This post was funded by climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Must reads from the region

Dangerous Hurricane Iota Sets Late-Season Records, Lynn Jenner, NASA blogs

Iota is the strongest hurricane and 30th named storm of the 2020 Atlantic season, the highest since modern record keeping began breaking the previous record of 28. It also marked the first time that two hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic in any November.

REDD+ carbon and deforestation cuts in Amazon overestimated: Study, Peter Yeung, Mongabay

Researchers found that the projects’ claimed reductions in forest loss and carbon emissions were seriously overstated due to poorly set deforestation rate baselines.

Mexico explains decision to flood poor, Indigenous areas, Associated Press

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador chose to direct excess water to poorer, more sparsely populated Indigenous areas, rather than allow a big city to be flooded. “It hurts me a lot,” he said, noting more people would have been affected in the latter case

What else I’m reading

The climatic situation Nicaragua is going through reminds me of several stories by Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, published in a compilation called “Friend of My Youth”. Not precisely because those stories refer to hurricanes, but because they recreate the mysteries at the center of the human experience. This stormy season will bring with it a lot of experience, but also a lot of stories that will probably never be told or compiled in a good book.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Families in the Wawa Boom community self-evacuated at a community college; government prepared no security plan for the town. Photo by Maynor Salazar.

Part 1 of 2

By Maynor Salazar in Bilwi, Nicaragua. Translated from Spanish by Jocelyn Timperley.

The wind blew strong at night and lifted the roof of the house. It lasted twenty seconds, an eternal moment that caused fear among those of us in the shelter. It was twelve o'clock at night; Hurricane Eta had not touched Nicaraguan soil but the damage was starting to be felt all around us. A huge tree fell nearby and blocked the road; several sheets of zinc from nearby houses went flying through the air; the electricity had stopped.

The shelter was located in Nazaret Uno, a community located in Bilwi, in the Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region of Nicaragua. I arrived there just over a week ago, on November 2, together with the photographer Carlos Herrera and a journalistic team from the EFE Spanish press agency, after driving some eleven hours on roads and dirt tracks.

Our aim had been to reach the city of Bilwi to document the ravages of Eta, but we did not manage to get there. The wind was blowing strongly and the night’s darkness reduced the visibility we needed to move easily along the dirt roads under rain heavy enough to shake the truck. Instead, we sought lodging.

We asked for refuge in a Catholic church. They kindly opened the doors of a house adjacent to the temple. There were already six adults and five children in the house. They had come by foot from their home, 30 minutes outside the community’s centre, after deciding to self-evacuate to protect their and their children's lives. The youngest were asleep on a sheet that served as a mattress, while the oldest rested on school desks. 

A family taking refuge in the Nazaret Uno community in Bilwi watches the sunrise the first day Eta made landfall in Nicaragua. Photo by Maynor Salazar.

We sat at the back, on some benches. With no blankets or food, we decided to stay overnight to get on with work the next day. I thought we were going to sleep, that the rain was going to cause that numbing effect that often occurs when you are in your bed, at home, in the city. This did not happen. That was the first sleepless night, the first time I was facing a phenomenon against which there was no chance of winning.

The hours passed slowly. The adults next to us were shy, they hardly spoke. They had water, little food, and although they were "safe" from the effects of Eta, their faces showed a lot of concern. They did not know what was happening to their homes and all their belongings.

Speed and destruction

Central America is projected to be one of the regions most impacted by weather events linked to climate change, with devastating consequences for its countries. Nicaragua has already seen 0.8-1.3C of warming, depending on the area. More intense hurricanes is one of several expected climate impacts in the country.

A major study published last month concluded that global warming has already increased the chances of storms reaching Category 3 or higher globally; and we already know that rapidly intensifying Atlantic storms like Eta are becoming more common with climate change. Eta was the fifth hurricane on record of Category 4 or higher to have made landfall in Nicaragua.

With Hurricane Eta, everything was speed and destruction: it caused more than 60 deaths in Central America and impacted thousands of people. Constant rains kept El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and, of course, Nicaragua on red alert. In Nicaragua, two miners died after being buried in a mine due to the soil being destabilised by the rain. Degraded to a tropical storm, Eta moved slowly over Honduras and Guatemala and practically parked in the region, simulating the behavior of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record.

“We have been abandoned”

Eta impacted a large part of the territory inhabited by Nicaragua’s main indigenous peoples, Miskitos and Mayagnas. Many live in towns close to companies with several mining concessions, but despite this economic activity it is one of the most impoverished and vulnerable areas of Nicaragua.

It is not only the ravages of Eta which caused destruction in the indigenous communities. Government neglect in many towns deepened the destructive effect of the hurricane. 

A house resists the Eta's attacks in the "La 43" community, in Bilwi. Photo by Maynor Salazar.

In Wawa Boom, for example, I met Adaluz Ramos, who wanted to show me the precarious situation she, her family, and other neighbours were in. She took me to a hill, at the top of which the largest house in the area with the best structure sat. Many small heads were peeking out of a window. Three were her children, the rest her sister's children, cousins ​​and neighbours, all sheltering in the house to protect themselves from Eta.

It was Tuesday, I had just left Nazareth believing that the situation may be better in other places, but reality hit us in the face. By then the hurricane had struck the city of Bilwi.

There were about fifty people in Ramos’s house. The structure was the strongest in a community full of small wooden houses, even with many of these raised on pillars as protection against flooding. But Ramos told me she was afraid her house would not withstand the 230-kilometer per hour gusts from Eta. She was distraught, but didn’t have a solution at hand.

"We don't know where to go next," she told me with hesitation. Her children and nephews watched one of the zinc sheets that was about to come off the roof. "We have been abandoned," she repeated again and again.

Awaiting the photographer

I spoke with Ramos for almost half an hour, and later published her story in Divergentes, the Central American investigative website I work for. I said goodbye to her and moved on to another community, also in Wawa Boom. Here I met Florencia Salvadora Francis; she was with her family and another fifty people in a shelter at the local school.

No one had brought them there; they themselves had decided to walk to the school from their homes, leaving behind many of their belongings. They were depressed because they had no food, water or medicine. When I greeted Salvadora Francis, she returned the greeting with considerable mistrust. I explained that I was a journalist from the capital who was covering the area. At length she let her guard down, chatted with me. What she said touched me deeply.

In the refuge, food and medicine were scarce due to the uncertainty of Eta's advance into the interior of the coastal territory. "The government did come here with several sacks of food, but they told us that we could not touch them until an official arrived to take photos," Salvadora Francis told me. 

She showed me the bags, a concerned expression on her face. In most of these shelters, not only Eta was hitting the population hard. Through its neglect, the government was too.

Maynor Salazar is a Nicaraguan investigative journalist who writes for Divergentes.com. He has written for international media such as Univision, the Connectas platform and various national media. Find him on Twitter @Maynorsalaz.

This post was funded by climate investigation grant awarded to From A Climate Correspondent by the European Federation for Science Journalism (EFSJ) and funded by the BNP Paribas Foundation.

If you’d like to support us to publish more journalism from the front lines of climate change, please consider supporting us with a regular donation on Patreon or inviting us for a one-time coffee over at KOFI. You can also support use by signing up and sharing this article with others!

Must reads from the region

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season keeps raging with Hurricane Eta, Justine Calma, The Verge

Hurricane Eta ties this season with 2005, writes Calma.

In Nicaragua, supplying beef to the U.S. comes at a high human cost, Nate Halverson, Reveal PBS

The US has turned to foreign beef suppliers such as Nicaragua to fill its meat demand after outbreaks of COVID-19 at domestic meat processing plants. This short film shows how this has actually led Nicaragua to ramp up its meat production, in turn driving indigenous communities off their land.

Is Pinera Impairing Chile’s Leadership on Climate Change?, Francisca Aguayo Armijo, World Politics Review

Latin America is on the verge of realizing its first regional environmental treaty, known as the Escazu Agreement, but Chile is currently missing from the signatory list.

Brazil's Bolsonaro rejects Biden's offer of $20 billion to protect the Amazon, Flora Charner and Ivana Kottasová, CNN

Following the US election result it’s worth remembering this little spat back in September. Biden’s comments which included the threat of “significant economic consequences” for Brazil if it fails to “stop tearing down the forest”.

Can renewables push Latin America towards a green recovery?, Fermín Koop, Diálogo Chino (The Southern Cone)

Hurdles remain as governments still bet on fossil fuels

What else I’m reading

I am in love with football. One of my favourite writers is the Argentine author Eduardo Sacheri. Nobody else has managed to captivate me so much with crime novels that combine perfectly with this sport. I am currently reading “The Life We Thought. Short Stories on Football”, an anthology of football stories involving many characters of special importance in each chapter.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe. We regularly also feature guest writers.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Auckland, New Zealand. Photo credit/copyright: Michael Levine-Clark, Flickr

It was certain to me that the New Zealand Labour party would win the elections.

What is not certain is that Jacinda Ardern's new government will be green enough to face the country's massive environmental challenges. But with the return of the Green Party's James Shaw as climate minister and a new dedicated ministry for oceans and fisheries, I’m now seeing hopeful signs.

The vast majority of New Zealanders want their environment, wilderness and climate protected. Their close proximity to untouched nature and national problems like droughts, wildfires, flooding, coastal erosion, and water pollution from agriculture makes New Zealanders especially attuned to their vulnerability to man-made changes in the natural world. This became clear in a poll last year of Kiwis views on climate change pre-COVID and again in the elections last month.

A renewed government

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seems to understand this well. In her newly formed cabinet presented on Monday 2nd November, she re-appointed James Shaw as climate minister, giving him the additional responsibility for biodiversity.

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Ardern did not need to co-operate with the Green Party. Her Labour Party gained 64 seats (compared to 46 in 2017) and had the power to reign alone. But the freshly re-elected Prime Minister of New Zealand has purposely chosen to bring in the skills of the Greens “in the environment space”.

It is in fact the best possible outcome for Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment and climate. The Green Party presented the most extensive and ambitious plans for environmental improvement and reform.

Many of the votes gained by the Labour Party are a result of people’s appreciation for Jacinda Ardern’s leadership in stamping out the coronavirus in the country. Much of the credits for her previous governments "green" initiatives went to the Green Party, which grew from 8 to 10 seats in Parliament.

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Meanwhile, parties promising to turn back the clock on restorative and protective climate measures and environmental action were punished with a tremendous loss of seats in parliament. The New Zealand First Party, part of Ardern's 2017-2020 coalition government and blamed for “putting the handbrake” on much of the more progressive, green plans of Ardern’s previous government, was essentially voted into oblivion, winning no seats at all.

A giant task

The prime minister now has the political capital to include essential green policies in her promise to “build back better” from Covid-19. There is plenty to be done. Greenpeace New Zealand outlines the need for Ardern’s new “emboldened” government to tackle climate pollution from agribusiness, illegal and destructive fishing in the oceans, while also seriously transforming the way New Zealanders move around, from safe cycleways to electric cars and public transport.

Pine timber being exported from Wellington, New Zealand. Photo credit: WRI, Flickr

Like everywhere else, established industries and interests under pressure are all too keen to push back, such as the intensive dairy farming sector, fertiliser companies, fish farms and the large fishery companies.

There have also been issues with public agencies failing to act on existing policies and trends. Environmental lobby group Forest & Bird showed in a recent report that dozens of local and regional councils are failing to protect the natural environment. It documented hundreds of instances of what it calls deliberate damage to native habitat.

New Zealand also has the highest proportion of threatened species in the world, including 90% of all seabirds, 84% of reptiles, 76% of freshwater fish and 74% of terrestrial birds. For years it has struggled with water pollution from agriculture, with current measures so far failing to produce results.

In addition, a devastating report by the environment ministry together with Statistics New Zealand, published two days before the elections, projects that days with very high or extreme fire danger are likely to increase by 70% in the next two decades.

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The report also shows that New Zealand’s emissions per capita are amongst the highest in the world. In particular, it reveals it as the fifth worst per capita traffic polluter in the world, with 3.2 tonnes per person per year from driving alone; worse than UK and Germany.

Poor public transport networks, low road user costs and an almost complete reliance on trucking for the distribution of food and goods are the culprits here, together with a burgeoning agriculture industry. There are also no efficiency requirements for cars, most of which are shipped in second hand from countries such as Japan.

New promise

In her last term, much of Ardern’s tough talk petered out when time came to put policies into practise. Her government’s most recent budget was short on climate policies. Cameras on fishing boats still haven’t been installed. A promised plan to protect Māui and Hector's dolphins, due to be released in December 2019, was delayed with no end date confirmed. Twenty-one mining applications were approved on conservation land, despite Ardern's promise in 2017 there would be no more, due to a delay with finalising legislation.

But the person to watch closely when it comes to climate action and the environment in New Zealand is not necessarily Jacinda Ardern herself, but the man she just re-appointed to be her climate minister over the next three years: James Shaw.

Ardern with Green Party co-leader James Shaw at Victoria University of Wellington, 12 April 2018 . Photo credit: Stuart Yeates,Wikipedia

In an interview with news website Stuff in May, Shaw emphasised that the need to cut global emissions in half over the next 10 years means we cannot afford to restore it to the status quo after Covid-19. “It has to be a different economy”, he said.”

A heavy responsibility rests on his shoulders, but if he can’t set this clean train in motion, probably nobody can.

In June this year, Shaw was the key driver behind returning climate change rules into the Resource Management Act – a parliamentary act promoting the sustainable management of natural and physical resources such as land, air and water. This climate clause closed a longtime loophole and makes it possible to decline permission for large projects with significant negative climate change implications.

Among Shaw's other achievements have been finalising the Zero Carbon Act, the reform of the Emissions Trading Scheme and establishing a green investment fund - all successes which he will be able to build on.

Sitara Morgenster is a bi-lingual, Aotearoa New Zealand-based health, ecology and culture writer and accredited freelance journalist. Sitara lives off-grid in regenerating native bush with all kinds of creatures big and small. Find her on Twitter as @SitaraWrites

Must reads from the region

In New Zealand’s deep south, Māori landowners make money by keeping their forests intact, Monica Evans, Climate Home News

Once considered useless because it couldn’t be farmed, New Zealand’s Eastern Fiordland is home to swathes of tall indigenous rainforest with scores of native birds, including tūī, kākā, kererū and the endangered, endemic Kea parrot. Now Māori landowners are earning money through carbon credits by keeping these forests intact

Kūmara flee climate change, Kate Evans, New Zealand Geographic Magazine

“Worldwide, sweet potatoes are under threat from climate change—and a new international study has found that maintaining the crop’s genetic diversity will be key to ensuring you can get a fix of kūmara fries with your beer.”

You do not create wetlands; you stop draining them. You do not ‘clean up’ rivers; you stop polluting them; my Message to Jacinda, Mike Joy, Newsroom.co.nz

“The biggest driver of the degradation of New Zealand’s waterways is the uncontrolled intensification of agriculture, primarily dairy,” writes ecologist Mike Joy in a recent message to New Zealand’s Prime Minister advising her how to spend the COVID-19 recovery budget. Joy urged Jacinda Ardern to move New Zealand’s agriculture industry to a low-intensity, highly diverse farming model as the country’s only good future.

Voting opens in New Zealand’s beloved Bird of the Year competition, Phil Taylor, The Guardian

It started 15 years ago as a modest promotion to draw attention to native birds, many of which are endangered and has become a national phenomenon.

What else I’m reading

Kauri – Witness to a Nation’s History, by Joanna Orwin

The kauri, New Zealand's giant, native conifer that once covered the country's landscape in the Far North, are currently under threat from “kauri dieback disease”. This 2004 book by scientist and historian Joanna Orwin, updated and republished last year, details the history and modern day challenges for this iconic tree.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Burning off plastic to retrieve copper from old cables, near Nairobi's Mathare slum. Image credit: Flickr/Meena Kadri

Pollution can take many forms. Sometimes it’s in the form of a plastic bottle, the wind making it rattle down a dusty road. Sometimes it’s more conceptual, like someone planting the idea this is the way it has to be - that it’s somehow what a country deserves.

Sometimes, it’s both.

That seems to be the case when it comes to East Africa’s plastic problem. One the one hand, the region is a pioneer. Rwanda led through a ban on single use plastic bags in 2008, followed by Kenya in 2017 and Tanzania in 2019. And this year Kenya marked World Environment Day by introducing a ban on single use plastic in all beaches, forests and conservation areas.

But that could all change if some of the world’s richer, more politically powerful, players have their way.

Because, as far as some of them are concerned, plastic pollution is in fact a big part of Kenya’s future.

Chemical reaction

An investigation by Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed earlier this year showed that the Big Oil-backed lobby group, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), was pushing Donald Trump’s administration to try and expand the plastics industry as part of the ongoing US-Kenya free trade deal talks.

In public letters to the US Trade Representative and US International Trade Commission, the ACC writes: “Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying US-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement.”

The letters also called for the lifting of limits on the waste trade -- rules designed to limit plastic pollution that the letters show companies represented by the ACC had opposed.

The ACC claimed at the time that it was lobbying to remove some of the regulations because they “could very well limit the ability of African and other developing countries to properly manage plastic waste.”

But African experts were not convinced -- saying the removal of such restrictions could mean “Kenya will become a dump site for plastic waste”.

Campaigners are now calling on Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Trade, Industrialisation and Enterprise Development, Betty Maina, “to commit to Africa's Plastic-free vision” as the country negotiates with the US.

An online petition, organised by Greenpeace, calls on officials to reject terms in any new agreement that would make it easier for the US to export its plastic to Kenya. The “Do Not Backslide on Plastics” campaign already has over 21,000 signatures.

Fredrick Njehu, Senior Political Advisor for Greenpeace Africa, told my colleague Maina Waruru that most of those who signed the petition are Kenyans, many of them young and alarmed at the prospect of their country being turned into a gateway for the export of plastics to the rest of Africa.

Njehu says “this is not solely a Greenpeace petition, it is a people’s petition. The number of people who have signed the document so far shows there is lots of concern among the public.”

But the campaigners are facing an uphill struggle.

Organised opposition

The American Chemistry Council has long experience of lobbying policymakers to stop or slow action on climate change, and strip back regulations that aren’t in the commercial interests of its corporate members.

The ACC is backed by fossil fuel companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and BP and major agri-chemical companies including Bayer, BASF, FMC and Corteva.

Its beneficiaries include the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), which has claimed there is no “no scientific consensus concerning global warming”, and Republican Senator and infamous climate science denier James Inhofe. The ACC is also affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which works with corporations including ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and Reynolds Tobacco to weaken regulations in state-level legislation.

As the negotiations progress, Kenya’s environmental campaigners will be hoping their politicians’ plastic pollution promises are sufficiently weighty to avoid them backsliding under such immense organised pressure.

Must reads from the region

Africa’s path toward energy security is away from fossil fuels, Oluwaseun Oguntuase, Africa Report

“The future is clear: the direction of travel for Africa is away from fossil fuels,” argues Oguntuase, from the Centre for Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development at Lagos State University. Yet the issue of stranded assets barely registers on African nations’ policy agendas he says -- that must change if governments are going to work out how to run a continent without oil.

Kenya should speak to Britain as an equal as climate summit draws closer, Mohamed Adow, The Standard

Kenya and Britain have a long and problematic relationship. But “Kenyans can proudly proclaim [the country’s] climate leadership”, argues the Director of Nairobi-based thinktank Power Shift Africa. That’s why, in advance of COP26, Kenyan officials should “tell the truth: Britain is failing on climate leadership, and the world needs you to step up to the challenge.”

Recovery plans are neither green nor fair to the poor, says Christian Aid, Maddy Fry, Church Times

So far, coronavirus economic rescue packages have been tokenistically green at best, says a new report from Christian Aid. That means they are hurting poor nations the most. Countries from the G20 group should cancel debt repayments for poorer countries, phase out fossil-fuel subsidies, and aid and export credits should be used mainly to support renewable energy, it recommends.

Vanessa Nakate: The Global South is not on the front page but it is on the front line, Euronews

“We cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil. No one serves fossil fuels at the dining table,”, climate activist Nakate says in a wide-ranging interview. “Honestly, I was surprised to learn that climate change was a problem, because at school it was taught as though it was, either, in the past, or in the far future that we don't have to worry about. We are all living in this comfort that climate change isn’t here yet. But it is here, people are being impacted now,” she says.

What else I have been reading

The Leader the WTO Needs, Mo Ibrahim, Kevin Watkins, Mary Robinson, Project Syndicate

In this open letter, three representatives of top non-government organizations, philanthropists, and business leaders argue that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is uniquely well placed to lead the WTO, as it rises to the twenty-first-century challenges posed by poverty, inequality, climate change, and – more immediately – the COVID-19 pandemic.

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya.

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Did someone send this on to you? Why not sign up yourself!

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Bull temple, Basavanagui, Bengaluru, Image credit - Divya Gopal

Despite its choc-a-bloc traffic, Bengaluru is still considered among the most pleasant Indian metros to live in. At a comfortable altitude of 900 meters above the sea, it was once known as the ‘Garden city’. Although only a few dozen lakes remain, when the city was first constructed in the 16th century by Kempe Gowda, a chieftain of the Vijayanagara Empire, over 800 man-made lakes were said to have run alongside verdant forests. 

Apart from the main Cubbon Park and Lalbagh Botanical Garden, stretching for over 100 hectares in the heart of the city, there is now really no greenery left. Increasing urbanisation, fuelled by the IT boom of the early noughties, has seen tree-felling become all too common -- be it to make space for a new IT park, the ever expanding city metro, widening city roads or yet another flyover to accommodate all the traffic. 

Earlier this week, 36 trees were earmarked to be cleared to make way for a train yard. There is another plan in the works to build a peripheral ring road which will see the culling of 33,000 trees across the city.

But while I sometimes despair about the future of my Garden City, I am reminded of the places that harbour a secret wealth of biodiversity that bulldozers can’t touch - our temples.

Bengaluru’s sacred sites, such as small temples and kattes, community managed traditional open-air shrines, have become unlikely havens for the city’s native tree species, as well as providing much needed nature-based services for its residents.

A team of researchers investigated their conservation potential in the scientific journal Urban Ecosystems. Divya Gopal, Moritz von der Lippe and Ingo Kowarik from the Technical University, Berlin, studied 69 temples and kattes across Bengaluru and found that these were instrumental in protecting trees that would have otherwise surely faced the axe. 

“This study shows the potential of small green spaces for biodiversity within neighbourhoods, providing easy access to residents,” says Divya Gopal. “They also create a green network for urban wildlife.”  

Kaad Malleshwaram temple, Bengaluru - Image credit: Divya Gopal

During their research, the team encountered 121 distinct plant species, a surprisingly sizable number for small urban green spaces. Their study also found that 69 per cent of plants are native species in urban sacred sites, as compared to other sites such as parks. And it was not just Hindu sacred spaces: Christian, Buddhist and Muslim religious sites were also protectors of native tree species too. 

Among them were the sacred fig (Ficus religiosa) and neem tree (Azadirachta indica), planted together under which one often finds idols of serpent gods. Other trees found include the coconut tree (Cocos nucifera), banyan (Ficus benghalensis), Indian blackberry (Syzygium cumini), Banni (Prosopis cineraria) and Bael (Aegle marmelos). The greater the native tree varieties, the healthier the green space is, the researchers say. 

Other similar studies in Santiago, Chile, Bandung, Indonesia and in neighbouring Chennai also had similar findings. As Gopal says, these are  “sacred ecosystems” that are “deeply etched in the cultural and spiritual realm of the society”. The sacred groves in the Northeast Indian state of Meghalaya are another popular example of community conservation that protects up to 1,000 sq. kms of natural forests. 

But while there have been many studies regarding sacred groves in rural regions, their importance in the urban context has been less recognised. 

Gopal and her colleagues were among the first in India to explore this unique form of sacred site conservation - something all the more important because, more often than not, sacred sites are de-facto ‘no go zones’ in terms of tree cutting for development purposes. As Gopal says, “Many native species such as peepal and neem are part of the local folklore and traditions.” 

The successful conservation and management of the environment, Gopal adds, requires community participation and involvement. It creates awareness among residents. For example, in some slum settlements of Bengaluru, sacred figs have become rare hotspots of greenery where people socialise as well as worship. Slum dwellers gather under their canopy for leisure or for activities such as selling flowers, fruits and vegetables.

I like to think of these sites, which have turned out to be unlikely stalwarts of conservation, as a reminder of a past where Bengaluru’s residents existed in harmony with nature. And for those who dare to dream, they are the precursors to a future where cityscapes can also be vibrant hotspots of conservation and biodiversity.

Sibi Arasu is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru. He tweets @sibi123

Who we are

From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe.

Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.

Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.

India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.

Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya and London, UK.