EDITORIAL
WORLDS APART
Dear Reader,
W hether fishing in the middle of the ocean or farming in the boundless interior, vulnerable communities have one thing in common: Help takes time to arrive. When disaster strikes, options are extremely limited and expensive for getting people out and flying supplies in. Climate change raises the stakes even more and brings the demands of relief and development to a whole new level of difficulty – an existential threat for many Small Island Developing States (SIDS). A top priority for the Maldives, an island nation deep in the Indian Ocean, is to shore up essential infrastructure including flood defenses and freshwater facilities (page 18). Most things are possible, despite the endless vicious cycle of disaster, debt and (re)development. But what about the things beyond a nation’s control, like soaring ocean temperatures? “If we overshoot 1.5°C by 2030, then there’s a 90 percent chance that all our coral reefs will die off,” says Khadeeja Naseem, former Maldives Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology in our interview. “That will shut down our tourism and our fisheries industries – and put our very existence in question.” Many emerging economies are banking on the UN “Loss and Damage Fund”, but particularly the younger generations are looking closer to home at nature-based solutions. In Jamaica, we hear from entrepreneur Nicholas Kee, who has won praise from the World Bank and UN Development Programme for his work on water quality, biodiversity and removing carbon from the environment
Developed Countries (page 44). With its vast potential for hydropower and dense forest cover, this Himalayan kingdom has become the only carbon- negative country in Asia (and one of just three worldwide). Other Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) are faring less well, however, especially in Africa and the Americas. Farmers in Bolivia first pray for rain, but then desperately hope for those rains to stop (page 38). New climate patterns are oscillating between “dryer El Niño years and wetter La Niña years,” says Mauricio Céspedes Quiroga, Vice Minister of Science and Technology in our interview. “We previously had some time to recover between each phenomenon – perhaps two or three years – but now they’re occurring consecutively.” A world away in Lesotho, an enclave of South Africa, we hear another angle of a similar story (page 42). As problems mount up on the back of climate change, Maphakamile Xingwana, Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, makes an impassioned plea to feed her people: “At the very least we need to acquire seed varieties that are more resistant to the impacts of climate change, including higher temperatures and less water.” From wheat seeds to seaweed, glacial runoff to bleaching reefs, highland hinterlands to hot tub oceans, this edition covers the full spectrum of challenges faced by SIDS and LLDCs. We wish you a satisfying, if sobering, read.
Vulnerable communities have one thing in common: Help takes time to arrive.
(page 26). His secret ingredients for local resilience? Seaweed meadows and oysters. “If the ocean were a country, it would have a seat at the G7,” says Valerie Hickey, Global Director of Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy at the World Bank – not least because our offshore ecosystem is thought to be worth somewhere in the region of US$2.5 trillion per year (page 24). Our handy explainer looks into the many shades of “blue” – from backing sustainable fisheries to harnessing tidal energy to boosting zero-carbon shipping. We also hear how drones and artificial intelligence are helping the Seychelles to monitor its exclusive economic zone of well over a million square kilometers of ocean and prevent illegal fishing. Shifting focus from the high seas to the roof of the world, we see how Bhutan is harnessing glacial runoff, as it ramps up electricity exports and graduates from the UN list of Least
Howard Hudson, Senior Editor
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