Climate Crisis: Africa, Asia, Latin America

     El Niño is one of nature’s many phenomena, and it affects countries all over the world.  In the book Tropic of Chaos by Christian Parenti, he elaborates on the topic of El Niño in different regions and how it is being affected by climate change.  I’ve learned about El Niño in the past, but never considered how it could be altered by our warming planet.  Parenti talks about how the conditions due to El Niño were increasing back when he was writing this book, and I was curious what the current ones might be like now.       This event takes place irregularly every two to seven years in the Pacific Ocean, but its impact is not limited to those boundaries.  During a typical El Niño, environmental factors differ including things like surface waters warming , wind patterns changing, and upwelling is reduced.  Whether these changes are strong or weak can play a role in those affected areas in terms of fishing, rain fall amounts,...

  The marabou stork is an African bird, massive in size. Its wings are filled with black feathers which contrast with its white chest and legs. The skin on the bird's head has a unique color scheme of red and black . The most important tool the marabou stork has is its beak. Long, sharp, perfect for getting into tiny crevasses or targeting small pieces of bone marrow. Native to countries such as Sudan, Kenya, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina, Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, and DR Congo. They are content in being in both wetlands and dry savannahs . However, they lurk near carrion . This could be from when big game leaves behind scraps on a carcass, scavenging around landfills, or when cattle herds die from lack of water. The marabou stork only has one primary predator, that being human beings. The lack of education in some African countries has led to the demise of the bird populations despite it thriving for so long.  The conflict that is taki...

     Turkana      Turkana is a region in southwestern Kenya that sits between Lake Turkana and the Ugandan boarder (Britannica). The Turkana people keep cattle and Shoats, but the region is very dry with little access to water which makes resource conflict an issue. They have a very low ratio of teachers and medics to population, but the biggest issue they face is drought “More wells. We needed boreholes… The issue is drought” (Parenti 52). Boreholes are narrow holes put deep into the ground to reach water or sometimes oil.   In Tropic of Chaos, Christian Parenti focuses on the global south and the impacts of climate change on the people there. He talks about Turkana and their cattle raids and talks to a man named Lucas who have us the quote above. This book was published over a decade ago, and I wanted to explore more about this area and if they ever received the much-needed boreholes.      I found an article from 2019 that included m...

  In Christian Parenti’s Tropics of Chaos the information presented on how farming is changing in Brazil was especially interesting because I did a research paper several years ago on how subsistence and commercial farming is shifting/needs to change in South America. Parenti presents research on a long history of societal and economic struggle in Brazil which is unfortunately non-distinctive to many countries across the globe. However, Parenti notes in his findings not only that “northeast Brazil ‘is expected to experience more rapid warming than the global average” but also that this region will “be a region of very severe water stress by 2050” (Parenti, 173). Another source noted that Brazil is the “world’s most water-rich country” yet since 1991 an entire 15% of the land  typically covered by water has become completely dry. This poses a serious threat to the livelihoods of both commercial farmers and subsistence farmers in the coming years. Between a long history of eco...

Christian Parenti’s Tropic of Chaos speaks on developing countries and their struggle with climate change; how it can affect their natural and social environment. The book’s chapter on Kyrgyzstan stresses the fact that the country as a whole is “almost totally dependant on hydroelectric power” (83). The droughts coming from the warming of the world have held a significant impact, “crippl[ing] Kyrgyzstan’s power plants, thus its whole economy” (83). I write this blog post to offer new information about Kyrgyzstan and its status concerning hydroelectric power more than ten years after the publishing of Tropic of Chaos. In a much more recent post by “Radio Free Europe,” it is made obvious that the issues thought about years ago still remain prevalent today. The fluctuation between too much water and too little water leaves the country in an almost critical state. Kyrgyzstan’s main hydropower plant, the Toktogul HPP, which took around fifteen years to create and fill with water, has suffe...

       One of the most beautiful cities in the hemisphere, Rio de Janeiro today is most often described as a city under siege. There is no question that violent crime has increased significantly over the past decade. The homicide rate for Rio, for example, has tripled in the last fifteen years, rising from 2,826 murders in 1980 to 8,408 in 1994. In 2003 the police force was responsible for 1,195 civilian deaths. In 2007 police force was responsible for 1,330 deaths. Something crazy to think about is in the U.S. there were 1,134 deaths by the police force and our country is 50% larger than Rio. After  2007 Rio hired new police officers that went through strategic training. A key ingredient of success was the emphasis on rewarding reductions in violent crime. This resulted in the number of deaths dropping by 46%.           The cause of this violence has been narrowed down to relations with criminal gangs and drug trafficking. Unfortun...

(Image from Guardian)  Less than ten years ago in Rio, Brazil, gangs and crime wars were at their height, and the causes for this were not entirely socioeconomic, but climate-related as well. As weather patterns in the Northeast, or Nordeste, of Brazil change and become more extreme, including droughts and flooding which cause immeasurable damages to infrastructure and economy, and driving a majority of the farmers and other population out of the area.  As people are pushed away from their homes due to extreme weather patterns and into the larger cities, they most often must live in the Favelas, underfunded, crime-stricken communities controlled by gangs. As they settle and try to survive, many join the gangs for whichever means they may need. This chain reaction of forced relocation and insufficient living standards that lead to individuals joining gangs fuels the gangs themselves and has negative impacts on the Rio crime wars.  The standards in which people are even giv...

    Most people likely have not heard of cattle raiding before and are initially surprised when they here this phrase. However, cattle raiding is not something new to Eastern Africans and has been going on for generations. It will most likely also continue on for generation unless the climate crisis is dealt with. Now your probably now wondering, "Climate crisis and cattle, how are these too even remotely linked"? Well this problem ultimately stems back to the  Turkana  and Pokot tribes conflict over water in Kenya. Drought in this area has ultimately been caused by drought and has been rapidly increasing as our planet ages. In the 1970s it was a drought every seven years, in the 1980s they came every five years, in the 1990s they were every two years. and now in the 2000s they happen every single year. The Turkana looking for water began migrating south in search where the ran into the lands of the Pokot. The Turkana forced the small nu...

  Day Zero for Humanity March 2018 Day Zero of Cape Town South Arica:     This year we witnessed what may have been one of the best city wide collaborations in conservation that I have witnessed. For those of you who don't know what Cape Town's Day Zero was here's some backstory. Back in 2018 Cape Town, South Africa a semi-arid country had three years of a rain deficit leading to the depletion of reservoirs to 20% capacity, this lead to heavy restrictions within the city on all persons limiting them to 50 liters of water a day.       On average according to the Mayo Clinic men need 3.7 liters a day and women need 2.7 liters a day, the remaining liters are for flushing toilets leading to people leaving urine in the bowl until solids needed to be flushed, showering which there was a hefty fine for anyone who took a shower longer than two minutes, artist even began writing songs exactly two minutes long so you would know when to stop the shower....

  In Christian Parenti’s Tropic of Chaos , there was a chapter on how India and Pakistan have a water treaty and it got me thinking about what that looks like today. Because the book was published in 2011, I thought a lot of things would be different when it comes to the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. A passage on page 129 explains that India believed they were using its rivers in a way that’s fair, but Pakistan thought they’re overusing their share of the rivers and obstructing their water rights. With the tensions between the two countries when the book was written, I assumed that things would have gotten worse. It’s been a long time since the book’s publication and even longer since the treaty was formed so I looked into what that treaty looks like now. Apparently the treaty is still active between the two countries, even though indianexpress.com tells us that the two countries consider the treaty to be unfinished. Pakistan has questions about if India is staying to the correct en...

       Reading through Parenti's book, all of which was alarming, I found the particulars going on inside India the most glaring considering the scale.  And the reasons for that are simple but disturbing, knowing the percentage of Earth's population that live in that part of the world. As well as the sporadic monsoons, severe pollution, melting glaciers, and the still remaining Naxalite insurgents. These issues combined with a myriad of others will result in millions of farmers lacking the means to grow enough food, and millions more struggling for access to clean water, for farming or otherwise... So to really emphasize the scope of what's concerning me about this, take a look at these two maps here.       One is a map showing the concentration of Naxalite activity (Red being the most concentrated.) and the other is an image detailing the major rivers of the Indian Sub-Continent. The Naxalite affected districts are unsurprisingly in farming ...

              Climate Change has led to a surge of climate refugees. As the Earth continues to warm, the problem is only going to get worse. Our country has been extremely divided on immigration. Some believe that it is our responsibility to help these refugees to the best of our ability, while others dismiss them as “not our problem.” To fully understand the issues that we’re facing today, it’s important to have an understanding of the history of the US-Mexico border and how it has been altered throughout history. "Migrants cross river into Mexico after being refused passage to U.S." (PBS)                It seems that imperial conquest has always been an aspect of the US government. We see that today with the sheer number of US military troops dispersed across the world. In the mid 19th century, under President James Polk, our government fully embraced a concept called Manifest Destiny. ...