Climate Crisis: Africa, Asia, Latin America

The book Tropic of Chaos by Christian Parenti dives into the problems of climate change and how these problems are creating chaos throughout many countries in the global south. One of these countries is Afghanistan. According to Parenti, Afghanistan faced a major drought in the year 2010 that was directly tied to climate change. The drought made it difficult for farmers to produce their normal crops like wheat, onions, and apricots (Parenti, 106). With conditions like drought leading to poverty around the country, farmers turned to alternative ways of making money, growing poppy. Poppy fields thrive in drought conditions as they only require a sixth of the water that is required to grow wheat. Poppy is also more profitable than wheat, which is another driving factor for these poor farmers to grow poppy instead of grains (Parenti, 107). One farmer was quoted saying, “Three years ago we didn’t grow much poppy, now everyone grows it, even the police chief (Parenti, 108).” Poppy plants ...

  Rio De Janeiro is a picturesque city that attracts millions of tourists and accounts for 60% of Brazilian GDP ( Tourism and GDP ). It is home to beautiful coastlines, stunning mountains, and a vibrant culture in the big city. However, violence has plagued the city over the past decades. In 2009, more than eleven hundred people were killed by police forces ( Tropic of Chaos ). Gang violence is prevalent and drug trade fills the market. In 2000, the murder rate per 100,000 was found to be 56.6 ( Crime in Brazil ), a murder rate 6x that of New York City. One may ask where all this violence stems from. It is a complex problem that begins with slavery in the past that created lasting social inequalities, and continues today with the Climate Crisis exacerbating the problem.   Relative deprivation is a factor introduced in Christian Parenti’s book, Tropic of Chaos, that helps to explain why horrific forms of violence continue to persist in this city. This phrase describes that c...

     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...