Anyoku, Ifeanyi
Professor Kevin Kelleher
EN 104-001
16th April 2023
We Stand or We Sink
Have you ever gone to bed and woken up feeling wet? Have you ever woken up to find yourself swimming in an indoor pool that did not exist before bedtime the previous night. This type of rude awakening is what bedeviled residents of Brisbane a city in Queensland, Australia late in February 2022 (2022 Australian Flooding). Thousands were displaced, an equivalent number lost their business, and dozens of lives were lost. The layman would blame this tragedy on mother nature while the partially informed one would blame coastal recession and flooding. They both, however, forget to blame humanity for its role in aggravating coastal recession and flooding. Coastal recession and annual flood frequency will inevitably worsen worldwide over the next century. This means that humanity may face an increased refugee crisis and higher mortality rates unless pragmatic social, political, and technological approaches are adopted for societies to navigate through these adverse effects and ensure they do not get worse than already projected.
No form of climate change is induced by natural biomes or biological processes. Rather, they are all anthropogenic in nature. In his research, University of Windsor professor David S K Ting explored the ways human beings cause major shifts in the earth’s biosphere and climate. Ting’s research provides evidence that the urbanization of a region is highly positively correlated with an increase in temperatures in that region and a deviation of weather conditions from the norm. Urbanization and climate change do not have a cause-and-effect relationship because urbanization itself does not create weather changes. However, the activities that characterize urbanization do. Deforestation – one of those characteristic activities – reduces the population of plants available to take in carbon dioxide in an environment. A lower rate of carbon dioxide removal leads to higher atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas notorious for trapping and reflecting heat back to the earth’s surface. Therefore, an increased concentration of this gas leads to increased temperatures and other peculiar weather conditions within a region undergoing deforestation. Another characteristic of urbanization is an increased use of vehicles which release the oxides of carbon into the environment. While these oxides usually act as greenhouse gases in the region where they are produced, they could also diffuse elsewhere and induce global warming. There are many more “normal” activities we humans engage in or observe on a regular basis that contribute significantly to global warming. Most people view these activities as harmless to the environment because they feel these activities cause minimal change. This is an erroneous way to view this problem. It overlooks the facts that just as millions of tiny sand grains create a beach, millions of individuals engaging in minimal anti-environmental activities induce large scale climate changes.
The role of humans in inducing flooding is quite shocking. Ryota Takayama, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Niigata University, is among scientists who have embraced the use of intricate simulations in their experiments. Simulation of rivers from various countries while gradually increasing temperatures in these artificial environments has led to the conclusion that “a warmer future atmosphere could hold a larger amount of water vapor … and thus potentially generate more precipitation” (Takayama). When precipitation levels increase above the norm, rivers will overflow their banks and flooding occurs. This data represents that nature cannot be blamed for many disastrous floods across Africa, Asia, and the southern parts of the United States. We humans have a hand in creating our own woes. We have numerous oil rigs in the sea that release humongous amounts of methane – a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide – yet we wonder why arctic ice has been melting or why many coastal cities have been sinking. This research also reveals that there are dangers which have not yet been unleashed upon inland cities built near rivers and other inland bodies of water.
Some individuals may still feel coastal recession and intense flooding are temporary issues which will be resolved soon. This is not true as these problems have been worsening non-stop for decades. Simon Usborne, seasoned writer for the Guardian and Financial Times, says that meteorological evidence shows that “sea level over the past 3000 years in 24 locations” in the Atlantic and Pacific has increased steadily. For most of those years people never believed things would get this bad. However, heavy floods that were once thought to be improbable now cost some countries about twenty-three billion dollars annually (2022 Australian Flooding).
The ignorance of the populace about the horrors of coastal recession and increased flooding could be blamed on two major parties: the scientific community and the government. According to Bruce Guile, former president of The New Advisory Group, outrageous “gaps exist between the way scientists think about climate adaptation and the information citizens, governments, and company leaders” are given. One would expect this type of information to be more emphasized and more published than it already is by scientists. However, one must understand that providing people with information on climate change does not truly benefit the scientific community monetarily. Scientists devoted to studying climate change (especially coastal recession and flooding) will often be found working with non-profit organizations and not for-profit-organizations. Poor remuneration of scientists invested in climate change is a major reason for the deficient education of the public on important climate issues. Most governments around the globe have failed to create strict policies that will motivate environmental agencies to tackle climate change with a sense of urgency. There is also a lack of investment in making policies that integrate contemporary and local climate change into the education system of their countries. Failure by government leads to failure by scientists: “IPCC has traditionally been accused by climatologists of underestimating future sea level rises” (Usborne). We, humans, need to stop keeping ourselves in a state of ignorance.
People, unfortunately, fail to realize that a plethora of issues result from coastal recession and mass flooding. According to British author and globetrotter Piers Moore Ede these issues include but are not limited to displacement, cultural extinction, and loss of biodiversity. A less intense, but still notable, issue is the increasing expenditure of government revenue on recovery efforts: “According to the ICA, claim numbers are much higher than at the same point during other flood events and they expected claims to continue to increase” (2022 Australian Flooding). Island people are the most at risk for displacement. For example, the nation of Tuvalu is currently experiencing more frequent cyclones and her citizens are undergoing relocation (Ede). Relocation makes it sound nice, but a lot of these people become refugees in the countries they abruptly flee to because they relocate with little plans. If the seven hundred and thirty million people scattered on islands across the globe were all forced to flee their countries, the world would have a problem bigger than the current refugee crisis (List of islands by population). How should all these people be accommodated? Which nations should accommodate them? What becomes of the mental health of these people as they realize the places that was home to their ancestors for many generations would be inhabited no more?
In some countries flooding and cyclones cause economic problems. This knowledge was garnered by research pioneered by Dr Celia McMichael, Associate Professor in Health Geography at the University of Melbourne. An agricultural society cannot survive when “subsistence gardens and fruiting trees [are] destroyed by saltwater” from the ocean (McMichael). Furthermore, both severe weather conditions and planned relocation of people susceptible to those conditions make life harder for predominantly fishing economies (McMichael). These were statements garnered from individuals who were relocated from a coastal village on Vunidogoloa, Fiji. Coastal recession can force people to migrate to regions with lower living conditions than their original homes. A discussion with individuals from Bhola and other villages in Bangladesh reveals that rural-urban migration sometimes makes people go from living comfortable lives to living in destitute conditions. This is because most of these migrants are only able to get jobs in “construction work, rickshaw pulling, garment and brick factory labour” which come with “increased risk of injuries, longer-term physical health impacts, and increased health care expenses” (McMichael). Children in families that migrated abruptly are noted to be at a higher risk to mix with the wrong crowds, be exposed to drugs, and unfamiliar diseases (McMichael). The economic disaster caused by displacement of small communities is terrible and the disaster which would result from the displacement of large communities will be even worse.
Climate change is hypothesized to bring more political problems in the next century. More and more citizens will begin to point fingers at the government for its inefficacy in handling or preventing flooding and displacement. Climate change could be used by extremist groups to convince well-meaning citizens to overthrow incumbent governments (Guile). Furthermore, tensions between nations could increase because of one nation suffering climate change induced by another nation. This has already started occurring. Former prime minister of Tuvalu, Koloa Talake took political and legal action against some of the leaders of nations most responsible for carbon emissions (Ede). Although nothing much came from that action, more drastic actions could be taken by nations in the future. One of such actions could be the termination of bilateral and multilateral agreements which could create more political enemies or less military protection for different countries. World powers may have been overlooking the issue of climate change due to privilege. However, they ought to be aware that that privilege may end soon.
One of the best ways to tackle coastal recession and flooding involves the use of technological and architectural tactics. A popular strategy is Integrated Coastal Management (ICM). Integrated Coastal Management is a set of architectural guidelines that focus on “waste management, resource conservation, and better planning of infrastructure” in a way that minimizes carbon emissions (Ting). Also, more effort needs to be put into constructing structures that minimize the entry of floodwater into both rural and urban communities. To ensure widespread adoption of these tactics across the nation, climate change also needs to be tackled using policies. These should be policies that create substantial punishments for companies that callously contribute to global warming, policies that require cities to fulfil annual quotas on their preparedness for a flash flood, and policies that require governmental agencies associated with environmental issues to have a certain amount of outreach programs across the country annually. There needs to be policies that encourage “an explicit public discussion of different cost scenarios” regarding coastal recession, flooding, and planned relocation to “build public understanding and flesh out possible responses” (Guile). Information on predicted flooding and coastal recession also needs to be circulated to avoid underestimating or overestimating flooding in a particular region.
It should not be misconceived that coastal recession and annual flood rates will decrease or remain constant if carbon emissions and other climate change aggravators miraculously cease to exist. The damage has already been done and there is currently no known way of reversing the harm to the atmosphere. Nevertheless, to make life bearable by everyone in society – upper, middle, and lower class – and to avoid more insurmountable natural disasters, there needs to be persistent, well-informed, not just well-meaning, efforts against climate change.
Works Cited
“2022 Australian Flooding.” Center for Disaster Philanthropy, 14 Sept. 2022,https://disasterphilanthropy.org/disasters/2022-australian-flooding/.
Ede, Piers Moore. “Come hell or high water: rising sea levels and extreme flooding threaten to make the South Pacific's Tuvalu the first victim of global warming.”Alternatives Journal, vol. 29, no. 1, winter 2003, pp. 8+. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A99121626/GIC?u=tusc49521&sid=bookmark-GIC&xid=bbea3dda. Accessed 11 Mar. 2023.
Guile, Bruce, and Raj Pandya. “Adapting to Global Warming: Four National Priorities.” Issues in Science & Technology, vol. 34, no. 4, Summer 2018, pp. 19–22. EBSCOhost,search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rgm&AN=133124799&site=eds-live&scope=site.
“List of Islands by Population.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Apr. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_population#:~:text=For%20comparison%2C%20continental%20landmasses%20are,of%20the%20world's%20total%20population.
McMichael, Celia, et al. “Waiting for the Wave, but Missing the Tide: Case Studies of Climate-Related (Im)Mobility and Health.” Journal of Migration and Health, vol. 7, Jan.2023. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmh.2022.100147.
Takayama, Ryota, et al. “Pseudo Global Warming Experiment of Flood Inundation in the Upper White Volta River, Ghana.” Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, vol. 45, Feb.2023. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2022.101297.
Ting, David S K and Jacqueline A Stagner. Climate Change Science: Causes, Effects and Solutions for Global Warming. Elsevier, 2021. EBSCOhost,search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2736493&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Usborne, Simon. “The High Seas.” New Scientist, vol. 253, no. 3375, Feb. 2022, pp. 44–47. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0262-4079(22)00342-6.
