Category Archives: People Stress

PLEA Network

18 August 2016, New Internationalist, Climate change and colonial history make a toxic combination. New research points to a powerful link between climate change and armed conflict. It also finds that countries that are ethnically mixed are more likely to experience this kind of conflict. But their results may actually tell us more about the consequences of colonialism than ethnic diversity. This new research joins a raft of existing research on climate change and conflict – often reaching competing conclusions. What is the link between climate change and conflict? This isn’t an issue that can be solved with one study. There are in fact hundreds of studies looking at this issue. And they don’t all reach the same conclusion. Some studies do show that climate impacts lead to increased violence. But some studies find that there was actually no connection at all. Being hit by a disaster or climate change impacts didn’t make any difference to levels of violence. Some studies even found the opposite. Climate change impacts actually reduced some kinds of violence. So what happens when we look at all this research as a whole? Yes, some of the studies point in different directions. But what about when we consider all the research together? Does it point to powerful climate – conflict connection, or not? It still isn’t clear. Read More here

PLEA Network

18 August 2016, The Telegraph, Alaskan village votes in favour of relocating due to climate change. tiny Alaskan village has voted to abandon their ancestral home to the rising seas, becoming possibly the first settlement in the United States forced to relocate due to climate change. Shishmaref’s 650 residents voted 89-78 in favour of a long-discussed proposal to move the entire village, to an as-yet-undecided new location, according to an unofficial count by the city clerk. Official results are expected on Thursday. In March a Native American community in Louisiana announced that it, too, was relocating – thus the Alaska village and the residents of the Isle de Jean Charles are vying to be the first to move. The remote Alaskan village, on a mile-wide island 600 miles from Alaska’s biggest city Anchorage, is described as being on the frontline of the climate change battle. Home for generations of seal hunters and fishermen, the island has lost 3,000 feet of coastline in the past 35 years. Rising temperatures have shrunk the sea ice, which buffered Shishmaref from storm surges. At the same time, the permafrost that the village is built on has begun to melt, with the shore receding at an average rate of up to 10 feet a year. Warmer waters allow more commercial ships to pass, polluting the seas and disturbing their fragile ecosystem. Thinner ice has led to a surge in fatalities among the hunters, who plunge to their deaths through the cracks. Read More here

PLEA Network

1 August 2016, The Guardian, World weather: 2016’s early record heat gives way to heavy rains. The record-breaking worldwide heat of the first six months of 2016 has turned to abnormally severe seasonal flooding across Asia with hundreds of people dying in China, India, Nepal and Pakistan and millions forced from their homes. In India, the Brahmaputra river, which is fed by Himalayan snow melt and monsoon rains, has burst its banks in many places and has been at danger levels for weeks. Hundreds of villages have been flooded in Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and other northern states. Some of the heaviest rains in 20 years have forced nearly 1.2 million people to move to camps in Assam. Floods have submerged around 70% of the Kaziringa national park, home to the rare one-horned rhino which was visited by Prince William earlier this year. “The situation is still very bad. We are taking measures to help people in every possible way,” the Indian forest minister, Pramila Rani Brahma,told Reuters. In the state of Bihar, 26 people have died, nearly 2.75 million people have been displaced or affected, and 330,000ha of land inundated. Many major rivers are still flowing at or above danger levels. In China, the summer monsoon which started in June after a series of heatwaves is said to have caused $22bn of damage so far. State officials say it has killed more than 500 people, destroyed more than 145,000 homes and inundated 21,000 sq miles of farmland. Read More here

PLEA Network

28 July 2016, The guardian, World’s largest carbon producers face landmark human rights case. Filipino government body gives 47 ‘carbon majors’ 45 days to respond to allegations of human rights violations resulting from climate change. The world’s largest oil, coal, cement and mining companies have been given 45 days to respond to a complaint that their greenhouse gas emissions have violated the human rights of millions of people living in the Phillippines. In a potential landmark legal case, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR), a constitutional body with the power to investigate human rights violations, has sent 47 “carbon majors” including Shell, BP, Chevron, BHP Billiton and Anglo American, a 60-page document accusing them of breaching people’s fundamental rights to “life, food, water, sanitation, adequate housing, and to self determination”. The move is the first step in what is expected to be an official investigation of the companies by the CHR, and the first of its kind in the world to be launched by a government body. The complaint argues that the 47 companies should be held accountable for the effects of their greenhouse gas emissions in the Philippines and demands that they explain how human rights violations resulting from climate change will be “eliminated, remedied and prevented”. It calls for an official investigation into the human rights implications of climate change and ocean acidification and whether the investor-owned “carbon majors” are in breach of their responsibilities. Read More here