Report about 'The Arab Spring and Climate Change'

It is always interesting to learn about the connection between natural sciences and social sciences. And for me, it is even more exciting to learn the impact of the greatest challenge of human kind 'Climate Change' with historic political movement the 'Arab Spring' happened in the Arab world. In this connection, I found one report which tries to establish a link between the Arab Spring and Climate Change.

 

In 2012, Troy Sternberg, a scholar of Oxford University, published an article in Applied Geography Volume 34 (519-524) entitled “Chinese drought, bread and the Arab Spring” in which he argues that the Arab spring was a result of increased wheat price in the international market due to winter drought in eastern china which might be caused by climate change. 

 

 Photo: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2013/02/28/54579/the-arab-spring-and-climate-change/

 

Another report published in February 2013 by Centre for American Progress and Centre for Climate and Security entitled “The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A Climate and Security Correlations Series” is a collection of five different articles in climate change, conflict, and economy that are edited by Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia. The report highlights Climate Change as a stressor  and indirectly argue that the Arab Spring was caused by Climate Change. In addition, the essays compiled in this report give a clear sense of relation between climate change in terms of record winter drought in China and its subsequent global wheat shortages, and civil unrest in Egypt stimulated by increased price of wheat in the market.

 

Carbon Footprint of Doha Climate Change Conference

Each year, signatory parties (countries) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet to discuss the climate change related issues. This year, the 18th session of Conferenceof Parties (COP) meeting is held at Doha, Qatar from 26 November to 7 December 2012. These meetings are extremely useful to discuss the agenda and to pave a forward path to combat climate change. Furthermore, they are very useful platform to share and showcase the knowledge and ideas among the world’s leaders, policy makers, community of practitioners, activists and students and researchers.

Very recently, people started to talk about the carbon footprint of delegates who travel long to participate in such meetings. Such meetings are not being able to fulfill the demand of climate change communities; they are also criticized for the high carbon footprint. I found this video on YouTube uploaded by Global 3000 - The Globalization Program calculating the carbon footprint of participants COP 18 meeting, Doha, Qatar.

 

 

Available global funds to climate change adaptation programme for the benefit of poor people

Introduction
Climate change is making poor people more vulnerable and marginalised in developing countries despite the fact that they have very little responsibility for causing climate change. Developed countries, with less than 20% of the world’s population, are responsible for 75% of global emissions (UNFCCC 2009 cited in Nakhooda et al. 2011, p. 1). Therefore there is growing consensus to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries, and in the meantime, to support poor countries by providing finance for climate change adaptation programme (Oxfam 2007, p. 2). Climate finance is defined as financial resources for tackling climate change while delivering sustainable development (Doig 2009, p. 1). Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developed countries commit to help developing countries in meeting costs of adaptation programmes to combat climate change. Hence, global funding mechanisms under UNFCCC, Kyoto protocol, and bilateral and multilateral donors have been established to fulfil growing demand to support this program since 1992. 

 

Different studies have estimated different amounts required for the adaptation programme which is quite higher than the committed by the developed nations. For example, World Development Report (2010) has estimated USD 30 - 100 billion per year is required to adapt climate change (see Table 1).  This fund must not come from the 0.7% target of UN development assistance, and should cover the extra costs of responding to climate change in as usual scenario. I will argue that the pledged fund is not sufficient for the climate change adaptation programme in order to address the need of developing countries, it should be additional to development assistance, and direct access to funding resources should be provided to developing countries to make funds efficient. I will analyse in this paper i) how much global funds under different mechanisms are available and what are the shortfalls, and ii) does direct access to these funds make them efficient and benefit to developing nations?

Unforeseen Disaster, Unprecedented Suffering

In late July 2010, Pakistan northern region received heavy monsoonal rainfall which caused recorded flooding in the history. It claimed around 2000 human lives leaving millions homeless and submerging many hectares of fertile land (BBC, Oxfam, Alertnet, Wikipedia). Due to large devastating impact, the UN Secretary termed it ‘a slow-motion tsunami’. Likewise, a cloudburst hit Leh region in Jammu and Kashmir, India and killed 100 people. A large mudslide occurred in Zhoqu county, north western china and claimed 1500 lives which is very uncommon place for such event. Other himalyan countries like Nepal, Bhutan and downstream country Bangladesh also experienced floods.