We wouldn't be responsible board members of
El Porvenir if we tried to design a five year strategic plan without recognizing the effects of climate change on the Nicaraguan countryside where we partner with communities to bring in clean water and work to improve watersheds. Unhappily, Central America and Nicaragua in particular are going to get some of the worst of what fossil fuel profits have wrought. Our member
Dr. Richard Gammon, a University of Washington climate scientist, brought us up to date on the new
IPCC report's dire scenarios.
Extreme weather isn't the half.
Many poor Nicaraguans are small farmers, scratching out a living on marginal lands. Cycles of drought and periodic torrential rain destroy crops. Warming means that crops that need cooler temperatures will have to be planted higher uphill, an adaptation that will only be available to large land owners.
Higher temperatures will decrease yields from corn (and Dr. Gammon added wheat is vulnerable as well.) Staple food prices will rise.
Meanwhile forests that are already directly stressed by illegal logging and encroachment form hungry farmers will be further threatened by drought and wildfires. The
Nicaraguan government's weak response to a massive wildfire in the Indio Maiz biological reserve was one of the triggers of the country's current political unrest. Healthy forests are essential to preserving ground water resources as well as absorbing excess atmospheric carbon.
Extreme heat in and of itself will become dangerous to human activity out of doors. When day temperatures around 40C (104F) become the norm in conditions of high humidity, human beings risk their lives performing strenuous work.
Climate scientists predict as many as 300 such high heat days a year in Central America within this century as global temperatures rise.
Learning more about these threats to long suffering Nicaragua has only redoubled our commitment at
El Porvenir to our water projects and particularly to our pilot efforts to make water resources more resilient through watershed improvement. Communities working with North American partners can do much to protect themselves. We can and must help.
1 comment:
Makes sense with that being the Equator zone. I think though it'll wreak havoc a lot of places because of its impact on ocean temperatures. The poor always suffer the most and have the least impact on why it's happening.
A friend of ours has always gone to the Siletz River for getting the fall salmon run. This year the river was in such bad condition, due to our reduction in rainfall and logging the hills above it, that there were few salmon; and they were being gotten by seals and sea lions, who were coming way up river.
When the oceans warm, the world changes in so many ways. With many people dependent on the ocean for food, this has the potential for tragedy beyond climate events. The worrisome part is while some want to think it's all human caused and humans can fix it, we live on a planet where we have little real control on its own cycles. We can probably intensify or reduce some but looking at the geologic record, we can see some of it may relate to things we little understand. In our recorded history, we have benefited by some of the shifts, as we grew in numbers. For many of the major shifts, we either were't here or weren't here in the numbers we are today. I don't know if I, at 75, will live to see the results; but my grandchildren likely will if not my kids. Unless, of course, a super volcano erupts and changes it all again.
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