Drilling for water is a fraught business in Africa – like being a pirate without a treasure map. In many areas, the rock is old – some of the oldest on our planet.
Africa Groundwater Atlas overview
This cracked, shattered stone that is blasted by desert heat or soaked in tropical rains with often only a thin covering of rust-stained soil, can hold substantial amounts of water, but a driller needs to know where to look and the skill to develop a water source that will last. A metre or two can make the difference between a dry hole and a well that could supply a village or a farm for a lifetime.
The good news is that, in many parts of Africa, there is more groundwater available close to most areas where it is needed and the potential to store more with land use or technology changes. Currently, groundwater is an underused natural resource in much of Africa – where water insecurity is rife and drought is currently threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in southern and eastern Africa.
For once, there may even be a rare silver lining to climate change – as it appears that in some environments groundwater recharge happens more readily when rainfall intensity is high.
Thus understanding and managing Africa’s aquifers should be central to poverty alleviation and climate resilience strategies.
A challenge up until now has been the lack of easily available groundwater information:
“When you drill a borehole in the UK, there are incredibly detailed maps and borehole logs (registered with the British Geological Survey – BGS) to help you decide where to drill,” Sean Furey, a water and sanitation specialist at Skat told The Guardian. “Even in countries where a similar organisation exists, that sort of data isn’t available because NGOs, the private sector or even governments who commission boreholes aren’t aware that they need to submit their drilling logs.”
In May, the Africa Groundwater Atlas was launched and is a major step forward in addressing this information gap.
The British Geological Survey has developed the Atlas in partnership with the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) Burdon Groundwater Network for Developing Countries, and with more than 50 collaborating groundwater experts across Africa.
For each of 51 African countries, the Africa Groundwater Atlas provides new overview geology and hydrogeology maps and summaries of the key geological environments and aquifers in each country.
There are sections on groundwater status, use and management, including groundwater monitoring, with up to date information on the national organisations involved in groundwater development and management. There is supporting material on geographical setting, climate, surface water, soil and land cover, with accompanying maps; and finally, there are references and links to more detailed information for those wishing to find out more.
Accompanying pages highlight important issues related to African groundwater, such as recharge, groundwater development techniques and transboundary aquifers; with links to sources of further information.
Also available is the Africa Groundwater Literature Archive, which enables users to search (geographically and by keyword) and freely access thousands of articles, reports and other documents about African groundwater.
The Africa Groundwater Atlas is still being developed. Some of the pages still have limited information, and for many others there may be more details to be added or updates to be made – and there is still a need for country-level collection of borehole logs. However, if you are working in Africa on rural or urban water supply, water resources, environmental protection, agriculture, mining or forestry, you should bookmark the Atlas in your web browser today.
We can’t tell you if X marks the spot of the hidden treasure you are looking for – but at least now you have a map.
What’s the weather doing? It is a question that obsesses many. But, for many Ethiopians, it is a question that makes the difference between plenty and destitution.
Community River monitoring in Dangila woreda, Ethopia. Photo credit: D. Walker, Newcastle University
Ethiopia is a rich and diverse country that is home to around 100 million people, 88 different languages and imbued with long, diverse history. Its highlands are seasonally wet and fertile and its lowland deserts are among the most parched places on Earth.
Dangila woreda, or district, is a hilly area in the north west of the country with a population of around 160,000 people spread across an area of about 900 km2. Although the area receives rainfall at around 1,600mm a year, over 90% of this falls between May and October. For farmers, who depend on livestock and rainfed crops, understanding and predicting these rains is crucial to their livelihoods. Traditional strategies, which have served for millennia, are coming under threat from new pressures of shifting climate patterns, land degradation and population growth.
Exactly what is happening now and what is likely to happen in the future is uncertain due to the lack of rainfall, river flow and groundwater level data. Throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, under-investment by governments has led to a widespread decline in environmental monitoring and this, in turn, makes water resources management harder and harder.
But what if those who stood to gain most from better understanding and management of water resources were those leading the data collection? Can communities reliably collect accurate weather, river and groundwater data? This is the question that is being investigated by researchers, led by Newcastle University in the UK through an UPGro-supported project called AMGRAF).
In a new paper in the Journal of Hydrology, David Walker and his colleagues explain why they think citizen science has a future in rural Ethiopia and beyond:
“The benefits of community involvement in science are being slowly recognised across many fields, in large part because it helps build public understanding of science, ownership and pride in the results, and this can benefit both individuals and local planning processes,” said Walker. “Because there are so few formal monitoring stations and such large areas that need to be understood and managed, we need to think differently about how data collection can be done.”
The community-based monitoring programme was started in February 2014 and residents of an area called Dangesheta were involved in the siting new rain and river gauges, and identifying wells that were suitable to be monitored. Five wells are manually dipped every two days, with a deep meter to measure the depth from the ground surface and the water level in the well; a rain gauge was installed in the smallholding of a resident who then took measurements every day at 9am; two river gauge boards were installed in the Kilti and Brante rivers and were monitored daily at 6am and 6pm.
Every month, the volunteers would then give their hard copy records to the Dangila woreda government office, who then typed them into an Excel spreadsheet and emailed to the research team.
But is this data any good? For David and his colleagues, this was a critical question that could make or break the whole approach. The challenges of data validation are substantial, and there are generally two types of error:
Sampling errors come from the variability of rainfall, river flow and groundwater level over time and over area. The sampling error increases with rainfall and decreases with increased gauge density. A challenge in tropical areas, such as Ethiopia, is much of the rain is high-intensity thunderstorms, which can be quite short in duration and small in size, and therefore easy to miss, or only partially record, if the density of monitoring stations is low.
Observational errors are the second type, and can come from a number of things: wind turbulence, splashing around the gauge, evaporation can affect how much is in the rain gauge, and then the observer might not read the gauge accurately or make a mistake or unclear notation, when writing the measurement down.
“Tracking down errors is tricky, but it can be done, mainly through statistical comparison with established monitoring stations and with each other,” said Walker. “What we found was that the community collected data is more reliable than that gathered through remote sensing instruments from satellites.”
It is hoped that this promising approach can attract further support and be used more widely, but what are the secrets, and challenges, to making community monitoring work?
“People are at the heart of this process and selection of volunteers is crucial to avoid problems with data falsification or vandalism,” concluded Walker. “Feedback is absolutely vital and through workshops and meetings the data can be presented and analysed with the community so that they can make decisions on how best use the available rainfall, river flows, and groundwater to provide secure sources of water for their farms and their homes.”
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has criticised the Nigerian government’s agreement with Russia’s ROSATOM to build four nuclear power plants in the country. The group is concerned with inherent dangers of the project, adding that it is uncalled for at a time most civilised nations are exploring safe renewables.
An impression of the proposed 1,200 MW Hanhikivi nuclear power plant in Pyhajoki, Finland
The agreement provides for the construction of a Centre with the two-circuit pool-type reactor of the Russian design and a nominal power rating of 10 MW in Sheba-Abuja. Four nuclear plants that ROSATOM will build will cost about $80 billion, with the first expected to be ready by 2025. The other three will be ready by 2035.
In the statement, Franklin Erepamo Osaisai, chairman and CEO of the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC) was quoted as saying that the plants would be financed by ROSATOM, which will then build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) them to the Nigerian government which will enter a power-purchasing agreement. Kogi and Akwa Ibom States are to host the plants.
But, in a reaction to the development, ERA/FoEN said the decision of the Nigerian government to experiment with the nuclear option is not only shocking, but also a betrayal of the Nigerian people who have roundly rejected the dangerous path since the technology is unsafe and, by virtue of its total control by the Russian firm, will create a state within the Nigerian state.
ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Godwin Uyi Ojo, said in a statement: “We are miffed that a cooperation agreement on this dangerous experiment has been reached despite the aversion of Nigerians to the nuclear option for generating power. We reject it and refuse to be led into a radioactive misadventure that western countries that hitherto experimented are weaning themselves off and exploring safe renewables,”
Ojo noted that, with the Chernobyl and recent Fukushima incident in Japan still fresh in the mind, the Nigerian and Russian promoters of the project have neither consulted Nigerians nor taken into cognisance the fact that the project will ultimately tie the country to the whims of the Russian vendor which can be described as the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy.
“We also gathered that the huge cost associated with the plants also leaves much to be desired because one facility of the kind and capacity that ROSATOM is planning to construct in Nigeria is about 7 billion Euro in Finland while same goes for $20 billion here.
Ojo explained that ERA/FoEN was part of a team of environmental activists and journalists who visited the proposed 1,200 MW Hanhikivi nuclear power plant in Pyhajoki, Finland, being constructed by ROSATOM and at the venue expressed misgivings about the project and total aversion of Nigerians to building same in Nigeria.
In Finland, the issue of how the spent nuclear fuel will be managed is now a burning question among local activists who staged resistance rallies against the planned construction in July.
Ojo pointed out that other issues that readily pop up are how the wastes will also be managed in Nigeria and where ROSATOM will get the funds for the construction.
“Without mincing words, for the average Nigerian, the details are scary enough. We reject the nuclear option for power generation because they are dangerous and we do not have the capacity to manage the potential disaster a nuclear breach may cause.
“We advocate the renewal of the Nigerian grid and energy sector. In doing this, renewables are the way to go since they make for both profitable business and safety. We do not support the dirty, unsafe and expensive reactors this government has agreed to build,” Ojo insisted.
In an article published by Nature World News on Wednesday, researchers announced the discovery of a new “Earth-like” planet orbiting a star not far from our sun. The planet has not been named yet, but was found circling the star Proxima Centauri – a “cool, tiny red dwarf” scientists have long suspected might be capable of having a planet in its orbit. The unnamed planet, known as Proxima b, is reported to orbit within Proxima Centauri’s “habitable zone” and is a only a short distance of 4.25 light-years away from Earth. Scientists estimate the planet receives enough radiation to retain a surface temperature of around -40° Fahrenheit. Based on what is known about other red dwarf star planets, Proxima b is likely rocky and has one side constantly left in darkness. Scientists are unsure whether it is in fact capable of supporting alien life, but it is believed it could have a surface “capable of holding liquid water” and sustaining life forms.
Artist’s impression of the surface of Proxima b. Photo credit: M. Kornmesser/European Southern Observatory
Scientists have discovered what they believe to be a new planet, the closest one ever detected outside our solar system. It is a small, rocky planet not unlike our own, orbiting the sun’s closest stellar neighbor.
“It’s so inspiring, it’s our closest star,” Lisa Kaltenegger, a Cornell astronomer who wasn’t involved in the new study, told The Washington Post. “A planet next door. How much more inspiring can it get?”
Located about 4.25 light-years from the sun, Proxima is less famous than the Alpha Centauribinary star system it hangs around with. But while Alpha Centauri is made up of two rather sun-like stars, Proxima is actually closer. It used to be that scientists were far more interested in stars like our own sun than in dim little dwarves like Proxima, but the times are changing – these types of stars are far more common in the galaxy, and scientists now believe they might be just as capable of hosting life as more familiar looking suns.
The proposed planet comes to light not long after a would-be-world orbiting Alpha Centauri B was determined to be nothing but a fluke in the data. Scientists know that most stars in the galaxy harbor planets, but we’ve had difficulty finding our closest companions in the cosmos.
Proxima b will no doubt be dubbed “Earthlike” by many, but let’s not jump the gun. Here’s what we know: The planet, based on statistical analysis of the behavior of its star, is quite likely to exist. Beyond that, we know very little.
Proxima b orbits its parent star every 11 days. Because of the method used to detect it, we don’t actually know how massive the planet candidate is – but we can say with confidence that it’s at least 1.3 times as massive as the Earth. It’s just over four million miles away from its cool, tiny red dwarf of a star (much closer than we are to our own sun), so it is blasted with enough radiation to maintain a balmy surface temperature of around minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Based on what we know about the planets that form around red dwarf stars, it’s probably rocky – like Earth, Venus and Mars – and is likely tidally locked, meaning that one face of the planet constantly stares at the sun while the other half is left in darkness.
To call a planet “Earthlike,” scientists have to show that a planet is likely to be rocky and capable of holding liquid water. If Proxima b has an atmosphere – a question unlikely to be answered anytime soon – then it could have a temperature quite close to Earth’s, meaning it would at least be capable of maintaining liquid water on its surface.
Even if Proxima b has (or once had) an atmosphere and held water, the evolution of life is far from guaranteed. For one thing, we’re working with a sample size of one (the Earth) and have no idea how common the spark of life really is – even on planets that have all the same ingredients as the ones found at home.
Then there’s Proxima itself: Known as a flare star, the red devil lashes huge flares of radiation out into space every few hours. Anything that evolved on a nearby planet would have to live deep underground or underwater to survive – unless it evolved some level of protection from radiation that scientists on Earth can scarcely imagine.
The discovery of this planet, be it Earthlike or not, has been a long time coming. Led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé from Queen Mary University of London, 31 scientists from eight different countries spent several months collecting data on Proxima. They were looking to build on previous indications of planetary presence, studying the “wiggle” in the star’s light that would be caused by the seesaw gravitational pull between it and an orbiting planet (this is known as the Doppler method). Such a wiggle had been seen before, but the signal wasn’t strong enough to prove a planet was there.
Anglada-Escudé and his colleagues applied for several months of observation time on the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph, allowing them to collect 54 nights’ worth of data on this telltale stellar wiggle.
“There had previously been claims of other planets, so we had to be really careful here,” Anglada-Escudé said during an embargoed news briefing held by Nature on Tuesday. The data from those 54 nights made a pretty strong case for the presence of a planet, but “it wasn’t enough.” The researchers weren’t satisfied until they combined their data with the older signals, the ones that hadn’t made enough of a case on their own.
“And then the [statistical] significance goes sky high,” he said.
Others agree that while the planet has yet to be confirmed using direct observational methods, the researchers have likely found something special. ESO astronomer Henri Boffin, who previously worked as HARPS’s instrument scientist but wasn’t involved in the new research, told The Post that Proxima b’s signal looked to be about three times as strong as that of Alpha Centauri Bb, the “planet” that turned out to be nothing but noise.
“It is quite amazing that our closest stellar neighbor would harbor a low-mass planet,” Boffin said. “Even if this is not so surprising after all, as it now seems established that the vast majority of stars host at least one planet, it is still nice to have apparently found the closest to us.”
Now the researchers will look for other methods to help confirm the planet’s existence and learn about its composition. Direct observation – staring at the planet with a telescope – isn’t possible with current technology. The star is just too bright and close to the planet for any telescope to see the latter. There’s a small chance – something like 1.5 percent probability – that the planet “transits” in front of its star, or passes in front of the star from the perspective of Earth’s telescopes. If that’s the case, scientists will be able to study the planet’s mass and atmosphere by analyzing the way Proxima’s light passes around it.
“That’s the first thing we’re going to go look for,” John Brown Paul Strachan, a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London who contributed to the study, told The Post. “If it does transit, then that opens a whole field to us, where we might be able to start seeing details about the atmosphere of the planet.”
But Strachan and his colleagues aren’t giving up hope of a direct observation in the near future. They believe that instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, will allow them to glimpse Proxima b in no time.
If Proxima b proves to be a real planet – and one particularly worthy of study – a visit wouldn’t be totally outside the realm of possibility. But even though Proxima is our closest neighbor, it’s still awfully far: NASA’s New Horizons probe had to travel 3 billion miles to get to Pluto and took nearly a decade to do so. At around 25 trillion miles away, a trip to Proxima b would be more than 8,000 times as long. At least one well-funded group is trying to develop the technology needed to propel a tiny probe into the Centauri system, but don’t hold your breath.
Then again, the detection of an Earthlike atmosphere on Proxima b would provide some excellent motivation.
As Anglada-Escudé said in a statement, “The search for life on Proxima b comes next.”
The Italian Civil Protection agency has described Wednesday’s devastating earthquake that hit near Perrugia as a “severe” seismic event.
At least 120 people were killed after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck central Italy in the middle of the night.
Scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the 3:32 a.m. quake in a remote area straddling the regions of Umbria, Marche, and Lazio.
A man is rescued alive from the ruins in Amatrice. Photo credit: Remo Casilli / ReutersA woman is helped to leave her home by rescuers in Amatrice. Photo credit: Remo Casilli / ReutersA woman holds a child as they stand in the street following an earthquake, in Amatrice. The magnitude-6 quake was felt across a broad swath of central Italy, including Rome, where residents of the capital felt a long swaying followed by aftershocks. Photo credit: Massimo Percossi/APRescuers stand by a collapsed house in Amatrice. More than 70 people were killed and hundreds injured as crews raced to dig out survivors. Photo credit: Massimo Percossi/ANSA via APA woman holds a dog in her arms as she walks with a man next to the rubble of buildings in Amatrice. Photo credit: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/GettyA man walks amid the rubble in Pescara del Tronto. Photo credit: Remo Casilli / Reuters
At least 120 people were killed after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck central Italy in the middle of the night on Wednesday near the town of Perugia, the U.S. Geological Survey said, in what is being described by the Italian Civil Protection agency as a “severe” seismic event.
A man walks amid the rubble of buildings in the town of Amatrice on Wednesday after a powerful earthquake rocked central Italy. Photo credit: Filippo Monteforte/Getty
The epicentre is in the province of Rieti, northeast of Rome. Residents in the capital city reported tremors that lasted as long as 20 seconds. The mayor of Amatrice, a small town with a population of a few thousand, said buildings collapsed and that residents are stuck under debris.
“The roads in and out of town are cut off. Half the town is gone. There are people under the rubble,” Mayor Sergio Perozzi said in a radio interview on RAI. “There’s been a landslide and a bridge might collapse.”
According to the Associated Press, a family of four in the town of Accumoli was “trapped under debris, without any signs of life.” The quake hit at 3:36 a.m. local time. Italian media said several aftershocks were reported, including one that was a magnitude 5.5. Many of the buildings in the affected towns are centuries old.
A USGS geophysicist told CNN the region could be facing “very significant losses.” Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s office said in a tweet that the government is “in contact with all affected areas” and was deploying rescue efforts.
Similarly, an earthquake of about 6.8 magnitude shook central Myanmar on Wednesday afternoon, in a jolt so strong it rattled residents as far away as Bangkok and Kolkota. The quake was reportedly centred about 52 miles below the earth’s surface, making it less likely to cause catastrophic damage.
Most information about damage came out of Kolkata, which suspended services, including the underground metro, over fears of aftershocks. At least 20 people were injured in Bangladesh. The shaking was centred about 15 miles away from Chauk, west of Bagan. Police in the area were investigating reports that some famous monuments and temples may have been damaged.
In Italy, scores of buildings were reduced to dusty piles of masonry in communities close to the epicentre of the 3:32 a.m. quake in a remote area straddling the regions of Umbria, Marche, and Lazio.
A new World Bank reports finds that water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, could hinder economic growth, spur migration, and spark conflict.
The impact of water scarcity on GDP by 2050, relative to a baseline scenario with no scarcity.
The report adds however that most countries can neutralise the adverse impacts of water scarcity by taking action to allocate and use water resources more efficiently.
According to the report, climate change influenced-water scarcity could cost some regions up to 6% of their gross domestic product (GDP).
The combined effects of growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities, notes the report, will see demand for water rising exponentially, while supply becomes more erratic and uncertain.
The study warns that, unless action is taken soon, water will become scarce in regions where it is currently abundant – such as Central Africa and East Asia – and scarcity will greatly worsen in regions where water is already in short supply – such as the Middle East and the Sahel in Africa.
These regions, stresses the report, could see their growth rates decline by as much as 6% of GDP by 2050 due to water-related impacts on agriculture, health, and incomes.
Water insecurity could multiply the risk of conflict, says the report, adding that food price spikes caused by droughts can inflame latent conflicts and drive migration.
“Where economic growth is impacted by rainfall, episodes of droughts and floods have generated waves of migration and spikes in violence within countries.
“The negative impacts of climate change on water could be neutralised with better policy decisions, with some regions standing to improve their growth rates by up to 6% with better water resource management,” the report finds.
Some of the report’s other key findings include:
Improved water stewardship pays high economic dividends. When governments respond to water shortages by boosting efficiency and allocating even 25% of water to more highly-valued uses, such as more efficient agricultural practices, losses decline dramatically and for some regions may even vanish.
In the world’s extremely dry regions, more far-reaching policies are needed to avoid inefficient water use. Stronger policies and reforms are needed to cope with deepening climate stresses.
Policies and investments that can help lead countries to more water secure and climate-resilient economies include:
(1) Better planning for water resource allocation;
(2) Adoption of incentives to increase water efficiency, and
(3) Investments in infrastructure for more secure water supplies and availability.
Fifty-seven countries accounting for 59.88% of global emissions have now indicated they will sign agreement before end of 2016
Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
The Paris climate agreement will become international law by the end of 2016 if countries stick to the promises they have made.
According to Climate Analytics, 57 countries have now indicated they will ratify or have already ratified the agreement by year’s end. They account for 59.88% of global emissions.
“Under this scenario, the Paris Agreement will enter into force by the end of the year2,” said the Berlin-based consultancy.
This is coming even as The Bahamas deposited its instrument of ratification of the Paris Agreement with the United Nations on 22 August 2016.
Announcements made by Japan and New Zealand on Wednesday tipped numbers over the dual requirements for the agreement to enter into force of 55 countries and 55% of emissions. The agreement will be activated 30 days after enough countries have ratified the deal.
The UN’s new climate chief Patricia Espinosa said on Wednesday that she was “very hopeful” enough parties would follow through on their intentions1.
In her first interview since succeeding Christiana Figures in May, the Mexican diplomat laid down a challenge to governments to get on with the task.
“Now is the time for ratification and for implementation. It is the time to act together, it is the time to avoid any disastrous consequences of climate change,” she told the UN’s in-house news service.
So far just 22 states, representing just 1.08% of global greenhouse emissions, have taken this step. Leaders have been invited to attend a special event on September 21 where they will be invited to present their ratification to UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon. Nigeria is expected to sign the climate treaty at this forum.
Climate Analytics’ assessment does not include India, which accounts for 4.1% of emissions and is a powerful political force in the talks. India made a joint commitment with the US in June, in which the US committed to ratifying the deal this year, but India’s timeframe was left ambiguous.
Getting ratification is more difficult than a signature: so far 180 countries have signed the deal. Ratification indicates a government has the domestic power to bind their country to the deal, sometimes this requires approval from domestic lawmakers.1
If the targets are reached by October 7, the agreement will be in place before countries come together at the next major climate meeting in Morocco in November.
This would also avoid the possibility of a Donald Trump disaster.
If he wins the presidency in November (the election is midway through the UN meeting) Trump has variously promised to “cancel” and “renegotiate” the Paris deal. But once the agreement enters into force, a clause means all countries will be bound to it for four years.
Once the deal was law, the next stage of the fight against climate change will be to hold all governments to the commitments they made in Paris, said Espinosa.
“We need to focus a lot on implementation of the Paris agreement and which translates to the national programmes on climate change for each and every country. We will need to reach out to all those actors – to governments, to civil societies, to businesses – and help in mobilising them to help in this fight against climate change,” she said.
Espinosa was the Mexican foreign minister who chaired the Cancun climate talks in 2010. Many credit these talks with resuscitating a process grown moribund after the Copenhagen talks failed to deliver a consensus the year before. Since then, she said, the climate process had transformed.
“Today, there is not only trust – there is an enormous enthusiasm about participating in this agenda and about being apart about this transformation process,” said Espinosa.
In a wide-ranging interview, she also discussed her personal motivations for taking on the job. She spoke of visiting disaster struck areas in Latin America during her time as foreign minister.
“I could see very clearly how much suffering this causes, really, a lot of suffering that should not happen,” she said. “In many senses the responsibility, the possibility of becoming the UNFCCC executive secretary brings together a lot of these issues for which I’ve worked for all my life.”
It was this sense of responsibility that Espinosa said she would appeal to when asking leaders to make long-term decisions for the global benefit.
“Actually, climate change is really about the wellbeing of people. It is not a very vague concept or a vague problem that is out of our everyday lives. It is actually affecting our everyday lives and this is the fundamental fact that everybody should keep in mind while working toward a low-carbon society.
“We are talking about the lives of people. So having that consideration in mind, it’s a big driver towards more ambitious and urgent action by everybody,” she said.
A Native American village in Alaska has voted to relocate its entire population of some 600 people due to the threat of rising seas, officials have said.
The remote village of Shishmaref, Alaska, has been experiencing the effects of climate change first-hand. In the last decades, the island’s shores have been eroding into the sea, falling off in giant chunks whenever a big storm hits. Photo credit:: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
Shishmaref, located on a tiny island north of the Bering Strait that separates the United States and Russia, is losing up to 10 feet of shoreline each year, according to research by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Alabama-based Auburn University.
Shishmaref is one of dozens of indigenous villages in Alaska that face growing threats of flooding and erosion due to global warming, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Shishmaref residents, who are members of the Inupiat tribe, voted 89 to 78 to relocate, said Donna Barr, secretary of the Shishmaref Council. Voting took place last week, but the official count has not yet been formally certified and a handful of absentee ballots remain unopened.
This is not the first time Shishmaref residents have made such a decision. They voted in 2002 to relocate but that effort stalled.
A few other U.S. communities in Alaska, Washington and Louisiana have decided recently to relocate as well due to climate change and shoreline erosion, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Arctic Institute.
Several others are likely weighing options to move, said Christina DeConcini, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute.
“It’s not going to be the last time that the United States has to deal with communities severely threatened by climate change and impacts and whether or not they can stay there,” she said.
In Shishmaref, Tommy Richter, pastor of the Lutheran Church, the island’s only church, said the community was torn over leaving its heritage behind.
“There are people here who have been here for generations and don’t want to leave at all,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The cost of relocation has been estimated at some $180 million, and authorities are seeking state and federal funding, according to local media.
Where to relocate remains to be decided, the clerk said. Two vacant sites on the mainland are being considered.
Relocation could take more than 10 years, according to a private feasibility study conducted for Shishmaref and published in February.
The island, which is seven square miles (18 square kilometers), lies five miles off the mainland. Its economy is based largely on fishing and hunting.
Scientists attribute coastal erosion in Shishmaref to global warming that has thawed sea ice that once shielded the island from storm surges. Its permafrost, the layer of permanently frozen soil on which it is built, is melting as well.
The village already has moved several homes and a National Guard Armory away from its coastline and built sea walls that have had limited success, according to Alaska authorities.
In March, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced $6.5 million in funding to help Native American communities find ways to deal with climate change.
Since 2014, more than 140 tribes and tribal organisations have gotten government funding to help address the impacts of global warming, it said.
Nigeria’s Environment Minister, Amina J. Mohammed, recently embarked on a working Visit to Morocco on the invitation of Moroccan government.
The visit, it was gathered, is geared towards fostering mutual relationship between the Nigeria and Government of Morocco in the area of the environment and sustainable development, in preparation for COP22, which will hold in November in Marrakesh.
The visit offered both nations the opportunity to explore bilateral cooperation on environmental and sustainable development issues. Hosted by her Moroccan counterpart, Hakima El Haite, Mrs Mohammed also visited the NOOR Power Plant. Also called the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, it is a solar power complex located in the Souss-Massa-Drâa area in Morocco, 10 km from Ouarzazate town, in Ghessat rural council area.
Amina Mohammed leads the Nigerian delegation at a bilateral meeting with Moroccan officialsAmina Mohammed with her Moroccan counterpart, Hakima El HaiteAmina Mohammed with Hakima El Haite (middle) and Marie Nelly of the World BankAmina Mohammed being received at the Nigerian Mission in Rabat by Ibrahim AjadiA visit to the NOOR Power Plant as both nations explore bilateral cooperation on environmental issuesThe minister meets Mr. Nizar Baraka, President of Scientific Committee for COP22Amina Mohammed being interviewed by a Moroccan medium at the NOOR Power Plant, a solar power complexThe minister exploring the NOOR Power PlantNigerian and Moroccan officials exchange views at the NOOR Power PlantThe NOOR Power Plant, a solar power complex
