2021, the year climate change hit home

World leaders, Indigenous groups and scientists met in Glasgow last month for the United Nations climate talks known as COP26. 200 nations agreed on what is now being called the Glasgow Climate Pact, outside experts said the deal showed progress, but no success. Meanwhile, climate change is affecting the lives of people around the world as extreme weather events become more frequent and more intense.

Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and wildfires are raging around the world. 2021 was the year that climate change hit home for many people from Alexandria to Hong Kong.
Scientists are warning that a section at the front of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica could shatter within the next five to ten years.

The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration says the process whereby the glacier is released could take decades, but if the ice shelf holding it melts sooner, the glacier could start to be released in as little as five years time:

In India, researchers say alpine glaciers in Indian-controlled Kashmir are also melting at an alarming rate.

According to researchers at the University of Kashmir in Srinagar, the Thajiwas glacier in Indian-controlled Kashmir has receded more than 50 metres in the last three years alone. This retreat is threatening the livelihoods of millions of people who live downstream and depend on glacial water for food and economic security.

Even if the world meets its most ambitious climate change targets, rising temperatures will melt away a third of the Himalayan glaciers by the end of the century, a 2019 report by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development found.

Himalayan glaciers are melting twice as fast in the years after 2000 as they were in the 25 years before due to human-caused climate change, researchers reported in Science Advances in 2019. In low lying regions rising sea levels are a concern for coastal communities around the world.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned global sea levels could rise by 0.28 to 0.98 meters (1-3 feet) by 2100, with "serious implications for coastal cities, deltas and low-lying states."

Experts acknowledge that regional variations in sea level rises and its effects are still not well understood.

Egypt's fabled port city of Alexandria is deploying concrete block barriers in the sea to break waves and protect the bustling metropolis from rising tides. Work is underway by Egypt's General Authority for Shores Protection to secure the city's shores, as well as its famous Citadel of Qaitbay, built in the 15th century.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Egypt's large population of over 100 million makes the country extremely vulnerable to climate change. Egypt will host the COP27 UN climate summit in 2022.

Another iconic city is already facing regular flooding. Venice's unique topography, built on log piles among canals, has made it particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels increase the frequency of high tides inundating the 1,600-year-old lagoon city, which is also in continuous danger of sinking.

"We live with this acqua alta, and you can see the inconvenience, the acqua alta is a phenomenon that is increasing more and more. It blocks all of the businesses," says Annapaola Lavena, who owns a café on the tourist hotspot of St Mark's Square.

"Venice lives thanks to its craftsmanship and tourism, if there is no more tourism, Venice dies, we have a great responsibility in trying to save it, but we are suffering a lot."

The Mose barrier project, which cost around 6 billion euros (nearly $7 billion) after decades of cost overruns, delays and a bribery scandal, is officially in the testing phase. The barriers have been raised numerous times since October 2020, sparing the city a season of serious flooding but not from the lower-level tides that are becoming more frequent.

Venice's worse-case scenario for sea-level rise by the end of the century is a startling 120 centimetres (3 feet, 11 inches), according to a report published by the European Geosciences Union. That is 50 per cent higher than the worse-case global sea-rise average of 80 centimetres (2 feet, 7.5 inches) forecast by the U.N. science panel.

Hong Kong is another coastal region whose residents have already adapted to weather extremes and rising seas. Tai O is a traditional fishing community. With houses packed together, perched on stilts, surrounded by fishing boats, it could soon be no longer. Experts have warned that due to rising sea levels, the whole village could disappear under the sea in the coming decades.

The village, which is on the west of Lantau Island in Hong Kong, near the international airport, was hit hard by seawater intrusion and serious flooding during the past two super typhoons in 2017 and 2018.

Wen Fook-ming, 84, lives in Tai O village. His stilted house has been passed down his family from generation to generation. He's seen two major typhoons nearly reduce his home to debris submerged in water. The village's first horrific experience brought by Typhoon Hagupit in 2008 jolted the Hong Kong government into action.

Temporary demountable flood barriers were built in affected areas before the arrival of big typhoons to prevent floodwater from rushing into the heart of the village. The government also invested in replacing essential household appliances if they got damaged.

Tai O used to have a population of 30,000 in the 1970s, but that figure has fallen to only 3,000, according to Ho Siu-Kei, chairman of Tai O Rural Committee. Most of them are elders living in their ancestral homes, just like Wen. Although sea level rises won't immediately cause large-scale flooding, Hong Kong will be left more vulnerable to the impact of typhoon-generated storm surges.

Residents on the Greek island of Evia are trying to return to normal life, months after devastating wildfires destroyed massive parts of the forests they rely on for their livelihoods. The August wildfires were described by the country's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as the greatest ecological catastrophe Greece had seen in decades.

Father of three Stavros Aggelou, a resident and part-time resin collector in the northern Evia village of Kerasia, had to evacuate his family home as the wildfires approached.
The building did not survive.

Revisiting some two months later, his property is almost unrecognizable. "Here, we had the kitchen, there the oven, the sink, the refrigerator, nothing left," says Stavros, inspecting his home's burnt remains.

"Somewhere here there is a ring, a single-stone one, but I haven't found it," he adds. Greece experienced in August its worst heatwave since 1987, which left forests tinder-dry. Tens of thousands of hectares of forests and farmland were reduced to a dystopian landscape of skeletal, blackened trees, silhouetted against a smoke-filled sky. Wetlands, including bogs, swamps and mires represent an important natural carbon store.

In Russia, the Great Vasyugan mire is the largest mire system in the northern hemisphere. The total area is 53,000 square kilometres - bigger than the territory of Switzerland.

This is just a small part of the overall mire system of western Siberia, which occupies 40 per cent of the region's territory. Mires, like forests, play an important role in helping maintain the carbon balance of the planet. They absorb CO2 from the environment through photosynthesis. They also store carbon in the form of rotting organic matter which eventually becomes peat for tens of thousands of years.

Sergey Kirpotin, a leading Russian biologist at Tomsk State University, and also Tyva State University, describes the Great Vasyugan mire as the planet's huge carbon storage facility and refrigerator.

"The so-called wetlands and peatlands, in English, "peatlands," occupy a relatively small area on our planet, about three per cent, but at the same time, it contains twice as much carbon as all the terrestrial forest ecosystems in the world," he says.

"So, this tiny three per cent of the planet's surface contains about 30 per cent of all the soil carbon that is accumulated on our planet's land."

According to Kirpotin, the role of forests in maintaining the carbon balance on the planet has significantly decreased due to more forest fires, while the role of mires has increased.
But he warns that without close attention, mires can become a major climate threat. In the northern mires, thawing permafrost means the release of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

According to some experts, the mires of Western Siberia can contain up to 70 million tons of methane. Another team from Tyva State University, also led by Kirpotin, travelled to the Alash plateau, in the Republic of Tyva to investigate melting permafrost.

According to Roshydromet (Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring), the mountains of Southern Siberia have experienced the greatest warming in Russia since 1975.

Winters have warmed by between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius, and the summers by about 1 degree. When the permafrost thaws it can cause small lakes to form called thermokarst lakes, which can release gases associated with global warming.

"When the thermokarst processes intensify, organic matter begins to decompose in these lakes, and, accordingly, a lot of carbon enters the water, which is then released into the atmosphere, either in the form of carbon dioxide or in the form of methane," explains Kirpotin.

Methane only lasts a dozen years in the air while carbon dioxide sticks around for centuries. Per molecule, methane traps dozens of times the heat of carbon dioxide. There is 200 times more carbon dioxide in the air than methane.

Some of the team's recent fieldwork includes monitoring the biological, geological and chemical properties of the water, the changing terrain and surveying endemic plant species. An important part is studying soil: digging, taking soil samples, determining the thawing depth, measuring the temperature of the permafrost layer. Located at the junction of two climatic zones, boreal and sub arid, this unique landscape is rich in biodiversity.

In Senegal in Sub Saharan Africa, the land is desolate and arid. But there are small pockets of greenery.

Ibrahima Fall walks under the cool shade of dozens of lime trees, watering them with a hose as yellow chicks scurry around his feet. The 75-year-old is the chief of the Ndiawagne Fall village in the Louga region of Senegal. The green orchard stands in contrast to the surrounding village of 83 homes in the Sahel region.

The soil hugging the citrus trees is sand, and beyond the homes and the central well pumped with solar panels, it's a different story. Strong winds whip the dry land into the air without the protection of trees.

This region is on one end of a project called the Great Green Wall, originally hailed for its efforts to plant nearly 5,000 miles of trees from Senegal to Djibouti in an effort to push back the encroaching Sahara Desert as climate change swept the sands south.

As temperatures rose and less rain fell, though, millions of the planted trees died. "The water and forestry service had planted trees in many parts of the forest to stop the advance of the desert. The "curtain" (of trees) that makes part of the strip along with other trees has stopped the desert, because before, everything we tried to put in place here was doomed to failure," says Fall.

Fall's citrus orchard, which he began in 2016, is one method of empowering communities agriculturally and economically to grow and withstand changing times. He jumped at the chance to plant one near a water source on his land, after the municipality called village chiefs together to present options for planting on their lands.

It is a success story and one of 800 such small orchards in six communes of Senegal's Kebemer town. He can produce anywhere from 20 to 40 kilos of limes per week during peak season.

The soil, enriched by the planted trees, has also helped to grow more tomatoes, onions and it means that on top of getting more money from citrus sold in markets, there is no need to spend money to buy limes or some other food staples.

More than a decade since the Great Green Wall project began in earnest, in 2007, only four per cent of the original pledge goal has been met, and it's estimated that $43 billion would be needed to reach the original 2030 target, which is unlikely to happen amid the global economic downturn brought on by the pandemic.

Today organizers are trying instead to find smaller, more durable ways to stop desertification in Senegal. They're focusing on community-driven projects that can help the most vulnerable agriculture. The group has helped with programs that have planted more than 700,000 trees and plants in the West African nation. It also works in countries across the Sahel.

On Senegal's Atlantic Coast, filao trees stretch in a band from Dakar up to the northern city of St. Louis, forming a curtain that protects the beginning of the Green Wall region, which also grows more than 80 per cent of Senegal’s vegetables.

The sky-reaching branches tame the winds tearing in from the ocean. Bands of these trees are also planted in front of dunes near the water, in an effort to block the dunes from destruction and movement.

This reforestation project has been in effect since the 1970s, with many people cutting down the trees for wood, but the necessary work to replant has been more recent.
Senegal's Reforestation Agency used the time of the pandemic to reconsider how it could cut imports that many communities have been reliant upon and to make villages more self-sufficient.

Aly Ndiaye, an agricultural engineer working for Ecovillages and Green Sectors under the Senegalese Agency of Reforestation of the Great Green Wall, says that it's necessary to take immediate action to fight climate change and preserve the environment.

"The whole world is seeing that if we don't preserve or recover the forests, we are heading straight for the edge, so it is necessary today that everyone compromises to rethink this world and the forms of development".

"It's no longer a question of saying we must preserve it for our children, today we must say if we don't preserve it, we will have problems and we are starting to have them".

African Development Bank President Akinwumi A. Adesina spoke about the importance of stopping desertification in the Sahel during the United Nations' COP26 global climate conference.
He announced a commitment from the bank to mobilize $6.5 billion toward the Great Green Wall by 2025. Farmers in an arid region of southern Spain are using a similar approach to stop desertification and increase soil fertility.

They have boosted crop production by devising new ways to restore soil fertility and increase water retention. Hernan-Valle in the province of Granada is not an easy place to farm. It is surrounded by a steppe desert with semi-arid conditions, it hardly rains throughout the year and there's frost every night from November until April. Extreme daily temperatures are not uncommon. In the ground, they've measured temperatures above 80 degrees Celsius in summer and -15 in winter.

Fran Martinez is one of a group of farmers trying a new approach to agriculture. Growing the same crops year after year depletes soil nutrients. But crop rotation or mixing crops in the way Martinez has done improves soil health. Companion plants are grown together to be harvested at the same time, a system called poly-cropping.

After his crops were devastated by locusts in 2008, Martinez began experimenting with a green cover, plants that are not destined for the table but grown to restore fertility to the soil. He lays strips of turf over bare spaces.

Since 2014 he has been working with a group of farmers interested in sustainable ways of growing crops in partnership with the AlVelal Association and Commonland, which now works with over 200 farmers. An area of over 6,000 hectares shared by Almería, Granada and Murcia provinces has been designated as 'organic regenerative cultivation' by AlVelal and Commonland, who assess each farm to evaluate whether their methods meet the criteria.

"We have transformed an agricultural farm into a forest. The only difference is to change the crops: the olive trees for the pines and in between, instead of having other types of bushes, we have our peppers, our courgettes, our aubergines. But the same ecosystems, the same biodiversity and the same fertile soil (as a forest)", explains Martinez.

Once the harvest is complete, farmers lay the green vegetation cover down with a tractor to protect the soil. Farmers use compost, green cover and perennial plants so that the bare soil is never exposed and temperature ranges are less extreme.

The preferred cover crops include Mediterranean herbs, winter cereal crops and legumes, which help restore nitrogen into the soil, something that is important for healthy plant growth. Farmers avoid ploughing or disturbing the soil and shun pesticides.

The world's first floating wind farm is located 25 kilometres off the shore of Scotland, where the UN Climate Change Conference took place in November. Hywind Scotland started operations in 2017 and has outperformed other wind farms in the UK. The key to wind energy generation is a consistent supply of strong winds. One of the reasons Scotland boasts so many wind farms is because the region is so windy.

The gusts over the North Sea are more consistent than wind on land. This means increased productivity and better performance of the Hywind farm. The enormous turbines, which stand at over 100 metres above the water's surface, are kept in place by three anchors that use suctions. Each turbine is covered in sensors which collect data that help the developers make adjustments to the technology.

All of Britain's electricity will come from renewable sources by 2035, the UK government announced ahead of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, saying the move would help end the country's reliance on imported fuel.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also said he believed the UK could get to "complete clean energy production" — including renewable sources and nuclear power — by the middle of the next decade.

Britain gets a big chunk of its energy from renewable sources such as wind and sun, and has largely ended the use of coal power, but remains heavily reliant on natural gas. Surging gas prices worldwide are driving up energy bills for millions of people in Britain.

California has been plagued by wildfires in recent years. But a return to traditional Indigenous techniques of controlled burns may help protect against future blazes.

The Yurok Tribe and other tribes in the American West are intentionally lighting controlled fires on the land in a return to traditional forest management practices. The Yurok, based in a mountainous region of northern California, hosted a days-long burning program recently that also educated participants about the role and uses of fire in their culture.

Tribal use of fire was banned for decades because of fears of wildfires, but tribes such as the Yurok, Karuk, Hupa and others in northern California say it's critical for their culture.

"For the Yurok people, cultural burning has been a way of life for us. Fire is family," says Elizabeth Azzuz, a Yurok tribal member and board secretary of the Cultural Fire Management Council.

"Fire warms our homes, it heats our food, it cooks our food, it protects our land, it restores our environment, it brings back food sources for our animals, it brings back plants and medicine and food that we as people use. It helps the trees to get more water to them, once you remove that 100 plus years of dead and downed fuels that has been suffocating the planet."

These tribes say that, when used correctly, low-intensity fire rejuvenates the landscape by burning away debris and thick undergrowth.

At the end of the UN Climate meeting in Glasgow, almost 200 nations accepted a compromise deal aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered-down crucial language about coal.

Nation after nation had complained after two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, about how the deal did not go far or fast enough. But they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress, if not success.

In the end, the summit broke ground by singling out coal, however weakly, by setting the rules for international trading of carbon credits, and by telling big polluters to come back next year with improved pledges for cutting emissions.

AP