Climate change predictions coming true

It’s certainly nothing to gloat about. Years ago, I began to speak out in this column about the coming change in climate if humanity didn’t take the threat seriously and deal with its industrial emissions and its sumptuous lifestyle, in particular in the “rich” part of our world. Climate change might be the only topic from which I received criticism from some readers who believed that the issue was at least an exaggeration or, at worst, a hoax.

Now, with Earth having experienced its hottest two summers in recorded history and endured massive storms, floods, melted glaciers and more, it would seem that not enough action has been taken, our unsustainable lifestyle has continued, and we are being told by climate crisis watchdogs that the process is now irreversible. Canada is warming almost twice as fast as the planetary average and the arctic at three times the global rate, says a federal government report.

Brandon and Westman has certainly been hit hard this summer by violent weather, and there was only a single voice that I found on social media claiming it was a “one-off” and that next summer would be very different. Those naysayers are now few and far between. The Interlake region has also been walloped, with the Stonewall area being flooded several times, affecting buildings, roads and crops. And the Dauphin and Swan River areas have seen fields turn to lakes, bridges and roads get washed away, and the Dauphin hospital damaged to the extent its ER was shut down for nine weeks.

As someone who has worked globally in his career, I continue to seek ways to support communities in poorer countries where climate change hits home directly, affecting livelihoods and indirectly affecting many products that we in Canada like to buy. As examples, Manitobans love their coffee, chocolate, sugar and tea. If such crops fail, at a minimum prices will go up. Anyone shopping for coffee these days will be aware of that. Just like gas at the pumps, coffee is getting darned expensive.

Our warming and more humid climate has caused new diseases to affect coffee and other tropical crops. Producers have tried to mitigate these effects in various ways, one of which is moving their crops to higher elevations where it might be cooler and drier. Bananas are the most consumed fruit in the world but are currently threatened by high temperatures, uncertain rainfall (drought one month and flooding the next) and storms where it is grown for our imports in Latin America and the Caribbean. Fungal diseases that thrive in hot, humid conditions and the mounting cost for farmers to fight these conditions mean that some observers are predicting a 60 per cent reduction in the global banana crop in the next 50 years.

Even for local consumption, using an African example, farm organizations and governments, and non-governmental, charitable groups, are working with farmers to find new ways to grow crops in their villages to avoid hunger. Rural people live under tremendous pressure, waiting for favourable weather to plant their crops, keep them producing and harvest them for their communities. The Brandon-based Marquis Project is working with rural women and youth farmers in Tanzania, East Africa to support these efforts. Canadian and other universities are also involved both in scientific research and in on-the-ground programs to confront the climate crisis.

Global movements, such as organics and fair trade, are also contributing to the fight against climate change, looking for environmental, scientific, economic, social and cultural solutions that will support producers with a stable and fair livelihood, supporting training and developing new equipment and inputs to meet the agricultural challenge, and keeping communities that are at risk sustainable by supporting the building of schools, clinics and other facilities. This will also keep the next generation of rural people on the farm instead of abandoning agriculture and heading to the cities.

There are many parallels between the challenges faced by rural people here at home and around the world. We in Manitoba may be at a psychological disadvantage as the food industry is several steps removed from us. We generally don’t have the direct connection with where our food comes from that people do in the developing world. But we do have the financial advantage, in that we are better off than most people on the planet and have more of a social safety net. Either way, climate change is already affecting us and we need to slow it down and come up with new ways of doing business and living our lives.

» Zack Gross is board president of the Marquis Project, a Brandon-Westman based international development organization.