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A Navajo family in Arizona (Photo: Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)
A Navajo family in Arizona (Photo: Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)

ScienceMarch 1, 2022

The climate crisis isn’t just about the environment, it’s about people

A Navajo family in Arizona (Photo: Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)
A Navajo family in Arizona (Photo: Getty Images; additional design by Tina Tiller)

Climate change isn’t just affecting our environment, it’s having huge impacts on the wellbeing of people and culture – that’s the message from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. 

A liveable future for us depends on safeguarding and strengthening nature, according to the IPCC’s latest report, released today. It’s the second instalment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which will be completed this year.

Focusing on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities, the second report emphasises the inextricable link between people and the planet. “Human and ecosystem vulnerability are interdependent,” it states. 

Restore ecosystems and look after them into the future, and our lives will improve. Continue with business as usual or neglect the environment and we’re faced with poorer physical and mental health for people, crumbling infrastructure including buildings, sanitation, transportation and energy, and further widening of societal inequalities. 

It’s intense reading but comes with a collaborative call to action: work together and draw on indigenous and local knowledge. 

The report plumbs the depths and the heights of where climate change can have an impact. “Our world is warming and dangerous climate change and extreme events are increasingly impacting nature and people’s lives everywhere. This can be seen in the depths of the ocean and at the top of the highest mountains; in rural areas as well as in cities,” according to the working group.

So let’s break it down. 

There are of course the effects a warming climate has on nature itself: animal and plant species dying out or moving polewards as temperatures rise and weather events get more extreme, and mass die-off events for particular species. Some of these losses are irreversible, the report states, and we’re already seeing the first extinctions due to climate change. 

In Aotearoa specifically, the report notes that our underwater kelp forests are dwindling and at risk because of marine heatwaves, ocean acidification and hungry fish and urchins moving in as waters warm. The thought of a forest of seaweed might not instantly get your climate flag waving, but they’re really important for lots of other sea creatures as a breeding site, food source, habitat or hiding place from predators. 

Our underwater kelp forests are dwindling (Photo: Steven Trainoff Ph.D/Moment via Getty)

Then there are New Zealand’s melting glaciers, some of the quickest melters in the world. They not only contribute to sea level rise but as they recede away, they could also trigger earthquakes or landslides, and limit water supplies and inputs into hydroelectric power stations. Plus there’s the economic impact. A notable chunk of New Zealand’s tourism dollar comes from these natural wonder draw cards and, according to the report, climate change has already had an impact (Covid aside) there. 

The changing climate can also affect people more directly. The IPCC report points to mental health challenges that come with warmer temperatures as well as the trauma and life disruption that come after extreme weather events like flooding. 

You only have to look at February’s Westport event, or any of many floods in New Zealand’s history, to see the toll climate change takes on communities. “They’re down in the dumps, very depressed,” one Westport resident said about barely recovering from the last flood before another rolled in.

The army visiting flooded homes in the Buller region after floods in 2021 (Photo: Supplied, NZDF)

The report drives home that climate impacts are no longer just about where you live but who you are. Climate impacts are going to be concentrated among the economically and socially marginalised, it states. In many cases, that means among indigenous people. 

It mirrors what we’ve seen throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, says Bronwyn Hayward, a professor at the University of Canterbury and co-lead of the cities and infrastructure chapter of the report. “While we will all experience climate change, our abilities and capabilities to respond are very different and our exposure to risk is very different. Anticipating that and acting for those communities is really crucial.” 

Nicki Douglas (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Rangiwewehi), who convenes Te Urunga o Kea, Te Arawa Climate Change Working Group, says that indigenous efforts to fight climate change have historically been undermined. “For generations we haven’t been able to undertake those cultural practices in a way that makes sense to us, to protect the environment and to take our responsibilities to care for that environment… yet we are the victims of that environment collapsing around us.”

Douglas points out, for example, that many marae are situated in coastal areas, vulnerable to inundation, yet plans for managed retreat need to take into account the historical, spiritual and physical links to that space. 

She also notes how losing animal and plant species not only represents a loss of biodiversity but also a cultural loss. “Those species are part of our whakapapa, they sustain us. They are really important parts of our stories and oral traditions and are intimately woven into our story. In the absence of them… how do you rekindle those practices? How do you reconnect with nature? Some of those stories may be forgotten.”

Douglas also notes how some aspects of the IPCC report echo long held indigenous principles about the deep people/environment connection. “When we talk about whakapapa we’re talking about Papatūānuku, Ranginui… we’re not putting ourselves at centre,” she says. 

“I think that’s a perspective that Aotearoa New Zealand could adopt: to centre our health and wellbeing of our environment and [acknowledge] that we’re part of that.” 

The IPCC report also notes that climate change  – particularly the increase in number and severity of floods, droughts and wildfires that come with it – will have a disproportionate impact on farming communities in Aotearoa and Australia. 

Farmers face financial costs from lost buildings, homes and stock as well as the emotional toll of dealing with debts, income insecurity and mounting pressures from environmental policy and groups. “How this affects individuals and communities will depend partly on where they are but also what else is going on, their vulnerabilities,” says Anita Wreford, a professor at Lincoln University and a lead author on the Australasian chapter of the IPCC report, noting things like debt or regulatory requirements.

And, as other climate reports have said time and time again, the solutions to climate change centre on people. This report takes that idea one step further. 

Hayward says it’s not just about environmental policy any more. “It’s not all about engineering seawalls… it’s about the social policy, the social wellbeing, the income support, health and education protections and our ecosystem supports.”

And these policies need to draw on, or be based off, indigenous knowledge, the report states. In an IPCC first, the report includes contributions from indigenous groups worldwide. Douglas agrees, “We have a significant body of knowledge to draw on and we want to bring that to the table.” 

Douglas says it’s important for climate change adaptation and mitigation to be iwi-driven. “It’s really being able to decide, for Te Arawa, what the solutions are, and what innovation or creation looks like, and then what’s the role of the government to support, invest and co-invest with us.” 

Te Urunga o Kea, for example, wants to focus on adaptation planning and resilience building, biodiversity, circular enterprise and economies, energy security and sovereignty, food and water security and sovereignty, and land use change and practices.

She says that at the moment, there’s an uneven relationship between the Crown and Treaty partners, in favour of the Crown, but admits there are large reforms under way. “There are significant opportunities to shift the [colonial] paradigm, while at the same time focusing on the issues at hand.”

But the window for action is closing. Resilience and adaptation is already challenging, the report states, and will only become more challenging as time goes on. There’s been a focus on planning and not enough action. 

Now, the IPCC wants governments to work together with local organisations – as well as educators, scientists, media and business – to cut emissions, safeguard biodiversity, protect ecosystems and build climate resilient infrastructure. 

Eyes are now on the third instalment of the IPCC report, due after April 2022, which will focus on mitigation. 

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Flatten the Curve 22 feature image

ScienceFebruary 27, 2022

Siouxsie Wiles: Two years on, Flatten the Curve gets an update for 2022

Flatten the Curve 22 feature image

Two years ago Siouxsie Wiles asked illustrator Toby Morris to collaborate on a graphic that went on to go globally viral, kicking off a working relationship that continues to this day. Now, she writes, New Zealand needs a new Flatten the Curve, for a new kind of virus.

It’s almost two years to the day since I first saw a tweet by Dr Drew Harris explaining how using public health measures to slow down transmission of Covid-19 and “flatten the curve” could be “the difference between finding an ICU bed & ventilator or being treated in the parking lot tent”.

I was so taken by the importance of this message – that we should try to keep Covid-19 cases low so they wouldn’t overwhelm our health system – that I wanted to share it far and wide. But what struck me about Drew’s graphic was that it didn’t show how crucial our attitudes and actions were. This is where, as a long-time admirer of Toby Morris’s work, I thought he could help. Soon Toby and I were working on a revamped version of Flatten the Curve, which we released under a creative commons licence in early March 2020.

Our version of Flatten the Curve was an instant success. The first tweet I sent with it garnered over six million impressions. Prime minister Jacinda Ardern held it up at a national press conference. The Washington Post, Buzzfeed and Wired shared it. NBC News called it “the defining chart of the coronavirus”. It went, pardon the pun, viral and launched the most productive and impactful collaboration of my career. I’ve lost count of the number of graphics Toby and I have made, but we’ve covered everything from masks, vaccines, and contact tracing to new variants and genome sequencing. You can find most of them here. As a scientist, I’ve always hoped I would be able to make a difference in the world. Over recent years, I’d thought that might be through the work my lab is doing trying to discover new antibiotics that kill antibiotic-resistant superbugs. My collaboration with Toby has also shown me that I can really make a difference through communicating science too. I still find it incredible that our work has been adapted and translated by governments and organisations all around the world.

Ironically, that Flatten the Curve graphic is my biggest personal regret of the pandemic so far. It sent the world the wrong message in those crucial early days. We didn’t need to flatten the curve. We needed to smash it. Almost immediately, Toby and I started working on a new graphic, this time based on a paper published in the medical journal the Lancet. We called it ‘Stop the Spread’, but what we were explaining was what is better known to everyone now as the elimination strategy. Unfortunately, that graphic didn’t go viral. I always wonder if things might have been different if more people had understood the concept and more countries had tried going for elimination.

What happened here in Aotearoa New Zealand, was that we did smash it. With one of the lowest death tolls from Covid-19, we’ve had a very different experience of the pandemic to most other countries. That’s bought us time. Time for vaccines and antiviral medicines to be developed and rolled out. While we’re no longer pursuing an elimination strategy, we’re facing Covid-19 in a very different place to where we were two years ago: with high vaccination rates, better treatments, and a much better understanding of how the virus spreads and how we can stop it.

But we’re also facing a very different virus to the one we faced two years ago. We currently have three different variants circulating in New Zealand, all of them much more infectious than the original virus. Yes, our treatments are better, and lots of people have been vaccinated. But there are still plenty who haven’t taken up the crucial “booster” dose, and we are still rolling out the vaccine to our 5-11-year-olds. On top of that, our under-fives still can’t be vaccinated, and a small number of people have chosen not to be vaccinated. Unfortunately, they are congregating together in large numbers to protest the public health measures we know work. It’s only a matter of time before some of them are infected with a virus they don’t even believe exists.

The problem with the virus evolving to be more infectious is that we’re back to needing to flatten the curve to protect our health system. We have a limited number of medical staff and hospital beds. People also don’t stop having babies, or heart attacks, or strokes, or car accidents, or cancer, or needing dialysis or surgery. The higher our number of Covid cases, the higher our hospitalisations, the less capacity our already stretched health care system will have to deal with everything else it normally deals with. So, get your booster shot, mask-up, scan the Covid Tracer QR codes wherever you go, get tested if you are sick, and isolate when instructed.

Flatten the curve graphic - 2022 version

It’s down to all of us to do what we can to slow the outbreak down and protect ourselves and each other. Keep an eye on the numbers to understand how the outbreak is tracking and check our handy guide below so you can manage your risk of being exposed to omicron and help flatten the curve.

 

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