Devastating Malawai Flooding, Kiribati King Tides Echo Faintly In Davos

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Global Risks 2015, the featured WEF report released just ahead of Davos, placed conflict at the top of a list of global hazards by likelihood – to no one’s surprise, sadly, given the ongoing tragedy in the Middle East. But next, and for the second year running, came “extreme-weather events,” while “water crises” – to a significant extent climate-related – topped the WEF’s parallel list of hazards assessed “by impact.”

In this crucial year for UN climate talks, which must produce a new global agreement in Paris in December, there can be no doubt that climate change is a very large component of the “complexity, fragility and uncertainty” that leaders and opinion-formers mulled over in their Alpine retreat. The start of Davos coincided with not one but two events, both extreme in their own way, that we would be wise to view as warning shots from an increasingly volatile climate system.

First, already-heavy seasonal rains in several Southern African nations seemed to conspire against the fragile country of Malawi, with an economy heavily dependent on small-scale agriculture and which has had its share of battles with climate impacts in recent years. A deep low-pressure system that was crawling across Southern Africa dumped weeks’ worth of rain in a few hours in parts of Malawi, making lethal flash floods inevitable, and triggering a major humanitarian emergency, with more than 50 lives lost and more than 120,000 people washed out of their homes

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A second climate-related event also began to unfold last Wednesday, when waves generated by a “king tide” washed over the capital of the Marshall Islands, Majuro, and some outlying islands in the Pacific, leaving flooded homes and debris in their wake, but thankfully no deaths or injuries. They came again early next morning and in the evening, all the time diminishing in strength, local Red Cross delegates tell us, but highlighting just how fragile life is in this remote Pacific region. Marshall Islanders need little reminding that they live on the front line of climate change: No part of any atoll is more than two metres above sea level, so any change in climate or weather patterns can have a devastating impact.

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http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/davos-and-climate-change-warning-shots-from-africa-and-pacific/