Psychology of climate change: social instability
Pacific RISA Research Fellow Dr. Kati Corlew contributed an article about climate change and social instability to the Community Psychology Practice blog last month, and we are pleased to share it with you here. Her timely article explains that a well-established tenant of community psychology–that context matters–can be helpful in predicting how societies may be impacted by climate change. The article offers research documenting how change or variability in the natural environment affects our physical and psychological well-being as individuals and communities.
Dr. Corlew received her Ph.D. in Community and Cultural Psychology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Her dissertation explored the threat of climate change to both land and culture in the Pacific Island Developing Country (PIDC) of Tuvalu. Now, she is developing a social network analysis of climate change professionals in the Pacific Islands region as part of her work with Pacific RISA.
Psychology of Climate Change: Social Instability
By Kati Corlew, Ph.D.
Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments
East-West Center
American Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III is the top military officer for the security of the United States in the Pacific, including trans-Pacific security threats from North Korea and other Asian locations. He is the leader of the United States Pacific Command (PACOM), which monitors security for a region covering approximately one half of the earth’s surface.
In March, 2013, Admiral Locklear stated that climate change is the largest threat to security in the region, as reported by the Boston Globe.
Admiral Locklear stated:
“Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”
Storms of this magnitude damage infrastructure and disrupt the stability of societal functioning. Crops are destroyed and freshwater is contaminated. With basic needs and social structures thrown into disorder or destroyed completely, communities (or even entire countries or regions) are left in a state of heightened instability that threatens security.
Additionally, sea level rise threatens the long-term ability of coastal and island communities to continue to be communities. The Boston Globe goes on to report:
“The ice is melting and sea is getting higher,” Locklear said, noting that 80 percent of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the coast. “I’m into the consequence management side of it. I’m not a scientist, but the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, they’re contemplating moving their entire population to another country because [it] is not going to exist anymore.”
Wholesale migration of entire populations due to climate instability is expected to overlap heavily with the experiences of refugees from political instability and war. Climate refugees will be populations who have lost everything, perhaps even their country. Without their community structures and relationships, property, and political power, populations who are forced to migrate because of climate change may wind up in a nebulous, uncertain, and inherently unstable position. Instability is often coupled with violence.
In Community Psychology, we explore the ways in which our social, political, and natural environments affect the physical and psychological well-being of individuals and communities. In essence, context matters. Researchers have been documenting the effects of climate change and variability on community well-being. It has been shown, for example, that countries experiencing El Niño are more likely to also experience war.
“Countries where the majority of the population lives in areas that become much warmer in El Niño years (red) are more likely to experience wars than those where temperatures are less affected (blue).”
Of course, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO, which includes El Niño and La Niña) is a seasonal weather pattern, not climate change. Do these things even relate? A recent consensus report about climate change in the Pacific indicates that they do.
Despite rumors of perfect and unchanging island weather, the Pacific is actually home to some pretty dramatic seasonal changes. A strong El Niño year can mean some island nations run out of drinking and irrigation water while others are plagued with storms. La Niña years can have similarly dramatic effects. In fact, the difference between an El Niño year and a La Niña year can be so strong that in the coming decades, the effects of climate change may be overwhelmed.
That is to say, in some years ENSO may greatly exacerbate climate change, while in other years ENSO could reverse the trends entirely. This means that we cannot expect to see a smooth slope of increasing impacts with climate change. We will instead see periodic upswings in disasters and climate change impacts, coupled with periods of relative calm.
In the coming decades, we can therefore expect periodic upswings in social instability. These “human dimensions” of climate change impacts on communities must be addressed along with the physical impacts.
References
Bender, B. (2013). Chief of US Pacific forces calls climate biggest worry. The Boston Globe, March 09, 2013. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/03/09/admiral-samuel-locklear-commander-pacific-forces-warns-that-climate-change-top-threat/BHdPVCLrWEMxRe9IXJZcHL/story.html.
Burke, J. (2012). Maldives’ political instability allows gang violence to flourish. The Guardian, October 22, 2012. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/22/maldives-political-instability-gang-violence.
Burkett, M. (2011). The Nation Ex-Situ: On climate change, deterrritorialized nationhood and the post-climate era. Climate law, 2, 345-374. Retrieved 3/15/13 from https://www.law.hawaii.edu/sites/www.law.hawaii.edu/files/content/coliver/345-374%20Burkett.pdf.
Duddy, P. D. (2012). Political unrest in Venezuela. Council on Foreign Relations Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 16. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.cfr.org/venezuela/political-unrest-venezuela/p28936.
Keener, V. W., Marra, J. J., Finucane, M. L., Spooner, D., & Smith, M. H. (Eds.). (2012). Climate Change and Pacific Islands: Indicators and Impacts. Report for The 2012 Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment. Washington, DC: Island Press. Retrieved 3/15/13 from https://www.pacificrisa.org/projects/pirca/report-materials/#.UUN9tByG3D4.
Kovats, R. S., Bouma, M. J., & Haines, A. (1999). El Niño and health. World Health Organization Protection of the Human Environment Task Force on Climate and Health. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.who.int/globalchange/publications/en/elnino.pdf.
Schiermeier, Q. (2011). Climate cycles drive civil war. Nature, 24 August 2011. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110824/full/news.2011.501.html.
Smith, H. (2013). Greece’s fragile political stability at risk as violence escalates. The Guardian, January 23, 2013. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/23/greeces-political-stability-violence-escalates.
Turchin, P. (2012). Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780-2010. Journal of Peace Research, 49(4), 577-591. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/49/4/577.abstract.
Vidal, J., Saeed, S. (2013). Bangladesh’s climate refugees: ‘It’s a question of life’ – audio slideshow. The Guardian UK, January 29, 2012. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/interactive/2013/jan/29/bangladesh-climate-refugees-audio-slideshow.
Williams, N., & Pradhan, M. S. (2009). Political conflict and migration: How has violence and political instability affected migration patterns in Nepal? Population Studies Center Research Report No. 09-677. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/abs/5938.
Cover photo: Local risk reduction actions, such as using coral rocks to build temporary walls in Kiribati to break the swell of increasingly large king tides, is one example of communities acting to reduce their vulnerability. Photo by UNISDR; used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.
Extreme Events in the RMI
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Posted on June 26, 2013 by pacrisa
Coastal inundation in the Marshall Islands forebodes the future of extreme events
On Tuesday, waves inundated the southern part of Majuro, the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), flooding homes and causing extensive damage to property. The waves reached two and a half meters high, according to Majuro Weather Service meteorologist Reggie White, who serves on Pacific RISA’s Advisory Committee. The flooding caused the Majuro airport to close for the day, after the runway seawall crumbled under the weight of the waves, and a United Airlines flight bound for Majuro was redirected. High swells could persist for several days, so residents are doing what they can to prepare for further inundation possible through Thursday.
Many parts of Majuro atoll are less than one meter above sea level and are therefore vulnerable to flooding during very high tides. This week’s events can be attributed to local weather (a storm produced high ocean swells), coinciding with an unusually high tide (a result of the recent supermoon); yet, such events are very likely to increase in frequency and severity as sea-level continues to rise. Whether or not future storm patterns change over the next century, the impact that rising average water levels will have on such extreme events is well recognized. A study focusing on Australian sea-level stations estimated that an increase of 10 cm (about 4 inches) in average water level corresponds to a threefold increase in the frequency of extreme events on average (Hunter, 2012). Thus, an increase of 20 cm (about 8 inches) will mean that what is currently a 100-year inundation event will become a 10-year event on average. The picture is clear—cities and villages on low-lying islands such as the Marshalls will be at heightened risk for severe flooding in the future.
Majuro residents will tell you that the increasing frequency of these situations and the effects of sea-level rise are already visible. In places where the coastline is eroding, trees and plants are removed as a result, and the waves have an easier time coming up. Coastal erosion is a natural long-term, dynamic process; however, sea-level rise is increasing the rate of erosion in many places, and loss of land at the shoreline is evident. As infrastructure becomes threatened, more and more structures to protect land from the ocean (seawalls, rubble mounds, etc.) are being built on Majuro, and seawalls now cover nearly the entire coastline of Majuro city and the eastern part of the atoll. While seawalls can protect against more minor high tide events, they may be overtopped by waves in more extreme events, as they were on Tuesday. Seawalls, in fact, can accelerate erosion of nearby beaches by disturbing natural coastal processes that transport beach sediment along the shoreline and by increasing the force of waves due to wave reflection off the seawall. Thus, there are obvious limits to this kind of protective structure as a long-term solution.
As low-lying islands face a wide range of impacts due to increased water levels and the possibility of more frequent extreme inundation events, places like RMI will require assistance from other governments and the international community in order to appropriately address the near-term and long-term threats. The U.S. Congress is currently debating an immigration reform bill, and Senator Brian Schatz of the State of Hawai‘i has proposed an amendment that would give a legal status to people displaced by climate change. The amendment would allow the U.S. government to designate individuals or groups of individuals displaced permanently by climate change as stateless persons, identifying climate change, like war, as a potential major cause of homelessness in the world. This move both signifies the severity of the problem that island countries are facing, and recognizes that now is the time for Pacific Islands together with other governments to put in place measures to prepare for a possibly not-so-distant future when such legal structures, as well as broader adaptation policies, will be needed.
References
Huang, T. and Rapp, H. (2010). Coastal Erosion on Majuro Atoll : Marshall Islands with Special Regard to Sea-Level Rise (Master thesis). Available from Division of Water Resources Engineering, Department of Building and Environmental Technology, Lund University, http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24965&postid=1670491
Hunter, J. (2012). A simple technique for estimating an allowance for uncertain sea-level rise. Climate Change, 113(2), 239-252. doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0332-1
Johnson, G. (2013, June 26). Marshalls capital inundated by high tide. Marianas Variety, Regional News, Palau/Pacific News. Retrieved from http://www.mvariety.com/index.php/regional-news/palaupacific-news/56955-marshalls-capital-inundated-by-high-tide
Keener, V.W., Marra, J.J., Finucane, M.L., Spooner, D., & Smith, M.H. (Eds.). (2012). Climate Change and Pacific Islands: Indicators and Impacts. Report for the 2012 Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment. (Chapter 3: Sea Level and Coastal Inundation on Pacific Islands.) Washington, DC: Island Press. Available from www.PacificRISA.org/projects/PIRCA.
Leber, R. (2013, June 20). Amendment Would Give Legal Status To People Displaced By Climate Change. Message posted to http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/06/20/2187831/climate-refugee-immigration-bill/?mobile=nc
Pope, T. (2013, June 25). Marshall Islands bracing for more destructive seas. Australia Network News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-25/an-marshall-islands-braced-for-more-flooding/4779164
Information Sharing in the Pacific
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Posted on May 20, 2013 by pacrisa
Can Network Analysis Strengthen Information Sharing in the Pacific?
Pacific RISA recently launched a multi-year social network analysis project to examine how climate information spreads across different sectors and countries in the Pacific Islands region. Using the December 2012 release of the Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA) report as a spring board, researchers are collecting data to analyze the networks of climate change scientists and professionals.
To learn more about social network analysis, Pacific RISA Communications Coordinator Zena Grecni spoke with Dr. Kati Corlew, who is a community and cultural psychologist and serves as the project’s Research Fellow. She provided great insights about their research methods and the study’s importance to Pacific RISA’s mission.
Zena: Thank you for talking with me today, Kati.
Kati: Of course! Thank you, Zena.
Zena: To start off, what is social network analysis, and why did you select this method to look at how information is shared in the Pacific region?
Kati: Social network analysis is a way to look at connections and relationships in communities of people. With network analysis, we can explore statistical theories, but we can also create a map of these relationships to graphically reveal reasons, motivations, and implications behind them. We chose network analysis for this project because in the Pacific, climate change projects cross sectors, regions, and fields of study. We have a strong sense of collaboration, but at the same time, we all want to know how to make these collaborations stronger. With network analysis, we can see where the strengths are in our network of climate change professionals, and also identify opportunities for growth.
Zena: Will the analysis be limited to connections among people living in the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands, or does it look at regional and international flows of information as well?
Kati: We are focused on Hawaiʻi and the USAPI, but much of the work done in this region is necessarily broader in scope. There are a number of climate change professionals who work in our region but who are based elsewhere. So, we expanded the network to capture these realities. We have participants from other parts of the Pacific, from the US mainland, and from all over the world.
Zena: How many people did you expect to reach? And, how many actually responded?
Kati: Well, we were hoping for hundreds, and that’s what we got. We have 340 participants currently, and I expect a few more will be trickling in over the next few weeks.
Zena: It sounds like you’ve been successful in collecting a lot of data. What do you hope to learn from the analysis?
Kati: We’re doing two types of analysis. First, we will look for strengths and gaps in our communications network. This information will help anyone in our field get an idea of where, and with whom, they might want to work in the future. I’m hoping this information will also be useful when agencies are requesting funds for future projects. Like, “Here is proof that we are really connected in this area.” Or, “Hey, we really want to improve our connections to this other area.”
Kati: The second type of analysis has to do with the theoretical drivers of network connection and our understanding of risk, as climate change professionals. With confidential, aggregated data, we will explore how network connection is related to climate change risk perception and to our psychological sense of community with other professionals. From this we hope to learn more about how and why people become actively involved in a community of climate change professionals.
Zena: Have you had any surprises so far, in looking at the survey data?
Kati: Wow, for me? I was surprised to realize how many professionals we knew (or knew of) who worked in climate change-related fields in Hawaiʻi versus other US -Affiliated Pacific Islands. I was able to compile a list of almost 500 people from Hawaiʻi, but for example in Palau I could only find contact information for 35 people. That’s a big difference, and already we can see that we need to further develop connections and capacity for future collaborations in Palau.
Zena: How will the data and results be displayed?
Kati: For the network connections, I am building a giant digital map. It will be broken down by physical region as well as by profession, to make it easier to search for strengths and collaboration opportunities. This will be freely available through our website. We’ll also write up what we learn in fact sheets, short reports, and journal articles.
Zena: What is the ultimate significance of this project to Pacific Island decision makers and to those who provide information about climate to communities?
Kati: The biggest takeaway is that we are connected throughout our region. We all know this—we are a series of islands connected by the ocean. But there is always room to build these connections. By mapping out how we communicate, we can find how best to strengthen our community.
There you have it, everyone, straight from social network analysis researcher Dr. Kati Corlew. If you have additional questions about Pacific RISA’s social network analysis project, you may contact Kati at corlewk@EastWestCenter.org, or email us at info@PacificRISA.org. You can also find more information on the social network analysis project page.
Drought in the RMI
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Posted on May 10, 2013 by pacrisa
Severe Drought Affects the Northern Atolls of the Republic of the Marshall Islands
A persistent drought in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has reached a severe level, affecting 8,000 to 10,000 people of the northern atolls. There has been little rainfall in the northern Marshall Islands this year, and well water is turning brackish, making it unsafe to drink or use for crop irrigation. With no alternative source of fresh water, the Marshallese Government has declared the drought a national disaster. In addition to the drinking water shortage, island communities are facing the threat of communicable disease as well as food shortage, as many subsistence food gardens have suffered from the drought.
Clint Simpson of the National Weather Service Office in Guam told Radio New Zealand that a high pressure system is lingering over the Central Pacific, causing the dry weather conditions. Typically, dry spells are offset by Trade Wind showers, but not this time. Forecasters warn that the drought is likely to get much worse in the weeks to come, as no rain is forecast for the near future. In fact, the drought may last through July, or possibly longer.
The Marshall Islands’ Foreign Minister, Phillip Muller, reports that the government conducted an assessment of the impacts on communities and says that the situation is “quite dire.” The United States government is making their own assessment, and if the need is found to exceed one million dollars, the US President will allow for additional aid to the country. The US has already delivered solar-powered reverse osmosis equipment that can supply a small amount of water (about 300 gallons daily), but it will not be enough for island populations. The Australian government has also provided US$100,000 in emergency desalinization units. The United Nations recently sent an emergency grant and an assessment team to the RMI. Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, “The lack of clean drinking water is of acute humanitarian concern, and children are particularly vulnerable.”
While the water shortage is worsening for families in the northern islands, atolls south of the capital of Majuro have received enough rain to be spared dangerous water shortages. The large municipal reservoir at the Majuro Airport held 20 million gallons as of mid-April, which is a little over half of capacity.
The latest issue of the Pacific ENSO Applications Climate (PEAC) Center’s quarterly newsletter, released in early May, reports that rainfall should slowly build back to normal across the RMI, starting with Majuro in May, Kwajalein by June, and into the drought-stricken northern islands by July. Download the full newsletter, with climate conditions and outlooks for each Pacific Island group, here.
References
Australia To Assist RMI Amidst Severe Drought Conditions. Radio Australia. 6 May 2013. Available from http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2013/May/05-07-10.htm.
The Marshalls Islands has declared a state of disaster in the island nation’s North due to the prolonged drought. Radio Australia. 10 May 2013. Available from http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacific/radio/program/pacific-beat/marshall-islands-declares-national-drought-disaster/1129120.
Marshall Islands drought to get much worse – forecaster. Radio New Zealand, International. 7 May 2013. Available from http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=75859.
UN disaster assessment team arrives in drought-affected Marshall Islands. UN News Centre. 10 May 2013. Available from http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=44871&Cr=drought&Cr1=#.UY2cM0rihYU.
The Pacific ENSO Applications Climate Center. Pacific ENSO Update, 2nd Quarter, 2013 Vol. 19, No. 2., issued May 2, 2013. Available from http://www.prh.noaa.gov/peac/peu/2013_2nd/PEU_v19_n2.pdf.
Cover photo: Namorik Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Courtesy of Darren Nakata.
Less Rainfall for Hawai‘i
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Posted on May 2, 2013 by pacrisa
UH Mānoa climate research: less rainfall expected for Hawai‘i
The latest Hawai‘i rainfall study, published March 13 in an early online issue of Journal of Geophysical Research, supports the findings of earlier research at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, but it goes beyond analyzing historical trends and looks at a critical issue: whether the drying trend that Hawai‘i has been experiencing since 1978 will continue. The research team, led by Oliver Elison Timm at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), finds that the drying trend is indeed likely to continue through the end of the century.
Modeling Hawai‘i’s climate presents many challenges because of Hawai‘i’s complex topography and the coarse resolution of global climate models. To meet the challenge, the team used statistical downscaling—a method for relating local observations (usually at the station-level) to features of large-scale global models for the same time period. These statistical relationships are then applied to global climate models for the future to see how local climate may be affected.
“The patterns we saw did not surprise us,” recalled Dr. Elison Timm, referring to the historical data. “For example, we found that the typical winter Kona storms with moist air-flow from the South often produce torrential rains in the islands.”
They found that the large circulation patterns over the mid-latitude and tropical North Pacific have already shifted since 1978 so that fewer weather disturbances reach the Islands during the rainy season from November through April. Combining information from their statistical model and cutting-edge climate models driven with the projected increase in greenhouse gases, the scientists conclude that we can expect the recent trend towards drier winter seasons with fewer heavy-rain days to continue through the end of this century.
“It is extremely difficult to take all the uncertainties into account and our overall result may not apply to all sites in Hawai‘i,” cautioned Senior Researcher Henry Diaz from the University of Colorado. “We are just beginning to understand the details of how climate change will affect the Hawaiian Islands.”
The project was supported by grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Pacific Island Climate Change Cooperative (PICCC) and the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center. Additional funding was provided jointly by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu District, and the Commission on Water Resource Management, Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Citation: Oliver Elison Timm, Mami Takahashi, Thomas W. Giambelluca, and Henry F. Diaz, 2013: On the Relation between Large-Scale Circulation Pattern and Heavy Rain Events over the Hawaiian Islands: Recent Trends and Future Changes. Journal of Geophysical Research, (early online-release in March 2013, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50314/abstract)
Cover Photo: A waterfall in Ka‘au Crater, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i. (Source: Victoria Keener)
Pacific Islands Drought Monitoring
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Posted on April 26, 2013 by pacrisa
The capacities and challenges for drought monitoring in the Pacific Islands
Pacific RISA Research Fellow Dr. Kati Corlew recently returned from the 2013 US Drought Monitor Forum, held this year April 16-18 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Dr. Corlew gave a presentation that introduced to the drought monitoring community the unique circumstances encountered in the efforts to monitor and measure drought levels in the Hawaiian Islands and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). The US Drought Monitor is a national program that tracks indicators and impacts of drought in localities across the US. The US Drought Monitor website contains a drought map that has been refined over time to reflect the needs of decision makers and those who use the information. Drought Monitor authors synthesize many drought indicators into this single map that identifies areas of the country that are abnormally dry (D0), in moderate drought (D1), in severe drought (D2), extreme drought (D3) and exceptional drought (D4). While the Drought Monitor already covers the 48 contiguous states, Hawai‘i , Alaska, and Puerto Rico, several federal partners are now working to bring a US Drought Monitoring-style system to the USAPI region. The tool is being designed to report the specific conditions of the Pacific Islands on a weekly basis. Therefore, those working on this expansion of the tool, as well as partners from the other regions of the US, were interested to hear from Dr. Corlew about the capacities and challenges of monitoring the Pacific Islands.
What is the current status of the Pacific Islands Drought Monitor?
At last week’s forum, Dr. Corlew represented not only Pacific RISA, but also two federal offices working hard to build drought monitoring and reporting capacity in the Pacific Islands: The Pacific ENSO Applications Climate (PEAC) Center, based in Honolulu, and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). The Pacific Islands drought monitoring tool may be connected to the US Drought Monitor in the coming few months, or may be integrated into one of two other tools—the North American Drought Monitor or the Global Drought Monitor. Important next steps include moving the monthly scientific consensus discussions about Pacific Islands drought levels and impacts to weekly, which will put them in line with the US Drought Monitor’s weekly reports. To do this, partners must automate the precipitation data system to report daily precipitation levels. PEAC and NCDC expect to put these improvements into action over the next few months.
View the Presentation
Dr. Kati Corlew’s presentation about drought monitoring in the Pacific Islands is available to download and view here (3.20 MB):
About the US Drought Monitor
The U.S. Drought Monitor map is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and about 350 drought observers across the country. It is released each Thursday based on data through the previous Tuesday.
Psychology of Climate Change
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Posted on April 23, 2013 by pacrisa
Psychology of climate change: social instability
Pacific RISA Research Fellow Dr. Kati Corlew contributed an article about climate change and social instability to the Community Psychology Practice blog last month, and we are pleased to share it with you here. Her timely article explains that a well-established tenant of community psychology–that context matters–can be helpful in predicting how societies may be impacted by climate change. The article offers research documenting how change or variability in the natural environment affects our physical and psychological well-being as individuals and communities.
Dr. Corlew received her Ph.D. in Community and Cultural Psychology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Her dissertation explored the threat of climate change to both land and culture in the Pacific Island Developing Country (PIDC) of Tuvalu. Now, she is developing a social network analysis of climate change professionals in the Pacific Islands region as part of her work with Pacific RISA.
Psychology of Climate Change: Social Instability
By Kati Corlew, Ph.D.
Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments
East-West Center
American Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III is the top military officer for the security of the United States in the Pacific, including trans-Pacific security threats from North Korea and other Asian locations. He is the leader of the United States Pacific Command (PACOM), which monitors security for a region covering approximately one half of the earth’s surface.
In March, 2013, Admiral Locklear stated that climate change is the largest threat to security in the region, as reported by the Boston Globe.
Admiral Locklear stated:
Storms of this magnitude damage infrastructure and disrupt the stability of societal functioning. Crops are destroyed and freshwater is contaminated. With basic needs and social structures thrown into disorder or destroyed completely, communities (or even entire countries or regions) are left in a state of heightened instability that threatens security.
Additionally, sea level rise threatens the long-term ability of coastal and island communities to continue to be communities. The Boston Globe goes on to report:
“The ice is melting and sea is getting higher,” Locklear said, noting that 80 percent of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the coast. “I’m into the consequence management side of it. I’m not a scientist, but the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, they’re contemplating moving their entire population to another country because [it] is not going to exist anymore.”
Wholesale migration of entire populations due to climate instability is expected to overlap heavily with the experiences of refugees from political instability and war. Climate refugees will be populations who have lost everything, perhaps even their country. Without their community structures and relationships, property, and political power, populations who are forced to migrate because of climate change may wind up in a nebulous, uncertain, and inherently unstable position. Instability is often coupled with violence.
In Community Psychology, we explore the ways in which our social, political, and natural environments affect the physical and psychological well-being of individuals and communities. In essence, context matters. Researchers have been documenting the effects of climate change and variability on community well-being. It has been shown, for example, that countries experiencing El Niño are more likely to also experience war.
Of course, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO, which includes El Niño and La Niña) is a seasonal weather pattern, not climate change. Do these things even relate? A recent consensus report about climate change in the Pacific indicates that they do.
Despite rumors of perfect and unchanging island weather, the Pacific is actually home to some pretty dramatic seasonal changes. A strong El Niño year can mean some island nations run out of drinking and irrigation water while others are plagued with storms. La Niña years can have similarly dramatic effects. In fact, the difference between an El Niño year and a La Niña year can be so strong that in the coming decades, the effects of climate change may be overwhelmed.
That is to say, in some years ENSO may greatly exacerbate climate change, while in other years ENSO could reverse the trends entirely. This means that we cannot expect to see a smooth slope of increasing impacts with climate change. We will instead see periodic upswings in disasters and climate change impacts, coupled with periods of relative calm.
In the coming decades, we can therefore expect periodic upswings in social instability. These “human dimensions” of climate change impacts on communities must be addressed along with the physical impacts.
References
Bender, B. (2013). Chief of US Pacific forces calls climate biggest worry. The Boston Globe, March 09, 2013. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/03/09/admiral-samuel-locklear-commander-pacific-forces-warns-that-climate-change-top-threat/BHdPVCLrWEMxRe9IXJZcHL/story.html.
Burke, J. (2012). Maldives’ political instability allows gang violence to flourish. The Guardian, October 22, 2012. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/22/maldives-political-instability-gang-violence.
Burkett, M. (2011). The Nation Ex-Situ: On climate change, deterrritorialized nationhood and the post-climate era. Climate law, 2, 345-374. Retrieved 3/15/13 from https://www.law.hawaii.edu/sites/www.law.hawaii.edu/files/content/coliver/345-374%20Burkett.pdf.
Duddy, P. D. (2012). Political unrest in Venezuela. Council on Foreign Relations Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 16. Retrieved 3/15/13 from http://www.cfr.org/venezuela/political-unrest-venezuela/p28936.
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Cover photo: Local risk reduction actions, such as using coral rocks to build temporary walls in Kiribati to break the swell of increasingly large king tides, is one example of communities acting to reduce their vulnerability. Photo by UNISDR; used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.
Climate Change in Hawai‘i
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Posted on April 11, 2013 by pacrisa
“Does more need to be done about climate change in Hawai‘i?”
Dr. John Marra, Regional Climate Services Director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shared his perspectives in response to this central question in a video interview with Honolulu Civil Beat.
In the interview, Dr. Marra and Honolulu Civil Beat reporter Joe Rubin discuss some of the realities that Hawai‘i faces under a changing climate: increased threats to infrastructure from storm surges and high tides; coral bleaching and ocean acidification leading to coral death, with cascading impacts on fish and marine ecosystems; and even the potential disappearance of Waikiki’s famous sandy beaches with just a foot or two of sea-level rise.
Dr. Marra explains how new policies and adaptive measures can “climate proof” the islands. Some of these measures are the same as actions taken to avoid the worst impacts of storms and coastal inundation that Hawai‘i already periodically experiences.
Dr. Marra spoke with Honolulu Civil Beat at the Waikiki shoreline and in his Honolulu office at the East-West Center, where he often collaborates with Pacific RISA on initiatives such as the recent Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA), mentioned in the video. He was also one of the featured speakers at the international climate change conference “Waves of Change” held at the University of Hawai‘i last week.
Watch the video:
Waves of Change
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Posted on April 9, 2013 by Laura Brewington
Hawai‘i conference on Pacific Islands climate change featured in ClimateWire
Last week, the University of Hawai‘i Center for Pacific Island Studies (CPIS) along with various partners hosted Waves of Change: Climate Change in the Pacific Islands and Implications for Hawai‘i. The two-and-a-half-day conference, Thursday April 4 through Saturday April 6, convened leaders from across the Pacific to discuss strategies for confronting climate change impacts, already a sharp reality for vulnerable Pacific nations, including the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, French Polynesia, and Kiribati. The conference turned a special focus to climate-induced migration and the implications for Hawai‘i and other places where climate change victims are likely to relocate.
Pacific RISA participated in the conference with great interest. Dr. Melissa Finucane was part of a panel of experts who presented scientific information about the the state of climate change impacts in the Pacific Islands on Friday, April 5, while Pacific RISA Project Specialist Richard Wallsgrove led a panel on the legal implications on Saturday, April 6.
An April 8 ClimateWire article about the conference, “Island countries facing watery demise confer on survival strategies,” quoted Asterio Takesy, the Federated of States Micronesia’s ambassador to the United States; Tony deBrum, Minister in Assistance to the President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands; and UH law professor Maxine Burkett. Additionally, an April 5 ClimateWire article reported on Mr. deBrum’s key note address for the conference and his statements regarding the possibility of the Marshall Islands bringing the issue of climate change to the International Court of Justice.
ClimateWire quoted Mr. deBrum on April 5: “We will leave no stone unturned in our search for justice in this manner. If that means approaching the ICJ — the International Court of Justice — that will be an option that’s left on the table.”
Small islands in Micronesia have already disappeared, Mr. deBrum said, adding that the Marshall Islands has received climate migrants from Tuvalu and Kiribati. In addition to the possibility of approaching the ICJ (which he offered in response to a question), Mr. deBrum emphasized a potential partnership with the World Bank that may enable the Marshall Islands to develop ocean thermal energy technology. He stressed that the most important function of such economic development in light of climate change is to give the people of the Marshall Islands options and confidence, rather than despair, in the face of rising sea levels that threaten their nation’s existence. He has also been pleased with interactions with United States officials at recent United Nations meetings, explaining that he has not seen such concern from the US delegation in his 45 years at the UN.
When asked if the United Nations is serious about the global threat of climate change or whether island leaders are “barking up the wrong tree,” Mr. deBrum responded, “The UN remains the last gathering of higher leaders who can deal with this. What else do we have?”
Read the full April 8 article here. (A ClimateWire subscription is required to view content.)
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