Hearts across the globe are aching for communities along the Nepal-Tibet border.
Last Wednesday, a catastrophic flash flood ripped apart whole villages and swept away dozens of vital bridges and roads. It has claimed the lives of more than 1000 people, as authorities race to find thousands more who are unaccounted for and free hundreds of trapped hydropower tunnel workers.
In the wake of the flood, the world has rallied to support ongoing rescue and humanitarian efforts. But as with any disaster, shifting from rescue to recovery will be far from straightforward. Soniya, co-author of this article and a Nepali national, experienced this firsthand while providing humanitarian assistance to communities rocked by the deadly 2015 Nepal earthquake.
Our research shows local communities are critical to ensuring disaster-hit regions can recover and rebuild.
It is difficult to comprehend the scale and severity of the Nepal-Tibet floods.
Families around the world are grieving, with many still wondering whether their loved ones are even alive.
Aside from the tragic human cost, the floods have destroyed whole networks of critical infrastructure. In the worst-affected districts, roads, bridges, power lines, and river gauges have collapsed, cutting off the very channels needed to get medical aid and supplies to stranded residents.
The demand for these local infrastructure services is at an all-time high, as displaced families seek shelter, the injured search for hospitals and people wait hours and days for their deceased relatives to be identified.
Our research team studies how communities, government agencies, not-for-profit organisations and businesses work together in the wake of disasters. Our research shows local communities consistently carry the weight of disaster recovery. People whose homes remain standing, whose phones still work or who live outside the danger zone often become the first source of support for those who have lost everything.
Several remarkable stories of rescue and resilience are emerging out of Nepal. There is the school teacher who saved the lives of hundreds of students, after receiving several phone calls warning of an imminent flood. There are also people from upstream villages who alerted downstream communities of the coming deluge.
These stories illustrate the crucial role communities play in disaster warning and response.
Formal agencies alone may not have the resources to forewarn communities with the same speed as a local teacher. Instead, they can work alongside informal networks, such as the guthi of Nepal. Guthi are a kind of social support system that looks after the religious sites, rituals and general welfare of a specific community.
Local social networks can also be repurposed for disasters as phone trees, where one person alerts several others, complementing formal warning systems. These networks range from women’s microfinance and cooperative groups to community forest user groups, which collectively manage local woodlands. These groups often know who is living alone, which households have older people and which trekking lodges fill during peak periods. This knowledge is indispensable and, if sought before disaster strikes, could save lives.
When infrastructure fails to meet urgent needs, communities improvise and self-organise. In partnership with emergency responders, locals carry patients across damaged roads, relay messages when communication networks fail and turn schools, monasteries and homes into shelters.
Community networks may need to evolve during and after disasters. This could involve establishing new communication channels or using existing networks for different purposes. In Nepal, for instance, local transport networks have already pivoted to deliver water, food and clothes to flood-ravaged regions. Meanwhile, restaurants are distributing hot meals to households that community groups have identified as being particularly vulnerable.
Community-led responses are perhaps most valuable in the recovery phase. In the aftermath of disaster, streams of international aid and funding can dry up. Media coverage often wanes or diverts to the next fire or flood.
During this period, disaster-hit communities do their best to return to daily life. They may need substantial support to do so, particularly in the form of consultation to help rebuild their future, including their homes, businesses and social networks.
Nepal’s parma system may support recovery in an informal way. Parma is a type of reciprocal labour exchange in which households lend a day’s work to a neighbour and then receive one back. If outside help has not arrived and reconstruction grants are months away, parma could be used to clear debris, salvage intact belongings or housing materials and set up temporary shelters. Agencies can build on this existing system by providing tools and supplies, while communities contribute skills, labour and local knowledge.
Along the Nepal-Tibet border, the long road to recovery has only just begun. In the midst of profound grief and loss, local communities are already mobilising to provide support to their most vulnerable neighbours. Governments and international organisations would do well to follow their lead.
Soniya Rijal is originally from Nepal and has personal connections to the country. She was directly affected by the 2015 Nepal earthquake and was involved in work related to the earthquake response.
Nader Naderpajouh receives funding from Natural Hazard Research Australia, the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, the New South Wales government and the European Commission's Horizon program.
For over a decade, the world has been trying to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
That’s no longer possible, according to a new United Nations report. We will likely pass 1.5°C in 2030. That’s not good news for anyone, least of all Australia’s Pacific Island neighbours who face rapidly rising seas.
In response to the report, Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr said:
It is hard to overstate the depth of emotion for those of us living on the frontline after having fought so hard to put the 1.5 degree limit at the heart of the Paris Agreement […] calls for greater ambition are no longer enough — we need to see an urgent and unprecedented increase in political will and investment in a climate safe future
The small silver lining is that it’s still possible for this to be a temporary overshoot of the target. If nations redouble their efforts to phase out fossil fuels and reduce other sources of emissions, they could limit peak warming to 1.8°C and then use carbon removal methods to bring temperatures back to 1.5°C or below this century.
There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5°C. Urgent cuts to emissions and efforts to protect the most vulnerable are our best remaining options. Failure to do so risks irreversible harm.
Major European rivers are at record low levels this year, threatening trade, power plants and farming. Pictured: the Danube River in southeastern Romania on August 5.Xinhua News Agency/Getty
Why does 1.5°C matter so much?
The 2015 Paris Agreement established a shared goal for the world: keep the rise in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels “well below” 2°C and “pursue efforts” to hold warming to 1.5°C.
This goal was set based on expert scientific assessments that warming of more than 2°C would be dangerous and that limiting warming to 1.5°C was necessary to minimise climate risks.
Pacific nations fought hard to include 1.5°C in the agreement, arguing it was essential for their communities to “stay alive” in the face of rising sea levels and other climate-fuelled threats.
Last year, the world’s top court – the International Court of Justice – ruled that 1.5°C is the primary temperature limit nations have committed to work towards.
This ruling means that if governments fail to act as ambitiously as they can, they could be sued in international courts.
In May this year, a majority of nations voted in the UN General Assembly to endorse the court’s ruling and urge action to keep to 1.5°C.
It’s not time to give up
Warming of 1.5°C will be bad. But 1.6°C will be worse, and 1.7°C worse again. Every increase will bring more extreme weather, more loss of nature, more loss of land to the sea and more harm to humans.
If we stay over 1.5°C, we risk triggering climate tipping points – sudden shifts which cannot be undone on human timescales. These include the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting, the collapse of crucial heat-distributing currents in the Atlantic Ocean or the Amazon rainforest becoming a source of emissions.
Overshooting 1.5°C doesn’t mean it’s time to throw out the Paris Agreement. It’s not working fast enough, but it is working.
Solar power and electric vehicles have boomed and electrification has accelerated. Nations have cut emissions enough to avoid the worst climate futures of a 3°C rise or even higher. According to the Climate Action Tracker, the Paris Agreement has averted the equivalent of 1°C of warming. Rather than hitting 3.6°C by 2100, the world is on track for 2.6°C.
While this is progress, it is not enough. Global emissions are plateauing, but have still not begun to fall in earnest.
As damage from climate change mounts, leaders must do the work and begin rapidly cutting emissions to keep the goal of net-zero by 2050 alive.
To get temperatures back under 1.5°C, we will also need to pull gigatonnes of carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere using tree planting and nature restoration. We may also need technological approaches such as rock weathering or ocean alkalinity enhancement, though these are not proven at scale and can come with other risks.
There has been progress on climate change since 2015 – but not enough.acilo/Getty
We are all in this together
It may seem as if climate action faces impossible headwinds, as populism surges and the current United States administration doubles down on fossil fuels.
It’s worth looking beyond these headlines. It took almost 70 years for the world to install a terawatt of solar power, but then just two years for the second and another two for the third terawatt. In ten years, that figure will likely have tripled. Developing nations are moving rapidly to take up non-polluting electric transport.
Climate change can no longer be ignored. As damage mounts, nations will have to cooperate to cut emissions as rapidly as possible and figure out how to safely and equitably pull carbon back out of the atmosphere. Action depends on strong political will, inclusive governance, and finance to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt.
In November, Australia will lead negotiations at the next international climate summit, COP31, in Turkey. Leaders and diplomats will work to keep 1.5°C in reach – even after overshoot. Australia can point to its own rapid clean energy transition and urge others to set clear pathways to go electric – and wean themselves off the production and use of fossil fuels.
Climate change has been described as a super wicked problem – big, complex and impossible to solve simply. The solution is to see the urgency of the issue and act cooperatively to tackle it. If we make it a problem for the next generation, there may be no way back to a safe climate.
Jacqueline Peel receives funding from the Australian Research Council for her Laureate Program on Global Corporate Climate Accountability. She is affiliated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, serving as a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group III (mitigation) for the Seventh Assessment Report.
Wesley Morgan is a fellow with the Climate Council of Australia
But scientists say the world could get back to 1.5C through deep, rapid emissions cuts and removing carbon from the atmosphere
Global heating will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future, well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion.
The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 was now “unavoidable” and, despite some progress in addressing the human-caused climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels, likely in the next few years.
New research finds the number of dugongs in the Gulf of Carpentaria — one of the animal’s most globally important populations — has halved in the past two decades, a decline scientists have called a “real shock”.
A pontoon turned white from bird droppings and the potential for exposure through untreated drinking water are among the issues concerning the Port MacDonnell community in south-east SA.
