Ruminations from Hurghada: Environment, Climate and Development in Egypt

Recently I was in Hurghada. Maybe not a name that immediately strikes a light in one’s head but still quite a significant place on the Egyptian Red Sea, not far south from the more famous Sharm El Sheikh. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) had agreed with the Egyptian government to organize the 6^th National Evaluation Capacities conference there.

Upon arrival, the participants found themselves in an all-inclusive resort surrounded by thousands of half-naked German, Russian, British and other tourists indulging in numerous different pools, water games and, less so interestingly, the beautiful sandy beach lining the sea. And of course, the watering holes in this dry seashore where numerous. We found ourselves navigating towards the massive conference center in our dark suits and ties in the heat that in the daytime exceeded 30 degrees Celsius past the inquisitive looks of the sunbathers.

Egypt is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to climate change. Its lifeline is the Nile river that gets its start from two branches beyond the national territory: the White Nile at Lake Victoria in Uganda and the Blue Nile in the highlands of Ethiopia. Merging around Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan and Egypt’s southern neighbor, the river flows into the country that was the birthplace of an ancient civilization that predated that of Rome and Greece. Already that civilization, 5,000 years ago, was dependent on the Nile for enabling food production.

Still today, most of Egypt’s almost 100 million people live along the banks of the Nile. Cairo, the chaotic and fabulous capital city of 9.5 million, lies in the northern parts of the country where the fertile river delta begins to fan out. Cairo is defined by the existence of the river that cuts through it. The famous pyramids of Giza are located just outside of the city where the Saharan sand dunes overtook them already a long time ago.

Decades ago, as a young researcher and evaluator, I well remember driving north – downstream, as the Nile somewhat counterintuitively drains into the Mediterranean – in a Peugeot with some much more experienced experts whom I was lucky to have joined on a joint FAO-IFAD mission to define priorities for new investment projects in the Nile delta. The road was straight but rather narrow and the traffic already then was heavy, which did nothing to make me less uneasy shaking at the back of the car in the African heat. We stopped by the Suez Canal, for some refreshments on our way to Port Said on the Mediterranean coast. I remember vividly seeing the tops of great vessels passing through the canal like ghost ships in the desert.

Our goal was to investigate the environmental status of the coastal lagoons – Lake Burullus and Lake Manzala in particular – in the widening delta of the world’s longest river. Conflict had arisen among fishermen and fish farmers in these parts due to overexploitation of the resources and our task was to figure out initiatives that could help the fisheries and lessen the tensions.

The year was 1986 and climate change was still far down the list of worries of those of us concerned with sustainable use of natural resources, including freshwater. We bunked up in the coastal city of Alexandria and soon walked down to the Mediterranean shore. Our senior team members with the linguistic and bargaining abilities strolled to the fishermen pulling in their nets and secured us a delicious meal of freshly caught shrimp that was cooked right there on the beach.

More than two decades later, I was lucky enough to visit Alexandria again and actually spend time in the fabulous reincarnation of its legendary library, the original version of which was destroyed during the Roman period. I was stunned to see how the city had grown, an almost interminable string along the Mediterranean coast. For it was virtually impossible to expand inland in a more concentric manner: the lagoons prevented it as did the soon encroaching Sahara. In Alexandria, I read Naguib Mahfouz’s lovely and melancholy novel Miramar and imagined how the city must have been in the 1960s: a beautiful and cosmopolitan city, distinctly part of the Mediterranean cultural sphere, where cafés dotted the waterfront. It was still lovely, but had grown with too little planning, with traffic on the coastal boulevard threatening pedestrian life both with its speed and its pollution.

Meanwhile in Hurghada by the other sea, a traditional fishing village was being developed with an intrusion of foreign money. In a couple of decades it grew from a small sleepy settlement into a conglomeration of resorts to cater to wealthy Europeans who wanted to explore the fabulous corals of the Red Sea (or just turn coral red themselves from the sun and booze at the resorts). I’ve been to such resorts in the Caribbean and the only thing different in Hurghada was the accent of the people working there and the fact that their first instinct was to address you in German rather than English.

The Red Sea corals suffer equally from multiple threats: sewage from the tourist industry, the massive onslaught by the visiting snorkelers and divers who can’t keep their hands and feet away from them, as well as the global problems of climate change and ocean acidification. Surprisingly, it has been found that the corals in the northern parts of the Red Sea appear to be rather resilient to climate change, but those in the south are barely surviving at their maximum temperature tolerance.

At the conference that focused on how evaluation can contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its stated goal of “leaving no one behind,” my plea to the participants who included high government officials from Egypt (including a Deputy Minister) and from numerous other countries in the South and the North, as well as staff from UN organizations, civil society, private sector and academia, was that “sustainable development” as it is proclaimed rests on the foundations of the natural environment. If there is someone or something that should not be left behind, it is the natural environment with all its wonders.

Today, climate change combined with population growth that continues at an annual rate of 1.9% is posing tremendous challenges to Egypt, as it is to many countries in arid North Africa and the Middle East. The scarce water resources of the country – 85% of freshwater in Egypt is supplied by the Nile – are overused and abused by urban, agricultural and industrial development (another threat is posed by the upstream countries that need the water to develop their own economies, thus potentially leading to conflict: as I write this, Ethiopia is building a massive dam on the Blue Nile). The unique biological diversity along the Nile is also on the verge of extinction, just like the coral reefs in the southern parts of Red Sea.

A country that has invested so much in its role as a political, economic, cultural and touristic hub in the region, is seeing its natural and cultural assets erode. And it is facing a problem of burgeoning numbers of young people with little hope for advancement despite better education This latter issue, of course, is a major contributor to discontent, social upheaval, rise of Islamism and all the issues that these bring along.

Alexandria, the seaside center up north with a population of more than 5 million, the port where not only fish, but also cosmopolitan ideas and cultural tolerance have landed for millennia, is slowly taken over by the Mediterranean. Sea-level rise has led to rapidly increasing and more frequent floods that severely disrupt life and cause massive amounts of economic loss. The rising Mediterranean also leads to saltwater intrusions into the fertile delta that threaten both agriculture and freshwater resources.

The country that contributes less than 1% of the global greenhouse gas emissions is feeling the brunt of the impacts. As always, when the going gets rough, it’s the poor people that suffer the most.

The good news is that the Government of Egypt appears quite aware of what these challenges mean to the continued economic and social development of the country. The government has attempted to integrate its national strategy for climate change adaptation into its National Development Plan. A number of initiatives related to energy, water, agriculture, coastal zone management and other factors to enhance sustainability and resilience are underway. For the sake of the ancient country and the whole world, we need to hope that these succeed in time.

Sources

Altzitser, Sonia (2019). Red Sea Corals may be Resilient to Climate Change. The Maritime Executive [https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/red-sea-corals-may-be-resilient-to-climate-change]

Conniff, Richard (2017). The Vanishing Nile: A Great River Faces a Multitude of Threats. Yale Environment 360 [https://e360.yale.edu/features/vanishing-nile-a-great-river-faces-a-multitude-of-threats-egypt-dam]

Eissa, Hesham (n.d.). Egyptian Development & Climate Change. Presentation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [https://unfccc.int/files/adaptation/application/pdf/nwa_1.2_development_planning_and_climate_change_in_egypt.pdf]

Fine, M., Cinar, M., Voolstra, C.R., Safa, A., Rinkevich, B, Leffoley, D., Hilmi, N. and Allemand, D. (2019). Coral reefs of the Red Sea – Challenges and potential solutions. Regional Studies in Marine Science 25: 100498.

Khalil, Maha T. (2019). Egypt’s Lukewarm Response to Climate Change. Worldcrunch [https://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/egypt39s-lukewarm-response-to-climate-change]

UNEP (2018). How Climate Change and Population Growth Threaten Egypt’s Ancient Tresures. United Nations Environment Programme ;https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/how-climate-change-and-population-growth-threaten-egypts-ancient-treasures]

UNDP evaluates its work on the poverty-environment nexus

This piece appeared on Climate-Eval blog a few days ago.

Juha Uitto, Deputy Director of the Evaluation Office at UNDP, outlines the conclusions of the recently published Evaluation of UNDP Contribution to Environmental Management for Poverty Reduction.

Environment and poverty are inextricably interlinked; people who depend directly on natural resources for their livelihoods tend to be poorer in material terms. Whether working in agriculture, forestry or fisheries—or relying on small scale extraction to eke out a living—the returns from their labor are subject to environmental factors. Even relatively small fluctuations in climate can make the difference between a high yield and crop failure. Because of this direct dependency, small farmers everywhere in the world have become masters at managing risk and adapting to changing conditions. However, global climate change is introducing a whole new dynamic, potentially amplifying the changes in temperatures and weather conditions, causing droughts and storms in places where they used to be infrequent, thus straining the adaptation capabilities of the people living there.

Another conundrum is that poor people often live in locations that are particularly vulnerable to climatic hazards; in the rapidly growing cities in the developing world, shanties often sprout up on steep slopes prone to landslides and vulnerable to storms. Whether in rural or urban areas, poverty also forces people to degrade the natural resources they depend upon. Forests are cut down to provide fuel or building materials, thus exposing the land to the forces of nature. As Hurricane Sandy, which battered New York this October so graphically demonstrated, it is not only the developing countries that are vulnerable to climatic hazards.

Poverty reduction is at the heart of UNDP’s mandate. Tackling environmental sustainability is therefore essential for the organization to achieve its goals of human development and resilient nations. But it is not only adapting to the changing climate that is needed. Promoting a green economy and a transition to non-polluting renewable energies can give a much-needed boost to the sluggish global economy. Transformation towards a low-carbon society will benefit the environment as well as the people and countries. UNDP can support the process, while ensuring that the benefits are also accruing to the poorest segments of society. The Evaluation Office of UNDP works to produce knowledge and lessons from the scrutiny of past operations to help the organization to set its direction and to understand what works, under what circumstances, in what respects, and how, recognizing the importance of context.

The recently published Evaluation of UNDP Contribution to Environmental Management for Poverty Reduction brought into the open a number of challenges that the organization faces in integrating its work on poverty reduction and environmental management. The evaluation findings suggest that while there is substantial recognition of the ‘poverty-environment nexus’ within UNDP, its articulation in programming remains uneven. This unevenness is dependent on a number of factors, both internal and external. For example, the organizational structure around focus areas and separate funding sources has resulted in a ‘silo effect’ in which teams sometimes work in parallel with each other. The absence of monitoring processes and indicators to track poverty-environment linkages diminishes the attention to these issues and reduces incentives to work together. Consequently, the results on the ground have been mixed, with significant achievements in a number of country programs but considerable variation in direction and priority.

Yet, the evaluation revealed many bright spots: such as in Mexico, where UNDP convened a multi-sector environmental consultative groups and established platforms for debate at local, state, and federal levels; in Sri Lanka, UNDP worked closely with the government to promote more attention to the nexus under the UN Development Assistance Framework; in Tanzania, UNDP led the pilot ‘Delivering as One’ activities to expand coordination among donors and ministries regarding poverty-environment issues.

Overall, the evaluation showed that where the poverty-environment nexus is recognized as critical to achieving sustainable development, there is strong support to address it in programs and projects. In Rwanda, the joint UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative demonstrated the linkages between degrading natural resource base and the health of the country’s agriculture.

Commitment of the government, degree of cooperation within the government, efficiency of UNDP advocacy, and effectiveness of its programming on the ground are all factors that influence the results. There is also evidence that positive results at the country level can be replicated elsewhere. The evaluation concluded that addressing the poverty-environment nexus is essential to achieving UNDP’s mission. The organization needs to learn from its good experiences and replicate its successes in a more systematic manner, while taking into account contextual factors, which places importance on strong knowledge management across the various regions and country offices.

The evaluation further concluded that greater attention to climate change adaptation in recent years has contributed significantly to raising awareness and understanding about the importance of addressing poverty-environment linkages coherently, including in preventing and recovering from natural disasters. Another global evaluation studied UNDP Contribution to Disaster Prevention and Recovery and that, too, highlighted the centrality of climate change, recommending that UNDP’s disaster risk reduction strategy should more directly address climate-related hazards and adaptation to climate change. More on that later.


Dr. Juha I. Uitto is Deputy Director of the Evaluation Office at UNDP. He has held a number of positions and conducted a large number of programmatic and thematic evaluations in UNDP and GEF since the late-1990s. Before becoming a fulltime evaluator, Dr. Uitto spent nearly a decade in the United Nations University as coordinator of the environment and sustainable development research and training program. He has published widely in peer reviewed and professional journals on environment, natural hazards and evaluation, and has authored/edited several books on related topics.

Sandy farewell

Monday, 29 October 2012

On Monday morning New York City is closed down. I’m staying at home as my office, like most others, has been forced shut. Without transportation it would anyway be impossible to get to Manhattan. It doesn’t look too bad outside, though. It’s grey and the rain is falling, but it all looks rather calm. The wind comes in gusts that violently shake the trees outside. Some leaves have already turned yellow and are flying off like wet rags.

By noon the situation is starting to look more serious. According to the reports, the storm has been moving faster than anticipated and therefore has arrived earlier than expected. Its power has intensified. There’s by now no doubt this’ll be the worst storm to hit New York since the 1938 hurricane. The TV shows images from Atlantic City, NJ. The famous boardwalk and the casinos are being pounded by heavy winds and the waves from the open ocean are splashing forcefully onto the shore. I remember my brother has a vacation property on the Brigantine Island not far from Atlantic City. I also remember it faces the ocean. There’s only the sandy beach and a narrow street between the building and the Atlantic. In good weather, the location is lovely.

I correspond with my colleague Chona who lives in New Jersey. She is lamenting the pictures of her beloved Jersey Shore being eaten up by the waves. The TV meteorologist explains how New York City is squeezed in between New Jersey and Long Island, which means that in an Atlantic storm situation like today, the water has only one way to go: inland towards the city via the inlets. Therefore, the storm surge forecast for New York harbour is grim.

The most threatening situation starts unfolding in mid-afternoon on the west side of Manhattan. A crane on a high-rise construction site on the 7^th Avenue at 57^th Street has collapsed and is hanging upside-down at the height of the 90^th floor above the city. There is no way to stabilize it, so it’ll be pure luck if it stays up and doesn’t fly smashing into neighbouring buildings and onto the street.

Around 4 pm Governor Andrew Cuomo holds another press conference flanked by NYFD and other emergency personnel. A troop of National Guardsmen dressed in camouflage uniforms stands guard behind them. There is a life-threatening situation on Fire Island, a thin barrier island off Long Island. Fourteen people who refused to obey the mandatory evacuation order last night had to be rescued today. Having spent some good summer vacation time on the island, I can’t even imagine anyone wanting to face a hurricane on that thin sliver of sand in the Atlantic. In the process a rescue vehicle has been lost. Luckily there were no personnel losses. Cuomo quotes Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who accused people who refused to leave of being selfish, putting others at peril. The emergency chief tells in no uncertain terms that the window to evacuate is rapidly closing. Sandy is now expected to make landfall around 18:00, which will coincide with the peak of the tide coming in. When that happens, it won’t be possible to get out of the islands that surround New York City.

I also correspond with my other colleague Indran who lives high up in one of the high-rises on the East River waterfront in Manhattan. It is Zone A, but the building complex is very solid and the water would anyway never reach that high up, so he had chosen not to evacuate. He and his family moved here from South Africa only earlier this year. They are awed by the storm which they can observe through rattling windows from a vantage point tens of stories above sea level.

Our building is faring well, too. We stay in our warm apartment and enjoy the food we stocked up on before the storm: steaks and asparagus for lunch, followed by coffee ice cream; grilled chicken and salad for dinner. Do we normally eat this well? Nowa sleeps through much of her first hurricane. I go down to the basement, which looks dry—so far. 

Around the time of the landfall, I venture out briefly to snap these photographs. From the balcony the southwestern sky looks menacing. On the street side, the large trees are bending with the gale force winds. Luckily, the rain remains surprisingly moderate.

In early evening, the communications start to falter. The cable network on which our building depends on for the Internet, TV and telephone landline goes dark. The elevator also becomes unsafe to use. We’re cut off from information and communications. Well almost, as Yoko’s iPhone can still send and receive messages (my older model went blank). Some neighbours in the building report water leaking from their a/c vents. Apparently, water is also starting to gather in the basement.

Around 21:30, Yoko reads on the iPhone that Sandy is no longer a hurricane. The National Hurricane Centre has reclassified it because it “has continued to lose tropical characteristics”—no wonder at these latitudes. It doesn’t mean that its power is waning. Sustained winds of more than 120 km per hour remain. The wind and rain continue late into the night.

Tuesday, 30 October

We survived the storm with minor personal inconvenience. In the morning the winds are still high and there are heavy showers. At the JFK airport, top wind speeds recorded were 127 kph. Our cable service is restored and we never experienced a power outage. Not everyone was equally lucky. The storm left some 7 million people in 11 states and the District of Columbia without power. In New York, power outages are widespread and currently 1.8 million people are without power. In the New York University Langone Medical Centre even the back-up generator system failed. Some 260 patients, including four newborn babies, had to be evacuated.

ConEdison, the power utility, made a statement that this is the biggest storm-related problem in the company’s history. A representative couldn’t give a timetable for fixing the problems but suggested it may take a week to fully restore the service. It's going to be a cold and dark week for those affected. 

The initial reports by the police talk about seven Sandy-related deaths in the city, but there is no information about how these happened. The national death toll from Sandy is currently put at 16. According to news reports, more than 80 homes have burned down to the ground in a fire in Breezy Point, Queens, due to electric fires. One can imagine insurance companies studying the hurricane causes in the policies for loopholes to avoid payment to the home owners. A building in Chelsea collapsed partially because of the wind. The crane in Midtown West is still hanging there, but the situation remains dangerous and the police have evacuated buildings in the neighbourhood.

There is massive flooding around the city. The National Hurricane Centre recorded storm surges of up to 3.8 metres in Kings Point. The storm surge in southern Manhattan’s Battery at 4.3 metres, was the highest ever on record, beating that caused by Hurricane Dana in 1960. In the South Street Seaport waves with a height of 9 metres were measured. Residents on Staten Island report that they have never seen anything like this. Coney Island waterfront is still inaccessible even to eager reporters. Streets look like rivers with cars floating on them. Cars have been crushed under felled trees. One car spontaneously combusted in a fireball, possibly caused by salt water getting into its battery. A huge tanker has washed ashore on Staten Island.

Reports are coming in and are being updated as more information becomes available. The economic impact has not yet been assessed.

The system-wide shutdown of mass transit—both local and long distance trains, subways, buses, ferries—continues. Seven subway tunnels are severely flooded. One can only imagine the hordes of rats sprinting across the debris in the deluge. Apparently MTA had managed to get all subway cars on higher ground in anticipation of the storm, so the trains have been spared damage. MTA calculates it’ll take four days to pump out the water from the tunnels. The rain continues to fall.

It seems that we’ll spend some more time indoors.

Waiting for Sandy

Sunday evening, October 28^th

Sandy is again a hurricane. Having already once been downgraded into a tropical storm, Sandy is back as Category 1 hurricane—and it’s heading north along the Atlantic coast. The storm system is slow-moving and massive, ranging some 1,200 km across. The eye is still far out on the Atlantic off the Carolina coast some 800 km from New York, but despite the distance, the winds are picking up even here in Brooklyn. The rain is starting to fall and the Rockaway shore is already getting soaked. The hurricane is calculated to make landfall well south of New York tomorrow night and is expected to pass the metropolitan area south-southwest from here across the garden state of New Jersey.

Although New York will likely not be hit directly, the expectation is that the city will receive its share of rain and wind. In fact, the biggest threats would appear to stem from wind and the associated storm surge. The rainfall on Monday-Tuesday is expected to be just 50-120 mm—enough to give us a good washing, but not huge in historical terms. However, by noon tomorrow, the winds are expected to blow at 80 km per hour, with gusts going up to 112 km per hour. That’s strong enough to fell trees and power lines and to throw leisure boats off the East River on the banks.

This afternoon we walked down from our house to Bedford Avenue and the main shopping area of Williamsburg to get supplies so that our daughter Nowa would be able to ride out her first hurricane in comfort. It should have been no surprise, but we were still taken aback at seeing how many others had had the same idea. There were crowds of people in all shops and at least three dozen people were queuing on the pavement outside our favourite supermarket. Two bouncers were admitting people in an orderly manner, so that inside the store things didn’t get too chaotic. After a brief wait we were able to stock up with enough of bottled water and cooking ingredients should we be unable to shop for a few days.  It is interesting to note the types of items that people buy in these kinds of situations. Apart from bottled water, the first things to go seem to include canned tuna. This I noticed 14 months ago when we were bracing for Hurricane Irene, and could reconfirm today. As we headed back home, we could feel the humidity condensing in the cool wind.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been visible in the media today assuring people of the state of preparedness. All public transportation—subway, local trains, buses, ferries—will be shutting down tonight. The area airports—JFK, La Guardia and Newark—have also instructed flights to be directed elsewhere and  Amtrak trains will be avoiding New York’s Penn Station. The bridges and tunnels connecting the five Boroughs may be closed up to avoid accidents caused by heavy winds or flooding. New York will be cut off from the world.

The decisive Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of all vulnerable low-lying areas on the coastline by 7 pm tonight. Zone A—which includes most of the shores of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island—may be facing huge storm surges. The forecast at this time is mostly 1-2 m above normal—high in its own right—but some areas around East and Hudson Rivers—and especially Long Island Sound—may face a storm surge of up to 1.8-3.3 metres. It’s almost full moon, which worsens the effects as the tides are naturally high at this time.

While the city hurricane shelters are slowly filling up, many citizens are also planning on challenging the evacuation orders and riding out the storm. The local TV station NY1 sometime ago broadcast a report from the Rockaways where some of the 130,000 people living there were gathering for hurricane parties. A somewhat wobbly gentleman declared firmly through a nearly toothless grin that he would not leave his home of 35 years: “The captain must go down with his ship!” True to his style, Mayor Bloomberg justifies the mandatory evacuations, not because of his concern for the stubborn residents, but because their intransigence may eventually put rescue personnel at risk if they need to go out to salvage foolhardy partyers from storm hit areas. He also made a decision to shut down elevators and hot water in public housing—many tall high-rises—to prevent people from getting stuck in elevators and other mishaps if and when there are power failures.

This is not the first time New York City will experience a hurricane, although they certainly are not regular events. By definition, hurricanes are tropical storms, and New York is far from tropical, as anyone having spent a winter here would attest. However, just last year, in August 2011, the city was hit by another hurricane, Irene. It was the first since Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The one before that had been Agnes in 1972. Whether this repeat just a year later would be any indication of intensified storm activity linked with climate change is of course impossible to tell. Two events in a row don’t provide any statistically significant trend. The most destructive hurricane that New York has had to deal with in modern times took place in 1938 when the eye of a Category 3 storm passed straight through Long Island killing ten people. Damage from Irene last year stayed quite limited, although much of Lower Manhattan—the Financial District and the Battery—were severely flooded. Even then, the Far Rockaways took the brunt of the storm that damaged the piers and boardwalks there. Here in Williamsburg, the visible damage was limited to some flooded basements and a few felled trees (see the photos from the aftermath of Irene).

 

Sandy is different, though. It’s been termed ‘storm of a generation’ to reach this far up on the East Coast. Last week, it already killed at least 60 people and caused large-scale homelessness in the Caribbean. President Barack Obama has just signed an emergency declaration for New York State in anticipation of Sandy’s arrival.

For now, we are tucked in comfortably in our apartment in Williamsburg. We are close to East River, but just outside of Zone A by virtue of our building standing on a small knoll. It will not prevent the winds from rocking the windows here on the 4^th floor or preventing flooding in the basement storage areas. But all the plants have been moved inside from the balconies. We expect to stay safe and dry, although the thick clouds hide the full moon and the wind is increasingly throwing raindrops our way..

Delhi Heat

Delhi is hot. I mean not warm and sunny. I mean searing hot. The sun is shining from a cloudless sky and the temperature is around +40 degrees Celsius. As we walked the few hundred metres to have lunch at the India International Centre, Jayati with whom I am working here remarked: “You’re lucky you weren’t here last week; now it’s a bit cooler.” But according to the forecast would soon again get warmer—and indeed, on May 12th the year’s record was broken with an official high of +43.1 degrees Celsius. Khushwant Singh, the famous Indian writer, sums it up in his latest, The Sunset Club: “It is said hell is a very hot place. If you want a foretaste of what may be your fate, you should spend the month of June in Delhi.” It is now May, and maybe this is only a foretaste of what comes after.




Last time I was here, in January, just four months ago, it was freezing. The cold and damp fog of winter enveloped the city for weeks. A dozen or more people died as the frigid winds blew down to the northern plains from the Himalayas. Now they die of the heat. People with no shelter, exposed to the vagaries of climate. It is the rag pickers and the poor elderly who perish when the weather gets too cold or too hot. Or when it floods. Delhi is renowned for its floods when the monsoon rains come later in the year. The river Yamuna, which crosses the vast conglomeration, rises above its banks. The slums are soaked and again poor people are washed away with the waters. Which kills more people, I ask myself. So far, it is not the cold of the winter, although the seasons are getting quite extreme lately. Which way would I prefer myself, if I had the unenviable choice? They say one feels numb and warm before one passes away from freezing. Drowning is supposed to bring along a calm, with a light that shines presumably from somewhere above. But how do they know? As far as I can see, nobody has really died and come back to tell. I think that, considering the options, I’d prefer succumbing to the heat. Maybe my brain is already overheating, as I'm thinking this way.

In the evening the heat subsides with the sun and it is actually quite pleasant. Hot and dry, but not suffocating. A couple of nights ago, I headed out by myself, as my travelling companion had acquired an acute case of ‘Delhi Belly.’ No wonder, as in this heat all kinds of micro-organisms thrive. It was more of a wonder in January, when it was cold, that I acquired a bad case of the same ailment. I attribute it to complacency. Then I had thought it was safe enough to eat salads and other uncooked food. Obviously I was badly mistaken. After a couple of agonizing days when I finally was strong enough to get on my feet I headed to the Max Healthcare Super Speciality Hospital. I could see why today so many people, including Westerners, choose to have themselves treated in Indian hospitals if they get gravely ill. Of course, this option is only available to those who can afford it; which is to say, perhaps the top 10 percent of Indians plus the foreigners who see the value of being treated here. The Max was a sprawling complex in a park-like setting, spanking clean, friendly, efficient and cheap by Western standards. After just a quarter of an hour wait, I was examined by the highly professional Dr. Monica Mahajan who discharged me with a set of prescriptions that I was able to pick up from the ground floor dispensary on my way out. Give me this anytime over an overpriced and unfriendly American hospital where they ask for your religious affiliation and credit card before they even start treating you.

This recent night I was perfectly fine and jumped into the tiny white Tata taxi that I had hired on a weekly basis to take me around. I asked the dark skinned moustachioed driver, Shiva Dayal, to take me to Khan Market. I wanted to visit the two fabulous bookstores operating at the popular place. Just a few years ago, this was just a local market. Today it is one of the fanciest shopping areas in New Delhi with lots of boutiques frequented by fancy ladies sporting expensive jewellery and handbags. Khan Market was crowded, the lights of the shops beckoned browsers. I first went to Bahri Sons, but soon realized they were about to close for the night. The two young women tending the cashier were no longer interested in making a sell. Instead they were counting the stack of bills the shop had collected from customers during the day, joking and giggling with each other. I decided to head to Faqir-Chand & Sons, a small but magnificent book handler not far away in the same row of shops. They gave me more leeway time-wise, as well as service-wise, and I was able to browse through their amazing and amazingly disorganized collections. In a place where the newest books on politics and international affairs lie next to an assortment of other tomes with no apparent connection through their topics—Jack London’s Call of the Wild adjacent to Mein Kampf; biographies of Che Guevara and the Beatles next to a photographic guide to sex positions from Kama Sutra—one can find true surprises that one just has to purchase. I picked up an inspiring anthology of Indian environmental writing, Voices in the Wilderness: Contemporary Wildlife Writings, edited by Prerna Singh Bindra.

Having picked my selection, I continued to an alley on the side of Khan Market where several small doors lead up to discreet little bars. Discreet only from the outside, however. I climbed the stairs to one called Route 04 and found a noisy room crowded with mostly young people, all Indian, consuming quantities of beer and cocktails. I could see plates of nachos carried to the tables to be consumed by the lively customers. Many of the women were breathtakingly beautiful, as many Indians are, with their large dark eyes lined with kohl. It was still early on a Monday evening, but the DJ in a corner was playing Led Zeppelin at high volume. A group of fashionable kids were sharing an oversized hookah at a close-by table. As it was happy hour, I got a second bottle of Tuborg for the same price. IMFL, they call it: Indian made foreign liquor. I could have stayed for the rest of the evening, but I was getting hungry and the somewhat depressing looking pseudo-Mexican/New Yorker snacks did not appeal to me.






I asked Shiva to recommend a restaurant with good Indian food that also served beer. The latter was a condition I would not compromise upon tonight. He said he knew just the place for me and off we drove to a new shopping centre close to Lodhi Gardens not far from Khan Market. The restaurant was called Pindi and boasted a neon sign promising genuine Mughal and Chinese cuisine. It was brightly lit with tables lining the sides of two adjacent oblong rooms. I sat at one and started browsing the menu. Soon Shiva returned with the bad news: the place had no beer. A discussion ensued involving the portentous proprietor and a couple of waiters mixing Hindi and English in a way that left me completely confused. I was led to a less conspicuous corner table and told to sit down. The paunchy owner assured me that things would work out. I would just have to be discreet about my beer. He only had two left and he had already told a group of some half a dozen foreigners sitting in the next room that there was no beer. The manager did not want them to see that someone arriving after them was actually served the cold drink. I agreed to be prudent and a waiter brought me a can carefully wrapped in a paper towel, so that it would not be obvious to any observer that the tin contained the coveted brew. With this, the evening proceeded. In my euphoria I ordered far too much food: succulent Rada mutton, with large chunks of soft lamb attached to bone served in an onion sauce containing minced lamb; delicious Karani Paneer, cottage cheese stewed in wonderful gravy; white long-grained rice.

India’s economy is growing rapidly and in the West this is often seen as a threat. People in the US complain about outsourcing of jobs, as well as about bright and hardworking Indian professionals taking jobs in America. Some of it may be true, but the thriving modern sector is still only a thin layer: icing on the boiling cake of India. Most of India is still very poor and this poverty has both a geographical dimension as well as many social aspects. Often these overlap. The UN ranks India 119th among 169 countries based on the Human Development Index. This ranking does not only include monetary income but takes into account aspects such as health and education. This puts India into the ‘medium human development’ category. The index, however, hides huge differences between people. These differences can be explained in numerous ways: historical and structural factors, the highly varying government policies between states, inefficiencies, corruption, the caste system, rural to urban migration, etc.

Some Indian states lie very far behind Delhi, Mumbai and other major cities in the level of human development. Within the big cities, too, the inequality between people is staggering. Huge slums sprout beside shiny new skyscrapers and fancy villas. Little children and severely handicapped people beg at each intersection in Delhi accosting cars as they have to stop at traffic lights. New Delhi is a gorgeously beautiful city with ample green parks lining the streets. Its majestic avenues linking parts of the spread-out city are good for cars but the distances are long for people without transportation. Old Delhi is different, picturesque for a casual visitor, but rough on those who must live there. Teeming with humanity, its narrow streets are cramped up and dirty, buildings crumbling. Violence flares up easily in poverty.

On 11 May 2011, in the middle of my stay here, the Planning Commission of the Government of India redrew the official national poverty line at Rp. 20, or less than US$0.50, per day. The motivation can only be to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line, so that India doesn’t look so bad in international comparisons or so that the government doesn’t have to extend social services to as many people. But poverty remains, wherever you draw the line.

On a recent night, my friend Nidhi took me to the Sikh temple, Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. The place was crowded and very welcoming to people of any creed or colour. We removed our shoes and were given saffron headscarves to cover our hair in respect to the Sikh faith and culture. The gorgeous white temple was alive with music as people gathered there for prayers. We walked slowly around the vast square pool reflecting the lights of the temple in the dark evening. The Sikhs are proud people, never to be found among the beggars. Instead they have formed a supportive social system whereby any person in need—and one does not have to be Sikh—can find food and shelter in the temple. A tall and thin pole with lights on top has been raised high to guide people to the temple from a long distance. Also now we observed a large crowd of men and women, young and old, who had gathered waiting on the porch of a big hall to be fed. As we passed by, the gates were opened and the people streamed in for their free meal.




Our meal wasn’t free at the Blues café and bar on Connaught Place at Delhi’s commercial and business heart not too far from the temple. Sitting in the air-conditioned comfort listening to rather loud rock, we talked about the inequality and the persistence of abject poverty in India. Like Nidhi said, “Delhi is not a good place if you don’t have money,” The trouble is, there are so many who do not—and even the climate conspires against them.

Climate Change is Here to Stay - Learn to Live with It!

The only way to adapt to global climate change is with risk management strategies based on solid geographical understanding. The evidence of manmade climate change is overwhelming. Although global climate has always fluctuated dramatically and it is difficult to say what part of our current warming trend is due to natural causes, the majority of scientists believe that human activities are contributing to this change. While we need to work towards mitigating climate change in the long run, it is already too late to halt the process. We need to learn to adapt to the changing conditions.

The problem is that there is considerable uncertainty about how climate change will manifest itself in specific geographical locations. The interlinkages and feedback loops are so complex that even sophisticated computer models cannot produce firm predictions. Climate change is easy to ignore by the politicians and public alike, because of the uncertainty of its outcomes and its gradual nature. The uncertainty should not be used as an excuse for inaction. When we finally decide to react, it may be too late. We must manage its risks, especially when undertaking new large projects, be they dams, airports, or new highway systems.

The popular name for climate change – global warming – is an unfortunate misnomer. It is not that global warming will make every place warmer. The impacts will neither be uniformly negative: there will be winners and losers. Some present-day deserts may receive more rainfall thus making them green. Or the warmer climes may or may not benefit some countries at high latitudes. But in many places the impact will be increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather.

Neither will climate change affect only the developing world or small islands sinking into the rising seas. Low-lying coastal areas everywhere – from the Mississippi delta to the Netherlands, from Tokyo to the small island of Manhattan – will be equally threatened by sea level rise and coastal storms.

Coastal cities are the fastest growing places in the US, China and elsewhere. Already now, half of the world’s population lives within 150 km from the coast. It is not hard to imagine the damage and the concomitant costs that ever stronger coastal storms can cause: just witness the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. But the impacts can be much more varied. Storm surges and sea level rise not only may inundate low-lying coastal areas but can cause saltwater intrusions into groundwater that render water supplies unusable.

Changes in climate may dramatically modify growing seasons or shift agricultural zones so that they no longer can produce as previously. Regional droughts may deplete aquifers. These scenarios have serious implications to our food security. In a globalized economy, local disturbances in food self-sufficiency can have widespread implications as the country or mega-city experiencing food deficits starts buying food on the international market. Prices then can swing unpredictably.

We must have solid geographic knowledge combined with hard-headed risk assessment, and not just for some places. Any new large-scale irrigation project will require an assessment of whether its water resources will still be adequate thirty or fifty years down the line. Major new infrastructure requires massive investment, takes a long time to develop, and is built to last. It is imperative to consider vulnerability when, say, deciding on the location of a new airport. Will it still be there or will it be under water in forty years time? There are numbers of active airport building projects, for example, in South Asia, a hot zone for tropical cyclones. How will they be protected?

Who will bear the costs when properties are damaged by violent natural events? The insurance industry that ends up absorbing many of the losses stemming from hurricanes and other disasters to coastal property is developing geographical expertise to allow it to set insurance premiums based on exposure and vulnerability. But can the vulnerable people afford to pay - or move if necessary - whether they are in South Florida or Sri Lanka? The more gradual the changes, the less likely the need for draconian adjustments.

Risk management strategies based on a thorough geographical understanding of hazards and vulnerability are immediately needed. That means putting together the full range of conditions – things like current and changing topography, vegetation, prevailing winds, water tables, population, buildings, and transportation systems – with the uncertainties of climate change. Any investment that ignores climate change as too costly risks pay a far higher price in the long run.

Juha Uitto 2005