Post #4
Millions of powerful images and videos are in circulation, such as the starving polar bear narrative of National Geographic, surely evoking the intended emotional response from any audience.
For a cause with passionate advocates such as Leo DiCaprio and Al Gore, the presence of Global Warming should come as no shock. *Queue Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”*. The documentary does a wonderful job of laying out the history of climate patterns, evidence and contributors of climate change and steps necessary to mitigate.
One statistic Al Gore provides is contributions to carbon emissions by country. We can see that the U.S. unequivocally emits the most carbon, out-emitting countries of the EU combined, surpassing China by double and equalling more than Russia, Japan, India and Africa combined.
One of the paradoxes of climate change, however, is the effectors vs. the affected; the biggest effectors of climate change (e.g. the U.S) are the least affected. For example, smaller cultures such as the Inuit, an indigenous people residing in the arctics of Canada, U.S.A, Greenland and Russia, or the small island of Kiribati, produce incredibly low amounts of climate change factors, sheerly due to the nature of their small size. However, both cultures are experience intense change due to Global Warming. The Inuit people are reliant on the Arctic for not only various species to hunt, but basic transportation, yet the effects of climate change have exponentially risen in the past decades, moving in a direction toward the eradication of ice. In Kiribati, an Oceanic country comprised of small islands, there is a very real threat of national submersion due to a product of climate change — rising sea levels.
These are just a few examples of climate change already in action, but soon everyone will experience its wrath. Global Warming is not an issue of “if” but “when,” nor is it called “Regional Warming” which is precisely why it must be addressed globally. In her section of Moral Grounds, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit activist, makes a compelling case of the morality behind climate change intervention, stressing that we as a global community mustn’t view it as a contentious political topic, but, rather, we must view it as an issue of human rights, bearing in mind the “consequences that do affect our children, our families, and our communities.” It is not simply something that should be addressed by the globe as an entirely, but must be addressed by the globe as an entirety.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established in 1992 as the main forum for international action on climate change. Its overall aim is to:
“…achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
195 countries have joined this convention, and negotiations focus on four key areas: (1) mitigating (reducing) greenhouse gas emissions, (2) adapting to climate change, (3) reporting of national emissions and (4) financing of climate action in developing countries. The most popular efforts of UNFCCC are the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the Paris Agreement of 2015, an effort to reduce annual global warming to 2 degrees celsius.
The 37 countries of the Kyoto Protocol successfully reduced GHG emissions by 10%, but, though technically successful, it was not successful enough to offset emissions from industrializing countries. A second Kyoto commitment period is in progress now. With 160 members, the Paris Agreement has potential to be extremely effective. Only two countries have not joined — Syria, which was crippled by war at the time of negotiations, and Nicaragua, which refused to sign up because it considered the deal too weak. Meanwhile, under the Trump Administration, the U.S. unfortunately pulled out from the agreement, becoming the only country in the world to argue that the Paris accord demands too much of signatory nations.
Every region faces its own set of environmental issues — the arctic Inuits and the islandic Kiribati people, for example — along with the people of my region of interest, Ecuador. As home to Darwin’s Galapagos Islands and a slice of the Amazon river, it’s no surprise that Ecuador is a country known for its abundant wildlife. Like many other areas of the globe, Ecuador has fallen victim to not only problems of air pollution and global warming, but also erosion, deforestation and water pollution. One city, Esmerelda, Ecuador, is a place of especially flourishing flora and fauna.
Unfortunately, in this area of such nature and beauty, only about 1–2% of the forest remains. Furthermore, 34 types of mammals, 69 species of birds, 163 species of reptiles, 12 species of fish, 48 types of mollusks, and 1,815 species of plants have been put in danger due to deforestation and pollution. The San Pedro River of Esmerelda was found to be contaminated with pollutants from Quito, and 30% of the Amazon river in Ecuador was found to be polluted by the oil industry as well.
With such beautiful and diverse populations of wildlife at risk, Ecuador’s main environmental agency, Ministry of the Environment (MAE), has the strategic objectives of:
- Conserve and use biodiversity sustainably while maintaining respect for multicultural differences and ancestral knowledge;
- Prevent contamination, maintain and improve environmental quality;
- Maintain and improve the quality and quantity of water and manage watersheds sustainably;
- Reduce environmental risk and ecosystem vulnerability;
- Integrate the administration of environmental sectors at the local through national levels;
- Administrate and sustainably manage coastal resources.
Though not involved now, perhaps involvement from various organizations such as Water.org and Greenpeace can help to alleviate some of the environmental issues plaguing Ecuador in order to move towards a continuously biodiverse and abundantly green future.
