Heavy flooding has affected more than a million people in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, with 45 dead and more than 200,000 in relief camps.

And yet there is still very little coverage of the disaster in the international media – perhaps not surprising when you consider even most Indians aren’t paying attention.

But they should – and so should you. The fact a region that is flooded regularly should be so unprepared for the latest downpour is scandalous, as is the shortsighted or uncaring government response.

The floods have also affected local wildlife, with the Kaziranga National Park – home to two thirds of the world’s Indian rhinos – reporting the electrocution of elephants fleeing from the water, as well as the death of at least three rhinos.

The floods come amid reports of increasing illegal immigration from Bangladesh and poor working conditions on local tea plantations, while armed conflicts between separatist groups and state security forces make the situation in the region even more unstable.

Perfect conditions for tea – and flooding

Assam is best known for its black tea, which grows well in the hot, steamy Brahmaputra valley. But while the monsoon may create perfect conditions for tea, it also means the region is highly susceptible to flooding.

More than 40% of the region is at risk and severe floods occur every few years, eroding riverbanks and dumping large amounts of sand on farmland, often rendering lands infertile.

For local communities, these floods have been disastrous and many are not receiving sufficient aid. For example my own research on recovery after major floods in 2012 found affected families who hadn’t received the promised compensation from the government, even two years on.

Government initiatives to build new embankments have led to further distress. For example, new barriers constructed in 2012 displaced hundreds of families who found their resettled homes were now on the wrong side of the embankments.

Compensation was poor, lower than market rates, while others received no support for resettlement due to identity and land ownership issues for illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Some embankments built along the Brahmaputra in central Assam as an ad hoc response to the 2012 floods (see photo) were so poorly constructed over natural drainage they actually failed to keep the river movements in check and increased erosion. The embankments simply breached in the following year’s monsoon. The subsequent relocations and distress were entirely preventable.

The Brahmaputra has caused serious erosion for decades now, and yet the government response has been inefficient. Plans to tackle the problem remain confined only to paper.

The real cost for Assam’s communities

The floods in Assam have taken a heavy toll on water, sanitation, health and education systems. Affected people flee their homes and create makeshift camps, where access to essential facilities is inadequate for the hundreds of thousands displaced.

The quality and accessibility of drinking water in particular is severely affected, and people are depending on contaminated sources – even when they know it isn’t clean. Defecation in the open becomes dangerous, especially for women and adolescent girls, all the more so during floods and regular displacement.

During floods the government turned some public schools into relief camps for a week or two. This of course affects the school term.

Once the water recedes people start leaving the camps and are forced to fend for themselves. When they return to their villages they’ll be faced with destroyed homes, lost food grains and fields ruined by silt or sometimes even entirely lost to erosion.

The road to recovery is hard to see, particularly as no long-term support is guaranteed by government, civil groups or NGOs. The floods also have an adverse affect on marginalised people, such as women, who bear the responsibilities of running households, childcare and rebuilding homes after floods.

A 2013 study involving 900 households around Assam found that soil erosion, as a consequence of flooding, heavily affected the standard of living for farmers. This in turn forced women to leave the home and earn an income which resulted in girls dropping out of school to look after younger siblings and do the chores.

India’s 2005 Disaster Management Act doesn’t recognise the chronic challenges of erosion as a natural disaster. The present development plans are shortsighted. They do not feature a long-term recovery, or take into consideration environmental factors.

In the case of Assam, disaster resilience will only be possible through education and the full participation of local communities and institutions.

Sneha Krishnan is PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant, UCL.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

In the Mediterranean climate of California, with its warm, wet winters and hot, dry summers, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains plays a critical role.

It serves as a natural water storage system that feeds waterways and reservoirs during the dry summer months.

That’s why it was very fitting that when Governor Jerry Brown announced the first-ever mandatory statewide water restrictions, he did it from the snow-barren Phillips snow course station in the Sierra Nevada.

The April 1 snowpack’s water content has been measured at this station since 1941 and has averaged at 66.5 inches over this period. On April 1 2015, there was no snow on the ground.

The Phillips station underscores how extreme the 2015 snowpack situation is. In our study, we put the 2015 snowpack low in a long-term context and demonstrated that these were the driest conditions in 500 years.

Our research, based on tree-ring data, also suggests that in the future California officials need to alter plans for managing and storing water from the snowpack, which has historically supplied about 30% of the state’s water.

Reconstructing past climate

Our team has been working for a couple of years on reconstructing the atmospheric circulation patterns that drive hydroclimate variability over the American Pacific Coast.

When the 2015 snowpack levels for the Sierra Nevada were found to be 5% of their historical average on April 1 – the date when snowpack is normally at its peak – we realized that we could provide a century-scale context for these numbers.

We combined two independent tree-ring-based data sets representing the two primary climate components that determine snowpack levels: the amount of winter precipitation and winter temperatures.

As a proxy for winter precipitation over the Sierra Nevada, we used a tree-ring compilation of more than 1,500 blue oak trees in central California. The California blue oaks are some of the most moisture-sensitive trees to be found anywhere on the planet.

Their tree-ring width reliably tracks the amount of winter rainfall that central California receives and the storm tracks that bring that rainfall from the Pacific Ocean. These same storm tracks, as they move farther east, then deliver winter precipitation in the form of snow over the Sierra Nevada.

Our current conditions may be unprecedented in 3,000 years

For winter temperature, we used a tree-ring-based winter (February-March) temperature reconstruction developed for and averaged over two gridpoints in central and southern California. Temperature is an important factor in year-to-year snowpack variability because it determines how much of the precipitation falls as rain versus snow and affects the speed of snowmelt.

We combined the winter precipitation and the winter temperature data sets in a model that captures how much these factors contribute to snow water equivalent (SWE) values for the April 1 Sierra Nevada-wide measurement. SWE is a widely used measure of snowpack that reflects its water content. We compiled April 1 SWE data from 108 snow course stations throughout the Sierra Nevada that started measurements in 1930 or earlier.

We were surprised by how similar the SWE measurements from these 108 stations were and used this common SWE signal to calibrate our tree-ring based multiple linear regression model.

Our model allowed us to reconstruct Sierra Nevada April 1 SWE back to the year 1500 CE, and we found that the 2015 April 1 SWE value was the lowest on record over this time span. We further used these 500+ years of data to estimate return periods for snowpack – that is, the likelihood of a 2015 snowpack low as this year to occur.

Our results indicate that the expected return period for a 2015-level snow drought is longer than 3,000 years. This estimate has a number of uncertainties, but we can say with 95% confidence that the 2015 SWE return period is longer than the 500-year time span of our reconstruction.

Differences in elevations

It is important to note that this 500-year return period estimate is based on the past five centuries and cannot be extrapolated into the future. On the contrary, it is likely that the frequency of occurrence of a 2015-level snow drought will increase with anthropogenic climate change.

The co-occurrence of very low winter precipitation anomalies and very high temperature anomalies is needed for extreme snowpack lows. In 2015, far below normal winter precipitation in the Sierra Nevada co-occurred with record high January-March temperatures, resulting in a 500-year snowpack low.

Future model projections agree that California temperatures will rise over the coming century, and the chance of low precipitation events co-occurring with them will thus increase.

In this context, we found an interesting difference between low (< ~2,130 meters or 7,000 feet) and high elevations (>~2,670 m or 8,750 ft). At low elevations, where winter temperature has strong control over SWE, the 2015 snow drought is strongly exceptional, with an estimated return period of longer than 1,000 years.

At high elevations, however, winter precipitation is the primary driver of snowpack, and the 2015 SWE value exceeds the 95% confidence level for only a 95-year return period. Knowing that the northern Sierras are typically of lower elevation than the southern Sierras, this finding has important implications for water management strategies and deserves further detailed study.

Planning for the future

As we are writing this piece, the Butte fire and Rough fire are raging through the Sierra Nevada, demonstrating in a devastating manner the link between low snowpack, earlier spring snowmelt and increased wildfire risk.

The impact of the 2015 snowpack low on Sierra Nevada ecosystems presents an ominous sign of the severity of the drought conditions that California has been experiencing since 2012.

The impacts of this drought have included water cuts for urban and agriculture consumers, drying wells for local communities and low hydroelectric power generation. Statewide water restrictions have helped to reduce these impacts, but have also revealed California’s vulnerability and lack of preparedness to coping with these societal impacts.

With the Sierra Nevada snowpack historically supplying roughly 30% of California’s overall water, the 2015 snow drought helps explain the state’s drought state of emergency because of the decimating water reservoir levels.

The unprecedented nature of the 2015 snow drought provides some foreshadowing for the future as well: with projected anthropogenic warming, the Sierra Nevada snowpack will be a less reliable source of water for reservoirs.

Adequate planning for water management and capturing is needed to build a resilient system for dire situations such as the current one.

Valerie Trouet is Associate Professor of Dendrochronology, University of Arizona.

Soumaya Belmecheri is Post-doctoral Research Associate in Paleoclimate, University of Arizona.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Sakhalin Environment Watch (SEW), a civil society group in Russia’s far east, has been ordered by the Russian authorities to register itself as a ‘foreign agent’.

Introduced in 2012, the restrictive ‘foreign agent’ law has been roundly criticised for the way in which it intrudes on and hinders the activities of independent civil society organisations.

In the case of Sakhalin Environmental Watch, the classification would tarnish its impeccable reputation of two decades and limit its ability to engage with decision-makers, the media and the general public.

“There is no justice at all in this claim”, says Dmitry Lisitsyn, SEW’s director. “SEW cannot operate under the label of ‘foreign agent, because it never was a foreign agent, and cannot accept being labeled as something it is not.”

He also points to an inconsistency in the law and how it is applied: “Russian law doesn’t consider political parties getting foreign financing as ‘foreign agents’. United Russia, the ruling political party, is getting a significant part of its funds from abroad. The party is not a foreign agent. But if you are an NGO getting foreign financing then you are foreign agent. Is it justice? I don’t think so.”

Foreign-funded, yes. Foreign agent, no way!

The group has indeed been funded from foreign sources, Lisitsyn acknowledges. These include the Ford Foundation, the Wild Salmon Centre, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). It is also supported by WWF Russia.

Most recently it received a donation from the Leonardo di Caprio Foundation to protect the marine area surrounding the 67,000 ha Vostochny Reserve in the Sea of Okhotska off the cost of eastern Russia, the most productive and undisturbed salmon ecosystem in the world. The reserve is itself protected as a result of an SEW campaign.

And Lisitsyn insists that the group would be unable to survive as an independent group without foreign funding: “There are exactly two sources of funding for environmental NGOs in Russia. One is controlled by Gazprom, the second one is controlled by the Kremlin. It’s impossible to be an independent NGO with such funding sources.”

Under to 2012 amendments to the federal law on non-commercial organisations, local nonprofits that engage in ‘political activity’ and receive funding from abroad are to be classified as ‘foreign agents’.

The term ‘political activity’ is only vaguely defined in the law, however the protection of flora and fauna has been explicitly excluded from this definition by an April 2014 ruling of Russia’s Constitutional Court.

So far, 91 non-governmental organisations have been put on this list; most of them are now trying to legally challenge this status. SEW too is contesting the classification, says Lisitsyn. “However, if these efforts are unsuccessful the organisation will convene a general assembly to consider its dissolution.”

So now environmental campaiging is political?

The Russian government’s decision follows an unscheduled two week long inspection in late August by officers from the Ministry of Justice of the Sakhalin Province, the fourth such inspection in two years.

The inspection report received by SEW last week says it found no indications of extremism in the group’s activities, the decisions of its governing bodies are competent, and the organisation’s operations are in line with its statutory objectives.

Yet, the Ministry of Justice report says the inspection found “a focus on the formation of public opinion in order to influence the decisions of government authorities, an intention directed at a public reaction and attracting the attention of the government authorities of the Sakhalin Province.”

As evidence the report cites:

• a link to a WWF Russia statement on the need to protect the Arctic posted to SEW’s unofficial account on Russian social media website Vkontakte;
• a signature of SEW’s director on a letter of support from Russian environmentalists to their Ukrainian peers sent during the Euromaidan protests;
• and a May 2015 article by the organisation’s director on the need for parks and for stopping the construction of new buildings at the expense of greenery in the crowded city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

These findings, the inspectors opined, indicate SEW’s engagement in ‘political activity’, and since the organisation is partially funded by international charities, it should have applied to register itself in the “registry of noncommercial organisations performing the functions of a foreign agent”.

However Lisitsyn, who is also a 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize laureate, denies that campaigning for environmental protection is any true sense political:

“We have never engaged in politics. We do not support any political party and do not participate in the elections ourselves, nor do we engage in any political struggle. Appeals to the authorities and publications on environmental topics – this is our constitutional right and one method of protecting the environment.”

A 20 year history of eco-defence

The group’s most prominent activity has been its opposition to oil and gas projects on Sakhalin Island and in its coastal water, such as the $12 billion Sakhlalin 1 project which aimed to produce 2.3 billion barrels of oil and 17.1 trillion cubic feet of gas.

They also brought a successful legal challenge against the Sakhalin II project, led by Shell, in 2004, persuading a Russian court that the project’s environmental assessment was unlawful and severely understated the impacts of the development.

In both cases the group has forced much higher standards on the oil and gas extraction, saving critical habitat for marine wildlife, and forcing Shell to abandon plans to build pipelines across Gray whale migration routes.

Since then the group has maintained a lower profile, says Lisitsyn: “Since 2009 we have concentrated on the local issues that don’t attract international interest, primarily on the protection of local populations of wild salmon. It doesn’t get international media coverage, but we have lots of successes in this area.

“We have been protecting the environment of Sakhalin and its citizens’ environmental rights for 20 years. We have much to be proud of.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Principal source: Bankwatch.

President Obama’s summer of climate change is a perfect microcosm of just how absurd and fantastical reality in the 21st century has become.

In a stunning display of political dexterity, the President managed to drive the probable stake through the heart of hopes for meaningful climate change mitigation, while simultaneously presenting himself as a dedicated, wilderness loving crusader aiming to save the planet.

“Later this month, I’m going to Alaska. And I’m going because Alaskans are on the frontlines of one of the greatest challenges we face this century: climate change”, the President announced in an explanatory video earlier this summer, backed up by a dramatic piano solo with images of melting ice.

Emphasizing the almost inherent intractability of climate change, Obama then stressed that “I’ll talk with other nations about how we can tackle this challenge together.”

Climate change, though, is not merely a “challenge”. It is an existential threat to complex human society, whose causes require serious diagnosis and treatment. By framing climate change as a vague and insolvable challenge, as if it is some far away mystery, the Obama administration manages to avoid any substantive conversation on how to mitigate the crisis.

Obama’s Arctic doublethink

The Obama Administration’s decision to approve the creation of more Arctic ice breakers serves as a perfect – albeit disturbing – example of Obama’s deliberately empty rhetoric on climate change and its devastating consequences. I include one notable excerpt from The White House’s ‘Fact Sheet’ on the decision below:

“Climate change is reshaping the Arctic in profound ways … Among the most noticeable changes is the retreat of Arctic sea ice, which has experienced significant, sustained declines in both extent and thickness in recent decades. As sea-ice cover diminishes because of climate change, marine traffic is expected to increase in the Arctic, including traffic from fishing and mineral exploration to cargo shipping and tourism.”

In short, the Obama administration recognizes, if not embraces, the impact of climate change in the Arctic, and intends to exploit it as an opportunity for growth.

And, no, the Obama Administration is not merely interested in expanding its collection of prized gems. “Mineral exploration”, is of course coded language for the exploitation of petroleum resources, which will only add momentum to the global death spiral.

Like a puppet attached to strings, reputable, mainstream media uncritically choruses this Thanatos drive. Below, see how the New York Times explained (i.e., reiterated without critique) Obama’s call for more of these ice breakers:

“The retreat of Arctic sea ice has created opportunities for shipping, tourism, mineral exploration and fishing, but the rush of marine traffic that has followed is bringing new difficulties.”

Only according to the logic of capital does the wanton destruction of a hospitable climate – the only one that exists in the known universe – appear as an opportunity for the expansion of the status quo. This logic is made even more offensive when coupled with the apparent consternation of the President towards climate change.

Actually, it’s all quite simple …

No, Mr. President. This is not a head scratcher. This is not complicated. You do not need to go on a wilderness tour with survival expert Bear Grylls to comprehend it. Your actions, your decisions are not only amplifying the crisis, they are exploiting it for further profit.

Moreover, the “increased marine traffic” does not exist in a vacuum, nor does it refer to relatively benign (though certainly not irrelevant) movement of cruise ships. Rather, one can assume it refers to Arctic drilling permits, which the Obama Administration recently granted to Shell.

Indeed, for the first time in three years, Shell – with the necessary approval from the President – will continue drilling for oil and natural gas in the Arctic. Not only will this intensify global climate change, but it poses a grotesque amount of risk. A busted well or pipeline, which seems inevitable given basic reasoning, is virtually unmanageable in Arctic conditions.

Obama, in terms of the decisions he makes, is thus in perfect agreeance with corporate sociopaths like Shell’s Peter Slaiby (VP, Shell Alaska) who stated, “I will be one of those persons most cheering for an endless summer in Alaska”, due to increased opportunities for profit from Arctic drilling.

While depressing, none of this is shocking from an Administration adept at faking left and going right. In the Administration’s description of their ‘All of the Above’ energy plan, you will find one of the most head-scratchingly incoherent pieces of policy sorcery ever concocted.

The first, summary sentence reads: “The United States is producing more oil and natural gas; generating more electricity from renewables such as wind and solar; and consuming less petroleum while holding electricity consumption constant.”

This is nothing more than political doublespeak. In terms of climate change, consumption rates are basically meaningless when contrasted against the ever increasing production of oil and natural gas.

And while expanded production of renewables is certainly worth investment, it cannot negate the increase in development of fossil fuels. Simply put, the global production of fossil fuels must be drastically reduced in order to seriously address climate change.

What we want is more of everything – and fossil fuels in particular

The brief policy description page uses the words ‘growth’, ‘economy’, and ‘development’ in some form or combination 29 times.

The page also boasts of the tremendous growth of the energy sector at large during the Obama Administration. They are particularly proud of the exponential growth of natural gas drilling, which leaks methane – a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide – and threatens groundwater quality.

In short, the energy plan is in complete accord with the Administration’s egregious support for the expansion of petroleum exploitation in arguably the world’s most vulnerable ecosystem, at a time where human society stands on the precipice of potentially irreversible global catastrophe.

And here lies the truth the of the matter: the Obama Administration is both powerless and unwilling to deny the growth of the fossil fuel industry.

Obama can rename all the mountains, go to all the conferences, and take all the rural hikes he wants to. But, despite what many of his supporters in politics and the media will argue, it is all meaningless without a serious critique of the current mode of production, along with forceful actions aimed to slow the growth of needlessly dangerous production and accumulation.

This socioeconomic understanding of the ecological crisis is a prerequisite for its adequate addressment.

From a political perspective, the tour of Alaska obfuscates Obama’s own role in the proliferation of climate change. It shields him from justified scrutiny. Moreover, it furthers the narrative that climate change is a puzzle to be solved, requiring some grand, camera filled wilderness adventure to even begin to understand.

Simply put, climate change is not that complicated in its origins. In like manner, the steps to mitigate it are not that difficult to comprehend. And yet, here we are.

So much understanding, so little action

We live in a period of unprecedented scientific understanding of the natural world. However, as this understanding increases, and as the warnings become more severe, climate change seems to only become a grander mystery in the political world.

It is amalgamated by the politics of spectacle. The same politics of spectacle that obfuscates the similar origins of poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. The same politics that invents a grand publicity tour to distract from policy decisions that directly increase the chances of the same global ecological crisis that said tour purports to address.

I do not wholly agree with Dave Lindorff’s main point in his article, published last week in Counterpunch, that Obama may go down as the worst president ever. This would imply that others who came before him (as well as after) were all that much better. Instead, Obama is an actor functioning exactly how he is supposed to in a system whose script is already written for him.

In regards to climate change, this script is now entering its grim dénouement. As has been iterated time and time again, we are running out of time. Left wing movements must organize and coalesce around common ground issues, like climate change, that disproportionately affect the vulnerable and oppressed.

Alternative ways of consuming, producing, and governing must be demonstrated and advocated for by social movements and community groups. Finally, growth paradigm actors – particularly the state and labor unions – must be pressured to enact substantive changes in rhetoric and policy.

A carbon tax, with revenue used to boost welfare and green jobs programs, along with a moratorium on fossil fuel development would be reasonable starting points for negotiations.

Climate change, as President Obama himself once quipped, is not a hoax or a joke. Neither, though, are its solutions.

They do not exist hidden in the most remote part of Alaska. They are right in front of our eyes. We simply must wipe the fog of the growth paradigm off our glasses in order to realize them.

Timothy Clark is a teacher, writer, researcher, and student, working towards a PhD in Sociology at North Carolina State University.

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

I have met the new shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer twice. Both times we were both speakers at Occupy Democracy events. And both times I found him to be a courteous, kind and unpretentious man.

The first time was on the Queen’s Jubilee, when we spoke at a small republican rally held on the steps of St Pauls, whilst the bizarre boring water pageant was being held on the Thames.

I was then in the middle of writing The Prostitute State and outlined my thesis of its four pillars supporting the hijacking of our democracy by the corporate 1% and how it had corrupted all of our political parties, including Labour.

I referred to how many former senior Labour ministers now work exclusively as highly paid corporate lobbyists, including for the arms, fossil fuel, nuclear, banking and private health corporations. I argued that unless this corruption was tackled we faced terrible social and ecological crises.

McDonnell kindly congratulated me afterwards on my speech and agreed with its critique of the Labour Party, as well as the other parties.

The second time we met, was at the opening rally of Occupy Democracy last October in Parliament Square. The Prostitute State had been published the previous week and so I had been asked to speak about how our democracy had been bought.

McDonnell again kindly congratulated me on my speech and asked to buy a copy of the book and insisted on paying for it, when I was more than happy to give him a copy.

Too much understanding is a very dangerous thing …

I see all the papers are already trotting out the same small number of intemperate comments, he made over the last 30 years and the Blairites desperately and anonymously briefing against their own shadow Chancellor.

Whatever the pros and cons of those, I know that this is a man who truly understands how much Britain’s democracy has been captured by the political corporate lobbying classes.

He understands how that has perverted the decision making in our democracy and which has led to a flooding of wealth from the poor and the middle classes to the tax-haven based, tax-dodging 1%.

He understands the £93 billion going on corporate welfare is what should be targeted first for helping to balance the budget, not the welfare budget.

He favours a fairly modest 60p tax, on earnings over £100,000 (despite this being used to label him a mad left-winger). This, remember, is the level that Thatcher set in her first government.

He understood the seriousness of the climate crisis long before others in the Labour Party understood it – and many still do not! He also opposes any new runway at Heathrow airport – which is located within his Hayes and Harlington constituency (see photo) – leading the famous 2009 ‘mace incident’ in the House of Commons, a protest against the lack of any Commons vote on the issue.

He is opposed to the massive inflation in executive pay (where under Blair, CEO pay went from 40 times average earnings to 120 times average employee earnings.

He understands that a society where 0.4% of the population owns nearly 70% of the land is not a sustainable way to manage our precious land resource.

He understands that a world where 85 billionaires own more wealth than half the planet’s entire population, is not socially or environmentally sustainable.

Taking on the banks – now this is getting serious!

As McDonnell recently wrote on his blog, he supports far reaching reforms of the banks and finance sector with effective regulation and a financial transactions tax, and wider economic reforms that would “replace short-term shareholder value with long-term sustainable economic and social responsibilities as the prime objective of companies”.