Filed under: Climate Change | Tags: Climate Change, Dominican Republic, Global Warming, Haiti, Hurricanes, Poverty
Humans have been settling land based on prevailing weather patterns and possibilities for agricultural production for thousands of years. In today’s rich countries, such a settling-criteria would be considered largely anachronistic. Nevertheless, in developing countries large swaths of the population still rely on subsistence farming, and so weather patterns continue to mean the difference between reaping a harvest and reaping hunger.
One of the most devastating consequences of global climate change has been the bizarre alteration of these once relatively stable weather patterns – and with acutely painful consequences for the world’s poorest, most vulnerable families.
For example, in just the past two hurricane seasons on the island of Hispaniola (first in the Dominican Republic and then in Haiti), I have seen literal lakes appear overnight, the result of hurricanes bolstered in intensity and frequency by global warming. In both instances, it was peasant farmers – subsistence farmers – with small plots of land who suffered the brunt as their land was submerged below the new geographic reality.
In much of the world, the full consequences of climate change have yet to show themselves and it can be difficult to feel a true sense of urgency based solely off the statistics and temperature-projections of climatologists. But here in the Caribbean, seeing a three mile wide lake appear where before it was dry, arid even, is enough to put the challenge in perspective. And let me take this opportunity to point out that it’s quite disorienting to see fields of crops replaced by a lake.
