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By David Farren

(This blog is re-posted from The Charleston Post & Courier) 

Water floods the Low Battery during Tropical Storm Irma on September 11, 2017. File/Matthew Fortner/Staff

Are we ready for a really frank conversation about climate change impacts in the Lowcountry?

Many of us have seen those doom-and-gloom sea level rise projections, but the real-life scenarios are already the new normal here, in a region where many of us live less than 10 feet above sea level. It’s not just the “hundred year storms” that are now occurring every 16 years, or the extreme hurricane activity each of the past four years that tells us it’s real. It’s also the nuisance “sunny day” flooding, up to 50 days last year, that will be more than 100 days per year two decades from now.

In fact, Charleston ranks as one of the 20 most climate-vulnerable metro regions in the entire world — step aside Conde Nast!

With the Charleston region’s economy currently the 16th fastest growing in the country, our mobility, our property values, our commercial activity and, ultimately, our tax revenue are all at extreme risk if we don’t take action. It’s time to move beyond the studies, commissions and community forums and implement scientifically sound, nature-based solutions that will help protect our communities into the future.

Recently, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation sponsored a gathering of 100 regional conservation leaders to look at some real strategies that we can begin to incorporate before it’s too late. Policy experts and community leaders from up and down the Atlantic Seaboard discussed a range of approaches working with nature to protect our communities and economic future. We quickly learned that Miami and Norfolk are well ahead of us in taking action. With recent polling showing that far more of  South Carolina’s citizens are in the “concerned” or “alarmed” category than the climate change “deniers” camp (a vocal 10%), now is the time to demand that our local and state officials work with business and community leaders on solutions.

Here are three key, practical action steps we identified:

Safeguard our wetlands. We are still blessed in the Lowcountry with abundant saltwater marsh and freshwater wetlands connected to our rivers and streams, which serve as giant sponges to soak up floodwaters. We must protect this critical resource from indiscriminate development that “digs our hole deeper,” puts people in harm’s way and blocks wetland migration corridors as seas rise. While counterintuitive, armoring our shorelines is only going to make matters worse. Thousands more citizens could have been impacted on our northern coast in the wake of Hurricane Florence if not for the conserved wetlands along the Waccamaw and Pee Dee Rivers. Because our president is proposing to expand existing federal loopholes, local action is even more imperative.

Stop subsidizing development in vulnerable areas. It’s time to take a closer look at local plans for new roads and utility extensions, and give up on the “legacy projects” that encourage people to move in harm’s way, ultimately requiring expensive public bailouts. Instead, let’s encourage development on higher ground along existing transportation spines. Community leaders need to get real about improvements, including transit, along these corridors, which will encourage denser, mixed-use development, a hallmark of effective planning in livable urban areas. Political will to shift funding priorities will take both courage and foresight.

Solve affordable housing. While this may not seem like a climate strategy, too often the most vulnerable communities with the least resources pay the biggest price both environmentally and economically. In Miami, “climate gentrification” is already displacing low-income residents and communities of color on higher ground. We must solve our affordable housing crisis before things get even worse. For those in repetitive loss areas, buyouts before, rather than after, the next storm can be encouraged. The FEMA flood insurance program must be applied equitably to serve all segments of our community, not just those who can more readily absorb the loss. As with natural systems, healthy economies and vital communities require diversity to be sustainable.

The biggest takeaway is we can’t wait. The real threat is not the next hurricane but our collective inaction. Let’s learn from our coastal neighbors and begin to work with nature to make our communities more healthy, prosperous and equitable.

David Farren is executive director of the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, which for 65 years has supported land conservation, artistic vitality and museum and library collections in Chicago and the Lowcountry.

By Kim Moore Bailey

(This blog post is re-posted from Youth Outside) 

Last month, we celebrated Black History Month.

I believe that Black History Month happens every month for me as I think about the shoulders that I stand on to engage in the work at the intersection of racial equity, inclusion and the outdoors.

As the "official" month of Black History was underway, I found myself thinking about my grandmother who turned 102 on February 13th. She remembers what she wants to remember, walks with the aid of a walker and loves red roses. When I share my work with her, she is excited that it involves connecting Black people (& others) to the outdoors.

Whenever we talk about my work, she connects it with the passion my grandfather (Granddad) had for farming and fishing. Her husband for 70 years, and my father’s father, he looked at these activities not as sport or hobby, but part of life. Fresh vegetables for his family and community…sharing the bounty of a good day on the water…this made for stories and the chance to share with others, often in trade for something else. At no point did my grandfather call himself an environmentalist. However, he did know what “good” soil smelled like; that the weather in the spring would determine the harvest in the fall; and an early frost meant damage to the tomatoes, but perhaps the pumpkins and squash would be ok.

These memories celebrate my heroes. They offer me an opportunity to look back and allow me to look forward.

There is something powerful about storytelling and being able to hear about the wide range of relationships that my folks, Black folks, have had with the outdoors. From Granddad’s garden in Queens, New York to my great-grandfathers farm (on my mother’s side) in Jamaica, the relationship ranges from recreational to necessity.

My grandmother (Gran) on my mother’s side used to talk about walking to and from work and church while living in Alabama and supporting the bus boycott. She continued to walk, long after the boycott ended and she moved to NY. She would say, “When I walk, my senses are alive. You can see the crocus coming up, the dogwoods blooming, and the first signs of the leaves turning in the fall. You can smell the fresh soil in the gardens, the dew on the grass.” She also talked about the fear – her time in the country that echoed those contentious and often violent tales that are part of our history.

For my ancestors, the connection to the land, to nature was real. It was part of their lives and while there were fears, there were also joys and they wove these experiences together for me.

They would tell personal accounts of friends and family disappearing in the woods during the civil rights movement, but they could also encourage the curiosity of a six year old who wanted to take a walk amongst the trees and look for wild berries. Stares and unwelcoming behavior on walks, in playground areas and at the beach were common. What I learned from them was how to ignore that behavior, move with intention and know I had the right to be in these places. They believed that things would get better and I know their disappointment would be deep if they knew that racial discrimination in our public spaces still exists today.

I think it’s time to write a new chapter in the Black history book called “The Great Outdoors.” Let’s continue our work to make this part of the story a positive one full of healing and powerful new connections…a powerful narrative about how we were able to reclaim our relationships with nature and feel safe, supported and welcome in the outdoors.

by Jonathan Leaning, Grassroots International.

In the beautiful, verdant jungle of the Brazilian Amazon—the very lungs of the planet—a small handful of Indigenous Munduruku communities have lived in connection with their ecosystem for more than a thousand years. When news emerged about plans to construct a massive dam right on their lands, the core of the Munduruku’s age-old existence was shaken to the core. The proposed dam would level and flood huge swathes of land, destroy the integrity of one of the most important rivers in the Amazon (the Tapajos River), and threaten their culture in the process.

The dam developers anticipated little resistance from the Munduruku communities: they were isolated, barely a few thousand in number, and far from the centers of power and decision. The remote land seemed ripe for the taking, and when omitting the ecological and cultural damage from the equation, the profit would be enormous.

It didn’t quite turn out the way the financial backers had hoped. The communities got wind of the plan and began to organize. They linked up with a national Movement of People Affected by Dams (Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens - MAB) which brings communities together to resist dams and fight for energy sovereignty. MAB provides access to information, data, training and spaces to develop collective strategy. The Munduruku began to form alliances with supportive national and international human rights, environmental, Indigenous rights and other networks.

After more than three decades of struggle, that small group of Munduruku communities achieved the unthinkable. Their years of coordinated direct action, education, alliance-building, international advocacy, and legal tactics finally paid off. It all culminated with the announcement in August, 2016 by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) that they were cancelling the licensing of the São Luiz hydroelectric dam, citing an Environmental Impact Study. On the same day, Funai, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, finalized demarcation of their lands bringing them one step closer to having constitutionally protected territory.

It was a victory of tremendous importance. Throughout the world, large dams have forced 40-80 million people off their lands over the past six decades.

According to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), dams are the largest single human-made source of methane, responsible for approximately 23% of all anthropogenic methane emissions. Worth noting, methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide and, therefore, is a more potent greenhouse gas producer. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that methane has a warming impact 72 times higher than carbon dioxide if measured over 20 years.

Rather than offering a “solution” to climate change, big hydro-electric dams are false solutions that endanger the planet with the methane emitted and threaten to destroy local ecosystems and cultures, like the Munduruku. The world's large dams emit 104 million metric tons of methane annually from reservoir surfaces, turbines, spillways and rivers downstream. Dam methane emissions are responsible for at least 4% of the total warming impact of human activities. 

“It you want to take care of the forest you need to invest in us – Indigenous Peoples – because no one takes better care of the forest than we do,” says Antonio Dace Munduruku, a spokesperson for the Munduruku people.

That is one of the reasons much of the battle for the preservation of our environment, our planet, and climate is being fought successfully at the grassroots level, particularly among Indigenous and traditional peoples with deep roots to their lands and territories. This is why the CLIMA Fund is focusing on building support and funding for climate justice movements and groups.

A collaboration of four complementary funders (Global Greengrants Fund, Grassroots International, Thousand Currents, and Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Rights), the CLIMA Fund recognizes that the frontline communities most affected by climate change and environmental threats are best equipped to advance climate solutions and combat the impact of climate disruption. Reaching over 100 countries, the CLIMA Fund aims to raise and re-grant $10 million to Indigenous, women, and youth-led grassroots climate movement-building over the next four years.

Though the struggle against climate-warming megaprojects are difficult to win, the Munduruku success is not unique. Around the world, Indigenous Peoples and climate-impacted communities are advancing climate solutions that address the root causes of climate disruption, and are successfully challenging destructive projects.

Worth noting, the Munduruku and their territory face new threats from the recently inaugurated Bolsonaro administration that wants to abolish the environmental ministry and [further] open the Amazon to logging and mining. Indigenous Peoples, comprising less than 5 percent of the earth’s population protect 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity. That means supporting Indigenous Peoples and the management of their territories must be a central strategy to challenge climate change.

In Latin America, a network of anti-dam movements in 13 countries (the Movimiento de Afectados por Represasa - a Latin American Movement of People Affected by Dams) is gaining strength, sharing learnings, successes and campaigns strategy across the continent. This year, they will be expanding their network to include movements from other continents, making it much harder for dam-building corporations to hoodwink isolated communities for the sake of quick, big profits at the expense of the environment.

Often resistance to megaprojects like dams comes at great cost. For example, in 2016, Berta Cáceres was murdered for opposing the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. Throughout the world, environmental justice leaders face violence, threats and assassination as they stand up to protect ecosystems and Mother Earth. The Indigenous organization Berta founded – COPINH (the Civic Council of Popular Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) – continues to carry on the work of resisting dams, advancing the territory rights of Indigenous Peoples, and defending Mother Earth.
When climate action is grounded in the experience and leadership of frontline impacted communities and connected by movements that have a clear analysis of the root causes of climate disruption, the results are powerful.

Throughout the globe, communities are weaving extraordinary solutions and connections, and building webs of resistance. Often they are accomplishing this on beat-up computers and cell phones, unpaid staff, sporadic electric power and barebones resources. One can’t help but wonder: what greater things could they accomplish if they weren’t mobilizing under the stranglehold of a shoestring budget?