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I was in Kenya earlier this month when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued their damning report. They highlighted the failure of the international community to take meaningful action to stop the planet heating by a maximum of 1.5°C.

According to the IPCC we only have 12 years to ensure global warming is kept to this maximum 1.5°C rise. Otherwise the risks of water shortages, drought and more extreme weather events will be a lot higher for hundreds of millions of people across the world.

I was thinking about the report and the consequences of inaction on its findings as I sat with groups of farmers in Ishiara in central Kenya. We were discussing the everyday challenges they face just to grow enough food for their families to survive, and it was clear how climate change is a daily reality for them now.

How much worse will it become for them and hundreds of millions of other small, poor farmers across the world if something drastic does not happen very soon?

Extreme weather is the new norm

Over the past two years many parts of Kenya have been affected by drought only to be followed by devastating floods. In 2017 failed rains led to a drought resulting in 3.4 million Kenyans needing emergency aid and over 500,000 children suffered from acute malnutrition.

When the rains did finally arrive in early 2018, after two years of waiting, the rains were so heavy in certain areas that over 300,000 people were displaced from their homes. 186 people were killed and 600,000 needed emergency support. Unfortunately these extreme weather events are becoming the norm in countries such as Kenya.

Lucy's story

Speaking to Lucy Wanjeru Njue, a farmer in Ishiara, I was struck by how much the climate dictates her life. She spoke to me of frequent crop failures and her family's utter reliance on rainfall for her crops to grow so that she can feed her family.

Given Lucy's vulnerability to climate change Trócaire, through our DfID UKAid Match funded project, is supporting her and hundreds of other female and male farmers in Ishiara, to reduce their vulnerably to climate change.

The community has been provided with an irrigation system so that they now have access to water from a nearby river.

She has received training on how to get the best out of her land by using natural pesticides and fertilisers.

She has been supported to develop a kitchen garden and has learnt simple techniques on how to ensure the soil maximises the little rainfall that it gets. This involves using raised vegetable beds, mixed cropping and growing fruit trees to provide shelter to the soil from the sun.

Lucy told me that she, her husband and young child now have a more diversified and balanced diet due to the range of crops they grow. Their yields are better and she can sell some of the excess crops to earn a little money for the family.

The world has to act

While Lucy is now better placed to cope with the changing climate, countless millions of people across the world remain extremely vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

As the seas rise due to melting icecaps, as storms become more frequent, violent and unpredictable, as droughts last longer, more and more people become exposed to the real threats that climate change poses to us.

The world has to act now if people like Lucy and her family, who have done so little to contribute to climate change yet face the brunt of its impact, are to survive.
Eoin Wrenn is Head of Region for Horn and East Africa with Trócaire.

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I saw the impact of a changing climate in Kenya

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I was in Kenya earlier this month when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued their damning report. They highlighted the failure of the international community to take meaningful action to stop the planet heating by a maximum of 1.5°C.

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Climate Change - Met Éireann - The Irish Meteorological Service

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Met Éireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service, is the leading provider of weather information and related services for Ireland.

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Students stage school strikes over climate change

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Thousands of students have taken part in school strikes and demonstrations around the country today in protest at what they say is Government inaction on climate change.

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Trump says climate change isn’t man made

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Scientific evidence of climate change

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AMERICAN PUBLIC opinion has been catching up to the scientific consensus on climate change, but still has a long way to go. In a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre in 2016, just 48% of respondents said they believed that the Earth was warming because of human activity. One likely reason for such widespread ignorance is that most people do not incur any penalty for being wrong. In contrast, the group most likely to learn the facts are traders in financial markets based on climate data, who stand to profit if they understand the issue and lose money if they don't. The consensus view of such experts-as measured by the prices at which they buy or sell futures contracts-lines up almost perfectly with leading academic research.

A new paper by Wolfram Schlenker and Charles Taylor of Columbia University studied the relationship between mathematical climate models and prices for contracts at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which have allowed traders to place bets on the monthly total of days that are hotter or colder than average since 2001. The authors assessed the match between the two sources' predictions. The yardstick they used was "heating and cooling degree-days" per season. A heating degree-day is a measure of the amount of heating people are likely to want to compensate for cold weather. It is calculated by taking a nice comfortable temperature, 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius), and subtracting the day's actual temperature. Similarly, a "cooling degree-day" is a measure of how much cooling would be needed to make a hot day bearable: if it is 80 degrees outside, that counts as 15 cooling degree-days.
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The researchers summed up each method's yearly prediction for cooling degree-days between July and September, and for heating degree-days between November and March. They found that the market's predictions were remarkably well-synchronised with the forecasts made by NASA's climate scientists. The mathematical models explained fully 94% of the variance in aggregate market prices. In many years, bettors barely deviated at all from the scientific predictions. For example, in 2010, they expected 8.0 more cooling-degree days than the annual average from 2002-18, almost the exact same figure as the 8.2 calculated by NASA. The relationship was weaker during winters than summers, but still robust.

It is hardly surprising that traders make use of scientific models when making investment decisions. Real money is at stake. What is noteworthy, however, is that the correlation between the two sets of forecasts is so close that it suggests that they base their choices almost exclusively on these models. That does not mean that statisticians have perfected climate forecasting: in fact, the errors their models produce are still large. But it does mean that they appear to have incorporated into their predictions all the information that investors use to bet on the climate.

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AMERICAN PUBLIC opinion has been catching up to the scientific consensus on climate change, but still has a long way to go. In a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre in 2016, just 48% of respondents said they believed that the Earth was warming because of human activity.

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Taoiseach agreeing that something needs to be

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Taoiseach says climate change protests are 'welcome' and 'inspiring'

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Earlier this month, the Taoiseach said he supported school students going on strike.