Newsletter: All Hands on Deck!

The Global Impacts of Droughts and Extreme Heat

From the Desk of Emilie

Better data. More efficient technology. New sources of financing. The recipe to address global impacts of climate change — such as drought, the focus of this month’s newsletter — is very much the same as in the U.S. But the needs are more pressing, and the ingredients even harder to find.

As I write from the ProAdapt conference in Cartagena, Colombia, I can’t help but notice how the discourse on the private sector has changed in the past years. Many government agencies, donors, and NGOs now beat the drums of private sector resilience – for its own sake, and also as a critical provider of products and services to support community adaptation efforts.

Such products and services are still nascent, but I’m confident this clear signal will help grow the market and spur innovation and investments. Fellow entrepreneurs and business folks: our ingenuity and resources are needed to build climate resilience. All hands on deck!

Emilie Mazzacurati, Founder and CEO

ProAdapt: The Challenge and Opportunity of Private Sector Climate Resilience

Emilie is at the Proadapt conference on The Challenge and Opportunity of Private Sector Climate Resilience in Cartagena de Indias, Columbia from May 25-27th. Emilie will join a panel discussion on A Strategic View of Private Climate Resilience. The panel will discuss evolving private awareness of climate risks and resilience in their sectors, changing business strategies and continuing barriers to private action on climate resilience. Emilie will highlight opportunities for the private sector to offer products and services that help bridge the adaptation gap and make the business case for responsible corporate adaptation.

Insights in Resilience: International Adaptation

“In the international arena, we’re currently seeing a shift from a focus on immediate adaptation needs to a more strategic, longer-term approach to adaptation planning.” Read our interview of Yoon Kim, Director of Advisory Services at Four Twenty Seven, about her work on international adaptation and for insights from her recent trip to the 2016 Adaptation Futures Conference in Rotterdam Netherlands.

Learn more about her work, and stay up to date with the latest in international adaptation.

Back from the (Adaptation) Futures

Yoon attended Adaptation Futures in Rotterdam from May 10th-13th. On May 10th, she spoke about Four Twenty Seven’s Resilient Hospitals tool on a panel about financing solutions to address the health risks of climate change organized by the World Bank. Yoon also co-presented a poster on the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) approach to climate-resilient development and National Adaptation Plans. She and her co-authors provided an overview of how USAID’s approach has been applied through stakeholder workshops to catalyze National Adaptation Plan processes in Jamaica, Tanzania, and 11 coastal West African countries and summarized lessons learned to inform development and implementation of National Adaptation Plan processes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

What We’re Reading: Lancet Study connects Climate Change and Disruption of Global Food Systems

Climate change is having a direct impact on the productivity of the world’s crops, and a new Oxford study warns that 500,000 lives are at risk by 2050 due to disruption of global food systems caused by the impacts climate change.

The report in The Lancet indicates that droughts, floods, and other climate-related impacts “will lead to per-person reductions of 2-3% in global food availability, 0-4% in fruit and vegetable consumption, and 0-7% in red meat consumption. These changes will be associated with 529,000 climate-related deaths worldwide, representing a 28% reduction in the number of deaths that would be avoided because of changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors between 2010 and 2050.”

Read the Report or Washington Post Article

Better Data for a Better World: Forecasting Drought

We are always on the lookout for climate data that represent advancements in observational data sets that can improve projections of the impacts of climate change, and we found one.

“The data set, called CHIRPS (short for “Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation With Station data”) blends data from weather stations and weather satellites with extraordinary accuracy, providing a detailed record of global rainfall stretching back more than 30 years.” The data is being used to project the impacts of extreme drought and improve resilience for those vulnerable to extreme heat caused by climate change.

More about CHIRPS from journalist Eric Holthaus

India’s drought migrants head to cities in desperate search for water

The links between extreme heat and climate change are becoming clear in India where drought is driving rural populations to cities in search of water.

In cities like Mumbai, which are already struggling to provide essential services to their already large populations influxes of climate migrants places additional stress on resources that are becoming more scarce due to climate change.

“The drought has affected 330 million people in India this year, according to government figures. About 15% of India’s gross domestic product comes from agriculture and 68% of the 1.3 billion population are farmers. With no water for irrigation, the drought has been devastating for farmers.”

Learn more about the impacts of drought in India.

Meet the Team: Claire Quiner, MPH

We are excited to announce the latest addition to our team: Claire Quiner. Claire joins as a senior analyst to support Four Twenty Seven’s growing climate health practice.

With a dual background in Public Health and Environmental Planning, Claire specializes in infectious diseases and brings six years of experience working in molecular virology. Her previous work investigated how viruses interact with their hosts (e.g. mosquitoes) and vectors to evolve. Through her research, she also collaborated with the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention on emerging infectious diseases, whose rise is related to global trends including climate change and urbanization. Her current point of interest is the interface of climate change and public health and what municipalities can do to prevent infectious diseases epidemics and other climate health emergencies.

Claire earned Masters degrees in Public Health-Epidemiology/Biostatistics as well as City and Regional Planning from the University of California-Berkeley in 2016 and Bachelor of Science in Biology from Alverno College, Milwaukee, WI in 2007.

Clevland Clinic and Four Twenty Seven win Verdantix Information Management Award

We are excited to announce that Cleveland Clinic and Four Twenty Seven were awarded one of the inaugural EH&S Information Management Awards at the Vendantix Summit 2016. Cleveland Clinic is one of nine health care networks across the US currently putting our Resilient Hospital Dashboard to use to inform their climate focused outreach and communications and to guide their resilience planning efforts.

See the Resilient Hospital Dashboard