'It's not if, but when': B.C. fires expose Canada's lack of emergency preparedness, experts say – CBC
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/lytton-fire-climate-emergency-preparedness-1.6096370
Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Monday, July 12, 2021
Request for Proposals (RfPs) for various projects/studies to be conducted in CDRI member countries. July 2021
Coalition for Disaster Resilient
Infrastructure (CDRI).
We are pleased
to inform you that we have issued multiple Request
for Proposals (RfPs) for various projects/studies to be conducted
in CDRI member countries, on our website. Please
find below the list of RfPs, their details and the last date of application.
Interested and eligible agencies are encouraged to apply.
|
S.
No. |
Projects/Studies |
Request
for Proposal Link |
Last
date of Application (Time: IST) |
|
1. |
Urban Disaster Resilience Study for Cuttack, Odisha |
30-07-2021/ 17:00:00 |
|
|
2. |
Global Urban
Infrastructure Resilience Study |
30-07-2021/ 17:00:00 |
|
|
3. |
Risk and Resilience
Assessment & Roadmap for Telecom Sector-India |
02-08-2021/ 23:59:59 |
|
|
4. |
Global Case Study of Field
Hospitals for COVID-19 |
03-08-2021/ 23:59:59 |
|
|
5. |
Global Study on Disaster
Resilience of Airports – Phase 2 |
30-07-2021/ 23:59:59 |
|
|
6. |
Design, Development, and
Operations of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (DRI) Knowledge Portal |
02-08-2021/ 23:59:59 |
|
|
7. |
State-Level Assessment of Fiscal Risks due
to Disasters in Critical Infrastructure Sectors |
29-07-2021/ 18:00:00 |
|
|
8. |
National-Level Assessment of Fiscal Risks due
to Disaster in Critical Infrastructure Sectors |
29-07-2021/ 18:00:00 |
|
|
9. |
Selection of Services for CDRI
Resilient Infrastructure Marketplace – Design, Development, Marketing
& Launch, Operations & Maintenance |
CDRI
RfP Marketplace Design, Development, Marketing, Launch, Operations &
Maintenance |
23-07-2021/ 17:00:00 |
For more information and to apply, please refer to: Tenders | CDRI
Africa's Business Economy & the AfCFTA - The Key Role of SMEs. 9am-11am (EDT), July 15, 2021
We Look Forward to Seeing!
If you
have not registered yet, please do!
CLICK RIGHT HERE TO REGISTER for the FEEEDS-Gallup 8th Annual Africa Forum "Africa's Business
Economy & the AfCFTA - The Key Role of SMEs," with partners ACBC, UPAC &
US-Africa Trade Council.
Honored Featured Guest Speakers are African
Export-Import Bank's Dr. Hippolyte Fofack & AfCFTA Senior Advisor Dr.
Francis Mangeni.
Press announcement:https://allafrica.com/stories/202107010916.html
|
Sunday, July 11, 2021
Science A Week After the Pacific Northwest Heat Wave, Study Shows it Was ‘Almost Impossible’ Without Global Warming July 2021
The extreme temperatures have shaken scientists’ fundamental understanding of heat waves and triggered concerns about a climate tipping point.
A couple and their dog lay in the shade during a heat wave in Portland, Oregon. on Monday, June 28, 2021. Credit: Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The high temperatures in late June that killed hundreds of people in Oregon, Washington and Canada were so unusual that they couldn’t have happened without a boost from human-caused global warming, researchers said Wednesday, when they released a rapid climate attribution study of the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.
The temperatures were so far off the charts that the scientists suggested that global warming may be triggering a “non-linear” climate response, possibly involving drought magnifying the warming, to brew up extreme heat storms that exceed climate projections.
Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the Pacific Northwest heat wave at least 150 times more likely, and increased its peak temperatures by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the study by World Weather Attribution concluded.
“I think it’s by far the largest jump in the record that I have ever seen,” said Fredi Otto, a University of Oxford climate researcher and co-author of the study. “We have seen temperature jumps in other heat waves, like in Europe, but never this big.”
The Pacific Northwest heat wave should be a big warning, said co-author Dim Coumou, with the Institute for Environmental Studies at VU Amsterdam and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. It shows that climate scientists don’t understand the mechanisms driving such exceptionally high temperatures, suggesting “we may have crossed a threshold in the climate system where a small amount of additional global warming causes a faster rise in extreme temperatures.”
In an unrelated study published July 6, European Union researchers studying climate tipping points found additional evidence that human-caused warming could be “abrupt and irreversible,” partly because the current warming is so fast that the climate system can’t adjust. Even the “safe operating space of 1.5 or 2.0 degrees above present generally assumed by the IPCC might not be all that safe,” said co-author Michael Ghil, with the University of Copenhagen.
About 800 people died across the Pacific Northwest during the heat wave, a number that will probably still go up as officials examine medical records and statistics in the coming weeks and months. The peak temperature was 121.3 degrees Fahrenheit on June 29 in Lytton, British Columbia. After setting heat records for Canada on three consecutive days, the town was mostly destroyed by a wildfire driven by hot winds in the dried out forests nearby. In addition to contributing to several major wildfires in the region that are still burning, the heat cooked growing fruit and scalded foliage on trees and other vegetation.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Wednesday that the average June temperature was the highest on record for North America and the fourth-highest on record globally. In early July, extreme heat boiled over in northern Scandinavia, with parts of Finland reporting record-breaking temperatures. Persistent heat across northeastern Russia is fueling fires there that are emitting record levels of carbon dioxide for this time of year. And in the West, yet another spasm of dangerous heat is building, potentially peaking this weekend in central and eastern California.
The Deadliest Climate Extreme
Release of the attribution study of the Pacific Northwest heat wave coincided with other new research with dire heat warnings.
A study led by Monash University scientists published Wednesday in The Lancet Planetary Health gives a comprehensive evaluation of heat deaths around the world from 2000 to 2019, a period when the global average temperature rose by nearly a full degree Fahrenheit. It attributes about 637,550 deaths during each of those years to high heat, including about 224,000 deaths per year in Asia, 78,000 in Europe and 19,000 in the United States.
The high death toll in the Pacific Northwest was “sadly, no longer a surprise but part of a very worrying global trend,” said Maarten van Aalst, with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and University of Twente, noting that heat waves were the world’s deadliest climate disasters in 2019 and 2020.
In the U.S., heat is the leading weather-related killer, said Kristie L. Ebi, of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington. But with good planning, nearly all those deaths are preventable, she said.
Communities need effective heat action plans that prepare for what are now completely unexpected heat extremes. Early warning and response systems, and community outreach programs, with neighbors checking on each other during heat emergencies, are among the best tools for saving lives, van Aalst said. There is also research showing that staff and scheduling changes at hospitals and ambulance services, based on extreme heat forecasts, can prevent deaths.
Loading the Dice for Weather Extremes
The new attribution study bolsters previous warnings about the need to prepare for more extreme heat waves in a rapidly warming climate, said Otto, one of scientists working on the attribution study. The findings should be considered in the context of what societies are resilient to, and what they can adapt to, she said.
“This is not something you would plan for, or expect to happen,” she said. “The models of today are not a good indicator of what to expect at 1.5 degrees (Celsius) of warming. Most societies are sensitive to small changes, and this is not a small change, it’s a big change. We should definitely not expect heat waves to behave in the same way they have in the past.”
Global warming has jacked up the odds for rare events, like 100-year floods, to happen every few years, said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner.
“We haven’t seen what a once in a 50 year event looks like now, in a climate altered by humans,” he said. “People are relating to those extreme events as really exceptional, and they are not. We are on the way to leaving the climate window of the Holocene, of the last 8,000 years where we’ve been enjoying a stable climate.”
Already, the world has warmed about 1.2 degrees from the pre-industrial average, he said, enough to fuel exceptional and dangerous heat extremes.
“It’s not really comprehended or understood what a climate change of 1.2 degrees is,” he said.
He warned that change is non-linear with global warming, meaning that a small rise of the average global temperature can spur a proportionately bigger increase in dangerous heat. Studies show that extremes like the 2003 European heat wave that killed about 70,000 people would have been nearly impossible without human caused warming and, with just another 1 degree Fahrenheit of warming, are likely to happen every other year by the 2040s.
“Our climate experience doesn’t prepare us to understand the scale of what’s going on,” he said. “People talk about loading the dice and throwing sixes. Global warming is loading the dice so we’re throwing sevens now, something impossible previously.”
Bob Berwyn
Freelancer
Bob Berwyn an Austrian-based freelance reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.
BEMA International. "An Impossible Mission"? No July 2021
BEMA International was conceived with a mission & vision that was considered impossible.
Is it? No
https://www.blackemergmanagersassociation.org/p/mission-vision.html
The importance of the diaspora with Migrant, and Immigrant communities members globally. From the 1800, 1900's, to the 2021.
The diaspora is not only a work attributed to a foreign nation nationals, but even within the U.S. ithin the U.S. to those that have migrated from small towns in rural communities, especially in the Southern States due to lack of job opportunities, voting restrictions, and racism that has been a part of their communities since Reconstruction and throughout the Jim Crow era's that are still present.
We (BEMA International) stress the importance of the diaspora in transferring knowledge, education & training to address disasters, emergency, and climate changes issues of diaspora members to their native born home communities.
BEMA International
The Power of the Diaspora. Sept 13, 2018.
The Power of the Diaspora
By Charles D. Sharp. September 13, 2018
Copyright
How much financially of donations, funding, and assistance reaches those communities in dire need following a disaster? Planning conducted with the inclusion of the diaspora, a powerful resource for assistance before and after a disaster strikes? On this Thursday, September 13, 2018. As the storms approach the East Coast of the U.S. and emergency plans, facilities, resources are activated, equipment repositioned. As these storms depart and the shift to response and recovery phases to save lives and reduce and suffering. How involved are diaspora organization of the community. Our attention will shift to focusing on the long-term recovery. Recovery to meet the needs of the community. The communities in need for shelter, water & food resources, and rebuilding for resiliency, adjusting plans that will change on demand. Thoughts are on the involvement of the ‘whole community’ involvement in the recovery. Thoughts on the importance of the diaspora not only during the recovery, but in the overall planning, preparedness, and sustainability to truly meet the needs of the community. The diaspora has a unique role of knowing individuals and groups in the community that are actively participating and have provided true services before, during, and after the disaster passes. These individuals and groups are the gauges for knowing the exact needs of the community. These are the individuals and groups that must receive the true funding and be involved in the rebuilding. Part of the diaspora involvement. The diaspora must also follow a planned and structured approach to ensure the communities needs are met. Financial Imperative Build a monetary value of your local and national diaspora group. Regrettably the financial imperative of an organization has a louder voice in local government, and internationally for changing the paradigm. Structure your organization with accountability, monitoring, quick decision-making, and ability to change to address issues within your diaspora. The diaspora can ensure that 90-100% of donations and funds reach the communities directly. Coming Together If multiple diaspora groups are within your community. Come together to address a common issue and goal. Climate change is real. If the number and types of disasters affecting your community are the common issue and goal. Let this be the rallying and changing point. Disasters strike every critical infrastructure sector of your community directly or indirectly. Disasters strike and affect the young, the wiser. The diaspora of the Flint, Michigan and Michigan communities to resolve and build resiliency for the water contamination issue that will never be resolved based on 20th Century solutions to a 21st Century problem. The diaspora of San Francisco to address the Bay View community environmental contamination. The diaspora of the L.A., Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and other communities to address issues of crime, homelessness, joblessness. The diaspora of Puerto Rica, and United States Virgin Island and other territories immediately intercede when the disaster strikes during the recovery phase, ensuring that jobs are created for those in the community for by-in and quick recovery. To ensure the distribution of financial assistance by private industry in the recovery are committed to the recovery of the community and not solely for the financial imperative. The diaspora of the communities in the Caribbean Island Nations that are taking an active role in preparing, planning, recovery, and resiliency building for not only natural disasters as they strike but extending into areas of man-made disasters, water & food security, energy, financial assistance for recovery, and more. By ensuring the communities that need the assistance, especially financially receive the assistance directly. The diaspora of France, Italy, China, and other nations with communities of African Descent. Address the pressing issues with your communities that are not being address by local or national government. You have a voice in diaspora. Your diaspora combined with global diaspora entities have an even greater voice. The diaspora of each nation on the continent of Africa. One nation diaspora at a time, coming together in spite of difference to address issues for their local communities but partnered with national government to bypass corruption, and address job development and creation and other issues that are constantly being used to justify outside intervention and influence in humanitarian aid, resilieny & capacity building. To steer away from ‘missions’ for health, water & waste management components to change the mindset to capacity building of sustainability systems. We can make the change. The diaspora, the community can make the paradigm shift. Sincerely, Charles D. Sharp |
Haiti. Situation Awareness. From 2019 Please READ IN ITS ENTIRETY. July 2021
https://www.blackemergmanagersassociation.org/2019/04/why-has-world-forgotten-haiti-april-2019.html
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