Cape Town to set up disaster operations HQ as the city faces Day Zero

South Africa's police and military will help secure water collection sites in drought-stricken Cape Town if authorities must turn off most taps on Day Zero, a date projected to fall in the first half of April, according to the city.

Some residents are supplementing water supply
by collecting from natural springs in the city.

Hospitals, key economic and industrial areas and densely populated areas with a higher risk of disease would be exempt from a water cut-off, municipal authorities said.

The authorities plan to open a disaster operations centre on Monday to prepare for a possible closure of taps in a city known internationally for its natural beauty and tourist attractions.

South Africa's second-biggest city ramped up contingency plans as the water crisis hurt tourism.

Politicians bickered over alleged failures to offset a looming disaster blamed on explosive population growth over the past two decades and several years of drought that scientists say was possibly exacerbated by man-made global warming.

Read the ABC News story - “Cape Town to set up disaster operations HQ as the city faces Day Zero.”

Australia faces potentially disastrous consequences of climate change, inquiry told

Military and climate experts, including a former chief of the defence force, have warned that Australia faces potential “disastrous consequences” from climate change, including “revolving” natural disasters and the forced migration of tens of millions of people across the region, overwhelming security forces and government.

Climate scientists warn security threats posed by
 climate change have been underestimated and
Australia has been ‘walking away’ from research
 that would help the country prepare. 

Former defence force chief Adm Chris Barrie, now adjunct professor at the strategic and defence studies centre at the Australian National University, said in a submission to a Senate inquiry that Australia’s ability to mitigate and respond to the impacts of climate change had been corrupted by political timidity: “Australia’s climate change credentials have suffered from a serious lack of political leadership”.

The inquiry into the security ramifications of climate change also heard from some of the country’s leading climate scientists, who warned the security threats posed by climate change had been underestimated, and complained Australia had been “walking away” from exactly the type of research that would help the country prepare.

Read the story by Ben Doherty and Michael Slezak on The Guardian - “Australia faces potentially disastrous consequences of climate change, inquiry told.”

Meet Sherri Goodman, who in two words made the military care about climate change

The Buzzfeed story lead says it all: “Meet the woman whose two-word catchphrase made the military care about climate”. 

That woman is Sherri Goodman, and she will be in Australia in early April. And the film about climate change and the military will be on ABC TV's 4 Corners next Monday night. 

The national security dimension of climate change receives little attention in Australia, but is the subject of intense focus overseas, particularly in the United States. Climate change interacts with other pre-existing problems to become an accelerant to instability in unexpected ways. Scarce resources, growing water scarcity, declining crop yields, rising food prices, extreme weather events and health impacts become catalysts for instability and conflict, especially in Asia. This has profound implications for Australia, economically and socially, quite apart from the climate change impact on Australia itself.

Read the Climate Code Red story - “Meet Sherri Goodman, who in two words made the military care about climate change.”

Climate change forcing change to emergency response processes

 Deputy administrator
 of the Federal Emergency
 Management Agency,
Joseph Nimmich.

Climate change—and the extreme weather associated with it—is changing the way U.S. emergency response organizations operate, from how they spend their money to where they pre-position resources, a panel of military, emergency and climate science experts said Monday.

"We pay a lot of money to have our military prepared to do something we really don't want them to have to do: go to war," said Joseph Nimmich, deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Well, we also need a FEMA and national infrastructure to deal with those catastrophic events we hope never happen… but are inevitable."

By using climate forecasts created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), FEMA has begun pre-positioning resources before a disaster strikes. FEMA is also now requiring state governments to incorporate climate change into their disaster mitigation strategies or risk losing out on billions of dollars of federal funds.

Read Katherine Bagley’s Inside Climate News story - “Climate Data Now Key to Disaster Preparedness, First Responders Say.”