How Camel Adapt To Its Environment

"Last Straw" Pushes Millions from Their Homes

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11, 2011 (IPS) - With political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions failing to materialise, a multi-pronged approach is needed to protect the millions of people who are being displaced as a result of environmental factors driven largely by climate change, experts say.

"Climate change is looming as a potentially very serious and underappreciated complicating factor when it comes to international displacement," said Erika Feller, the assistant high commissioner for protection in the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees .

More is needed from the international community to address this challenge "in a coordinated and pragmatic manner", she told IPS.

Of paramount importance is that national authorities play a central role in developing appropriate responses to both the internal and external dimensions of climate-related displacement, while affected persons and communities must be made fully aware of their rights and given opportunities to participate in decision-making, Feller said.

"Decisions about where, when and how to relocate communities, for example, must be made in consultation with the affected populations and be sensitive to cultural and ethnic identities and boundaries to avoid possible tensions and conflicts," she added.

That the poor are always hardest-hit by natural disasters is a fact recently underlined by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Report 2010, which says that these nations "will be disproportionally affected by changing climatic conditions".

This despite the fact that LDCs account for less than one percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for heating up the atmosphere and altering rainfall and weather patterns.

The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in these regions are five times higher now (519 events in 2000-2010) than during the 1970s (116). In the last decade, about 40 percent of all casualties related to natural disasters were found in the poorest countries of the world, the report says.

Climate change affects LDCs in different ways. While Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are facing droughts and floods, some Asian LDCs, together with Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific, are at risk particularly from rising sea levels and storms.

Milkshakes and camel spotting – it's an arid world « bryonyjones

In a continuation from the last post I thought that I would share a figure that I recently compiled by overlaying a climate map (from the UN website) with a map published by Roger Blench that shows the distribution of pastoralist groups in Africa. What is clear from this figure is the correlation of pastoralism with aridity which makes sense when you think about it – it’s the best way to survive in an arid environment. You can’t grow plants particularly well in an arid environment and consequently you can’t survive from agricultural strategies. Animals however, can eat the scrub plants that we as humans can’t digest, and in turn they provide humans with meat, milk (which crucially is a source of clean bacteria-free water – think alcohol and beer in Europe and boiled water/tea in China) and sometimes blood. Camels for example, can go for up to two weeks without water(!) which is particularly useful in the hyper arid desert regions although they are a pretty late addition to the domesticates – first appearing about 1500 years ago. Note also that no pastoralist groups are seen on the African continent in the humid regions – most likely due to a bad relationship with the tsetse fly.

Essentially this demonstrates the point that for populations to survive in their respective environments, they need to adapt (not only genetically but also) culturally. Jared Diamond makes a good reference to this in his book Collapse, when he refers to the Vikings in Greenland. Although the Eskimos managed to survive in Greenland quite successfully by fishing, because of their taboo on eating fish (I’ve also noticed a general correlation between pastoralist groups and a taboo on eating fish – I don’t have any explanation for that so far…), the Viking population was unable to thrive and eventually abandoned the place (I probably would have too to be honest – I don’t like being cold).

A good example of this cultural adaptation of agricultural/pastoral subsistence strategies involves the Oromo from Ethiopia. After they took up pastoralism 1-2000 years ago, the Oromo population expanded and migrated across Ethiopia. Some Oromo migrated west to the Ethiopian plateau where they reverted to a settled agricultural way of life – the environment there is more suited to agriculture, whereas the Oromo that remained in the arid regions continue to this day with pastoralism as their main strategy for subsistence.   Interestingly genetically, my lactase data shows a significant difference in the frequencies of the lactase persistence variants for the two sub-groups, which is most likely explained by there being a far lower selective pressure on the ability to drink and digest milk when living an agricultural vs pastoral way of life.

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