Irwin Loy

This is Jeffrey and Joyce Daniels’ patch of earth

in the middle of the South Pacific

in Vanuatu

on one of 83 remote islands

in a tiny village

on a spit of land

that’s slowly vanishing beneath rising seas.

When Jeffrey was a child, this land was twice as wide. 

Now his home and village are losing ground to the sea year by year.

The entire village must move – but few can afford it.

Some in Vanuatu are pushing back.

They want to sue countries for climate change loss and damage.

They plan to bring the battle from battered communities like Jeffrey’s village to the UN’s top court in The Hague.

Vanuatu is slated to receive $23 million in climate financing.

The damage from April’s Cyclone Harold: $440 million.

From 2015's Cyclone Pam: 2/3rds of GDP.

It’s simply not enough, says Ralph Regenvanu, who leads the push to sue for damages.

Vanuatu, he says, is “always building back after a cyclone or disaster.”

It's locked in costly recovery despite contributing little to climate change.

Climate loss and damage is deeper than violent cyclones or rising seas in Vanuatu and the Pacific.

Seasons are changing. Staple crops, once plentiful, are harder or impossible to grow.  

“It is dying,” Jeffrey says of his island’s agriculture.

Salome Kalo is trying to defend her community.

She helps her neighbours cope – diversified crops, new growing techniques, shared costs as incomes shrink.

But adapting to extreme weather has its limits. She fears her community is reaching theirs.

Will a climate lawsuit work?

There’s no blueprint. There are plenty of hurdles.

Never before has one country sued another for climate change damage.

Legal action will come too late for people like Jeffrey.

His village is already emptying.

The waters creep higher each year.

A graveyard, perched precariously on the tip of his island, will be the first to vanish beneath the waves.

Read the full story: Inside Vanuatu’s climate change fight

✍: Ann Esswein  

📷,🛰️: Felie Zernack

‘Excessive’ rains hit millions across Asia

Unusually heavy monsoon rainfall is driving severe flooding over large swathes of Asia, from northeast India and Bangladesh, to China, Mongolia, and Japan.

The US space agency, NASA, says this year’s flooding has been “excessive”. A map tracking rainfall using satellite data, published today, shows some parts of Asia have seen more than 1,000 milimetres of rain since June.

Scientists say climate change is making extreme weather more unpredictable and more intense. So-called “extreme event attribution” studies have zeroed in on climate change’s role in specific disasters, including heavy pre-monsoon rains that hit northeast Bangladesh in 2017.

There are thousands of different languages and dialects spoken in India. This map shows the primary language spoken by a majority of the population in each district. Source: Translators without Borders, from 2011 Census of India.

"People are falling down, one by one, like dominoes." 

“Anyone can be arrested when going out the door.”