From California’s raging wildfires to record temperatures in Japan, extreme weather events are striking us with increasing ferocity. But what about those countries for which climate change isn’t a seasonal threat but a permanent, even existential one? OZY takes you to the Climate Change Frontiers, with stories on countries at the vanguard of the battle against climate change, on innovative solutions they’re deploying and the people behind them.
Inventors and architects in the Pacific Islands are marrying ancient traditions with modern technology to save their nations from drowning, developing solar-powered boats and homes that are resistant to strong winds and typhoons. Farmers in rain-deprived, landlocked Chad are using cultivation practices that both save water and enrich the soil, while the country diversifies its economy and prepares for an even drier future. In South Africa, farmers are shifting their attention from crops to game, their transition forced by unpredictable weather.
In Sri Lanka, a researcher is trying to retrofit tuk-tuks with low-cost electricity-powered engines to cut their emissions, without disrupting livelihoods. The changing economics of clean energy is allowing firms to take solar panels to poor and disadvantaged communities, and not just the wealthy. And conservationists are using drones to try and seed-bomb dying forests back to life, from Bangalore to Borneo.
Read this series also for the stunning consequences of climate change. Scandinavian nations are growing crops they never could, because of longer and warmer summers. Denmark, for instance, is now producing wine. And in Antarctica, climate change is doubling up with a growing human footprint to endanger the future of one of the world’s last relatively untouched zones.
Stay with OZY as we bring you a ringside view of the ways in which these countries and inventors are tackling climate change. Make no mistake, these aren’t the struggles of such frontline states alone. How they fare against climate change could determine all of our futures.
