From Cape York to California: Meet 5 people living on the front line of climate change.

26.08.15 By
This article is more than 8 years old

1. Meun Lifu, Cape York, Australia

Mr Meun Lifu, locally know as ‘Shorty’ is one of the elders in the Injinoo community in Cape York. He has seen many changes happening in his lifetime. Shorty and his people are planning on building sea walls in order to battle rising sea levels. Many flora and fauna are already threatened in active tidal zones.

Photo by Peter Yesawich, Jr. @pyesawichjr The Climate Reality Project @climatereality via @everydayclimatechange

2. Nina Gualinga, Sarayuku, Ecuador

Nina Gualinga is a young Kichwa climate activist from Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon who, along with other indigenous community members, is calling on the world to to keep oil in the ground. Most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground, unburned, to keep global temperature rise to no more than 2°C. Rainforest communities like Nina’s native Sarayaku and their NGO partners have been challenging fossil fuel projects while working toward a just transition to a clean energy future.

Photo by Caroline Bennett @carobennett for @everydayclimatechange

3. Sheep Farmer, Mendota, USA

Gov. Jerry Brown ordered mandatory water restrictions for the first time in California history this year, saying that the state’s drought had reached near-crisis proportions after a winter that brought record-low snowfalls. These water restrictions will impose cutbacks on water use across the board, including farmers. In this photo, a sheep herder gathers his flock to water them in the intense summer heat in Mendota, California in July of 2014. In Australia, climate change is likely making drought conditions in southwest and southeast Australia worse.

Photo by @edkashi/@viiphoto via @everydayclimatechange

4. Abou Hisham, Iraq Al Amir, Jordan

Abou Hisham holding dry soil from his field in his hands. Abou’s family receives a weekly distribution from a water tanker of 4000 litres per week for 8 people, not enough to water his farm. Jordan has one of the lowest levels of water resource availability, per capita, in the world. The result is an entire country that is very vulnerable to even the smallest changes in the climate.

Photo by @matildegattoni for @everydayclimatechange

5. Ujelang Jorlang, Majuro, Marshall Islands

Increasingly intense and frequent inundation events are destroying seawalls and homes on strips of land between the ocean and lagoon. “I think with sea level rising, the water will devastate this place,” Ujelang Jorlang said from his home in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. Jorlang, a landowner and deacon in the local church, has lost more than 100 feet of land to erosion and the sea. He added a second level to his house to protect his family from the next big wave. You can read more about climate change and coastal flooding in our report.

Photograph by @coleenjose via @everydayclimatechange

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