2830. The Water Footprint of What We Eat and the Climate Crisis

By Anita Kaksrud, Cape Chameleon, Februry 13, 2018

South Africa has 1.7 million dairy cows. Their current rain-fed feed will likely be irrigated in the future, exacerbating their already massive water footprint. Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash.com

Cape Town and its desperate battle to avoid running out of water is a climate change disaster, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, stated this January. While Capetonians are currently in a dire race against time to conserve water, with the local government limiting its residents to 50 litres of water per day, there is another water-intensive culprit to consider: agriculture.

Lorelei Plotczyk, the founder of the Truth or Drought campaign affirmed this: ‘Animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate change and deforestation, both which exacerbate drought.’ Kip Andersen, the producer of the documentary film Cowspiracy agrees. In the 90-minute film, he attributes animal agriculture as the main cause of greenhouse gases, and the main reason for water shortages. ‘It all comes back to animal agriculture, by far,’ he said.

The Western Cape hasn’t had sufficient rainfall for the past three years, and Capetonians are getting a real feel of climate change as the city is currently experiencing its worst drought in over 100 years. Without an eleventh-hour rainfall or overwhelming human intervention, Cape Town will become the first major city to run out of water in the history of civilisation on 11 May.

Agriculture’s effect on drought

The stats are quite comprehensive, even if the conservations around the outcomes are not. Globally, the animal agriculture industry is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than the world’s transportation industry combined. These emissions are also expected to increase by as much as 80% by 2050.

In addition to this, just one cow releases 70 to 120 kilograms of methane per year. In Cape Town, there are about 57,000 cattle. This means that each cow releases up to 6.8 million kilograms of methane each year and the 1.5 billion cows in the world produce 240,752,189 kilograms of methane every day. Considering that methane has a global warming potential 86 times that of CO2 on a 20-year time frame, there is little doubt that livestock and animal agriculture have a major effect on climate change and global warming.

Even if every country immediately met their commitment to decrease carbon emissions, the world is still projected to reach a 2°C increase in temperature, on average. South Africa, on the other hand, would still experience a  4°C increase by 2030, leading to less precipitation in the winter – Cape Town’s rainy season. This is because Africa is especially vulnerable and exposed to climate change, as the fluctuations in temperature have the potential to change wind and ocean circulation.

Experts predict that by 2030, 30% of previously rain-fed crops will need water from irrigation, putting even more stress on the limited amount of water in the dams. Photo: Markus Spiske/Unsplash.com

Because of this, the Western Cape is expected to become even drier in the future, and reduced rainfall would become the ‘new normal’. In 2016, 15 billion m3 of water was allocated in South Africa. However, South Africa is experiencing and is expected to keep experiencing a growing population, creating a projected 17.7 billion m3 of water demand by 2030. Altogether, the growing need for water, alongside aggravated drought conditions, is likely to hinder Cape Town’s water supply for the foreseeable future. But where is all the water going?

Who uses our water?

Farmers are the leading direct users of water in South Africa, consuming 66% of all water. However, Cape Town is predominantly an urban area and only 29% of the water consumption is due to agriculture. 29% might not sound like a great deal when compared to the national number, but cuts in the agricultural water usage in the Western Cape still made it possible to push Day Zero back almost a whole month from 16 April all the way to 11 May. This gives us a picture of how many million litres of water make up that 29%.

Furthermore, the greenhouse gases produced by agriculture in other parts of the country also play a role in Cape Town’s drought. Water Footprint Network founder Arjen Y Hoekstra explained that globalisation means food consumption in one place often affects water demands elsewhere because water and greenhouse gases have no boundaries. If the food you eat is not produced locally, it will affect the water levels at the place of production. According to Hoekstra, it has become clearer that livestock significantly contributes to humanity’s water footprint and water scarcity.

Everything we use and eat has a water footprint. According to the Water Footprint Network, ‘the water footprint is a measure of humanity’s appropriation of fresh water in volumes of water consumed and/or polluted.’ It basically tells us the stress a product puts on freshwater resources. WWF has calculated the water footprint for different foods based on South African production and total water use, including irrigation (blue water) and rainwater (green water).

WWF has calculated the amount of water used to produce different foods in South Africa. The numbers are shocking and show the impact of consumer choice on water levels. Photo: courtesy of WWF

These calculations reveal that half of a hamburger requires the same amount of water as a 60-minute shower with a water-efficient showerhead, and the water needed to produce a mouthful of steak could run your dishwasher 22 times. One teaspoon of milk is equivalent to one flush of a dual-flush toilet and the average bathtub could be filled six times with one litre.

This is an enormous amount of water. Despite this data, many people are still resistant to cutting down meat in their diet. Plotczyk described how eating fewer animal products is a less direct way of saving water, hence it is harder for people to appreciate. Instead, people focus on direct ways of saving, like household restrictions.

Nevertheless, a family of four could save the equivalent of 17 bathtubs of water by swapping one meal of beef per week with lentils. ‘It sounds glib but we can eat ourselves out of this problem… less meat; more water,’ said Stockholm Water Prize Laureate Prof Tony Allan.

And meat is not the only problem. Dairy has a significant footprint as well. South African dairy production holds about 1.7 million cattle, with production rising steadily over the last decade. Western Cape is the second leading dairy producer in the country by province, supplying 26% of the country’s milk. According to Dr. Heinz Meissner, advisor to Red Meat Producers Organisation, cattle are fed mostly by grazing veld and rain-fed dry land, which means they have a greater green water footprint.

Although fruit requires less water in general, fruit grown in the Western Cape is highly dependent on irrigation, which makes it a notable user of the same dams as Capetonians. Photo: Jakub Kapusnak/Unsplash.com

Fruits and vegetables do have a notable water footprint in South Africa as they require irrigation for growth. Meissner says this irrigated water mainly comes from the Theewaterskloof dam, which also supplies the City of Cape Town with more than half of its water for human consumption. However, the WWF’s infographic illustrates how dairy and red meat require far more water in total than the irrigated apple.

It’s not only the animals themselves that are utilising precious water, but also the crops used to raise them. ‘If you refer to water stored in catchment systems and used for irrigation to grow crops used exclusively for beef cattle farming, then there may be an argument,’ said Meissner when asked about the water footprint of the animal feed. What is certain is that the demand for food will increase. Simultaneously, natural resources are becoming compromised resulting in farmers turning to irrigation for the crops that were previously rain-fed, such as livestock feed. By 2030, there will be a 30% increase in irrigation water for crops, exacerbating the water crisis even further.

If we get to a point where the farmers have to use irrigation to grow the animal feed, it would use water faster than nature can replenish. This would again lead to further restrictions on irrigation water, which in turn effects animal products. It is the rhetorical equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

‘We need to re-examine the place meat and dairy have in the diet of modern man,’ Hoekstra stated in his Water for animal products report. He continued, ‘No national water plan in the world addresses the issue that meat and dairy are among the most water-intensive consumer products, let alone that national water policies somehow involve consumers or the meat and dairy industry in this respect.’

‘We need to re-examine the place meat and dairy have in the diet of modern man,’ Hoekstra stated in his Water for animal products report. He continued, ‘No national water plan in the world addresses the issue that meat and dairy are among the most water-intensive consumer products, let alone that national water policies somehow involve consumers or the meat and dairy industry in this respect.’

Alien vegetation are thirsty consumers

Even though animal agriculture is the main user of water in across the globe, South Africa and Western Cape have its own thirsty users in addition to the livestock and irrigation-dependant fruits. Invasive alien vegetation has long been a problem in South Africa as they use more water than surrounding native plants, lowering the water availability by up to 4%.

As a result of this, 2.7 million hectares of land have been cleared of alien vegetation in the past 20 years, freeing up over 2,000 kilolitres of water per hectare. According to Dr. Christo Marais, Chief Director of Natural Resource Management in the Department of Environment Affairs, over 200,000 condensed hectares still need to be cleared. ‘Invasives are very much part of the package to mitigate the impact of drought and climate change,’ Marais said, but also added that the alien vegetation is only responsible for 7% of the Mean Annual Runoff, and therefore he did not consider it the chief contributor to the drought Cape Town is facing.

Drought’s effect on agriculture

The City of Cape Town has implemented water restriction level 6B, which requires agricultural users to reduce usage by 60%. Western Cape Government Department of Agriculture and their GreenAgri programme admitted that monitoring is not done as efficiently as possible due to lack of government capacity and support to farmers. ‘Water supply to irrigation boards will be cut off once restricted quotas are reached. They have in fact already reached their Day Zero,’ Limberg stated.

Western Cape is well known for its wine production. Grapes have a big blue (irrigation) water footprint, and will likely be even more dependent on irrigated water in the drier future. Photo: Samuel Zeller/Unsplash.com

‘Reducing industry will, of course, free up more water, but it comes with job losses and decreases in rural economic activity, potentially increasing urbanisation, which increases pressure on city water supply,’ a GreenAgri representative said. It is estimated that, due to the drought, about 50,000 jobs will be lost in the agricultural sector, one of the biggest contributors to the South African economy and employment in rural areas. The GreenAgri drought fact sheet points out that this will lead to reduced ‘local food security, increasing food prices, the consolidation of production to fewer producers, a decline in export earnings, and a great dependency on food produce import from other regions of South Africa and other countries.’

GreenAgri also explained that a decline in farming profits and water scarcity has left South Africa with less than two-thirds of the number of farms it had in the early 1960s. However, the farmers of South Africa will still need to continue producing enough food to meet the demand of a growing population.

This is a vicious cycle where animal agriculture is the principal contributor to climate change, but also one of the sectors that is hit the hardest by its effects. Angus McIntosh is a farmer at the Spier Bio-dynamic farm and one of the farmers who personally feels the devastating effects of the drought. ‘We are now having to close half of our egg business,’ McIntosh says, and adds, ‘if we don’t have a normal winter rain I will close the whole farm.’

How do we fix this?

‘In a nutshell: we need more efficiency, producing more or the same from less resources, which additionally implies more intensification, as less resources are used per unit product and commodity. Water, of course, is one of these resources,’ Meissner outlined when asked about the Red Meat Producers Organisation’s plan for a sustainable future. So how do we do this?

Eating one mouthful of steak is equivalent to the water consumption of running your dishwasher 22 times. Photo: Lukas Budimaier/Unsplash.com

Plotczyk explains that only 3% of a person’s water footprint consists of household use, while 73% comes from the food they eat. ‘Since we know most of our water footprint lies with what we eat, then it’s logical that eating a less-water intensive diet has the potential to save more water than anything else you do,’ emphasises Plotczyk.

Plant-based food also has lower greenhouse gas emissions. For example, legumes have a 250 times lower emissions per calorie than beef, and even 20 servings of vegetables still have lower emissions than a single serving of beef. In addition to this, most animals currently grazing in South Africa are dependent on rainwater. However, this is likely to change in the future due to drier conditions, placing more strain on dam water to supply both animal feed and human consumption. So, what is the best way for humans to help curb the effects of climate change and future droughts? The answer is eating a less meat-intensive diet; but, this is easier said than done.

Will switching to a plant-based diet today save Capetonians from the current drought? Unfortunately, probably not. However, water conservation is a marathon, not a sprint, and even small changes in diet today can bring hope for the future. Plotczyk draws a relatable metaphor: ‘It’s like saying you’ve drained your savings account and have been laid off from your job – so should you keep spending and go into debt, or change jobs and start saving money again? Continuing meat-based diets, which are incredibly water-intensive, in the face of drought and water scarcity would be extremely counterproductive, even if the results are hard to see here and now.’

2805. Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out of Water

By Aryn Baker, Time Magazine, January 15, 2018

Tap water is predicated to run out by April 29, 2018

After three years of unprecedented drought, the South African city of Cape Town has less than 90 days worth of water in its reservoirs, putting it on track to be the first major city in the world to run out of water. Unless residents drastically cut down on daily use, warns Cape Town Mayor Patricia De Lille, taps in the seaside metropolis of four million will soon run dry. On April 22, to be exact. Here’s what to know:

The date is just a scare tactic, surely?

Nope. Day Zero, as it is called, is real, and is calculated every week based on current reservoir capacity and daily consumption. On Jan. 8 Mayor De Lille revised the date down from April 29, based on a citywide uptick in daily usage. The city won’t literally run dry; in most cases, reservoirs can’t be drained to the last drop, as silt and debris make the last 10% of a dam’s water unusable. City authorities have decided that once the dams reach 13.5% capacity, municipal water supply will be turned off for all but essential services, like hospitals.

What happens when the taps are turned off?

Cape Town enters Mad Max territory (well, almost). Residents will have to go to one of some 200 municipal water points throughout the city where they can collect a maximum of 25 liters (6.6 gallons) a day. Armed guards will be standing by to keep the peace and prevent anyone from taking more than their share. Of course, the truly wealthy will be protected. The local version of Craigslist is already full of listings for companies wiling to truck in tankers full of water from less drought-prone parts of the country, for a price.

What steps are residents taking?

The city has capped household water usage at 87 liters (23 gallons) per person, per day. For most homes, that means keeping showers under 2 minutes, no watering the garden or washing the car, refraining from flushing the toilet unless absolutely necessary, recycling bathing water where possible and severely limiting dishwasher and washing machine use. Water storage tanks are already on backorder, unwashed hair is now a symbol of upright citizenship, and public restrooms are festooned with admonishments to “let it mellow.”

Are the self-imposed limits working?

Not really. According to city statistics, only 54% of residents are hitting their target, one of the reasons why Day Zero was moved forward a week earlier this year. But the city has few options for punishing individual water abusers and ensuring compliance, so everyone pays the price.

Didn’t anyone see this coming?

Yes and no. City planners have long pointed out that Cape Town’s water capacity hasn’t kept up with population growth, which has nearly doubled over the past 20 years. Still, a three-year drought on this scale is a “once a millennium” event, say climatologists, and even the best-planned water system would have taken a hit under current conditions. Now the city is playing catch up, hastily (and expensively) installing desalination plants and looking into groundwater extraction. But it’s unlikely any of those systems will be brought online before Day Zero, or even before the rainy season is due to start up again in May (if indeed it does). These systems are unlikely to go to waste, however. Climate change researchers predict more frequent dry years and fewer wet years to come. More likely, they say, Capetonians are just getting a preview of the new normal.

2803. Cape Town Water Wars: A Literal Shitstorm

By Sharmini Periers and Patrick Bond, The Real News, January 18, 2018

SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

Cape Town, South Africa. It is on the brink of running out of water. Historically, Cape Town a port city situated in a natural bowl to catch the fresh rainwater, was recognized for its lush, green vegetation. But for a few decades now it has been suffering from water shortages, and now it is gripped by the worst drought in a century.

Residents will have to queue for emergency rations, come April. Dam levels fell below 30 percent in the first week of this year. If it hits 13.5 percent, then residents will have to queue for their water collection at many points. Some 200 sites may have to be set up across the city.

Mainstream media has picked up this story, as Cape Town is the world's first major city to run out of water; but what they are not talking about is the drought's link to climate change. With us to discuss all of this from Johannesburg, South Africa, is Patrick Bond. He is professor of Political Economy at Wits University in South Africa, and author of Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis from Above, Movement from Below, and co-editor of BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique.

Welcome, Patrick.

PATRICK BOND: Great to be with you again, Sharmini. Thanks.

SHARMINI PERIES: Patrick, the water shortages in Cape Town appears to be a slow moving environmental disaster that Cape Town has been unable to prevent. What is causing this crisis?

PATRICK BOND: It's certainly the amplification of all of these weather vectors that have brought the whole country into a drought situation. Most of the country did recover about a year ago, but we had a two-year drought that left rural areas devastated and then there were major storm events. As you say, Cape Town's been suffering a creeping drought, but we've had unbelievable storms that have wrecked huge swaths of the infrastructure in Johannesburg here, as well as in the port city of Durban.

All three of the major cities between about three and a half million people in Durban, four million in Cape Town, a little over four million here in Johannesburg ... What they've really shown, these storm events and the drought, is how unprepared major cities in a fairly sophisticated economy, which is a major greenhouse gas emitter, not only therefore is a villain, but also a victim. The inability of the city of Cape Town --and they're run by a center-right government, not the African National Congress but the Democratic Alliance -- their inability to manage this and to run a mitigation and adaptation program that would work may well cost the mayor her job. Patricia De Lille is on the verge of being kicked out of the mayorship by her own party, and the water crisis and its mismanagement is the central reason.

As you say, Sharmini, it does mean for "Day Zero" as it's called -- April 20 is now the predicted date at which there won't be water in the residents' taps -- they'll have to start queuing up in just 200 water collection points, for those four million people. It may well be quite a disastrous situation, particularly given the water apartheid that Cape Town has inherited from centuries ... Since 1652 when Dutch settlers arrived with the Dutch East India Company. This is really a city in which white people have taken vast amounts of water for the English gardens or swimming pools, leaving the Africans and colored people without sufficient water, and now the chickens are coming home to roost for everyone.

SHARMINI PERIES: Patrick, this is not only a war and a crisis, but a slow-moving economic crisis and also a pending food shortage crisis. Elaborate on this for us.

PATRICK BOND: Well, there's quite an interesting debate and it's, as in California, an awareness raising, at which where is this sort of bulk water going, and it turns out that 60% of the incoming bulk supply to Cape Town has already been reserved for the commercial agriculture. Now, that's not necessarily the kind of staple foods, the maize meal, the corn that is the basic staple for most of the residents, but instead it's actually used for irrigation, and that's often in this wealthy agricultural area, for the finest wines in Africa and some of the finest in the world, as well as the famous tea, the Rooibos Tea.

The stress agriculturally, on these two products - the vineyards that create these beautiful wines and the Rooibos Tea. This red bush Rooibos Tea, may well put them out of business entirely in coming decades. That's one of these adaptation questions. Can there be different agricultural systems or better irrigation systems, or should we begin to think about these cities as really having to undergo ... That this changes everything. A revolution that Naomi Klein and her major book on the topic, on sort of taking advantage of these crises and using them to re-jig the local economy. The production system, the agricultural system, the urban form, to make it more compact and water efficient. The consumption norms and disposal systems. All of these now must come up for debate.

What's interesting in Cape Town, is that there's a long tradition of environmental justice, and yet, because I think true across the world, many of our local environmental justice movements have been oriented to stopping pollution or addressing very localistic systems. Food systems, for example is a very important part of the Cape Town progressive community, but it's not yet been the ability to connect the dots and to put climate justice onto the national agenda and to ask the questions, should this new government that's about to take power nationally, as we have a new incoming president of the African National Congress. He may well take over the presidency of the country in coming months.

Cyril Ramaphosa, but he comes from the coal industry, and Shanduka is his company, and that as well as Lonmin, the Marikana massacre thing, and that may mean we'll see a revitalization of carbon-intensive economic activity. Notwithstanding this huge wake-up call that Cape Town's drought and probable desperation water-rationing now represents for this country.

SHARMINI PERIES: Patrick, you mentioned this earlier. The people that are going to be most affected by this crisis. So, describe the class nature of the crisis and what we can expect as the problem deepens.

PATRICK BOND: Along with Johannesburg, which is the widely acknowledged by UN-Habitat and researchers, the most unequal city in the world here. Cape Town's in the top five, Durban as well in the top 10. These three cities, these South African cities, have had exceptional urban resistance from shack settlements and townships and low-income suburbs, from women, from environmentalists, and from labor. The South African working class, according to the World Economic Forum is considered the most militant in the world, and we have the most corrupt capitalist class in the world, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Bank regularly acknowledges it's the most unequal country in the world. This is an explosive situation. The question is: Will there be a possibility to bring environmental justice into a sort of maybe even eco-socialist approach to addressing this?

We've seen just one indication in Cape Town that's been quite explosive, and that's the use of shit. I know shitstorms and shit houses and shitholes are regularly discussed in the United States, but in Cape Town, shit has been used by people in the townships, Khayelitsha specifically, as a weapon of the weak, because there aren't flush toilets in these sites. There are chemical toilets and various kinds of pit latrines, and that gives the poor people the ability to take their buckets, their large plastic containers, and use those as weapons. We've begun to see a class struggle take place over water, or specifically the lack of water.

The most famous moment was two years ago, three years ago, 2015. When shit was used to ... Thrown on Cecil Rhodes' statue at the University of Cape Town, and lead to that statue being removed in a huge movement. #FeesMustFall, #RhodesMustFall -- an emerging of radical students. So there's something quite evocative, a sort of nuclear weapon, if you will, of poor people, their last resort is the sanitation system breaking down. That's all they've got at hand and that would be, I would suspect, something we'll see much more of as the water wars break out.

Johannesburg had, along with Cochabamba, Bolivia, about 18 years ago in the famous 2000 battles ... Johannesburg, Cochabama, were the water wars of the 21st century, and in those cases it was privatized water. Johannesburg, it was a big French company, Suez, and they were tossed out by activists after about six years of a contract with the city they wanted to extend for 30. What I suspect might now happen with these water shortages, is we begin to see a different kind of water politics. Not really necessarily about privatization, but about the physical scarcity of water when we have a water apartheid, poor people in these vast townships just not given enough historically, and they'll see the big English gardens, the swimming pools ... Mostly now these swimming pools, they're not allowed to be filled.

I should add that there may be a break in this drought. It might come in June when the winter rains start again, but in the meantime what I think many people are asking: Will -- in a context of lots of political turmoil in South Africa -- will water become one of the sites of struggle that helps to fracture an existing system in which the center-right, the centerist politics of the African National Congress, the neoliberalism, and in Cape Town, the Democratic Alliance can be challenged from below in a way that might teach the rest of the world the first major city running out of water, what will the activists do to take advantage of that? We'll soon see.

SHARMINI PERIES: Finally Patrick, as I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of the world's mainstream media is talking about the water crisis in Cape Town, but they're not linking it to climate change. Is South African media doing so, and if not, what are the ways in which this link can be made for people to get a better understanding of the changing climate and this crisis?

PATRICK BOND: I think that's the right question because as Naomi Klein put it, you really need to connect the dots. This changes everything, and looking at political economy and in politics in a cultural and a gendered and a highly racialized inequality in Cape Town through the climate lens should add quite a bit to us. One would be the tourism industry in Cape Town. Vast industry, lots of low-income people working in the hotels, working in the various aspects of the tourist trade; food and services. That will be under pressure, and yet the attempt by the tourist industry is to pretend it's not happening, and to tell people, "No, no it's fine. You can come here. We're gonna have some water for you." There's a sort of fakery going on in tourism, because that's a lifeblood of this city.

The second is that there's been a purchase, it's actually being confirmed this week, it's by Sinopec, the big Chinese company of Chevron's refinery and retail shops. So Chevron, a huge oil company from the U.S., dastardly company, one of the worst, very implicated in climate politics of denialism and massive emissions and no mitigation and terrible pollution in all of its sites. That would be one of the sites where if Sinopec, the Chinese company with a terrible record on its own takes over, I would suspect we're gonna see some politics of resistance amongst climate justice activists who know the oil industry, and Sinopec has this potential huge refinery in Cape Town. They've committed over $500 million to expending that. That's a very serious climate crime that's about to be committed, and I don't think the activists in South Africa are going to stand for that. So, these are the sorts of struggle sites; water, tourism, a new owner of the major refinery system in Cape Town.

Like we've seen in Durban, South Durban, one of the sites of the biggest refineries in Africa, amazing struggles there. Here in Johannesburg, major struggles over the extent to which urban social movements can access energy and electricity, whether that comes from coal or huge solar potential. This is a country that has some of the worst extremes of abuse, but some very talented people at the grass roots, so I learn a great deal from them. I'm sure we all will.

SHARMINI PERIES: Alright.

Now, I did say that was the last question, but I cannot let you go without asking you this. This drought condition that South Africa faces is really a much bigger sub-Saharan African issue if we look at the current map that Princeton University African Flood and Drought Monitor has provided us. That there are droughts going on all over the sub-Saharan African part of the world. Tell us a little bit more about that link.

PATRICK BOND: I would also add North Africa, which is going to certainly experience the sort of 40 degree Celsius conditions regularly, and maybe the Qatar World Cup in the least, won't even happen in 2022, because the climate will have advanced rapidly. So, North Africa's the most threatened, but yes. The East African zones, particular in the horn of Kenya, running up through Somalia, have had terrible ongoing droughts. Water wars on the Nile with new dams that Ethiopia and Egypt are contesting, and in West Africa and Central Africa where we were seeing terrible civil wars ... Your viewers will know about the DRC in Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda, South Sudan, and these war sites are also the sites that are -- Darfur maybe most spectacularly -- where climate change has had an impact on the way in which desperation of herders and farmers lead to these conflicts.

Yes, there are studies going on and I certainly resort occasionally to the U.S. Pentagon-funded Minerva Program, which works with University of Texas in Sussex, to identify the correlations between social protests and anger and frustration, fury really on the one hand, and the climate crisis. As we've seen in many African sites and you could look at Syria, you could look at many other places, these are the sites where we're beginning to find massive rebellions emerging.

If we were talking, Sharmini, five years ago, people would have said, "Well, Africa's rising." It was a sort of hope that the commodity boom that sort of petered out by around 2011 and ended with a crash in 2015, that that commodity boom would allow African sort of trickle-down to work and keep this continent moving forward. In reality, Africans are uprising against this Africa Rising expert-oriented, commodity driven, highly unequal system of accumulation, and I think climate will amplify that, and the question is whether networks like the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance with over 1,000 groups and members, this group, and begin to generate a really serious political economy that demands a new system locally, as well as globally, and now with Donald Trump having walked out of Paris, one of the big questions many would ask is well, since Paris provided the liability protection so you don't have a climate debt if you sign onto Paris, you don't have to worry about your historic debt, that's part of the deal that the U.S. State Department cut in Paris in 2015.

Now it's time, not only for Africans, for all affected people by climate change, by the youth in the United States or a couple of dozen kids ... Jim Hansen's grandchild as well ... Suing Donald Trump for climate damage, and I think that whether you like the courts or not, the idea is very important. We should now be talking about those vulnerable parts of the world, the vulnerable generations who have to live through a future of extreme weather events and global warming, and in this part of the world, we're already seeing in Cape Town some of the worst micro-impacts of that if we see a major city, the second largest in South Africa, four million people, literally run out of water.

SHARMINI PERIES: Patrick, I thank you so much for joining us and always very informative. Thank you.

PATRICK BOND: Thank you. Good to be with you.

SHARMINI PERIES: Thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.