Ocean Health

Makuleke, a village of small mud-walled houses with tin roofs in South Africa's Limpopo province, is a dry place in a dry land. Rainfall there, near the country's border with Zimbabwe, is low by most standards; about the same as rainfall in Montana.

Philemon Makamu, a farmer in Makuleke, gestures toward a garden planted in corn, pumpkin, watermelon and peanuts. His friend Reckson Josini squats to the ground to grasp a corn stalk gingerly in his hands. "You can see how it suffers," say Makamu.

On August 5^th, 2003, Los Angeles trial lawyer Alvin Michaelson and his wife arrived in Paris for vacation. Before long they were having dinner at a swanky bistro. Michaelson says it was "clearly hot, very humid" when he arrived and, as he noted, air conditioning is not common in Paris. His restaurant certainly had none. Michaelson didn't realize it but he had landed near the start of what scientists now say was the worst European heat wave in at least 500 years. The temperature had climbed to 99 degrees and had failed to cool off at night.

With a low degree of irrigation, residents of the Limpopo Province of Southern Africa must "gamble on farming," constantly hoping that just enough water will feed their crops to make it through the year. But as the world changes, the dry seasons of the Limpopo Province are getting drier- Daniel Grossman explores.

Makuleke, a village of small mud-walled houses with tin roofs in South Africa's Limpopo province, is a dry place in a dry land. Rainfall there, near the country's border with Zimbabwe, is low by most standards; about the same as rainfall in Montana.

Philemon Makamu, a farmer in Makuleke, gestures toward a garden planted in corn, pumpkin, watermelon and peanuts. His friend Reckson Josini squats to the ground to grasp a corn stalk gingerly in his hands. "You can see how it suffers," say Makamu.

Daniel Grossman travels to the interior of southern Mozambique, where clean water is never a promise, and droughts are as worrisome as floods.

As global warming melts the world's ice, and heats the oceans, sea levels are on the rise. Although it may take decades for some coastal areas to begin to feel the effects, few places on Earth are as threatened right now as the low-lying coastlines off the vast Bay of Bengal, where the Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra Rivers meet the Indian Ocean.

Some of the countries most at risk from climate change are low-lying nations. And chief among them is the South Asian country of Bangladesh. Rising seas threaten to inundate this already disaster-prone land. But Bangladesh is experimenting with new ways to protect itself. One possible solution uses floods to prevent floods. It’s an idea that was forced on the government in a revolt by desperate farmers. Reporter Daniel Grossman has our story.

Climate change is front page news in Bangladesh on a near-daily basis, and the English-language newspaper The Daily Star is averaging two to three articles per day on the subject. As Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina traveled to Geneva this week to attend the World Climate Conference-3, coverage has focused on her trip. But there is also a sense in Bangladesh that climate change is putting the country on the international map, so to speak, and Bangladeshis are very much interested in getting that recognition.

Bangladesh is a massive river delta, and river erosion is taking more than 100 sq. km. of land per year. According to local officials, it displaces more than 100,000 riverside residents per year, and the pace is accelerating, fed by melting glaciers and monsoons upstream. We visited the massive Jamuna River near Sirajganj in the northwest corner of the country and saw where large chunks of the dike and roadway had collapsed just a few weeks earlier.

It is monsoon season in Bangladesh, making the delicate balance between water and land more tenuous than ever. It was raining heavily when we disembarked from the ferry on Bhola Island and it continued to rain for much of the day. South of Dhaka some 205 km. (or 11 hours by ferry), Bhola is caught between the rising saltwater of the Bay of Bengal to the south and the ominous churning of the Meghna River to the east.

I am writing from the overnight ferry from Dhaka to Bhola island. Glenn and I spent the morning shooting interviews and b-roll footage at a dismal slum in Dhaka that is home to over 1000 displaced people from the island of Bhola. Bhola, one of six southern islands in Bangladesh, is home to 1.6 million people. But many thousands of people are leaving Bhola as erosion caused by rising sea levels and strong currents swallows the land. Some predict half the island could be gone in 30 years time.

We will be heading off for Bangladesh on Aug. 22 to explore the "ground zero" of climate change and innovative adaptive strategies they are developing there. We will be traveling to Bhola, a large coastal island that has reportedly lost half its land mass over the past decade, to report on the "children of climate change" whose families are battling to stay there. We have just secured an interview with Dr.