Massive Tongan Eruption Sends Tsunamis Across the Pacific

A massive underwater volcano erupted Saturday, January, 15th near the remote Tonga nation in the south Pacific. The eruption generated immediate buzz across the internet from dramatic satellite imagery and tsunami warnings spread as far as the west coast of the United States. The massive Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano is particularly active, and smaller hydromagnetic eruptions like this event are commonly observed. The violent eruption is generated from a flash vaporization chemical reaction between extruded magma and seawater, causing an explosion. The United States Geological Survey measured the resulting shockwaves as a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. 

The volcano lies 40 miles away from Tonga’s main island, Tongatapu, and its eruption was heard in New Zealand as far as 1,400 miles away. The violent eruption generated a volcanic plume of ash, gas, and steam extending more than 12 miles into the atmosphere, where satellite images were able to reveal their expanse over the event duration and indicate the presence of tsunamis. 

A four-foot tsunami wave crashed into the Tongan capital on its northernmost island, Nuku'alofa, where boats and debris washed ashore. Videos across social media captured the powerful wave easily overcoming seawalls, roads, and fences inundating people’s properties. The impending threat left many Tongan residents rushing to higher ground as tsunamis can often increase with each generated wave. The eruption impacted undersea cable networks leaving many areas of Tonga in a blackout, impacting the island nation’s telecommunications. 

Tsunamis spread rapidly across the Pacific, extending warnings to Japan, Hawai’i, American Samoa, Chile, and the west coast of the USA. Waves up to 5 feet arrived Sunday morning in Chile, Japan, and California ports. Witnesses described the incoming tsunamis as water surges instead of the giant waves depicted in popular films like San Andreas (2015)

New Zealand has committed an initial aid of more than $300,000 in supplies, technical support, and defense assistance. The eruption is one of the biggest to occur within the last decade, according to the volcanic explosivity index (VEI), used by volcanologists to categorize eruption scale. The VEI measures the plume height and quantity of ejected materials like ash, gas, and magma following an eruption. A VEI closer to 6 would indicate one of the rarest and largest eruptions, capable of sending materials high into the atmosphere generating global cooling effects as sunlight is reflected away from Earth’s surface. Scientists previously estimated this volcano to be capable of only producing eruptions up to a maximum of 2 VEI, but the recent event has not yet been measured. 

Drastic Changes to India’s Air Pollution During the Pandemic

While the world faced unprecedented lockdowns amidst the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, many environmental scientists observed significant beneficial impacts the lack of human activities caused on Earth’s natural systems. Urban areas were inhabited by local wildlife species that had not been seen in decades, water resources began to purify and significantly reduce air pollution. India’s large cities are well known for their environmental pollution, and the lockdowns created the opportunity for numerous improvements for India’s atmospheric status. 

Air pollution is rampant across India because of its enormous population size and concentrated city infrastructure. Air pollution results from too many greenhouse gases like aerosols, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide collecting in the atmosphere. These gases lead to increased temperatures as they capture and hold solar radiation. They also increase cloud retention of particulate matter that can be detrimental to surface resources and human health. 

The World Health Organization’s study of global air pollution indicates it poses a significant health risk, responsible for killing 7 million people a year and impacting many more. The COVID-19 outbreak is only responsible for 2.5 million deaths per year to place that statistic into context. In India, contributing sources of atmospheric pollution include vehicle byproducts, industrial power generation, material kilns, and suspended particulate dust contaminants. A report by IQAir identified the top 10 most polluted cities globally, and 9 of them were in India. 

India’s urban areas previously blanketed in smog and pollution experienced substantial reductions, extending views to the horizon in many places. Indians in Punjab could see the Himalayas more than 100 miles away! India’s Central Pollution Control Board found more than 85 cities across India with significantly reduced air pollution in only the first week of the pandemic. The report also measured New Delhi, the capital of India, with a more than a 44% reduction in only the first day of restrictions! It is estimated that more than 90 percent of road and transportation activities across the country were halted at the start of the pandemic.

Restrictions were lifted as the early pandemic lockdowns concluded, and life in India seemed to go back to the levels of pollution it created before. This is incredibly worrying because high levels of pollution in the air can highly damage a person’s health. If pollution levels do not rescind, ailments like headaches, respiratory issues, and virus susceptibility will become rampant. Toxic pollution also increases susceptibility to contracting COVID-19 because of its involvement in damaging respiratory cells, severely impacting at-risk demographics. 
Parents are forced to keep children home from school many days throughout the year because the overlying smog is too dangerous to breathe in. This saw many schools respond with waning attendance rates even after restrictions were lifted.

COVID-19’s Negative Impact on Tourism Employment in Asia and the Pacific Countries

According to a brief from the ILO, tourism in the Asia-Pacific countries has been suffering from job losses, deterioration in work quality, and shifts toward increased informality. Evidence from five countries - Brunei Darussalam, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam - demonstrates that job losses in tourism-related sectors in 2020 were four times greater than in non-tourism sectors. 

About ⅓ of the total job losses were linked to the tourism sector, with an estimated 1.6 million tourism-related jobs lost in these five countries alone. The ILO also estimates that pandemic-induced job losses will continue to drag down the region’s economies well into 2022. Even as borders reopen, international tourist arrivals are predicted to be slow in the near term. Given this, governments in tourism-rich countries are likely to seek broader economic diversification with the ultimate aim to create new employment opportunities in non-tourism sectors.

The pandemic did not affect all workers to the same extent. Women workers appear to have been particularly hit with an increased concentration of women carrying out food and beverage serving activities, the lowest-paid jobs in the sector.

A heavy impact on enterprises and workers in tourism at the country level:

  • In the Philippines, employment losses and decreases in average working hours in 2020 were among the largest. Employment in the sector contracted by 28% (compared to an 8% loss in non-tourism-related sectors) and average hours worked by 38%. Workers in the tourism-related sector working zero hours per week rose two thousand-fold (affecting 775,000 workers).

  • In Vietnam, the dire consequences of the crisis on the tourism sector were reflected primarily in decreasing wages and increased informality. Average tourism wages fell by nearly 18%, with the decline for women employees even higher at almost 23%. While the number of informal employees in tourism increased by 3% in 2020, the number of formal employees decreased by 11%.

  • The impact of the crisis on tourism employment in Thailand was more muted, yet contractions in wages and working hours were stark, and jobs in the sector contracted. In contrast, jobs in non-tourism-related sectors experienced a slight gain. Average wages in the tourism sector decreased by 9.5% as tourism workers moved into lower-paid jobs like food and beverage serving activities. Average hours worked declined by 10 percent. In the first quarter of 2021, employment was below pre-crisis numbers in all tourism-related sub-sectors other than food and beverage serving activities.

  • The tourism sector in Brunei Darussalam was hard hit in terms of both lower employment and fewer average hours worked, which contracted by more than 40% and nearly 21%, respectively. It was also the country that saw the largest difference between employment losses in tourism and non-tourism-related sectors.

  • Likewise, in Mongolia, tourism employment and average working hours suffered considerably from the pandemic and contracted correspondingly by almost 17% and more than 13%. The impact on employment among male tourism workers was particularly sizable, falling by around 29%.

Climate Change Projections For 2030 Estimate That Majority Of The World's Population Will Live In Coastal Areas Which Are Exposed To Floods, Storms, and Tsunamis

A publication from Nature demonstrates that satellite observations of floods reveal that the proportion of the population exposed to floods has grown by 24% globally since the turn of the century. That is 10 times more than scientists previously thought, and they estimate that by 2030, climate and demographic change will add 25 new countries to the 32 already experiencing increasing floods and harsh weather conditions. 

The United Nations has chosen to increase international cooperation for developing countries as the theme of this year’s World Tsunami Awareness Day, on November 5th. The UN Secretary-General designated November 5th as World Tsunami Awareness day back in December 2015, and it is meant to call on all countries, international bodies, and civil society to increase understanding of the deadly threat and share innovative approaches to reduce risks. 

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, says that “rising sea levels caused by the climate emergency will further exacerbate the destructive power of tsunamis. We must limit warming to 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial averages and invest at scale in the resilience of coastal communities.” Many regions that experience rapid urbanization and growing tourism are prone to tsunamis, and it puts even more people in harm’s way. 

For World Tsunami Awareness Day in 2021, the theme will be the Sendai Seven Campaign. The Sendai Seven Campaign –"7 targets, 7 years" was launched in 2016 by the United Nations Secretary-General, with the main objective of promoting the seven targets of the Sendai Seven Campaign over seven years, which are the following: 

  • 2016 – Target (a): Substantially reduce global disaster mortality by 2030, aiming to lower the average per 100,000 global mortality rate in the decade 2020- 2030 compared to the period 2005-2015

  • 2017 – Target (b): Substantially reduce the number of people affected globally by 2030, aiming to lower the average global figure per 100,000 in the decade 2020- 2030 compared to the period 2005-2015;

  • 2018 – Target (c): Reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030;

  • 2019 – Target (d): Substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, among them health and educational facilities, including through developing their resilience by 2030;

  • 2020 – Target (e): Substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020;

  • 2021 – Target (f): Substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate and sustainable support to complement their national actions for implementation of the present Framework by 2030;

  • 2022 – Target (g): Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to people by 2030.

Tsunamis are rare events but can be extremely deadly. In the past 100 years, 58 of them have claimed more than 260,000 lives or an average of 4,600 per disaster - more than any other natural hazard.

Plastic Production to Outpace Coal in Driving Climate Change by 2030

Plastics are on track to contribute more climate change emissions than coal plants by 2030, according to a new report by Beyond Plastics at Vermont’s Bennington College. As fossil fuel companies seek to recoup falling profits, they are increasing plastics production which are canceling out greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions gained from the recent closures of 65 percent of the country’s coal-fired power plants.

The New Coal: Plastics and Climate Change report, analyzes never-before-compiled data from ten stages of plastics production, usage and disposal and finds that the US plastics industry is releasing at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year — the equivalent of 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants.

In June, the US Plastics Pact unveiled an aggressive national strategy to ensure all plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. But in the meantime, conventional plastics production shows no signs of slowing down: In 2020, the plastics industry’s reported emissions increased by 10 million tons of GHGs over 2019. According to the report, construction is currently underway on another 12 plastics facilities, and 15 more are planned — altogether these expansions may emit more than 40 million more tons of GHGs annually by 2025.

“The fossil fuel industry is losing money from its traditional markets of power generation and transportation. They are building new plastics facilities at a staggering clip so they can dump their petrochemicals into plastics. This petrochemical buildout is cancelling out other global efforts to slow climate change,” said Judith Enck, former EPA Regional Administrator and President of Beyond Plastics.

In addition to accelerating climate change, plastic pollutes water, air, soil, wildlife, and health — particularly in low-income communities and communities of color. The US plastics industry reported releasing 114 million tons of greenhouse gases nationwide in 2020. 90% of its reported climate change pollution occurs in just 18 communities where residents earn 28% less than the average US household and are 67% more likely to be people of color. In addition to greenhouse gases, these facilities also emit massive amounts of particulates and other toxic chemicals into the air, threatening residents’ health.

As Congress finalizes federal spending bills and the United Nations prepares to meet for COP26 in Glasgow next month, their failure to acknowledge and act to reduce plastics’ contribution to climate change threatens to undermine global climate-change mitigation efforts. Nearly 1,000 companies have already adopted 1.5°C-aligned, science-based targets — but governments must now do their part, and work to provide clarity for companies that are ready to accelerate their climate action with equally ambitious policies and incentives. Without both sectors working in tandem, the majority of sustainability experts are pessimistic about our ability to avoid the effects of catastrophic climate change.