The climate emergency is a life or death situation. We must act now

When NADJA was founded in 2016, it was out of a frustration with the way women are depicted in the media. We were tired of hearing female politicians being asked how they coped with being mothers while having a career, with performers and artists being asked for diet and beauty tips and most of all, we were fed up with the lack of reporting on groundbreaking achievements by women, and the focus on just a slim portion of the world.

It’s for very similar reasons that we’ve decided to launch this new section devoted to the climate crisis that now affects our daily lives, and yet is not given the urgent coverage it needs.

It is widely accepted that Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease, caused by a virus that has jumped from animals to humans because of wildlife erosion among other man-made problems. The pandemic, still in its first wave for most countries around the world, has killed at least half a million people, and continues to accelerate throughout the United States, Latin America and Africa, while it has been all but controlled elsewhere. That there will be other, potentially even deadlier pandemics in the future is a given, unless something is done with immediacy to prevent this.

THERE IS NO SEGMENT OF SOCIETY OR ATOLL ON THE PLANET THAT WILL NOT BE DEVASTATED BY THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE; TO TACKLE IT WE MUST ALL WORK TOGETHER

If temperatures continue to rise because of the greenhouse gases we keep adding to the atmosphere entire regions risk becoming uninhabitable due to hotter temperatures, severe droughts, rising sea levels and increasingly strong hurricanes and monsoons. Moreover, leading scientists believe that if left unabated climate change will lead to the collapse of civilisation as we know it – and much sooner than we might imagine, with new diseases, food shortages and migration from regions that become unlivable likely to cause social unrest and conflict. In parts of the world this is already happening on a large scale.

This should be headline news across all mainstream media, but it isn’t. And this is why you’re reading this right now.

We will endeavour to report new findings and solutions to tackle the crisis, with interviews, original features and analysis from experts. We will of course retain the focus on women and their accomplishments, featuring female experts in science, biology, technology and academia among other sectors wherever possible, in a bid to overturn the fact that STEM industries are still male-dominated.

Most of all this is our rallying cry – there is no segment of society or atoll on the planet that will not be devastated by the effects of climate change, and to mitigate it we must all cooperate: citizens, governments and businesses from north, south, east and west must all work together if we want food, safety, and clean air for ourselves and our children. So join us, sign up to our newsletter, follow us on social media, tell us your thoughts and let’s take action together.

Leila Hawkins

Featured image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

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