Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2022

The Current Transcript for May 6, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The summer of 2022 is absolutely excruciating.

VOICE 2: This summer is being just so bad. The heat wave stepping out for doing even the basic. Most things have become so difficult. I don't know how we as humans are going to take care of this.

MATT GALLOWAY: It's spring finally and maybe you're out enjoying some warmer weather where you live. Meanwhile, in India and Pakistan, the temperature has been in the mid-forties and summer is still a month away. In an hour, how climate change is making cities on the subcontinent almost uninhabitable and what can be done to adapt but also perhaps turn down the heat. Also this morning, the war in Ukraine might feel far away, but Canadian farmers are feeling it.

SOUNDCLIP

We've been getting calls from countries such as Brazil, from France, just desperate to find a source of fertiliser.

MG: Russia is the world's largest supplier of fertiliser. In 30 minutes, how war could threaten the global food supply and perhaps offer a window for a more ecologically friendly alternative to fertiliser. We start, though, with the overrepresentation of Indigenous women in Canada's prisons. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Why Indigenous women account for half of all female inmates and what to do about it

Guests: Donna Gamble, Eleanore Sunchild

Half the women here in Grand Valley, I would say, are indigenous. Half the population.

MG: That's Kitten Keyes. She's an inmate of the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario.

SOUNDCLIP

The indigenous women here have stories of their own that are similar to mine. As an indigenous person growing up and the abuse that was afflicted on us.

MG: Just one in 20 women in Canada are indigenous. But for the first time in Canada's federal prisons, indigenous women now account for half of all female inmates. Canada's prison ombudsman, Ivan Zinger, told The Globe and Mail this week that the overrepresentation is both shocking and shameful. Donna Gamble is a court worker at the Prince Albert Friendship Centre for more than 20 years. She was in and out of the corrections system. Donna, good morning.

DONNA GAMBLE: Good morning.

MG: When you hear Kitten talk about the high number of indigenous women in her federal prison, the one that she's in right now, what goes through your mind?

DONNA GAMBLE: No, it doesn't surprise me. It's been like that since I was young. Doesn't surprise me at all.

MG: You almost ended up in a federal prison, right?

DONNA GAMBLE: Yes, I did.

MG: What happened?

DONNA GAMBLE: Oh, look what got me there.

MG: Yeah.

DONNA GAMBLE: Well, I was charged with attempted murder. And I was looking at 14 years.

MG: And when you wind up in front of the judge. What was it that kept you out of that federal prison system?

DONNA GAMBLE: Oh, the judge was phenomenal. I had been going up in front of many male judges for since I was a kid. And here was a woman judge. And I don't know, something clicked. And I, just for the first time in my life, started speaking out for myself. And before that, I just accepted whatever came out. And I just broke down and said, You know what? I'm sick and tired of seeing your faces. I know you're sick and tired of seeing mine. But what am I supposed to do? You know, and I just, like, had verbal diarrhoea for about 5 minutes. And she looked at me and she said, You know, you're right. She said, I think I'm going to give you conditional order and prove it. So I did.

MG: What did that mean for your life? You could have spent a long time in prison.

DONNA GAMBLE: Yeah. Yeah, I probably would have died there. And, you know, my best friend died there. Sister, sister friend. She died. Committed suicide. And, you know, I don't think I was. Too far behind of just given up.

MG: When you say that you spoke up for yourself. I mean, part of that is about you talking about growing up and what you grew up with. Can you just briefly describe what life was like growing up for you?

DONNA GAMBLE: Oh. Well, when I try to describe it to my children, my grandchildren. If you've ever seen that show once we're warriors out in New Zealand. That was the story of my life. It was terror. I was afraid most of the time as a child. And, you know, from what I gathered, um, excuse me, white people were different and supposedly better. And because I watched The Brady Bunch and with the first foster home we were in when I thought we would receive some help or or have a better life, we were told to eat on the floor separate from the family. So, you know, my hopes sunk.

MG: What was your first encounter with that? The criminal justice system. How old you.

DONNA GAMBLE: When you see I was 11 years old and an older friend of mine. She was 14 hours, 11, and we had stayed out all night. My mother had phoned the police and we got found downtown Saskatoon and the police picked us up. The older police officer beat me out for about 20 minutes trying to get my age, and I told him I'm 11, but he kept beating me. Your lying... Your lying. And. And he beat me up. And then he threw me in a paddy wagon. When he took me home and asked my mum for my age and she said, well she's 11. Well he booked it out of there, but I never received an apology. And after that, as far as I was concerned, you know, authority was off limits.

MG: What do you want people to understand? I mean, we're talking about the overrepresentation of indigenous women in the federal prison system in this country. What do you want people to understand about why it is that women like yourself and your sister ended up in in that system at such a young age?

DONNA GAMBLE: Well, it's just not simply black and white. There's stories behind the you know, what they're going up on. People are astounded, like at women being going up on murder charges when in fact, they've been, you know, probably abused for many years, even as children and are fighting, trying to fight back in their way with what they know. You look around at everything and what it tells you is, is we're less than and certainly as indigenous women, we're even more or less than.

MG: Do you see that now in the work that you do- you're now a court worker with the Friendship Centre in Prince Albert's. So what do you see when it comes to the justice system and how it might fail indigenous women that you that you see through your work?

DONNA GAMBLE: Oh, it does fail. It's not a might. It does fail and probably will continue to fail Indigenous women, indigenous people, period. Because it just doesn't. It continues the trauma that we're trying to pull ourselves out and everybody's saying, oh, get over it, get over it. How do you get over, you know, seeing people die in front of you? Like even me. I'm 57 years old and two months ago, we had ten people die in our community. Ten. You know, and I'm related to majority of them. And, you know, it's continued trauma. And then you have to go up in front of hordes of people who are looking down at you and lecturing you and in your head you're, I want to do better. Would you just tell me how? Give me give me the sign. Right. So it's just very frustrating. I've worked in the system myself, and all I kept saying was, you know what? I know what helped me, which was the 12 step programmes, and we got to have it here. And then somebody wanted to recreate it and, and bring it in. I'm like, Why? It's already here. Let's make use of it.

MG: What do you think needs to change? Just finally, before I let you go, if you think of even that judge that you stood up in front of and what she did for you, what needs to change so that that system doesn't fail the women that you work with.

DONNA GAMBLE: Just to continue to have an open mind. I know there are those percentage of people who are beyond help, but they're like a 1% out of all indigenous people because majority of them are just just they're trying to figure out where do I go, what do I do, and who will stand by me? Just open mind.

MG: And more judges like the one that dealt with you.

DONNA GAMBLE: That helped me. Yes.

MG: I'm glad to talk to you, Donna, and I'm glad you're doing the work that you're doing now. It's important, particularly given where you've been, but also what you know. Thank you very much.

DONNA GAMBLE: Thank you.

MG: Take care of yourself. You, too. Donna Gamble. As a court worker at the Prince Albert Friendship Centre. She was in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Eleanore Sun Child is an indigenous lawyer with Sun Child Law. She's in Battleford, Saskatchewan. Eleanore, good morning to you.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of what you've heard from Donna?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: I've heard it before. It's terrible. It's reality. It's what what is happening in Canada at this moment.

MG: Why are these numbers so high? Why is it that indigenous women make up half of the population of women in federal prisons, despite the fact that they are just 5% of the Canadian population?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Yeah. That's staggering, isn't it? It's due to the trauma of colonisation and practises exasperated by racist attitudes, stereotypes and sexism amongst settler Canadians and their institutions. Factors that contribute to the overincarceration of indigenous women include poverty, trauma, lots of trauma as as Donna stated. It also includes, like, I want to talk about the trauma. There is so much trauma left over from the Indian residential school system and from the intergenerational effects of the residential school system, meaning their families, their communities. There was a practise called the Sixties Scoop, equally traumatising, Indian Day schools, you know, and the list goes on and on. And all of these people, men and women. Have been traumatised. And unfortunately, women, women carry the brunt of that in their communities and in wider society as well.

MG: Can you unpack specifically how that trauma would impact an Indigenous woman's chance of ending up in that federal prison system?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Well, if we listen to Donna's story, Donna had colonial trauma. Donna ended up in a in the foster system, foster care system, where she was, again, treated poorly. She ended up I don't know if she was running away or out where she was, obviously ran into a racist police officer who assaulted her. And that's just one story. You know that that is just one example of one woman's story. There are thousands, all of those women guaranteed in the federal institutions have a story like that, or worse. The residential school system, the Sixties scoop were full of sexual and physical abuses, and that creates a lot of of hurt and anger. And unless people start dealing with that root trauma, it's just going to get worse.

MG: Part of this is about women who go into the system. This is also about women who are in the system itself. Take a listen to Ivan Zinger, the correctional investigator of Canada, on what he believes is behind these numbers.

SOUNDCLIP

So for women, we've seen over the last couple of years more releases of non-indigenous women than of indigenous women. They seem to serve their time in custody in higher security institution. Also, if they are released, they have their parole more likely to be suspended or revoked. They're more likely to be subject to use of force, and they tend to have a higher rate of suicide attempt of self-harm. So they do very, very poorly in corrections.

MG: So in some ways this is about indigenous women going into prison, but it's also about the fact that they are staying longer in prison and they're going back in for parole violations and higher recidivism. What do you make of that?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Yeah. You know, once inside the criminal justice system there, they go into there with issues, they often don't get the assistance that they need within the system. It's that the criminal justice system focuses on the annunciation and deterrence. It does not focus on rehabilitation and healing as it should. So these women don't get the proper rehabilitation that they need in the correctional system. And this prevents them from having that plan when they're released, having that plan to to go to a stable place, to have a plan of healing of of support. You know, that's lacking. And that's lacking because our communities often are dealing with crises. Like Donna said, you know, there's been ten deaths in her community. That is not unique. That's every single indigenous community. They don't have the supports. They don't have the infrastructure to support these inmates when they are released. And that's a problem.

MG: She talked about the discretion that the judge showed that she stood in front of that judge could have had 14 years in a federal prison. And the judge took Donna's background into consideration and that was part of the ruling that she gave. How common is that, that sort of discretion?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It's not common. It's not common at all. Our judiciary needs to really think about their role in in these numbers. I mean, I see it in court that there is not a proper understanding of colonisation of the Indian Residential School. There's also all sorts of stereotypes still at play within our justice system. And and actually, I'm not a proponent of indigenizing the criminal justice system. I'm a proponent of actually implementing our own systems of justice, because those are the only systems that are going to have any effect on these numbers.

MG: What do you mean? What does that look like?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It looks like going back to our traditional ways in our culture, we had our own systems of justice. We had our own systems of dealing with people, of rehabilitating our people. Our people are going to be able to help all the inmates and the people in the criminal justice system a step away from that system. But we need our own our own systems.

MG: So practically, does that mean a separate system for indigenous people, a separate criminal justice system?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It could mean that, yes. Because this current one, is it working at all.

MG: The Federal Government. We asked for comment from the federal government on this, and Marco Mendicino, the Minister of Public Safety, sent a statement that reads In part, We are committed to implementing culturally sensitive training, increasing representation of indigenous peoples in policing and corrections oversight, improving reintegration and rehabilitation programmes such as healing lodges. Marion Buller, who was the Chief Commissioner of the National Enquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, said that the statement was in some ways unacceptable, that it falls into the thoughts and prayers category. What do you make of what the federal government says in light of the numbers that we've been talking about?

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: There's no concrete action plan. There's. There's words. People. The federal government has been saying those words for years. It is, they are fluffy words. What do they mean? Not much. There has to be a concrete action plan to address these numbers that focus on the rehab, the rehabilitation of these women, but also focus on addressing the racist attitudes that are seen within the criminal justice system and the courts. I mean, Donna was really lucky that she had a judge like that render her sentence. But those sorts of judges are few and far between.

MG: I just wonder whether is it in the short term, even realistic to think that there can be a separate system created? And if that's not possible, what has to be done now to deal with the numbers? This is not new in some ways. People have been reporting on this overrepresentation for years.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: They have. They have. And we have gladue in the courts. We had we went to the Supreme Court last month on a case that addresses mandatory minimums when we were arguing to have mandatory minimums not apply. So mandatory minimums are a minimum sentence that are required for various sorts of crimes. And unfortunately, indigenous women are subject to these mandatory minimums there. That's one example of something that can be done. But until the criminal justice system and the courts understand colonisation, understand the trauma that indigenous people are dealing with, nothing will change.

MG: You mentioned Gladue. That was in 1999. The Supreme Court said that the overrepresentation of indigenous people in prisons constituted a crisis in the Canadian criminal justice system. That's more than 20 years ago.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: It is. It's more than 20 years ago and the current system is not working. The current system still has a lot of a lot of racism, a lot of attitudes that don't focus on understanding, compassion. Don't look at the rehabilitation of the women. There's so many stereotypes. And, you know, I'm going to I'm always talk about the bushy about Colton Bushy and the Gerald Stanley. The because that that was so impactful to me as a as a criminal lawyer. I seen so many stereotypes inside the system and outside of the system, you know, the stereotypes that that indigenous people are thieves, that indigenous people are prone to crime. You know, comments like, why don't they work harder? Why don't they earn their stuff instead of drinking and living a life of crime? And then they go to jail and they get what they deserve. And now they are crying because they're in jail. Well, that's just a totally racist viewpoint. And unfortunately, many of the people who are in the criminal justice system hold those stereotypes. So they need to be challenged on their racism stereotypes. They need to learn about indigenous people in Canada and in our province. They need to understand colonisation and the true history of this country. And then maybe we can look at at tackling some of these numbers because as Ivan Zingersaid, it's just going to get worse.

MG: Eleanore Sunchild, it's good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

ELEANORE SUNCHILD: Thank you.

MG: Eleanore Sun child is an Indigenous lawyer with Sun Child Law. She was in Battleford, Saskatchewan. When you're CBC News is next. And then a look at the global shortage of fertiliser. Russia is the world's largest producer of fertiliser given the war in Ukraine. That supply has been disrupted. We'll talk about what that means for farmers and the effect on those who eat the food that those farmers grow. That's coming up in six minutes. My name's Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

A look at the fertilizer shortage in Canada and its impact on food supply

Guests: Robert Misko, Evan Fraser

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come. It's been hot in India an d Pakistan, so hot that locals say it's like living in hell. More on what it feels like to be out in 43 degree heat in just under 30 minutes. But first, why farmers are getting on waiting lists for cow manure delivery.

[Music: Theme]

MG: As farmers across Canada prepare for the growing season, they are running short of a key supply fertiliser. It is becoming harder to find and very expensive if you do manage to track some fertiliser down. Part of the problem is that Russia is the world's biggest fertiliser exporter. Sanctions war in Ukraine and supply chain disruptions have all had an effect. Robert Misko has been a farmer for 35 years. He's chair of the Manitoba Crop Alliance. He has a grain farm near the Manitoba Saskatchewan border. Robert, good morning.

ROBERT MISKO: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How are you? I'm well. Just how expensive is fertiliser right now?

ROBERT MISKO: Well, if we go about 18 months back, I think we were getting nitrogen for around $0.41 a pound. And this spring we're looking at somewhere between a dollar 30 to a dollar 40 a pound. So in a year and a half, it's almost tripled in price.

MG: And the limited supply to.

ROBERT MISKO: It is definitely with the supply chain issues, there definitely seems to be shortages. Everyone's hoping to work through it. With the later spring, probably isn't going to help matter as much because it seems that if it's not too dry out in the west, it's too wet in Manitoba and it's going to be kind of seeding is going to hit everyone at the same time, which makes the logistics that much tougher to get the product when you need it.

MG: Are you hearing of farmers getting caught without.

ROBERT MISKO: Some, I guess at this point you can't see the court without yet because sitting still hasn't really started in full swing. So some would have had the product, you know, from the fall and they could have you have prebys and but some don't have the capacity to store it on farm. So even though they've bought it, they're still they're kind of in limbo. They don't know if they're going to get enough and when it's going to arrive.

MG: For people who have no knowledge of life on the farm, I mean, this is kind of fertiliser 1 to 1. But how important is it to farmers at this time of the year when you're getting set to start seeding?

ROBERT MISKO: Very key ingredient, especially with this year with all of the different problems. I mean, we just came through a fairly major drought in North America. Across the board, crops were poor. The invasion of Ukraine, there's a big chunk of of grain that's displaced from the mark et. So every bushel this year counts. Farmers are trying their hardest to get get things in the ground and get things going. And fertiliser is a key ingredient. If you short yourself on that one, your your yield prospects are down right off the bat, never mind contending with Mother Nature and what the weather has got to throw at it and and what the growing season is going to be like.

MG: So what happens if some farmers have to make the choice not to fertilise because they can't get a hold of it? It might be. And we'll talk about margins in a moment, but it may be too expensive to get your hands on it. What happens then for crop yields?

ROBERT MISKO: Well, if you can't get the fertiliser and if you can't get you know, in your introduction, you were talking about the potential of manure, which I mean, I guess that's sort of the same thing. If you could get it at the time you need it. It's a potential I mean, farmers are going to look at whatever alternate options they have, possibly some different crops. It might not be quite as high a demand of fertiliser. You'll try to adapt as best you can. But the end result is if you're short of the one of the key ingredients, it is going to have a detrimental effect on the yield and what you're going to have in the end.

MG: For people on the other end of it, what would the consequences be for the folks who buy the food you grow?

ROBERT MISKO: Well, I think I think the consumers are already seeing that with with prices going up. If if there's any more supply reductions, that's only going to make that problem get worse. And it's going to flow through the whole supply chain fairly quickly as as it's doing that right now.

MG: As you mentioned, as well. I mean, the backdrop of this is the war in Ukraine. Bread basket of of Europe. People are really worried about grain supplies broadly. What do you see as the role of Canadian farmers in helping to supplement that shortage?

ROBERT MISKO: Well, again, I think Canadian farmers in general, we're always there. Farmers helps supply the world. And we're definitely going to try to do our part. But the these little glitches are the things that just keep adding up. It's one thing after another. It's the weather, it's the inputs. It's the, you know, price of fuel is up. There's talk of chemical shortages. It just sort of it's never ending. It's like the it's never good to say it's a perfect storm, but it sure seems to be the storm has been building because there's just been little incremental things, just one after the other that keeps cutting at that production. And yeah, it's a concern for farmers, just as any other consumer. We we have to buy our most of our food at the grocery stores, too. So I mean, the costs keep going up and and you just it's getting harder and harder to find certain articles. And I don't think that's going to get better for probably another year or two at least.

MG: What does that mean? I mean, all of those cumulative things, what does that mean for farmers? You operate on a knife edge anyway. There are very, very tight margins. And so could you imagine something like this tipping the balance and pushing people out of farming? Because as you said, everything the price of fuel, all those inputs, things just get more expensive and the margins get tighter and tighter and tighter.

ROBERT MISKO: They are. And and and it is it is putting the squeeze on. And, you know, you look at a lot of farms and it doesn't matter if you're a dairy farmer in Quebec. [Unintelligible] crop or vegetable farmer in or small grain and in in western Canada. Most farms are all family like. I mean, it's they're multigenerational. I mean, people live this this is this is their livelihood, this is their lives. And yeah, those margins keep getting tighter. And the costs, it's not only the margin itself, it's it's it's, you know, you're going to take the scale of what people are having to live with. Like, again, five, ten years ago, you might have been looking at $200 an acre to get your crop in the ground and get it going. Now you're looking at 6 to $700 an acre and that's on a small grain farm. There's there's different types of farming. You could be looking at 1300 dollars an acre, 15, but on an average, you know, Western Canadian farm, if you got 2000 acres and you're looking at 650 to $700 an acre, you're looking at a million and a half dollars just just to get the crop in the ground.

MG: And those costs are upfront.

ROBERT MISKO: I know exactly. You have nothing to guarantee what you're getting on the back end yet. So that stress level has been building. And yes, I do have that concern that we're going to start where we're losing farmers on a regular basis. Now it's getting to be that there's less and less smaller farmers because you just the margins are such that you just can't make it work. And I mean, if you have to have, you know, the farmer and and his or her spouse working full time, yet on top of it, farming is a full time job. Never mind if you go to supplement it with two full time jobs and one job pays that much, it could cover that cost if all of a sudden you don't have a crop. It's it's definitely getting tougher every year. Hmm.

MG: Just before I let you go back to the fertiliser piece, the Federal Government has said that it wants to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers in part because of the impacts of of climate emissions. Is that something that your members are considering or are you exploring that now?

ROBERT MISKO: Well, I think I think we are I mean, I think all the different all the different farm organisations are looking at what can we do to be better, better stewards of the land. I mean, that's what we do. I mean farmers in general, it's in our it's in our best interest to be good with the land as the land is good with us. So we do whatever we can. And if there is options out there, which right now that seems to be the biggest problem, I don't think farmers in any shape, way or form would disagree with with with finding something more environmentally sustainable. But the technology is just not keeping up to the demand. And at this point, you know, there's there's talk of hydrogen fuel cells. Well, if you could get if you could get a economic and reliable source of hydrogen, that would go a long ways on the fertiliser side too, because ammonia NH three uses a lot of natural gas to be produced. If we could do it in a sustainable if they could get the technology going that you can do it with just basically breaking the water down to get the hydrogen and and you could use that in your fertiliser source. That would be great. But at this point, we don't have that option. So we're kind of kind of between a rock and a hard place. It sounds good to reduce the usage, but if we reduce the usage, we reduce our output.

MG: I wish you the best of luck. I hope you have a a decent spring. You're up against it. Robert, good to talk to you.

ROBERT MISKO: All right. Thank you very much for your time.

MG: Robert Misko, grain farmer and Robin near the Manitoba Saskatchewan border. He's also chair of the Manitoba Crop Alliance. That fertiliser shortage is also being felt acutely in eastern Canada, from Ontario to the Atlantic provinces. Industry group Fertiliser Canada estimates that farmers in eastern Canada get 85 to 90% of the nitrogen fertiliser they use from Russia. Karen Proud is president and CEO of Fertiliser Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

So we've been asked a lot in the last few weeks about how quickly fertiliser manufacturers can fill the gap that's being left by the Russian fertiliser supply being cut off. It's not as easy as just flipping a switch. Our fertiliser manufacturing facilities, from a nitrogen fertiliser perspective run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So there really isn't room for additional supply unless you start investing in increasing your capacity and that can take years. We're talking about very sophisticated manufacturing facilities for potash, where Canada is the number one exporter of the world. We can increase production. This is something that's that's mined primarily in Saskatchewan. But again, that takes time. It's likely going to require additional staff, additional investment. So it's not something that we can address overnight. This is going to be a very challenging year, not only for Canadian farmers, but farmers around the world. It's the first year that we've been approached by other countries concerned about their supply of fertiliser. We are very, very fortunate in this country that we manufacture fertiliser here, but other countries don't. And we've been getting calls from countries such as Brazil, from France, just desperate to find a source of fertiliser, not to mention the increasing prices that we have to deal with.

MG: Evan Fraser is director of the Aral Food Institute, Professor of Geography at the University of Guelph. Having good morning to you.

EVAN FRASER: Hi. Good morning.

MG: Take a listen to what we're hearing about what life is like on the farm and the things that farmers like Robert are up against. How serious is this shortage in the context of all of those other pressures that farmers are facing?

EVAN FRASER: Oh, my goodness. Well, my heart's just breaking for the farmers around the world. And and folks like Robert, I mean, he articulated it. The challenge is really, really well. I guess I'd say that if you step outside of Canada and take a global perspective on this, the loss of fertiliser and the precariousness of the weather, the very vagaries caused by climate change, I mean, this will crush farming in many regions of the world, especially in places like Africa. I mean, Canada has the benefit of having relatively fertile soils that actually have quite a high level of background nutrients in them already. It's one of the benefits of our Canadian prairies. So so while the challenges Robert describes are absolutely spot on, it's not as bad as, say, a farmer in Rwanda with highly sandy soils where if they don't fertilise, they can't get a crop off at all. So it's not a challenge. It's a catastrophe in Africa. So it's really, it's really bad, I'm afraid.

MG: What does that mean? I mean, you've hinted at that, but what does it mean more broadly for the global food supply?

EVAN FRASER: Well, I mean, what we're all experiencing right now around the world. And this is a particularly acute with food and farming is is food is a price inflation. I mean, this is a global phenomenon. Food prices, as of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I looked up at the latest U.N. statistics. And and food prices have now never been higher ever in living or recorded history. So we are at just like the temperatures, records keep getting smashed. We are at a record levels, both of hunger and of of food prices. So so from a consumer perspective around the world, especially a poor consumer, someone who who's struggling to make ends meet, whether they're in downtown Toronto or whether whether they're in Africa or something, this is an unbelievably challenging time. And and the the script the problems that Robert's facing about getting fertiliser and fertiliser being three times as expensive. And fertiliser is one of the farmer's main costs, as you said. You know, this this will push food prices up even further. And so we face a cascading series of problems that are rippling out of the Ukraine, exacerbated by climate change and the supply chain challenges associated with the with the pandemic. Creating what Robert describes as well. I would actually say it is the perfect storm. He was he was a little a little cautious, maybe a little more cautious than I am being in his language. But but this is a perfect storm of problems in terms of the world food system.

MG: A side note here is that in Canada, there has been a run on manure that farmers in, you know, the struggle to get fertiliser are turning to cattle manure. And you're seeing even farm equipment companies reporting that they don't have enough spreaders. They call them the honey wagons that are used to get the manure out into into the field. What does that tell you about the desperation that farmers are up against?

EVAN FRASER: Well, I mean , I'm going to paint a short term scary picture and then a long term positive picture to try to not be too depressing about this conversation. The short term the short term scary picture is that between skyrocketing food prices, skyrocketing fertiliser prices, the desperate attempts to switch and find alternatives adapt as Robert just said. Fine. You know, get that old honey wagon out of the back barn and see if you can get some manure to spread. I mean, these these are all examples or illustrations of a system, our food system, deeply, deeply under stress. And we have to pray that our prairies, Canadian prairies, get good weather conditions over the next four or five months. Evidence is that that Canadian farmers are putting a lot of spring wheat in in response to higher prices. And and this strikes me as a good thing, because Ukraine and Russia are the world's one in five top and fifth biggest wheat exporter, or they're in the top five. And so maybe the Canadian prairies can can help fill some of that gap and take some of the pressure off. But we're very vulnerable to what Mother Nature throws at us this this summer. And and, you know, we're in the middle of climate change. So so that's that's scary. So so all of these things illustrate a system under stress. My my slightly optimistic and maybe I'm just looking for silver linings and grasping at straws here. But my slight silver lining here is that high fertiliser prices will hopefully spur the kind of innovations that Robert's talking about slow release fertilisers, fertilisers, the access that use microbes to access nitrogen from the atmosphere as opposed to using lots of natural gas to to create a nitrogen pellet, smart tractors that are that are more efficient at putting the fertiliser in the right place at the right time, and that overall we will be able to become more efficient and by being more efficient will create less emissions. And that maybe some of this innovation and technological breakthroughs that Robert's alluding to will be unlocked by these high prices. So so maybe in the long term, there's a, you know, in the three to five to seven year horizon, there's some silver linings here. But but as that fertiliser representative, you just you just played the clip of illustrates, this is going to be a really tough year.

MG: What are the real concerns? I mean, he hinted at that in terms of the production. But when it comes to the impact of chemical fertilisers and the fact that the government wants to reduce the the amount of them used, what is what is the impact that they have on the environment?

EVAN FRASER: Okay. So this is really big. And let's just take a quick step back in general. And this is going to sound crazy to people, but in general, it's really hard to get data, but in general, fertilisers are over applied by about by about 50 or 60%. So we put down way more fertiliser than the plants can use and we do that for all sorts of reasons. It's hard to put fertiliser down efficiently and put it in at just the right place at just the right time for the plants to utilise. Fertiliser has historically been fairly inexpensive. I mean it's expensive for a farmer, but but in general there's not a lot of incentives to put it down super efficiently. The technologies are hard to do it efficiently if you put it down and then it rains and then it washes through the soil, it's hard. So we over apply fertiliser and. Because fertiliser takes a lot of energy to produce, it's a major source of greenhouse gas emissions linked with farming. I mean, I'm not going to put a percentage on it because it's hard, but it's a it's a significant contribution to Canada's greenhouse gas inventory comes out of a fertiliser and the way farmers use it. And that's not a criticism of farmers, that's just the challenges of the system. So one area that Canada can address or can it can work to get its emissions down is by being more efficient with fertiliser. And that's probably about developing these technologies. Smart fertilisers, smart tractors, bio fertilisers. Those are all sort of buzzwords. But the ultimate result of those technologies is more crops with less with less fertiliser applied. And that'll that'll be a good thing for farmers. Bottom line. It'll also be a good thing for the environment.

MG: As you mentioned, we also in this country are blessed with with really good soil. And so you have farmers who will say that they farm the soil, that that's their job. Robert talked about that as well, that you are a steward of the land and you have a move towards more regenerative farming where you are trying to build up the natural benefits of the soil. Is that an answer?

EVAN FRASER: Oh, absolutely. So one of the things that's happened in Canada over my lifetime in general, not everywhere in Canada, but in general, is what's called the lock loss of crop rotation. So when farmers would have previously planted four or five different crops, say a a corn, soybeans, a wheat, and then maybe left, left a year with some some leguminous crops just to plough under to build up soil fertility. Say, in Ontario, for instance, we've really lost a lot of that complexity over the last generation. And many farmers are just planting corn and soybeans on top of each other. So that's a very hard and that's responding to the market and that's responding to all sorts of economic signals. So, again, I'm not blaming anybody for this, but the reality is we're really farming in a far simpler way than we used to. And so perhaps having high commodity prices and high fertiliser prices, there'll be economic incentives to go back to using these more complex crop rotations, which will be part of what they call regenerative agriculture, regenerating the soil, building the organic matter in the soil up. And that'll have lots of benefits like requiring less fertiliser and also soils high in organic matter. Organic matter essentially acts like like a sponge. It traps water and traps nutrients when they're abundant and stores them one for when they're needed. So getting back to some of these regenerative agricultural practises is a really good thing for both farming and the environment. But we need the economics to reward a farmer to do that.

MG: That's going to say, is that happening at scale yet? Not not you know.

EVAN FRASER: Yeah, it's slowly and and and as and a little bit but but really we need, you know, government policy and technology to help enable that and and, you know, high corn prices, for instance, without the technologies and without government policy to support regenerative agriculture, high corn prices on their own, just lead farmers to do the obvious thing, which is to plant more corn.

MG: Last minute or so that we have. If you take a look back at that crisis that you were predicting when it comes to what might be happening in the absence of fertiliser in countries that don't have that great soil that we might have here, is there a role for Canadian agriculture and farmers to play in helping to fill some of those gaps in the global food supply?

EVAN FRASER: Yeah, I mean, on the short term, this is going to be a hard year and the World Food Programme, for instance, illustrates massive increases in hunger and and and real serious problems for farming around the world and Canada. You know, as long as we get a good crop this year has a big role to play. I think looking forward, we have a generational or and a historic opportunity to become the world's trusted supplier of safe and sustainable food. We've got the land, we've got the resources. We have the the savvy, technologically sophisticated farming community with a good infrastructure. This is an opportunity for our country to be an agri food powerhouse. And and I actually think this could be a remarkable window of opportunity to train the next generation and to farm in a slightly different way to work with our farmers to expand the capacity that they have to grow sustainable food and to market that to the world.

MG: Have been great to talk to you about. We'll end on the positive note. Thank you very much.

EVAN FRASER: Sounds good.

MG: Evan Fraser, director of the Earth Food Institute, a professor of geography as well at the University of Guelph. This is the current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Coming up next week on this programme, a CBC investigation uncovers a dark history of alleged serial sexual abuse in Toronto area music programmes. The alleged abuse was either missed or minimised by school administrators and later the police. CBC senior reporter Julie Ireton has spent years looking into high school abuse cases, and on Monday on The Current, she'll bring us her documentary. It centres on two survivors who walk the same path for decades but just recently met.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: He actually leaned down and gave us all goodnight kisses with tongue. Our teacher. And afterwards. Did he do that to you too? Did he do that to you, too? Yeah. You look back and you realise that's so inappropriate.

VOICE 2: He had sex with me once in the classroom in a closet and that, you know, I remember being humiliating. I never resisted because I was like, I was under his control. I had no way out.

MG: Julie Ireton's full documentary, Under His Control, will be heard Monday morning on The Current. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

There are limits that we are going to hit. In some places. We ought to be hitting them, but in the future we will hit them more and more. Mitigation for Heat is the best adaptation, actually. Just let's not get so hot.

MG: It hit 49 degrees in Jacobabad, Pakistan, last weekend. When speak about the role that climate change is playing in the heat wave that's hitting two months earlier than usual, and what this heat is doing to people who can't find shelter. The conversation coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Back in a minute. Stay with us.

Temperatures reach record highs in India and Pakistan

Guests: Chandni Singh, Fahad Saeed

MG: Hi. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. It has been so hot in parts of India and Pakistan that there are videos of people baking roti on the hoods of cars. Rolling blackouts and power cuts have left millions sweating all day and all night. Temperatures have been above 40 degrees Celsius for days on end. And in some cities in Pakistan, they've recorded temperatures hitting 50 degrees. The Yamuna River flows through Delhi, where kids and adults have been taking refuge.

SOUNDCLIP

The summer of 2022 is absolutely excruciating. I mean, the heat has been toppled with pollution and has made things worse. And you really cannot think about leaving the house without having any protective gears or being completely hydrated because it's that bad out there.

[Sound: Wind]

MG: That's the sound of hot winds blowing across Delhi.

SOUNDCLIP

The heat is so intense, it's making people sick.

The heat is really killing me. I have been sick since last two and a half week and doctors have advised me not to go out. The amount of dust in the atmosphere too. It's really, really bad. The situation is really bad and I don't know how the government or any official are. We as a humans are going to take care of this.

MG: In some regions of India and Pakistan. It was the hottest April in 122 years. Chandni Singh is in Bangalore, India. She's a senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. She was also a lead author on the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Also on the line is Fahad Saeed. He's a climate scientist with the think tank Climate Analytics, and he's joining us from Islamabad, Pakistan. Hello to you both.

GUESTS: Hello. Thanks for having us.

MG: Chandni. How does it feel outside where you are right now? What's the temperature?

CHANDNI SINGH: So I'm in Bangalore right now, which is fortunately quite pleasant. It's in the mid to late twenties, the temperature. But last week I was in Delhi, which was around 44 degrees Celsius when I was there and it was just excruciatingly hot.

MG: What is excruciatingly hot feel like?

CHANDNI SINGH: It feels very hot, also very dry. And although I had plenty of water and covered my head to make sure I'm not exposed to that heat, at that time I didn't feel it. But then by evening I was really tired and actually my fatigue lasted for two days. So it's that extreme heat when you are outdoors, but also then a lot of fatigue afterwards.

MG: You tweeted a story about waiting for a bus. The temperature was 40 plus degrees. This was a few days ago. What happened there?

CHANDNI SINGH: Yeah. So it was actually it was 43 degrees that day. And I was for various reasons outside. Usually we are actually in India and Pakistan. I think we've been accustomed to heat and we do have strategies to deal with it. So one wouldn't choose to be out at 2 p.m. in Delhi heat really. But I was on that day and trying to take a bus and we do have air conditioned buses in Delhi but also non air conditioned ones. The air conditioned one that came was so full that there was actually no space for me to get into it. And Delhi is also seeing a rise in COVID cases. So I was not very keen to get into that crowded bus and took a non air conditioned one, which as you can imagine, was extremely hot. And that's what led to this two days of being absolutely tired with the heat.

MG: What do you think that story says about how this sort of heat impacts people who are more vulnerable than you, people who perhaps don't have air conditioning and a home to go to?

CHANDNI SINGH: Yeah. So that's what, that's exactly what I was reflecting on when I came back home. I came back to a house where I had air conditioning. I had lots of cool water to drink. And it was just I think it was three or 4 hours that I was outdoors. But there are people who are much worse off than me, people who don't have access to either electricity or to cooling devices. All also this ability to not move out. A lot of us can do our jobs indoors, but there are certain livelihoods like street vendors, for example. You have to be out to be able to earn. So for such people as that, it's it's inevitable being exposed to such heat. And there's this added thing of at least some of the climate data shows that nights are becoming hotter as well. And that means that the body doesn't get a chance to recuperate even in the night, where usually one would, you know, be able to recuperate from the day's heat. So it's really like this double, double exposure to extreme temperatures.

MG: Fahad, what about for you? You're in Islamabad. What is the temperature like there right now?

FAHAD SAEED: So right now it's pleasant, Matt, because we had some showers in the last couple of days, but before that, it was over 40 centigrade, almost 42 degrees centigrade in Islamabad. And that is pretty unusual for the for the city. We normally have temperature of around 32 degrees centigrade at this time of the year.

MG: How are people coping with those high temperatures? Are people staying inside if they can? Are they outside? Are people still having to work outside?

FAHAD SAEED: That is exactly the same what Chandni has said. So some of us are blessed once we began to stay inside our houses with air conditioning and cooling and other facilities. But there have been people who are street vendors and daily wagers who have to be there to work to earn their living. They have to stay outside. And at this time of the year, the heat wave coincided with the holy month of Ramadan. So you can imagine that people who are working outside and having fast at the same time that don't have enough chances to hydrate themselves during Ramadan. But looking into Ramadan is over now. And there is another prediction of a heatwave in the in the next week as well. But thankfully, the Ramadan is over and they can at least drink water while being in the sun.

MG: You wrote after I witnessed the 2015 heat wave. Forecasts for another one come with serious dread. What are you most worried about?

FAHAD SAEED: The most worrying thing for me is that the high level of humidity, because right now, the last bit of last week, we did not have a high level of humidity. The moisture in the air. But you never know in this part of the world, because of the onset of monsoon and because of climate change, the weather is so unpredictable. We are witnessing something that we haven't witnessed in the past. So if the high temperature, high level of mercury continues with high level of humidity, it would make the heat unbearable for most of the people who do not have access to artificial cooling facilities.

MG: Your research focuses on heat. What impacts have you seen when it comes to those high temperatures across Pakistan?

FAHAD SAEED: First of all, I mean, these heat waves are the silent killer. So the first threat is to the human lives as compared to some other events like floods or cyclones, where they incur a lot of a huge economic damage. Heat wave actually kills people. So that is the most important thing I can think of whenever we talk about heat wave, because in 2015 we have witnessed that the heat wave in Pakistan resulted in the death of more than 3000 people in a matter of just a couple of days. So but besides that, it can also incur huge economic losses, for example, to the to the farmers, especially those who have high level of ability with small farms and their heat at the wrong time of the year, it can really damage the crops.

MG: Chandni, what have you seen in terms of the effect of these temperatures on crops in India?

CHANDNI SINGH: Yes, so there's been quite a lot of coverage actually on impacts on wheat and I'm sure it's the same actually in Pakistan. So March and April harvest season for the late sown wheat in India and northern India, which is also a breadbasket. And some farmers these are anecdotal. Still, the government hasn't put out the actual numbers, but farmers are reporting 15 to 20% reduction in the yields. So that's a direct impact on wheat, which is core to our food security. Apart from that, there are other, you know, fruits and vegetables like mangoes, leeches, tomatoes, lemons. All of them have seen a reduction in yield and then a shooting up of prices. So consumers have been directly affected as well. So that's on the I would say on the agriculture food crop side, but there are also impacts in for particular livelihoods. And I think that gets spoken of a little less. We have a lot of informal livelihoods in Indian cities, people who are driving rickshaws, people who are street vendors or construction labourers, and all of them have to be out during the day and are dependent on these daily wages for their food, really, for their livelihood. So it's all of these people are exposed quite a bit and infectivity drastically, and that could.

MG: Have catastrophic economic effects if they can't be out working. But also, you know, as you said, the the breadbasket of the nation is being affected by this.

CHANDNI SINGH: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And another link that's being made, maybe it's a bit early to say with a lot of certainty, but the links that are being made is that India also is also exports wheat. And with the Ukraine crisis, there was this hope that India will be able to meet some of the deficit on wheat, which perhaps India will still export wheat, but it'll be to a lesser degree just because we need to also ensure national food security. So there's that international ripple effect as well. And actually in the IPCC report, recent one, we do talk about this, this cascading effect of hazards where what happens in one place doesn't stay in that place. It can cascade out across countries as well.

MG: What do you see as the relationship between the heat wave that you're living through right now and climate change?

CHANDNI SINGH: Yeah. So what we know, again, from the science with a lot of certainty and I'm sure Farhad can add to this actually is that there is there has been a trend of increasing heat and all the climate models to show that with sort of the high degree of certainty that we are expecting to see higher temperatures and higher precipitation across the Indian subcontinent. And these two things coming together is this idea of breathable temperatures, which is that heat and humidity go up, which together become more catastrophic only because you need you need a dry dryness in the air to be able to sweat and allow the body to cool when it's humid. That doesn't happen. And so the body really. Starts hitting the limits of survivability. So that is what we know with a lot of certainty. All the models show that we're going to see these higher wet temperatures across South Asia, really India, Pakistan, as well as Bangladesh. Cities named in the IPCC report as going to be approaching some of these high red temperatures by 2050, almost breaching the limits of survivability by 2100 if we do not reduce our emissions.

MG: Farhad What do you see as the link between what's happening right now and the broader issue of climate change?

FAHAD SAEED: I'm convinced that it is due to climate change. There is certain protocols, scientific protocol through which you carry out a study and you attribute the particular event to climate change, since this is a very extreme event. So the studies are being carried out to, you know, to give scientifically robust view on whether it can be attributed to climate change or not. But what we are witnessing, and you can see yourself the ten degrees centigrade, higher temperature than normal, it just cannot happen by itself that that is beyond natural variability of a climate system. And yes, in the month of April, the temperature rose up to 50 degrees centigrade in some parts of Pakistan, which have never been seen before during this time of the year. So I'm pretty convinced that if you're aligned with the findings of the IPCC report, it says that because of climate change today, these heat events are becoming more common and not yet at 1.1 degrees centigrade warmer than the pre-industrial world at the current level of warming. And if you talk about Paris agreement, which talks about this limit of 1.5 degrees centigrade, that we have to hold that warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. So you can imagine that what the temperature of a cheek would be at 1.5 degrees centigrade and anything beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade will result in, you know, a catastrophic event in this part of the world, the people who just could not survive. And those limits, if we ever go beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade, are predicted.

MG: And so when you hear Pakistan's minister for climate saying that this is now an existential crisis, are you encouraged that politicians would be using a phrase like that?

FAHAD SAEED: I that is that is something like telling the world that the kind of a problem we facing here. So I will concur with the with the with the statement of the minister, because we are certainly facing existential threat. And that is not a common phrase we use when we talk about heat extreme in this part of the world. But I think that we should be focussing more on using this phrase because it's is just a doomsday scenario for for vulnerable people who cannot afford artificial cooling. And along with that, there are huge power cuts. Some part of the country are facing power cuts of 12 to 20 hours a day. And and once again, you can imagine that if you don't have artificial cooling, even if you've got if you can't afford that kind of, you know, artificial cooling, but the facilities are just not there. So I would say that it is it is certainly something to be worried.

MG: What does that mean, a doomsday scenario? What does that practically mean, do you think?

FAHAD SAEED: I would say that having the event of two 2015 heatwave in mind where you just had more than a thousand people dying in one city of Pakistan, Karachi, at the level of one one degree of 1.1 degree centigrade of warming. It's a clear proof that that is something that which a human body physiologically cannot sustain. So that's what I mean when I say a doomsday scenario.

MG: Chandni, how prepared were governments in India for what is happening now when it comes to extreme heat?

CHANDNI SINGH: Yes, of course, we have been living with heat, heat as something that is not foreign to the Indian subcontinent. So we do have strategies. National Disaster Management Authority releases early warnings. The Indian Met Department gives forecasts about heat and I think their methods are quite sophisticated on that side of forecasting and warnings. We are well prepared, I would say, as a country. However, what happens is that we need to really think about that. That's one one element of the story. But there's a deeper, more systemic change we need around our labour laws, for example, or how our buildings are being built. Right now, we have urban plans, for example, don't have any way of thinking about extreme heat and then these heat and humidity coming together. So it's really we we currently are looking at it as just one risk and very incrementally we're trying to adapt to it. But that's not enough. It's as as we've been saying, there are vulnerable populations that need to be targeted in interventions for them to really think about how do we change the way we work and live? Given this kind of heat, the other side of the story is that, as Farhad also was saying, there are limits that we are going to hit. In some places we are already hitting them, but in the future we will hit them more and more. And if we are going to hit these limits to adapt, what do we do about that? So instead of waiting for those limits to get breached, we really need to think about addressing the root cause, which is that we are continuing to emit greenhouse gases. And that is really the story of mitigation. So a lot of people have been focussing on adapting to heat. Of course we need to both these countries are doing that, but that can only get us so far. So it's really a story of focussing a lot on deep mitigation and then of course trying our best to adapt. But that can go on endlessly because if you look at the projections, 2030, 2050, we're going to see really tough, tough weather which which will really test our large population.

MG: What does that mean for you? When you talked earlier about survivability and Farhad talks about a doomsday scenario adaptation to your point can only go so far. And we'll talk in a moment about the global community's response to this. But for people who are there in those countries, the vulnerable people, what does that future look like for them, do you think?

CHANDNI SINGH: It's a difficult future and it's also a deeply unequal future. So people who can afford to cool their homes can afford to live in parts of the city that are greener. And so, you know, a few degrees lower than these very densely populated, informal settlements will be able to protect themselves. People who can stay indoors versus those who actually have contributed very little to the problem are going to be seeing the biggest damages and the biggest burdens of this. So it's really my deepest problem with all of this is the inequality and that people who are already vulnerable are going to be seeing this risk the most. So again, I think one of the solutions is, of course, more targeted measures towards those who are more vulnerable. Also prepping our health systems to deal with such things, not only when a heatwave is going on, but preparatory measures. And then finally, as I said, mitigation. Mitigation is in the case of heat. As another colleague of mine, Dr. Democritus, said, mitigation for Heat is the best adaptation. Actually, just let's not get so hot.

MG: And so for the global community that's watching in horror as this unfolds would do what do you want from that global community?

CHANDNI SINGH: Yeah. So one of the messages from both Working Group one, which is the physical science IPCC report and Working Group two, which is on risks, impacts and adaptation. Both these reports actually say that while the Global South and actually South Asia in particular, that the frontline of climate change, no country and no population is going to be spared. So we have seen devastating heatwaves in Canada, for example, in Europe. So there's also, I think increasingly we have to realise that as this is a global problem, we can also find global solutions. So right now it's perhaps very visible in India and Pakistan, but no place is going to be spared really. So we really need to be thinking about this as a global commons problem and not an us versus them. And who is going to reach net zero first and all of that, which I feel is the politics of it. It's it's really not keeping people at the centre for hard.

MG: Fahad, what do you want to see from the global community?

FAHAD SAEED: Yeah, of course there's a need for a response from global community and the UN of people too. You know, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiation happens. We go to court every year and there's an urgent call to reduce emission by 50% by 2030. So that is the quote from the scientist. But we really have to cut the emissions, but specifically for affordable and enable countries like Saudi and also these developed countries in Africa. There would be support from the developed countries in terms of finance, in terms of capacity building and transfer of technology, because right now the countries in South Asia, they are adopting a bat which is not very clean and green. And just to throw a few numbers that 70% of India electricity is is based on coal. And in Pakistan we have 30% of energy mix coming from imported oil and 30% is from the still go and around 10% is from coal. So in order to fulfil their energy needs, these countries are opening up. Outrageous. Again, I would say medically so there's an acute need for for making the transfer of technology possible, as well as finance and capacity building to adapt to adopt this technology in the developing world.

MG: Are you confident that this will be a moment that spurs the world to action?

FAHAD SAEED: I'm hoping so. I'm hoping so because we haven't been putting a lot of effort as a global community, but it's a wake up call for improvement. Each year we are reducing the extremes. We are unbeatable. We are seeing economic damages. We are seeing people dying because of heat wave events. And again, it's a question of inequality. Those who are not responsible for causing this mess are the ones who are less resilient to bear the brunt of climate extremes. So I would say that I would concur with what you said, that it's also a matter of inequality, not only at Amazon, but also at the global level.

MG: Chandni, just finally, to you, I mean, at the end of that story that you wrote online about that very hot bus ride, you said as a climate scientist, the question plaguing me is, where do we go from here? Are you confident that this will be one of those moments that spurs the global community into action?

CHANDNI SINGH: I am hoping that it will, as far though, so said, but I think we will need many more of these events to happen before the global community. It's not, this heat wave is not it is, of course, very extreme. But we have had heatwaves earlier. The 2015 heatwave was big. There have been other events in other countries as well. And somehow the policy space moves at such a glacial pace. But what I am looking forward to is the COP 27, which is happening in November in Egypt. Countries like ours are going to be citing these kinds of examples when we talk about loss and damage at that, that cop and I, we have evidence loss and damage is not something that's going to happen in the future, at least in countries like ours. It's happening right now. So I'm hoping that armed with this kind of evidence, we can actually make a stronger case at the international level to say we really need to mitigate fast. And now so that gives me hope. And the other part that gives me hope is the climate science has just become so clear. We've had three IPCC reports in quick succession that have really laid out the problem, the risks, and then the solutions to adapt and mitigate. So the science is clear, the impacts on the ground are clear, so hopefully the policy can now follow.

MG: I'm grateful to speak with you both. Thank you very much.

GUESTS: Thank you. Thank you.

MG: Chandni Singh is a senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. Fahad Saeed is a climate scientist with the think tank Climate Analytics. You can hear more about the heat wave facing this part of the world this weekend. On what on earth I'll speak with Suruchi Bhadwal, who's worked with vulnerable people in India to help them adapt to a warming world as this heatwave rips through parts of the country. Bhadwal talks about the efforts underway to keep people safe. Impacts this heat wave will have on global food systems. That's coming up this weekend on what on Earth Sunday, 11 a.m. Eastern, 11:30 a.m. and Newfoundland and parts of Labrador. That is the current for the Friday and for this week. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's q. Jennifer Gray of Dirty Dancing fame. She was also in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, of course, Ferris Bueller's sister, who was a key role in that film. She has a new memoir out about all the things that she has done. And she will talk to guest host Talia Schlanger in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. Leafs, Lightning's, Oilers, Kings, all tonight, playoff hockey on your CBC. What more could you possibly want on a Friday night trying to Maple Leafs are in Tampa so you will not hear their goal song in the arena. But we can still play it here because it's good. No matter your thoughts on the Toronto Maple Leafs, it's Hall and Oates. You make my dreams. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Have a great weekend. Go Leaves, go.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

Friday May 6, 2022 Full Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode