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In early March, people who live along Mozambique's long coastline began to hear rumors about a cyclone. 三月初，居住在莫桑比克漫长海岸线上的人们开始听到有关龙卷风的传言。 The storm was forming in the Indian Ocean, in the narrow band of warm water between Mozambique and the island of Madagascar. 风暴形成于印度洋在莫桑比克和马达加斯加岛之间的温暖的狭长地带。 Overnight on March 14, 2019, the storm struck Mozambique head-on, barreling over the port city of Beira and flooding an enormous swath of land as it moved inland toward Zimbabwe. 2019年3月14日夜间，风暴正面袭击了莫桑比克，席卷了港口城市贝拉，并向津巴布韦内陆移动，淹没了大片土地。  In low-lying, rural Buzi district, the wind arrived like an explosion. 在地势低洼的农村布孜地区，大风登陆时就像发生了一场爆炸。 It tore the roofs off homes and schools and churches. 它掀翻了房屋、学校和教堂的屋顶。 It ripped trees out by their roots. 它把大树连根拔起。 When the floodwaters came the next day, there were perilously few high spots left where people could escape 当第二天洪水来临时，几乎没有人可以用来躲避危险的高地了。  Those in some of the worst-hit areas were cut off for weeks. 在一些受灾最严重的地区，电力供应已经中断了数周。 Neighbors rescued each other and did their best to help each other survive. 邻居们互相救助，竭尽全力互相帮助。 At least 600 people died in Cyclone Idai, according to the United Nations. 根据联合国的数据，至少有600人死于飓风伊戴。 Mozambique's long coastline, sprawling river delta and changing weather patterns make it susceptible to multiple hazards as the climate changes. 莫桑比克漫长的海岸线、广阔的三角洲和不断变化的天气模式使其非常容易受到气候变化带来的多种危害的影响。  Flooding, heat waves, cyclones and drought are all getting more frequent and severe as the Earth gets hotter. 随着地球变得越来越热，洪水、热浪、龙卷风和干旱都变得越来越频繁和严重。 Five weeks later, a second cyclone — this one dubbed Kenneth — hit a less populated area on the border between Mozambique and Tanzania. 五周后，第二个气旋——这次被称为肯尼斯——袭击了莫桑比克和坦桑尼亚边境的一个人口较少的地区。 It was the strongest cyclone to ever make landfall in Africa. 这是有史以来在非洲登陆的最强飓风。 In all, the back-to-back storms seriously affected about 2 million people. 连续的风暴总共影响了大约200万人。 "The example of Mozambique must be an alert for all," United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said when he visited Beira over the summer. “莫桑比克的例子必须引起所有人的警惕，”联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯今年夏天访问贝拉时说。  The disasters put Mozambique's government and citizens in the unenviable position of responding to an onslaught of climate-driven disasters while also doing their best to prepare for an even more dangerous future. 这些灾害使莫桑比克政府和公民处于一种危险的境地:一方面要应对气候引发的灾难，另一方面又要尽最大努力为更加危险的未来做准备。 They also have made clear that, absent international climate action, there's only so much that vulnerable countries can do to adapt to extreme weather. 他们还明确表示，如果没有国际的气候行动，脆弱国家在适应极端天气方面只能做这么多。 Long before the cyclones of 2019, Mozambique's government and the International Red Cross had realized that flooding was a serious problem in the country. 早在2019年的飓风之前，莫桑比克政府和国际红十字会就意识到洪水是该国的一个严重问题。 In 2000 and again in 2013, rivers overflowed and hundreds were displaced by water. 2000年和2013年，河流再次泛滥，数百人因洪水而流离失所。  But far fewer people died as a result of the 2013 floods. 但2013年的洪水造成的死亡人数要少得多。 In the intervening years, Mozambique's government and the International Red Cross had studied where and how people were vulnerable to floods and other disasters, then asked community leaders to volunteer to serve on Disaster Risk Reduction Committees for their towns and neighborhoods. 在此期间，莫桑比克政府和国际红十字会研究了人们在哪里以及如何容易受到洪水和其他灾害的影响，然后要求社区领导人自愿为他们所在的城镇和社区的减灾委员会服务。 Such a decentralized approach to disaster preparedness is something that the Red Cross and others argue for around the world. 红十字会和其他组织在世界各地都主张采取这种分散的备灾方法。 The idea is that local leaders learn how to prepare for disasters and help their neighbors stay safe during extreme weather events. 他们的想法是，让当地领导人学习如何应对灾难，并帮助他们的邻居在极端天气事件中保持安全。 Such programs are not a replacement for national and international climate action, but they are nonetheless an important part of building climate resilience in many places. 这些项目不能取代国家和国际气候行动，但它们仍然是在许多地方建立气候适应能力的重要组成部分。  By 2017, more than 14,000 people were serving on more than 1,000 local committees around Mozambique, according to the World Bank. 世界银行的数据显示，截至2017年，有超过1.4万人在莫桑比克各地的1000多个地方委员会工作。 "I'm responsible for making sure everyone knows where the high ground is," explains Luis Josine, who has lived in the farming community of Mondiane since 1961 and became the leader of his local disaster committee when it was founded five years ago. “我负责确保每个人都知道高地在哪里，”路易斯·琼西解释道，他从1961年起就住在蒙戴安的农业社区，五年前他的地方灾害委员会成立时，他成为了该委员会的领导人。 The tools and training he received were relatively basic: a handheld radio for weather warnings, an orange vest, a whistle and three flags of different colors. 他所接受的工具和训练都是相对基础的:一台手持天气警报收音机，一件橙色的背心，一个哨子和三面不同颜色的旗子。 Mondiane is near a river that's prone to flooding. 蒙戴安靠近一条容易发洪水的河。 In 2000, dozens of people who lived in this area drowned, Josine says. 琼西说，2000年，这个地区有数十人溺水身亡。 Today when there is a flood warning, Josine goes through town blowing a whistle and waving a flag. 今天当有洪水警报时，琼西吹着口哨，挥舞着旗子穿过小镇。 If the flag is blue, it means a flood is likely in two or three days, he explains. 他解释说，如果旗子是蓝色的，这意味着两到三天内可能会有洪水。  If it's yellow, it means one day. 如果旗子是黄色的，它意味着一天内会发洪水。 If the flag is red, it's an emergency, and people should evacuate immediately. 如果旗子是红色的，这表示是紧急情况，人们应该立即疏散。 "It is good," he says. “这很管用，”他说道。 "People listen. They know to leave and go up the road." That makes him feel proud, especially since he has noticed that the flood risk in the town of Mondiane is increasing. “人们会听。他们知道该走了，该上路了。”这让他感到自豪，尤其是他注意到蒙戴安镇的洪水风险正在增加。 "We've been noticing the climate changing here since around the year 2000," he explains. “我们从2000年左右就开始注意到这里的气候变化，”他解释道。 "The floods are getting bigger and more severe. The droughts are getting longer." “洪水越来越大，越来越严重。干旱时间也越来越长。” Climate scientists say that's in keeping with trends in the whole region and that extreme weather is expected to get more common as the Earth continues to heat up. 气候科学家表示，这与整个地区的趋势一致，随着地球继续变暖，极端天气预计会越来越常见。  "Disasters put people back into poverty," says Michel Matera, a senior analyst at the World Bank in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo. 世界银行驻莫桑比克首都马普托的高级分析师米歇尔·马泰拉说:“灾害使人们重新陷入贫困。 Without efforts to decrease the damage from floods and other disasters, he says, people will be "continuously trapped into poverty." 他说，如果不努力减少洪水和其他灾害造成的损失，人们将“继续陷入贫困”。 It's particularly challenging to avoid that vicious cycle when climate change drives more than one disaster in a short period of time. 当气候变化在短时间内造成不止一场灾难时，避免这种恶性循环变得尤其具有挑战性。 In the months after the cyclones drew international attention to Mozambique, another disaster was unfolding more quietly: a drought. 在飓风引起国际社会对莫桑比克的关注后的几个月里，另一场灾难悄然发生:干旱。  The rain from the cyclones had come all at once, in a torrent, but the more moderate, continuous rain that farmers rely on didn't fall in much of the country. 飓风带来的降雨是一场倾盆大雨，但是农民所依赖的更温和的、持续的降雨并没有降临到这个国家的大部分地区。 Disaster Risk Reduction Committees worked to lessen the drought's blow. 减灾委员会一直在努力减轻旱灾的影响。 "We collect the water, we do our farming very carefully," explains Juliet Fernando Chaque, a member of the local committee in the town of Xidwaxine. “我们会提前收集水，我们会非常谨慎地对待我们的农业，”朱丽叶·费尔南多·查克解释说，她是西达克瓦辛镇当地委员会的成员。 She says the community has done a lot in recent years to cope with extreme weather, including drought. 她说，社区近年来为应对包括干旱在内的极端天气做了很多工作。 For example, the town now has a communal silo to store food, and farmers plant crops that are tolerant of drought, like sweet potatoes. 例如，小镇现在有一个公共粮仓来储存食物，农民们会种植耐旱的作物，比如红薯。  But this ongoing drought has been so extreme, it has overwhelmed their efforts. 但是这场持续的干旱太极端了，已经超过了他们的努力。 It began in 2018, and at this point, any food that residents managed to store is long gone. 它开始于2018年，在这一点上，任何居民设法储存的食物都已经吃光很久了。 The soil is dry and cracked. Planting season came in September and still there was no rain. 土壤干裂。9月到了播种季节，但还是没有下雨。 So there's almost no planting. 所以也没法进行耕种。 Women from Xidwaxine have started walking three hours to a lake where water lilies grow to harvest the plants and eat the bitter tubers at the base of the roots. 来自西达克瓦辛的妇女们已经开始步行3个小时到一个湖里去，那里生长着睡莲，她们在那里收割庄稼，吃树根下苦涩的块茎。 "We are really suffering," Chaque says. “我们真的太苦了，”查克说道。 Adapting to drought here will likely require comparatively big, expensive infrastructure projects to bring water out to the fields. 为了适应这里的干旱，可能需要相对大型、昂贵的基础设施项目来把水引入农田。 Putting the brakes on climate change in general will require a global shift away from fossil fuels that has been slow at best. 要想在总体上遏制气候变化，就需要全球改变对化石燃料的依赖。 That's a difficult reality for local leaders like Chaque, who have proudly, persistently pushed their communities to become more resilient to global changes that they cannot control. 对于像查克这样的地方领导人来说，这是一个很难面对的现实，不过他们一直在自豪地、坚持不懈地推动自己的社区变得更能适应他们无法控制的全球变化。 问题 -End- 感谢关注 跟amber一起看世界 |
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