The Climate Pattern

Goal: After this lesson you can explain the climate-vulnerability spectrum and the hard irony at its center. Subject: Geography | Run time: about 6 minutes

Quick recall

Last time we ranked the plants by geographic specificity. Two quick questions. One: which plant is the most geographically restricted? Kava, on volcanic Pacific islands (Lebot et al., 1992). Two: what does more geographic specificity tend to mean for a plant? More cultural embedding and harder to commodify.

Why this matters

Now line the same six plants up a second way, by how badly climate change threatens them. When you do, a cruel pattern appears. The plants that best resisted being taken are the very ones most at risk of being lost.

The idea

Run down the spectrum. Tea, the most adaptable, faces moderate climate risk, because it can grow in many places. Coffee faces high risk, because warming pushes it up the mountain until it runs out of higher ground; by 2050, up to half of today's coffee land could become unsuitable (Bunn et al., 2015). Cacao is worse, because it depends on a lowland forest it cannot leave; a two-degree rise could make up to 89 percent of its suitable land unsuitable (Laderach et al., 2013). The forest plants, guayusa and kola, are very highly vulnerable, because they need an intact forest ecosystem that deforestation and warming are tearing apart (Lewis et al., 2003). And kava is the most exposed of all, because it grows only on small tropical islands threatened by sea-level rise, salt intrusion, and stronger storms (Lebot et al., 1992). Now hold the two spectrums side by side. The adaptable plants, tea and sugar, are both the easiest to commodify and the safest from climate change. The place-bound plants, cacao, guayusa, kola, and kava, both resisted commodification and face the gravest danger. The same rootedness that protected them from extraction now leaves them most exposed to a warming world. That is the hard irony of the season. The plants most worth protecting, the ones still tied to living cultures and intact ecosystems, are the ones we are most likely to lose.

Picture it

Picture two thermometers rising side by side, one for the planet, one for the risk to these plants. As the first climbs, the second climbs faster for exactly the plants that needed a forest or an island. The coffee farm can crawl uphill for a while. The cacao tree cannot leave its forest. The kava plant cannot leave its island. The rising line catches them where they stand.

Remember this

The fact to carry out: the most geographically specific plants, cacao, guayusa, kola, and kava, are both the hardest to commodify and the most vulnerable to climate change (Laderach et al., 2013; Lebot et al., 1992). What protected them from extraction now puts them most at risk, which is why their fate is tied to protecting forests and island nations.

Quick check

Quick check. What is the cruel irony of the climate pattern? The plants that best resisted being commodified, the most place-bound ones, are the very plants most threatened by climate change (Laderach et al., 2013).

Key Takeaways

Climate vulnerability runs from moderate (tea) to extreme (kava), tracking how place-bound each plant is.
Coffee could lose up to half its land by 2050; a 2 degree rise could make up to 89 percent of cacao land unsuitable (Bunn et al., 2015; Laderach et al., 2013).
The forest plants and kava are the most exposed, because they cannot leave their ecosystems or islands (Lewis et al., 2003; Lebot et al., 1992).
The irony: the plants that resisted commodification are the ones most at risk of being lost.

Sources

Bunn, C., Laderach, P., Ovalle Rivera, O., & Kirschke, D. (2015). A bitter cup: Climate change profile of global production of Arabica and Robusta coffee. Climatic Change, 129(1-2), 89-101. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1306-x
Laderach, P., Martinez-Valle, A., Schroth, G., & Castro, N. (2013). Predicting the future climatic suitability for cocoa farming of the world's leading producing countries. Climatic Change, 119(3-4), 841-854. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0774-8
Lebot, V., Merlin, M., & Lindstrom, L. (1992). Kava: The Pacific elixir. Yale University Press.
Lewis, W. H., Kennelly, E. J., Bass, G. N., Wedner, H. J., Elvin-Lewis, M. P., & Fast, D. M. (2003). Ritualistic use of the holly Ilex guayusa by Amazonian Jivaro Indians. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 33(1-2), 25-30.