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A30 world news
Diamars 11 OctOber 2022

Drive for climate compensation grows after Pakistan’s floods

DADU, Pakistan (AP) — ternational law says states with Pakistan as well.
Every part of Rajul Noor’s have an obligation not to
life has been wrecked by cause harm to the environ- Pakistan approved a national
this summer’s massive ment of other states. Viola- flood protection plan in 2017
monsoon-driven floods. tions can trigger an obliga- but never put it in place. The
The 12-year-old girl’s fam- tion to make reparation — ei- World Bank extended a $200
ily home is destroyed, as is ther restoring the situation to million credit line to fund
the school that she loved. what it was before or provid- flood protection projects in
The friends she used to ing compensation. Baluchistan province but it
walk to school and play was suspended because of
with are scattered, finding Pakistan has two options, she Pakistan’s lack of progress in
refuge elsewhere. said. It could go after states implementing it; the projects
through an international were supposed to have been
“Our whole world is under- Dadu, past buildings still like Pakistan. body like the ICJ. But this completed this month.
water, and nobody has helped partially submerged, weeks avenue rules out China and
us,” she said, speaking in the after the rains stopped. This Climate Change Minister the U.S., two of the world’s In Dadu, Noor keeps the
tent where she, her parents level of damage is repeated in Sherry Rehman went further, biggest greenhouse gas emit- same routine as she once
and four siblings now live in towns and cities across Paki- saying rich nations owe repa- ters, as they don’t recognize did in her village of Gholam
Dadu district in Pakistan’s stan. rations to countries hit by cli- the ICJ’s jurisdiction. Or it Nabi Pir. She wakes at 5 a.m.
Sindh province. mate disasters. could pursue cases against and helps her four younger
The destruction has in- governments or fossil fuel sibling get ready for the day.
Almost 100% of the district’s tensified the debate over Developed nations have re- companies in national courts. They go to school in a nearby
cotton and rice crops were a question of climate jus- fused anything that smacks of tent. But there’s no longer the
destroyed. More than half tice: Whether rich countries reparations, fearing the door Ayesha Siddiqi, an expert on long walk to school with her
its primary and secondary whose emissions have been will open to massive climate climate change and disasters, friends, no more playing tag
schools were fully or partially the main driver of climate claims against them from said the greater responsibility around her house, no hearty
damaged, local officials say. change owe compensation around the world. for the destruction lies with traditional breakfast of fried
Boats laden with people and for the damage that change is Wewerinke-Singh said there those causing climate change, eggs and paratha flatbread.
their belongings crisscross inflicting on poor countries is a basis for legal action. In- “but there is responsibility”

Locals try to save threatened, traditional ‘Mexican caviar’

C H I M A L H U A C A N ,
Mexico (AP) — In a shal-
low lake on the outskirts
of Mexico City, a handful
of farmers still harvest the
eggs of an evasive, finger-
tip-size water bug in a bid
to keep alive a culinary
tradition dating at least to
the Aztec empire.

Caviar is typically associated
sturgeons swimming the
Caspian Sea, but the Mexican
version is made from the tiny
eggs of the an aquatic insect
of the corixidae family, also
know as the “bird fly,” be-
cause birds like to eat it. Sim-
ilar bugs are often known as
“water boatmen” in English,
because of the way they seem
to row in ponds and streams.

The bug, which only occa-
sionally surfaces before div- opment around the lakeshore other traditions, festivals and have been a part of Mexico’s
ing again in a trail of bubbles, and waning interest in the in- ceremonies. cuisine for hundreds or thou- But now, Farfán said, the dish
would not look like food to gredient among younger gen- sands of years. Edday Farfán, “is associated with the coun-
most, but it was once impor- erations, said Jorge Ocampo, But Guerrero acknowledges an entomologist at Mexico’s tryside, perhaps with poverty,
tant to the people of the Val- agrarian history coordinator that “Mexican caviar” is at National Autonomous Uni- as if it were an undesirable
ley of Mexico. at the Center for Economic, risk of disappearing because versity, said there are more protein.”
Social and Technological Re- younger generations aren’t than 430 species of edible in-
For Juan Hernández, a farm- search on Agribusiness and familiar with the dish, and sects in Mexico. Even those still familiar with
er from San Cristóbal Ne- World Agriculture in Mexico ever-fewer people harvest it ahuautle often consider the
zquipayac, cultivating and State. in the scarce remaining lakes Farfán has been studying bird insects that produce it to be
collecting the tiny insect where it is found. flies since 2016, and even has feed for chickens or turkeys,
eggs known as “ahuautle” -- Ocampo called the dish’s one tattooed on his arm. and may think of it literally as
meaning water amaranth in survival an example of “com- Ahuautle is also at risk of “for the birds.”
Nahua -- is a way of life. munity resistance,” similar to becoming only a gourmet Farfán said indigenous peo-
the way in which inhabitants dish for the rich: A kilogram ples living around the lakes With the odds stacked against
The painstaking collection of around Lake Texcoco — a of the eggs can sell for the adopted the insect eggs as it, there is no guarantee that
“Mexican caviar,” known for shallow, saline lake that once equivalent of $50 (roughly a source of protein because Mexican caviar will even be a
its intense but delicate flavor, covered most of the eastern $25 a pound). prior to the Spanish conquest choice for future generations.
is threatened by the drying half of the Mexico City valley of 1521, they had few domes-
out of Lake Texcoco, devel- — have managed to preserve Insects, their eggs and larvae ticated animals or livestock.