April 2023

“It’s been more than a half century since astronauts journeyed to the moon — that’s about to change,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson as he stood before the current astronaut corps as well as veterans of the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs at Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. The crowd was gathered for the historic announcement of the crew for Artemis II — Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen.

“This is humanity’s crew,” said Nelson, emphasizing the diverse makeup of the international crew, all in their 40s. “We choose to go back to the moon and on to Mars, and we are going to do it together, because in the 21st century NASA explores the cosmos with international partners.”

International Space Station veteran Reid Wiseman is mission commander for Artemis II, while engineer Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will serve as mission specialists. Hansen is the first international astronaut scheduled to launch on a mission to the moon, while Koch would make history as the first woman taking part in such a journey.

“Am I excited? Absolutely,” Koch said to the cheering audience during the announcement ceremony. “But my real question is: Are you excited?”

Victor Glover, a U.S. naval aviator, will pilot the Orion spacecraft carrying the crew on a 10-day roundtrip mission around the moon and back, testing the functions of the systems and equipment future crews will use to eventually return to the lunar surface.

In an exclusive interview with VOA during the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission last year, Glover said he embraces the opportunity to be the first person of color assigned to a moon mission.

“People keep asking me, ‘Is it meaningful to you that little Black kids look up to you and say they want to be like you?’ You know what? Let’s be honest, I represent America,” he told VOA.

“I’m a naval officer and I work for NASA. I represent America and little white kids, little Mexican kids, little Hispanic kids and little Iranian kids follow what we’re doing because this is maybe one of the most recognizable symbols in the universe,” he said pointing to the NASA patch on his blue flight suit. “I think that that’s really important, and I take that very seriously.”

Not only is the crew makeup historic, those aboard Artemis II could also venture farther in space than any humans before them. While the Artemis II crew won’t orbit or land on the lunar surface, they could travel more than 1 million total kilometers on a path that slingshots well beyond the moon before returning to Earth. NASA says the exact distance and plan depends on a number of factors, including the date of the actual mission launch.

At the end of the NASA ceremony introducing his crew, astronaut Reid Wiseman expressed the determination of the agency to further its goals in space despite repeated delays and cost overruns.

“There’s three words we keep saying in this Artemis program, and that’s ‘We. Are. Going.’ And I want everyone to say it with me – We Are Going!”

NASA hopes to launch Artemis II as early as November 2024, with the first mission back to the lunar surface as early as 2025.
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As more people become concerned about the effects of climate change on their lives, journalists in an otherwise struggling industry are becoming specialized in the environmental beat.

But that wasn’t always the case, said Frederick Mugira, founder of Water Journalists Africa, the largest network of journalists on the continent reporting on water.

Mugira said that when he started the organization in 2011, “not so much was being tackled about water.” But now, “we have more journalists preferring to specialize in water and climate issues.”

Mugira, an award-winning journalist based in Kampala, Uganda, founded the network to share ideas and provide training.

From investigative reporting on the impact of a large agricultural industry in Cameroon to how plastics and water pollution are devastating the fishing trade in the African Great Lakes, the coalition is combining environmental, data and solutions-led journalism.

Made up of about 1,000 journalists across Africa, the network works collaboratively to investigate issues around water, wildlife, biodiversity and climate change.

The nongovernmental organization receives funding from various institutions, including the U.S.-based Pulitzer Center and Internews, an international media support nonprofit organization in California.

The network also has a few specialized offshoots, including InfoNile, which uses graphics to map stories on the Nile Basin, and the Big Gorilla Project, which focuses on the endangered species in the forests of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

African nations are among the world’s lowest greenhouse gas emitters, but scientists have long warned the region will be one of the worst affected by climate change. Mugira said that more than ever, local people want explanations of phenomena such as droughts.

“We identify a theme of common and cross-border importance. For example, plastic pollution,” he said. “When we identify a theme, we search for credible data across the countries we’re working on.”

Water Journalists Africa projects include graphs and interactive maps and seek to break down data in a comprehensible and colorful way. Radio, TV and print are some of the mediums used, and the stories are published in English and local languages.

“When we started it, we realized journalists in the region didn’t have experience in data journalism,” Mugira said. But accessing that data can be a challenge.

One reason, Mugira said, is that scientists don’t always trust journalists and don’t always want to share their information. Another challenge comes when some government officials might want to release only numbers that show them in a good light.

“When it comes to natural resources, they don’t really release data, because they see it as sensitive,” he added.

Reporting with results

For Nairobi journalist Sharon Atieno, 29, being a member of Water Journalists Africa opened her up to a wide range of new skills.

“The network has helped shape my environmental reporting, and I’ve also learned to use data,” said Atieno, who learned of the network when applying for grants.

“You can use maps, visualizations, to make it more captivating. This is a skill I acquired not through university but through being part of the Water Journalists Network. That’s how I discovered my beat,” she said.

Asked why she thought the beat was important, Atieno said, “Everything around us is the environment — plastics in the oceans, polluted lakes, everything has an impact not only on the environment but also on climate change.

“Environment reporting is important because even tiny things we’re doing, if you look at it accumulatively, it’s having a very big impact on our lives as human beings.”

Atieno said everything is connected. For example, more drought results in increased wildlife poaching as people’s crops fail and they go hungry.

Atieno has taken part in collaborations with Water Journalists Africa. One story she was particularly proud of looked at how poaching for bushmeat increased when Kenya was under the pandemic lockdown. The poaching resulted in a decline in the population of the country’s iconic Rothschild’s giraffe, she said.

Another story she covered was how waste from sugarcane companies in a part of western Kenya was polluting a nearby river.

“The degradation of the sugarcane waste results in a chemical being produced so when it goes into the water system, it makes the rivers toxic,” she said. “When I did that story, I reached out to the county government. They said they didn’t know it was happening.”

After she covered the story, the county authorities opened a commission to investigate the issue.

Funding challenges

Cross-border networks of environmental journalists in Africa are growing, according to Anton Harber, adjunct professor of journalism at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.

“At our annual gathering of the continent’s investigative journalists, the African Investigative Journalism Conference, we have definitely seen environmental coverage take center stage with the emergence of a number of cross-border, collaborative networks doing important and often excellent work,” he told VOA.

However, he said, such work needs funding to be able to survive.

“Few newsrooms are investing in it because it is not seen as a topic that sells newspapers or brings clicks,” Harber said. “Africa has the stories and the journalists who can tackle it, but they are not usually in the mainstream conventional newsrooms.”

But Mugira said stories from his network were now being picked up and followed by other media as interest in their coverage grows.

“These stories are just a starting point,” he said.
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Zimbabweans in the agriculture sector are dealing with rising fertilizer costs and poor rainfalls due to climate change. Now, some are turning to organic farming and conservation agriculture to make ends meet, and officials say they are making progress against the odds. Columbus Mavhunga has more from Mashava, one of Zimbabwe’s poorest and most drought-prone districts. (Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe)
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The United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather. 

Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather. 

That’s only part of it. Nature dealt the United States a bad hand, but people have made it much worse by what, where and how we build, several experts told The Associated Press. 

Then add climate change, and “buckle up. More extreme events are expected,” said Rick Spinrad, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Tornadoes. Hurricanes. Flash floods. Droughts. Wildfires. Blizzards. Ice storms. Nor’easters. Lake-effect snow. Heat waves. Severe thunderstorms. Hail. Lightning. Atmospheric rivers. Derechos. Dust storms. Monsoons. Bomb cyclones. And the dreaded polar vortex. 

It starts with “where we are on the globe,” North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello said. “It’s truly a little bit … unlucky.” 

China may have more people, and a large land area like the United States, but “they don’t have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather,” said Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina. 

The U.S. is by far the king of tornadoes and other severe storms. 

“It really starts with kind of two things. Number one is the Gulf of Mexico. And number two is elevated terrain to the west,” said Victor Gensini, a Northern Illinois University meteorology professor. 

Look at Friday’s deadly weather, and watch out for the next week to see it in action: Dry air from the West goes up over the Rockies and crashes into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s all brought together along a stormy jet stream. 

In the West, it’s a drumbeat of atmospheric rivers. In the Atlantic, it’s nor’easters in the winter, hurricanes in the summer and sometimes a weird combination of both, like Superstorm Sandy. 

“It is a reality that regardless of where you are in the country, where you call home, you’ve likely experienced a high-impact weather event firsthand,” Spinrad said. 

Killer tornadoes in December 2021 that struck Kentucky illustrated the uniqueness of the United States. 

They hit areas with large immigrant populations. People who fled Central and South America, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Africa were all victims. A huge problem was that tornadoes really didn’t happen in those people’s former homes, so they didn’t know what to watch for or what to do, or even know they had to be concerned about tornadoes, said Joseph Trujillo Falcon, a NOAA social scientist who investigated the aftermath. 

With colder air up in the Arctic and warmer air in the tropics, the area between them — the mid-latitudes, where the United States is — gets the most interesting weather because of how the air acts in clashing temperatures, and that north-south temperature gradient drives the jet stream, said Northern Illinois meteorology professor Walker Ashley. 

Then add mountain ranges that go north-south, jutting into the winds flowing from west to east, and underneath it all the toasty Gulf of Mexico. 

The Gulf injects hot, moist air underneath the often cooler, dry air lifted by the mountains, “and that doesn’t happen really anywhere else in the world,” Gensini said. 

If the United States as a whole has it bad, the South has it the worst, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, a former president of the American Meteorological Society. 

“We drew the short straw [in the South] that we literally can experience every single type of extreme weather event,” Shepherd said. “Including blizzards. Including wildfires, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes. Every single type. … There’s no other place in the United States that can say that.” 

Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana also stick out in the water so are more prone to being hit by hurricanes, said Shepherd and Dello. 

The South has more manufactured housing that is vulnerable to all sorts of weather hazards, and storms are more likely to happen there at night, Ashley said. Night storms are deadly because people can’t see them and are less likely to take cover, and they miss warnings in their sleep. 

The extreme weather triggered by America’s unique geography creates hazards. But it takes humans to turn those hazards into disasters, Ashley and Gensini said. 

Just look where cities pop up in America and the rest of the world: near water that floods, except maybe Denver, said South Carolina’s Cutter. More people are moving to areas, such as the South, where there are more hazards. 

“One of the ways in which you can make your communities more resilient is to not develop them in the most hazard-prone way or in the most hazard-prone portion of the community,” Cutter said. “The insistence on building up barrier islands and development on barrier islands, particularly on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, knowing that that sand is going to move and having hurricanes hit with some frequency … seems like a colossal waste of money.” 

Construction standards tend to be at the bare minimum and less likely to survive the storms, Ashley said. 

“Our infrastructure is crumbling and nowhere near being climate-resilient at all,” Shepherd said. 

Poverty makes it hard to prepare for and bounce back from disasters, especially in the South, Shepherd said. That vulnerability is an even bigger issue in other places in the world. 

“Safety can be bought,” Ashley said. “Those that are well-to-do and who have resources can buy safety and will be the most resilient when disaster strikes. … Unfortunately that isn’t all of us.” 

“It’s sad that we have to live these crushing losses,” said Kim Cobb, a Brown University professor of environment and society. “We’re worsening our hand by not understanding the landscape of vulnerability given the geographic hand we’ve been dealt.” 
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