2. The prospects for life in a destabilised climate.
The Looming Environmental Refugee Crisis
- By Grover Foley –
The impact of climate change around the world is set to create
millions upon millions of new refugees, as whole regions become
uninhabitable through food and water shortages, and as towns and
cities fall victim to rising seas, increased flooding and violent
storms. Where will they go? What will we do?
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2. The prospects for life in a destabilised climate.
Climate change, at a conservative estimate, will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years: from 25 million to 150 million.1 How will climate change create refugees?
As the planet warms, food and water grow scarcer. In 1998 the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research forecast major decreases in crop yields by 2050. These would above all affect the tropical countries of South America, Russia and western Africa. As for water scarcity, the Hadley Centre forecasts that by 2050 about 170 million people will suffer severe stress: their countries will be using over 40 per cent of their water resources. Badly affected areas will include the US, North Africa, Europe, Turkey, the Gulf states and China. Global warming may also endanger the monsoon, with effects much greater than those of drought alone -particularly in India given that 70 percent of Indians rainfall conies from the monsoon. Indeed, the Asian Pacific region as a whole, which has half the
world's population, likewise depends on the monsoon. Besides drought, sea-levels are predicted to rise greatly and storm surges increase as a result of global warming (see "The Threat of Rising Seas.' p76). Few countries will have the resources to contain the rising waters. Should the rise reach one metre, even Holland would find it difficult to cope. Hundreds of millions of people would be at risk from such flood damage -given that a considerable proportion of the world's population
lives close to coastlines, including in major cities, such as Shanghai, Bangkok, Miami and not least London. In China, at present, the government estimates that 30 million people are already being displaced by climate change. Some authorities set the figure higher, at up to 72 million. A one-metre rise of sea-level would Hood all of Shanghai, plus % per cent of the province around it. The population of Shanghai is over twelve million: by 2030, it is expected to be 27 million. Egypt would lose 12-15 per cent of its arable land, creating 14 million refugees. As the sea encroached, sail water would move into the foreshortened Nile, threatening the irrigated lands that produce almost all of
Egypt's food. In some areas, more destructive river Hooding is also predicted, for instance through a heavier than usual monsoon. In Bangladesh, melting glaciers in the Himalayas would add to such floods.'
Rising sea levels also threaten delta areas - such as the Mekong in Vietnam, the Yangtze in China, the Irrawaddy in Myanmar, the Tigris-Euphrates in Iraq, the Indus in Pakistan, the Orinoco in
Venezuela and the Amazon in Brazil - that hold more than one million people (two billion by 20501. The Mekong delta, for instance, is home to ten million people, on land one metre or less above high tide. In such deltas lie mega-cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Bombay, Manila and Buenos Aires that by 2050 will be home to 200 to 220 million people.
While these threats are bad enough, each may intensify the others. Due to synergisms, two problems may have not twice but many times the expected impact.' Just as deforestation increases
warming, and warming increases loss of forests, so loss of forests increases migration, while these migrants may of necessity cut down forested areas into which they have moved. The resulting
poverty, moreover, produces malnutrition, disease, flight from the
land, growth of megacities, unemployment, brain drain to the richer countries, and still greater disparity of wealth.
Despite hundreds of articles and many books about climate change, few discuss the issue of environmental refugees. The 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I PCC) for instance, has a 431 page volume on "Economic and Social
Dimensions of Climate Change" Yet the subject of refugees receives only one-third of a page (along with unrealistic-ally low- estimates of their future number). Is the refugee problem already
too great and loo divisive, pining the humanitarians against the 'realists". Certainly both Europe and the US face hard decisions. Most of the refugees to Europe are expected to come from the
sub-Saharan nations - the source of half of the world's current total of refugees and slates that are projected to suffer severe impacts from climate change. By 2010 the population of these countries is expected to increase by half, from 600 to 900 million. Of the extra 300 million, about 100 million are predicted to be destitute and are likely to rely on international aid. These potential refugees will far outnumber today's 12 million refugees from that area. Worse could come: by 2050 the population of sub-Saharan Africa is likely, on present admittedly shaky forecasts, to grow not 60% but 116%, to 1.3 billion.' Where will the extra 691 million live and grow their food? If 11% (100 million) were destitute in 2010 how many of the extra 700 million will be so?
If today's 25 million refugees become 150 million by 2050 (a conservative estimate), will this six-fold increase mean not 100,000 illegals in Spain but a million'.' Instead of 30.000 asylum seekers in London. 180,000? Given the prospects of far worse desertification in Africa, plus climate change in Britain, 180000 would be a huge under estimate. True, a large percentage will lack the money to make their way into Europe. They face starvation in their own countries or in internment camps. But those who have some money w ill keep on coming. Consider the estimate we noted at the outset: a six-fold increase
in environmental refugees by 2050. That could mean, for the US. not one million but six million people crossing from Mexico every year. Already, African nations like the Congo and the Sudan ban or intern starving refugees from neighbouring stales. Would the
governments of Europe be more hospitable if under similar environmental pressures, or create a Fortress Europa, ringed with machine guns? Far more sensible, surely, to try to get to the root of the matter now - the fossil-fuel-based industrialisation that is
causing climate change and many of our other environmental problems.
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2. The prospects for life in a destabilised climate.
Answer the question:
Printed for archive.ecologistpartial from Ecologist (Vol 29 No 2 - March / April 1999) at www.exacteditions.com. Copyright 9 2012.
2. The prospects for life in a destabilised climate.
1. What are the cities at risk inundation?
2. Are there any environmental refugees around the world yet?
3. Give an example of how different problems affect each other
4. Does the IPCC report reflect the situation objectively?
5. Is coming environmental crisis going to encourage immigration?
6. What zones are likely to suffer severe impacts from climate change?
Printed for archive.ecologistpartial from Ecologist (Vol 29 No 2 - March / April 1999) at www.exacteditions.com. Copyright 9 2012.