(CNN) November 17, 2010 – The devastating effects of climate change and conflicts fought over ever-scarcer resources such as water could cause a surge in migration that experts fear the world is totally unprepared for.
At least one billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050 by such forces, the international charity group Christian Aid predicted in a recent report.
This forecast is backed up by a new report by British consultancy Maplecroft that says developing countries in Asia and Africa face the biggest risks from global warming in the next 30 years. Poverty and large low-lying coastal regions prone to flooding and cyclones make Bangladesh the most exposed country while India, in second place, is vulnerable because of pressures from a rising population of 1.1 billion.
displaced by climate climate change, putting the call to governments and our political leaders for a new agreement on environmental migrants.
Together with the Hay Festival Maldives, EJF has developed a collection of ideas from Heads of State, philosophers, explorers, scientists, lawyers, actors and experts in their field. These filmed discussions consider the potential cultural, emotional and physical impacts of forced migration, who should be responsible and what the potential options
are for dealing with the impending human rights crisis (ejfoundation.org).
(Center for Global Development) October 27, 2010 – Last week, I hosted a roundtable here at CGD to discuss how the United States and other rich countries might better provide safe haven and opportunity to
potential migrants from developing countries that are in acute need—particularly the victims of natural disasters.
This question has been at the forefront of my mind since the earthquake ravaged Haiti on January 12. Simply having the chance to leave Haiti has lifted more Haitians out of extreme poverty than all of the billions of dollars in aid, all of the foreign investment, and all of the trade preferences that Haiti has received from the United States during the past thirty years. (The research underlying that statement can be found in this CGD paper. I further describe the dynamic impact of mobility, particularly for Haitians, in these Washington Post and Foreign Policy articles.) It doesn’t make sense to me that allowing some flexibility in human mobility—one of the most effective, lowest-cost ways to help Haitians—has been playing such a tiny role in international efforts to help Haitians.
While the U.S. has worked expeditiously to assist Haiti’s people and government to rebuild and recover from this catastrophe, we lack a systematic mechanism for leveraging human mobility—one of the most powerful ways that people in poor countries cope with and overcome shocks. Because natural disaster victims are not fleeing group-based violent persecution, they do not qualify as refugees under international law. Thus, I contend that the U.S. and other rich countries must either create a new category of entrants or find some means of handling a finite number of natural disaster victims through existing policy or administrative channels.
An image from the London Futures exhibition showing Buckingham palace surrounded by a vast shantytown. Photo credit: Jason Hawkes/Museum of London
(The Guardian) October 27, 2010 – The effects of climate change are so hard to imagine that we should welcome an exhibition of Postcards from the Future that promises “Images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate debate in a way that everyone can understand”. Unfortunately the debate it frames is dangerous and the main reason that it can be readily understood is that it fits all too easily with existing prejudices.
The pictures are artfully composed photomontages that juxtapose iconic London landmarks with eye-catching climate impacts – for example the Household Cavalry ride down a sand-strewn Whitehall on camels; an oil palm plantation grows in Hyde Park; and people skate on the Thames after the Gulf Stream packs in.
The creators, Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones, assure us that they “researched different scientific projections”. Really? Not one of these images reflects any real climate scenario for London. They are pure science-fiction.
Certainly they are striking and win attention, but at a price. Public acceptance of climate change is still weak and 55% of people believe that climate change has been exaggerated for political ends. Fantasy images actively feed that public denial
and with it the widespread assumption that climate change is conjectural and without firm basis in fact.
Below is a documentary film entitled “The Uprooted People” which was recently uploaded to YouTube by the Local Environment Development and Agricultural Research Society (LEDARS) of Bangladesh. LEDARS is a Bangladeshi NGO working in the southwest of the country, where its main focus is climate change and adaptation,
human rights, gender equity, water and sanitation and economic empowerment.
The audio visual department of LEDARS has documented the forced migration and human suffering in the southwest coastal area of Bangladesh. This film is locally funded and produced which is different from the others I have posted before on this website. It is about 10 minutes long and is in English subtitles. Unfortunately, the last two minutes are unwatchable.
(Reuters AlertNet) October 5, 2010 – YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Yaounde’s Briketteri neighbourhood, home to Muslim traders in textiles and beef, is seeing a surge of climate migrants – farmers and fishermen fleeing fast-drying Lake Chad to the north.
Aisha Alim 42, a former Lake Chad farmer, now earns a meager leaving selling fried peanuts in Briketteri after watching his farmland near Lake Chad run out of water.
“It has been a bitter reality to swallow and a battle for survival,” he said. “The desert keeps encroaching on farmland
as the water recedes and this makes it difficult for farming activity to thrive. I used to grow onions, peppers and maize but my farming area turned dry and I had no choice except to relocate.”
Mahmadou Bello, 52, who once fished in Lake Chad, similarly brought his wife and six children to Cameroon’s capital two years ago when the lake could no longer provide enough fish.
“We used to make enough money as fishermen by the shores of the lake and my wife was also involved in fish smoking because there was enough catch,” he said. Now, however, he has had to take up work as a butcher to support his family, he said.
