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THE IMPACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING
INERTIA: LEADERS FAILING TO ACT
WATER: WORLD
IS IN CRISIS
BIODIVERSITY UNDER THREAT
Many millions will be made homeless
Climate change has created a new class of homeless person: the environmental refugee.
The term was first used in 1985 and since then millions of people have been forced by extreme weather events and environmental degradation to flee their homes to seek refuge, either in their own countries or elsewhere.
And as global warming causes the severity of these events to intensify, millions more will join the exodus.
These people aren’t political refugees forced to flee their homelands because of ideological or religious differences. They are ordinary people, living ordinary lives, and it could happen to any one of us without warning.
Global warming is universal, and as the world’s weather continues to change because of what we humans are doing to the environment, extreme events can occur anywhere at any time, with little or no prior warning.
Tony Oliver-Smith, a natural hazards expert and anthropologist at the University of Florida in America, told a 2006 conference: “Around the world vulnerability is on the increase, due to the rapid development of megacities in coastal areas. Combine this trend with rising sea levels and the growing number and intensity of storms and it is a recipe for a disaster, with enormous potential to create waves of environment-driven migration.”
In the past ten years environmental deterioration has displaced some 10 million people a year.
According to the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, in 1998 alone, twenty-five million people fled their homes because of the depletion, pollution, degrading and poisoning of river basins.
It was the first time in history that the number of people fleeing natural disasters out-numbered those fleeing wars and political strife.
And the problem can only get worse. Experts are predicting there will be around 50 million environmental refugees by 2010 and that by 2050 up to 150 million people will be homeless. Others put the figures much higher.
Environment-related migration has been most acute in sub-Saharan Africa but also affects millions of people in Asia and India. Europe and the US face increased pressure from people driven from North Africa and Latin America by deteriorating soil and water conditions.
More than half the world’s river systems are already being seriously depleted and polluted, degrading and poisoning their surrounding ecosystems and threatening the health and livelihood of the people who depend on them.
Among the most stressed are China’s Yellow River, the Colorado River in the United States, the River Nile in Africa, Russia’s Volga River Basin and the Ganges Delta in India.
A warming world faces more storms of increasing severity, more droughts and famine, more floods, and as ageless glaciers and polar ice caps melt, sea levels will rise inexorably.
By the end of this century the oceans could be up to eight metres higher than their current levels.
Dr Norman Myers, an environmental scientist and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University in England, says that in China sea level rise coupled with local subsidence would flood all of Shanghai and around 96 percent of the surrounding province, displacing an estimated 72 million people.
By 2050 an estimated 142 million people will inhabit coastal India where flood zone refugees alone could be anywhere between 20 million and 60 million. Even at current population levels a 1.5 metre sea level rise would displace 17 million people in the Ganges River Delta, according to some sources.
Dr Myers says that up to seven percent of Bangladesh could be permanently lost to sea level rise coupled with land subsistence, displacing an estimated 15 million people. In 1988 river flooding left three quarters of the country inundated and 50 million people homeless.
Egypt could lose between 12 and 15 percent of its arable land. Dr Myers says that given Egypt's predicted 2050 population, more than 14 million people would be displaced.
Other delta areas at risk include Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Mozambique, Gambia, Senegal, and Suriname.
Then there are the island states such as the Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshalls plus dozens of islands in the Caribbean where rising sea levels will force around one million people to evacuate permanently. As many as 46 to 50 million others would have their lives "critically affected".
An analysis of the impact of climate change on agriculture suggests that by 2060 global warming may decrease cereal production in developing countries by around 10 percent, with Africa the most vulnerable.
Dr Myers estimates that 50 million people globally may be displaced due to famine and that severe water problems will affect three billion people globally by 2015.
This would cause deforestation, soil erosion and desertification and would lead to mass movements of people.
Pentagon prepares for world chaos
Pakistan, India and China—all armed with nuclear weapons—are warring over refugees and access to shared rivers and arable land.
Spain and Portugal are fighting over fishing rights.
Bangladesh has become uninhabitable and rising seawaters have submerged the Dutch capital.
Australia has closed its borders to refugees and has armed patrols firing into waves of starving boat people.
The world is in turmoil with millions fleeing from catastrophic weather events and civil wars.
It sounds like a story outline for a new Hollywood disaster movie, but it’s not. It’s a future shock scenario in a report to that most conservative of all bodies, the US Defence Department.
The report’s authors admit that some of their predictions may be exaggerated— but say it’s just possible they could happen.
The report, based on inputs from respected international climate scientists, was commissioned by the Pentagon as part of its defence contingency planning for a future world thrown into chaos by global warming.
The real significance is that US defence chiefs are acknowledging the realities of global warming and are preparing for its potential impacts.
•Fact
People fleeing from environmental catastrophes are not recognised as refugees under international law unlike those running from wars and political strife who are protected by international agreements.