Moving from one area of resource scarcity to another
The next step in the migration pattern is across national borders. Military experts predict a downward spiral of violence and conflict as people desperate for food, water and jobs cross into neighboring countries where resources may be only slightly less scarce.
Wealthy nations like the United States and the European Union, meanwhile, could also be asked to take in millions of the world's displaced people even as they negotiate international disputes.
"Those people who are most vulnerable right now, and having a problem just surviving, and having the normal development challenges of clean water, fighting disease, getting an education—those are the ones most affected," said Koko Warner, who heads the Environmental Migration, Social Vulnerability and Adaptation Section at the U.N. University.
In Bangladesh, the issues are magnified by the density of the population. Any climate-induced disaster "inevitably affects millions of people," researcher James Pender wrote in a recent sweeping report on Bangladesh. He estimated that by 2080, almost all the 51 million to 97 million people currently living in coastal zones may have to leave. The worst off won't even be able to do that.
"If those who are causing the greenhouse gas emissions are unable to control carbon emissions, the people in the vulnerable areas, many of the coastal areas, are going to be inundated," said Khawaja Minnatullah, a water specialist at the World Bank's Dhaka office.
"The vulnerable, the uneducated, the lowest of the communities will never be able to migrate to the U.S., to Canada, to Australia. There will be pressure on the not-so-vulnerable part of Bangladesh," he said.
In the village of Gabura in southwest Bangladesh, 20-year-old Amina lives with the fractured collarbone she suffered when a tidal flood smashed a wall of her home, crushing her. She and her husband have no money for a doctor, much less a move.
"Everyone that's living here, we're all poor people," she said, sitting in front of her partially repaired mud and thatch house. "We don't have anywhere to go."
Swelling overcrowded cities; scaring neighbors who have built a fence
But in Gabura and other parts of Bangladesh where the land can become the sea in the blink of an eye, climate migration has already begun.
Cities like Dhaka are bursting at the seams. Migration to bordering India appears to be occurring at a higher rate, as well, though government leaders are reluctant to acknowledge it. India, meanwhile, is wide awake to the possibility of migration from Bangladesh, and is building a fence much like the one along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants out.
There is a human tendency to deny mind-numbing futures like this one, and Bangladeshi experts are positioned on both sides of this verbal fence. Some insist that climate migration is a reality that needs to be addressed sooner than later.
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4 Comments
Add CommentThe entire planet needs to adopt China's one child policy. The primary force driving climate change is an overpopulation of homo sapiens and extinction of the other similar sized species not seen as food or pets by homo sapiens. Our planet had over time developed into a bio-diverse balanced system, we are destroying the balance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo prevent (actually delay) another extinction we all need to act now. Recognise the benefits of biodiversity, far more important than a multi cultural homo sapien planet.
If we don't act evolutionary pressures will restore balance, but it wont be a humane process.
I have an idea...rather than restrict ourselves to one child, how about we limit our maximum age to 35 years and then we are summarily put to death? Hmmm, seems I've heard that story line before. I wonder how mother earth managed to save itself from cataclysmic climate change in eons past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate is ALWAYS changing. Always has, always will. As a result, some areas become uninhabitable and others become habitable. Don't go prescribing vasectomies for everyone. If you believe in anthropogenic global warming, then that means that man-kind was smart enough to change the climate in one direction so we should be smart enough to change it in the other as well right? If you don't believe in it, then what difference does it make what we do either way?
It will be almost impossible to get people to agree to terminating their life at a given age, I would happily comply with such a global requirement and donate all my organs to the sick and the rest of my body to science. Asking people to lower fertility is possible. Science can modify microorganisms that reduce fertility, to be non pathogenic. We wont need vasectomies, when you want a baby just take a pill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur planet does regulate the environment using feedback mechanisms that is why we exist. Still there have been five major extinctions. We know the fifth could have been a result of a meteorite impact followed by an increase in volcanic activity. Our earth has a thin plastic skin on which we live followed by a molten layer. The impact of the meteorite may have exerted pressure on the molten mass. Liquids cannot be compressed and would try to squeeze out of every nook and cranny; this could be an explanation for the resulting volcanic activity.
Climate has been changing on earth ever since it formed 4+ giga years ago, but change has always been slow, except for some freak events, each of which can be attributed to a cause, some of which are still unknown.
We are now talking about rapid temperature change. Species are becoming extinct at rates greater than that experienced during the fifth extinction (40 K years approx.). Many scientists believe we are in the sixth extinction, I agree. To do nothing is to doom a decent but egocentric species to extinction.
Excellent article !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.
Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.“The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. The best solution is continue to recognize deterritorialized states as a normal states in public international law. The case of Kiribati and other small island states is a particularly clear call to action for more secure countries to respond to the situations facing these ‘most vulnerable nations’, as climate change increasingly impacts upon their lives.