We’ve been talking about this idea that climate change is going to cause a lot of mass migration, and the claim that it won’t be a problem if we just have open borders everywhere. I find that claim not at all credible, so I thought I would gesture toward a source or two.
The Center for American Progress has a report.
From the summary:
Recent intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense, conclude that over the next two or three decades, vulnerable regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises, and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change. These developments could demand U.S., European, and international humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations.
That seems odd at first blush, but of course the military has the equipment and the personnel to do jobs like that…assuming, that is, it’s not all tied-up with a grotesquely ill-advised war.
But will there be migration or not?
In the 21st century the world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by either the slow or sudden onset of the effects of climate change. The United Nations’ recent Human Development Report stated that, worldwide, there are already an estimated 700 million internal migrants—those leaving their homes within their own countries—a number that includes people whose migration is related to climate change and environmental factors. Overall migration across national borders is already at approximately 214 million people worldwide, with estimates of up to 20 million displaced in 2008 alone because of a rising sea level, desertification, and flooding.
One expert, Oli Brown of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, predicts a tenfold increase in the current number of internally displaced persons and international refugees by 2050. It is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on this estimate. In fact there is major disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a causal factor in internal and international migration.
It’s not going to come with labels on it. Most migrants aren’t going to say “I’m here because of climate change.”
But even though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real. A 2009 report by the International Organization for Migration produced in cooperation with the United Nations University and the Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance cites numbers that range from “200 million to 1 billion migrants from cli- mate change alone, by 2050,” arguing that “environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with economic, social and developmental factors that can accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change.”
The report also notes that “migration can result from different environmental factors, among them gradual environmental degradation (including desertification, soil and coastal erosion) and natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods or tropical storms).” (See box on page 15 for a more detailed definition of climate migrants.) Clearly, then, climate change is expected to aggravate many existing migratory pressures around the world. Indeed associated extreme weather events resulting in drought, floods, and disease are projected to increase the number of sudden humanitarian crises and disasters in areas least able to cope, such as those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.
Or both.
Testing testing How I’d love to be named Helen Singer
Huh? There’s people out there who need to be told that floods and famine make people move to search for survival? Hello? Don’t we have like, I don’t know, 10,000 years of history making that point?
/*shakes head in disbelief; walks off mumbling*/
Yup. I live in Los Angeles, and I told my wife that we might be forced to move sometime because of the drought. She said no.
Oh, well, as one of my poems ends:
Hope I won’t be here to see
Apocalyptic humanity
My previous attempt at commenting contained some errors.
The E.U. curtailed search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. No one really wanted to help Italy out with it, you know, “in these times of budgetary restriction” and all…. So now some faraminous number of migrants are drowning every day, whole boatloads of them. Many fleeing Syria.
The 12 Christians chucked overboard by their Muslim brethren only got attention because of the religious conflict angle. Otherwise, the people drowning are to us relatively happy Europeans like the miserable child in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Wikipedia describes it as the story of “a utopian city whose prosperity and success depend on the perpetual misery of a single child, kept locked beneath it in squalor and torture.”
“Once citizens are old enough to know the truth, most, though initially shocked and disgusted, ultimately acquiesce with that one injustice which secures the happiness of the rest of the entire city. However, a few citizens, young and old, silently walk away from the city, and no one knows where they go. The story ends with ‘The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.’ “
It’s possible that nations might open their borders, and welcome displaced refugees with open arms.
It’s also possible that purple flying monkeys might come flocking out of my ass.
I actually think the purple flying monkey scenario is the most likely of the two.
Considering nationalism’s response to displacement, so far, has been fences and men with guns at borders, I think it’s hopelessly naive to think there will be cooperation. Especially since some of those borders are historically divisions between conflicting parties. When the Nile Delta is destroyed, will the Egyptians displace to The Sinai?
Civility and basic human decency is what should happen.
Unfortunately, what likely will happen is expansion of current far right attitudes and politicians, and their actions taken towards migrants and refugees along the US-Mexico border or the waters around Australia. Preventing migration and leaving people to starve is going to become policy and governments talk more and more about “food security” for their own nations. Food refugees will be treated the same way China treats North Koreans, or the US treated refugees from US-backed fascist regimes in countries like El Salvador and Honduras during the 1980s. The US sent people back to their deaths.
People and governments can talk about what to do until the cows come home (migration, food distribution, human rights, et al), but until we address the underlying problem of there are too many mouths to feed, we’re not going to find a solution. Unfortunately, attempts to raise difficult issues are often met with false accusations of “advocating euthanasia”, “forced abortion”, and “violating people’s rights to have children”.
“..if we just have open borders everywhere. I find that claim not at all credible,”
It’s a crazy idea, and the degree of lunacy depends on the size of the migrations around the world. Moral arguments will probably be persuasive when refugee immigration is say, 1-2% of the recipient nation’s population. However, at some point, the strain on the host country’s social and political institutions will be intolerable and borders will be closed.
‘These developments could demand U.S., European, and international humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations.’
If the numbers of refugees are anywhere near the projected figures, Western aid organisations, with or without military assistance, will be unable to cope with the crisis. Of course if the most pessimistic scenario develops, Western nations won’t be able to seal their borders.
Let’s hope that the experts at The Center for American Progress are wrong.
@6 leftOver1under,
“what likely will happen is expansion of current far right attitudes and politicians, and their actions taken towards migrants and refugees along the US-Mexico border or the waters around Australia.”
Agreed.
Quite. And we should be very careful about putting words into their mouths. I think it is likely that the immigrant herself is best placed to understand why she is moving. And I am willing to bet that most of them will tell you they are moving because of poverty. In which case, the best response, the one that stops them drowning in their hundreds in the Med, or living in squalid refugee camps, is to let them move, open the border.
We have the resources to mitigate these problems, we are simply refusing to spend them. Climate change will cause population movements, but these are manageable.
By the way, I would be very sceptical of any report by the military that fins that more spending on the military is the best outcome. In general we don’t need the army to deliver aid if we don’t lock people up in areas of deprivation because they were born to the wrong parents.
Hahahahaha that’s a good one, Bluntnose –
Hahahahahahahaha very droll; thank you.