Climate Migration
“1% of the world is a barely livable hot zone. By 2070, that portion could go up 19%. Billions of people call this land home. Where will they go?”
This is the opening of a New York Times photo essay on Climate Migration. This essay highlights some scary truths for many across the world:
For Jorge, an indigenous farmer in Guatemala, rainfall is predicted to fall by 60%, replenishing water will deplete by 83%, and by 2070 yields of some staple crops will decline by nearly a third. For Jorge, getting his family out of the land “that was turning against him”, was a matter of life and death.
The essay continues with a dim reality we must awaken ourselves to accept— quickly before we are too late:
“As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.”
The climate crisis is already here. There are only so many ways to get this point across. As the world heats up, many of us around the world will not be able to adapt to temperatures that make farming, breathing, and working extremely difficult.
We are already beginning to see that shift. We must act fast. The article suggests:
“Migration can bring great opportunity not just to migrants but also to the places they go. As the United States and other parts of the global North face a demographic decline, for instance, an injection of new people into an aging work force could be to everyone’s benefit.
But securing these benefits starts with a choice: Northern nations can relieve pressures on the fastest-warming countries by allowing more migrants to move north across their borders, or they can seal themselves off, trapping hundreds of millions of people in places that are increasingly unlivable.
The best outcome requires not only good will and the careful management of turbulent political forces; without preparation and planning, the sweeping scale of change could prove wildly destabilizing. The United Nations and others warn that in the worst case, the governments of the nations most affected by climate change could topple as whole regions devolve into war.”
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The anti-immigration rhetoric we are seeing across the nation and in other countries that have adopted an extremist nationalistic view, must end. The climate crisis is showing us that like it or not, people are on the move. To turn a blind eye, would plunge millions into circumstances we could help change.
We must also talk about how climate migrants move. Since many are moving from rural land that no longer serves them, they will likely find themselves in urban, crowded cities, where the costs become high— not just in terms of poverty but also the way pandemics work.
We have a lot of things to consider: “What are policymakers and planners prepared to do about that? America’s demographic decline suggests that more immigrants would play a productive role here, but the nation would have to be willing to invest in preparing for that influx of people so that the population growth alone doesn’t overwhelm the places they move to, deepening divisions and exacerbating inequalities.
At the same time, the United States and other wealthy countries can help vulnerable people where they live, by funding development that modernizes agriculture and water infrastructure. A U.N. World Food Program effort to help farmers build irrigated greenhouses in El Salvador, for instance, has drastically reduced crop losses and improved farmers’ incomes. It can’t reverse climate change, but it can buy time.”
“Our modeling and the consensus of academics point to the same bottom line: If societies respond aggressively to climate change and migration and increase their resilience to it, food production will be shored up, poverty reduced and international migration slowed — factors that could help the world remain more stable and more peaceful.
If leaders take fewer actions against climate change, or more punitive ones against migrants, food insecurity will deepen, as will poverty. Populations will surge, and cross-border movement will be restricted, leading to greater suffering. Whatever actions governments take next — and when they do it — makes a difference.”
Read more about the Climate Migration Model (there is also an extensive amount of information on modeling in the NYT piece.
And the World Bank piece “Groundswell”, where the image is from below!
