Climate change is provoking mass human migration. According to scientists, 50 million people worldwide will be displaced this year because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding, and other severe environmental changes.
A joint study by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre shows that in 2008 climate-related natural disasters forced 20 million people out of their homes. Research conducted by the Red Cross shows that more people today migrate due to environmental disaster than because of violent conflict.
Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs Director at the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University is the author of a recently published study on linkages between climate change and migration in Mexico. The study is among the first attempts to put hard numbers to issues of "environmental migrants".
Oppenheimer told MediaGlobal, "In the future, we expect climate change to influence human migration through a variety of pathways. Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and causing global warming and a multitude of climate changes, including shifts of ecosystems and species and acidification of the oceans."
The worldwide population boom and reduced economic opportunity in rural areas are major factors that have brought about the largest worldwide migration in recent history.
Sidney Weintraub, professor emeritus at the University of Texas told MediaGlobal, "Mexico's poorest part of the population lives in rural areas. That is why we see a lot of migration from rural to urban areas. There is not much rainfall in Central Mexico. Mexican farmers, however, depend on rainfall if they want to make a living."
There are no reliable estimates of climate change-induced migration; however, future forecasts predict between 25 million and 1 billion "environmental migrants" by 2050. These migrants will move either within their country or internationally.
Jean-Philippe Chauzy, Head of Media and Communication of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told MediaGlobal, "Climate change is putting a lot of pressure on infrastructure. The worldwide trend goes towards internal and international migration as we can particularly witness in Mongolia, Bangladesh and the Sahel Region. Pacific island states like Vanuatu and Tuvalu can no longer maintain themselves and will not survive without adequate concepts to change the current state."
In Tuvalu tides flood the streets, ruin houses, destroy aquifers and crops, kill fish and wildlife. Total immersion could also be the fate of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, and Papua New Guinea. Lake Chad in Eastern Niger and Lake Saguibine in Northern Mali were once vast lakes but have since evaporated and become arid deserts.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) released a statement earlier this week declaring that more stringent actions to reduce emissions could not be much longer postponed and called upon industrial nations to take the lead. This implicates adapting to climate change, limiting emissions growth, providing adequate finance, boosting the use of clean technology, and promoting sustainable forestry.
However, at the UN climate conference held in Copenhagen last December, no consensus could be reached on specific targets to limit and reduce carbon emissions; countries remain divided over sharing the cost of cutting carbon emissions. The fate of regions susceptible to climate change will be high on the agenda of a major upcoming international conference in Cancun this November.
UN delegates will have another round of climate talks in China this coming October before the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing (AGF) is expected to present a final report to UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon for the next conference of parties to the UNFCC in Mexico. To avoid a conflict between developing and developed nations over emissions cuts, there could be two separate deals, which are designed to co-exist.
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Two angles to consider on this: 1)You can enforce emissions cuts on the outside world by refusing to sell your oil and gas. You have your own uses for oil anyway. The revenue from exporting them does you more harm than good anyway; and 2) You can attack climate change more directly by cleaning the cooling system and reforestation. Weed and dredge your rivers and lakes. When your lakes are functional again, they will create "lake effect" rains. When your aquifers are replenished, they will water your drylands. Lakes create rains, and rains create lakes. Reforest. Forests create rains, and rains create forests. Use the biomass from the weeds for fuel. You can make this sustainable. Displace the charcoal from trees with charcoal, ethanol or fuel gas from weeds, and stop deforestation. Use the silt that must be dredged to fight erosion. With the rivers weeded and dredged, severe flooding will be channeled and reduced. Breeding habitat for pests like Quelea and mosquitoes will be reduced to a fraction.
The work to be done is huge, but so is Africa's labor glut.
Thousands of articles about what's wrong with Africa. Let's face it. In the minds of pro-westernization Africans are still considered inferior ... call a spade a spade. What's the difference between copper pipes in Africa and copper pipes in other parts of the world when the copper originated in Africa? What's the difference between various metals, and other materials, used to make power generation units that power water pumps in Africa versus large scale water pumps in other parts of the world when the materials were excavated from African soil and taken elsewhere? Status quo talking in circles while Africans die. Aquifers exist all over the world and desalinization techniques have existed for years, but when I say these things to people I'm talking to, the "get around the conversation" psychosis kicks in. The game of test of wills, matching whits, political anti-black/anti-African raising the voice tone, pontificating godless crap kicks in. Africa has all the resources it needs, including water if it's cleaned and reused efficiently, for sustainability. The "talks" are code word stall tactics holding on the the fantasy that the continent will one day collapse and colonialism will return.