Flood affected Bangladeshi villagers queue for water in Koikhali on the outskirts of Satkhira some 400 km from Dhaka on June 3, 2009.
Credit: AFP
BONN: Tens of millions of people will be displaced by climate change in coming years, posing social, political and security problems of an unprecedented dimension, a new study predicts.
"Unless aggressive measures are taken to halt global warming, the consequences for human migration and displacement could reach a scope and scale that vastly exceed anything that has occurred before," its authors warn. "Climate change is already contributing to migration and displacement."
"All major estimates project that the trend will rise to tens of millions of migrants in coming years. Within the next few decades, the consequences of climate change for human security efforts could be devastating," they said.
Climate refugees
The report, In Search of Shelter, was compiled by experts from Columbia University in New York City, the United Nations University, and non-governmental organisation, CARE International.
It was presented on Wednesday to journalists on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany, a staging post to an envisioned new global pact for tackling global warming and its impacts.
The study swung the spotlight on several regions that, according to projections, will be badly hit by rising sea levels, flood or drought.
Rather than a migration from poor countries to rich ones, the exodus is most likely to unfold within poor nations, with a movement mainly from the countryside to cities, thus further burdening urban infrastructure, it said.
In central Mexico, where tens of millions of people live, rainfall in some areas could decline by up to 50% by 2080, "rendering many livelihoods unviable and dramatically raising the risk of chronic hunger," the report said.
Chronic hunger
South Asia faces both short- and long-term threats.
Warming will accelerate melting from Himalayan glaciers in springtime, thus heightening the probability of flooding. But glacier shrinkage will eventually affect the flow of major rivers that wind down from the Himalayan foothills.
"This has a lot of consequences for agricultural production in one of the world's most populous regions," said Charles Ehrhart, climate-change coordinator at CARE.
The Ganges Delta, small island states and other low-lying areas, meanwhile, are in peril from rising sea levels. If ocean levels rise by two metres, "9.4 million people would be completely flooded out" in Bangladesh alone, said Ehrhart. A two-metre rise is seen by most climate scientists as being at the top end of predictions for what could happen this century.
Climate Change & Global Warming
We can panic in the face of the gathering storm now looming ahead with climate change driven by global warming, or we can prepare to weather the storm and work our way toward a better future. To ignore the storm and hope it blows away would be like sailing on the Titanic and believe it could never sink. We are all in this boat together and if we can find a way to work together, that would be best. The construction of an adjustable space sunshade at lagrange 1 would appear to be the best logical way to cool the Earth (Google for Your Tube film). It would be expensive, but the price of losing all that many generations have worked so hard to achieve would be far greater. If enough people and nations around the world united in achieving this vision, it could be achieved, the same as mobilising for a major war and we are at war whether we like it or not, with the Earth, with Nature. Establishing a space sunshade would also be handy into the future as our Sun gets steadily hotter with age, now 25 percent hotter than at the dawn of life 3,5 billion years ago and allow life to continue longer on Earth than would otherwise be possible. If the Human family responded to the need for survival and made the giant leap into the future with the construction of a space sunshade, then it would be an easy addition to the campaign to build space based solar power collectors to provide all Earth's energy needs and in one clean stroke, remove the need to burn fossil fuels (Google for You Tube film) and soak up the carbon dioxide by growing trees. The space sunshade will be needed then, as when pollution is removed from the atmosphere, current global dimming will end and the Earth will get hotter faster. The campaign for human survival will also need to develop ways to provide built structures for people, animals and vegetation to stay cool as we make the transition to a cooler Earth with temperature controls. The giant leap to space solutions to global warming will also open the gates to space and speed up the development of space industry and many other activities. This will also bring the time closer when we will have secured a sustainable presence beyond Earth and then in the Solar System, we will have secured our long-term survival. With a view to the wealth of space, we can also begin designing for an end to poverty now and prepare to deliver a healthy life for all Earth's children, as well as an amazing future on Earth and among the stars. If we fail to act on our survival needs and global warming drags us down into the dust of a hotter world, we may never have another opportunity to reach for space solutions, because of depleted resources and any survivors may find ourselves trapped on a desert island in space with no lifeboats and no way to build them. What each of us decides to do now could determine the future of the Human family in a rather dangerous old Universe. To remain divided could be suicide and unless we are obsessed with some strange collective wish to be lemmings, our primal impulse should be to survive and as the only known intelligent species of life in the Universe, it is our responsibility to survive and be protectors of the treasure of life. As James Lovelock wrote in his latest book The Vanishing Face of Gaia, "We are deeply impressed by the power of our weapons, yet they are puny compared with the most powerful weapon of all: creative intelligence." page 157.
Kim Peart
Brisbane
kimpeart@iinet.net.au