Dr Cecilia Tacoli, a researcher at the International Institute of Environment and Development, has published a paper in which she holds that there are misconceptions and alarmism about the effect of climate change on population movements. She thinks that many of us overestimate the likely population migrations because we do not understand how mass migration works, and that in doing so we are being alarmist and that alarmism distracts from “real problems”.
Her starting point seems to be that people faced with climate change problems which change the very nature of where they live will not necessarily migrate. Those that do will make short journeys rather than long journeys and that many migrations will have positive results in that migrants usually support those that they leave behind.
I can understand her point, but do not agree with it. The issue of migration caused by climate change should not alarm us about migration; it should alarm us about climate change. Whether migrations caused by climate change are long or short in terms of distance that migrants will travel, the migrants will need to abandon places in which they cannot live because the land is underwater or there is no water.
The point about drawing attention to this is not to create fears about migration because truly no one really knows how and when and where it will happen. The point is to attempt to galvanise action on climate change, which will happen if we carry on in the same way that we are now behaving.
Displacing half a billion people who now live in Delta lands out of a total world population of seven billion people will inevitably cause distress. Having regard to what we know of mass migrations in the past it is likely to cause more than distress and inconvenience; it may well cause conflict; it may well cause serious food shortages and it will inevitably motivate more people to leave their homes in order to seek a better or safer life elsewhere.
Traditionally people do not like leaving the familiar places and communities into which they were born and brought up. Needs must when the devil drives, and this is the reason why people migrate, rather like my parents migrated, in search of a better safer life.
Migration to the United States of American was driven by people in search of a better safer more prosperous life; many people went simply because they had a chance to earn sufficient for food shelter and clothing after famines in Ireland or pogroms in Eastern Europe or a whole host of similar events.
For the migrants the result was the ability to live and work in a healthy democracy which respected freedom and encouraged enterprise. For the indigenous American people the result was displacement, disease, oppression and often death, as the migrants fought to displace the native Americans.
Climate change will ultimately affect both people in rich parts of the world and people in poor parts of the world. Those are poor and live in poor parts of the world will find it most difficult. They will not be welcomed with open arms by richer countries, and yet, morally speaking, we should welcome them. After all, it is the richer countries that have created the problem which caused the migration in the first place.
One concern that some have expressed is the sheer amount of resources that will have to be allocated to cope with climate change migration. If the wealthy nations welcome climate change migrants then that will create huge additional infrastructure costs. If climate change migrants have to be housed closer to their own homes then there are massive infrastructure costs that will be incurred. There is no cheap solution to climate change migration.
There is a cheaper solution to the problem; this is to invest in preventing the emission of greenhouse gases by whatever means possible or as quickly as possible. In the long term this is not only the cheapest solution but the best solution. Government needs to spend less time assessing the most effective measures and get on with implement all measures. Developing plans that will work best in five ten or fifteen years is no solution; we need to get on with reducing emissions now.
Filed under: carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, climate change, global warming Tagged: | celilia tacoli, IIED, mass migration
The migration route of Dr Tacoli has one inherant problem in that today such a migration cannot plave as it would have a 100 years ago, we have borders to cross and legal documents needed for the people to enter the different countries,
A mass migration in today’s world is normally caused by wars not global warming, in some conflicts, good land is going unused because the people fear for their lives, in Africa of late there were massacres because of overcrowding and availability of enough land for growing food,
Migration to the united states was caused by governments not people, the clearances of the Highlands whee people were surviving quite happily need not have happened, and it is known that the Irish famine and the loss of life need never of happened, because there plenty of other root vedgetable around, or there would have been if the dozens of container ships hadn’t been taken from the people and shipped overseas to America and Europe.
The 10 million deaths due to starvation in the dust bowl era of 1920′s USA need never have happened if the Robber barons, Rchilds, Rockka’s hadn’t been importing cheaper European goods and turning their backs on the farmers, cotton went down from 28 c per bushell to only 6 cents,
Movements in the early years were down to land grabing, and food is the ultimate leveller and controller without food for even three days will prevent anybody from going anywhere once drought sets in .
I hate to point the finger but the native north Americans at first killed everyone who set foot inj the new world, they were then very rich people themselves and eventually welcomed the next visitors and left them alone, look where it got them there were around
17 million which were whitled down down to 800 thousand in less that 100 years and there was plenty of food to go around.
The cap and trade route is going to cost the tax payers of this world the biggest every fee that we have ever witnessed, the quickest way to sort the problem is for the super rich to give everything they own to fund many alternatives and to set up a permaculture society before it to late, without the food we will not live past a week if any real dissasters occured.
The rich world is wasting at a rate of 25-1 which could be going to the poorer place on the planet.
There are those who look upon the global warming issue as a way of halting their progress, especially in africa, where they are asked not to polute or use their natural resorces in order of having their own dream to develope.
Its a bit of the kettle calling the pot black because we have had 50 years of prosperity because of fossile fuels and have set up many of our manufacturing bases in many of their countries, thus encouraging them to pollute in our name.
What I think we are seeing happening in years to come is a one world energy government who says who can and who cannot pollute for the better of mankind,
if this is the case then all the fossile fuels throughout the world should be saved not for a paticular ruling party but for everyones future, of course its never gong to work and many wars will ensue, and ultimate poverty will rise further.
It is now recorded that we now have 1.2 billion por and hungry people on the planet, one sixth of the total population, yet we waste so much food which others need not go hungry, the only answer I see for these problems in a permaculture basis backed by renewables, otherwise we are really going to strugle in the future,
Less can most definately be more.
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