Climate migrants may soon be a new breed: the latest wave of those forced to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. These will not be people fleeing political violence or poverty. Or not simply those two things. They won’t be leaving only their homes and the graves of their ancestors behind. These will be the hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—forced to migrate because their homes, ancestors’ graves and every bit of familiar landscape will have disappeared, beneath the rising sea levels caused by global warming.
Coastlines receding. Land falling away.
It is no secret that both Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are melting faster than they ever have. This is producing higher ocean levels with warmer water, as well as changes in weather patterns and more extreme weather events, all phenomena dramatically affecting the peoples of the world who live in low-laying areas. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the global sea level has risen by eight inches since 1870, with the rate of change increasing in recent times.
Cities of means, such as London, Venice, New York and New Orleans, are making plans. The Netherlands, long vulnerable to a sea level higher than its territory, may have lessons to offer. But, as is always the case, the poorest countries face the greatest devastation, without economies that can support either preparation or change.
Some of the smaller island nations have already begun to feel the effects of this incursion; water is eating the land in ways quite visible to the human eye. The most conservative estimates from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report suggests that the global sea level will increase eight to 16 inches above 1990 levels by 2090. The US National Academy of Sciences predictions from 2009 suggest that by 2100 sea level could increase by anywhere from 16 to 56 inches, depending how the Earth responds to the changing climate. Eleven island nations are expected to disappear completely: Kiribati, Maldives, Seychelles, Torres Straight Islands, Tegua, Solomon Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Cataret Islands, Tuvalu, and Bangladesh.
We all remember the opening day of the November 2013 UN climate change conference in Warsaw, Poland, when Yeb Saño, the chief negotiator from the Philippines gave an emotional appeal to the world, urging it to address the crisis once and for all. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever recorded, had just assaulted his homeland. When Sano got up to speak, the storm had killed at least 10,000 people. With tears in his eyes, he said: "In solidarity with my countrymen who are now struggling for food back home, and with my brother who has not had food for the last three days, I will now commence a voluntary fast for the climate."
I was watching the story on my TV screen. The Filipino delegate’s face was streaked with tears. A few nearby attendees seemed moved, but most didn’t seem to be listening. Those with the power to change our dangerous course weren’t listening at all.
The year before, Saño had given another speech, at the UN climate summit in Doha following devastating Typhoon Bopha that killed some 1,100. Now, in Warsaw, he said: "In Doha, we asked: 'If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?' But,” he continued, ‘here in Warsaw, we may very well ask these same forthright questions." What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness. We can stop this madness.”
Yet climate summit follows climate summit, delegates from nations large and small attend, huge amounts of money are spent on redundant studies and rhetorical talk, and nothing is done. All initiatives are non-binding. The so-called developed world continues to make high-sounding pronouncements, but fail to back those pronouncements up with action. The disenfranchised watch helplessly, and suffer.
As the world’s top scientists prepare to meet yet again, this time in Yokohama, Japan, at the top of the agenda is the prediction that global sea levels could rise as much as three feet by the end of this century. Higher seas and warmer weather will cause profound changes. No one expects anything from the Japanese conference that hasn’t happened at preceding meetings.
The powerful, highly industrialized, nations that are causing the highest percentages of global warming and also have the greatest wealth with which to implement more sustainable technologies, are not about to accept threats to their bottom lines. Not at home, and certainly not for throwaway populations in faraway lands. The smaller, poorer, more easily victimized nations, that bear the brunt of the madness, have nowhere to turn for help.
The situation is reminiscent of our recent Great Recession, in which hundreds of thousands were tricked into assuming debts beyond their means, the financial sector suddenly called in those debts, and the poor lost their homes, jobs, and futures—while the wheelers and dealers, in a very few cases, got a slap on the wrist and were able to go on to think up the next scheme for making billions on the backs of new victims.
Bangladesh is one of the countries already feeling the brutal effects of rising ocean levels. It produces only 0.3% of the greenhouse gasses causing climate change, yet already unusual storms and a loss of land have foreclosed on thousands. These people are homeless, not because a bank or mortgage lender tricked them into assuming an obligation they could not fulfill, but because the very land beneath their feet is disappearing.
Some climate change leaders have demanded that rich countries compensate poor countries for polluting the atmosphere. A few have even said that developed countries should open their borders to climate migrants. In a New York Times article entitled “Borrowed Time on Disappearing Land” (March 28, 2014), Gardiner Harris quotes Atiq Rahman, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies and the nation’s leading climate scientist: “It’s a matter of global justice. These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States.”
Of course we know the Unites States will not accommodate the victims of its endless excess, any more than we welcome those immigrants we actually need to till our land, harvest our crops or work in our factories. Legal entrance to the US is one of the world’s most coveted and difficult to achieve statuses.
But sometimes when I try to sleep at night, I dream an endless stream of gaunt humans, wandering from lands long since beneath the surface of the seas, knocking on our door. They are the ghostly climate migrants. Their hungry eyes and mute lips jolt me awake.
(Photo by European Commission DG ECHO)
Responses to “Climate Foreclosure / Climate Migration”