Five scientists, working in different parts of the world, bear witness to some of the dramatic changes to our planet that have occurred in their lifetimes, as the global climate warms. Radio 4 Climate Change and me.
Environmental migrants
In May 2004, Professor Jennifer Leaning of Harvard University, led a two-person human rights investigation into the reported widespread attacks and killings against agrarian villagers in Darfur, in Western Sudan. The villagers became refugees in neighbouring Chad. This trip lead her to realise that climate change has a crucial part to play in human migration.
Linkages between conflict, environment and forced migration. People on the move were not only refugees from war, but whose land is worn out. After Darfur, began reading about contestation over scarce resources leading to migration and war.
The islands in the South Pacific are the first inescapable evidence of these vulnerabilities of climate change. Populations small. Science easy to grasp of encroaching seas overtaking Leaders compliant and respectfully in calls for help. request to be assisted. Individual or collective exodus aimed at salvaging some sense of national identity. Here the world is presented with its first clear incidence of exodus caused by climate change.
How sacristy of resource, water, materials, could lead to risk of war. Example: 1990’s 2000’s. Armed conflicts in the horn, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia; social unrest Kenya, mass migration out of Niger, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria heading north to Mediterranean. “Distress migration is both a symptom of climate change and a cause of intense social disruption and mounting violence between population sub groups.”
SYRIA: In 2011 a civil war broke out in Syria. One of the antecedence was as a severe 4 year drought which began in 2006, Suni populated north eastern area of agrarian people. Crops collapsed. Migration to the cities begun. By 2010 economic ruin. Government did not act. By 2011 a million farmers, mainly Suni, moved into western greener land of minority but politically elite Alawites. Resources stretched by Iraq refugees. March 2011 Suni youth marched/demonstrated against government to demand access to services. Government brutal repressions, rounded up thousands. Spured further armed resistance. Outright civil war. That war now 8 years old, killed 500,000 people, created 5.5 million refugees. Ongoing ramifications enormous
IPCC 2013 report stated that by 2050-2100 intense heat and dryness would effect most of the middle east including Syria. By 2050 populations would experience as many as 200 24 hours days of unabated heat above 100 degrees. Prospects of force migrations and civil strife were inevitable. “If these projected high temperatures in the meaner region become reality, part of the region would become uninhabitable for some species including humans.”
No one can now study forced migration without understanding climate change and its effect.
