Copenhagen: Climate Refugees Pose Growing Concern
December 7, 2009 by Webmaster
By Prerna Lal
Ahead of the UN Copenhagen summit on climate change, Bangladeshi Finance Minister Abdul Muhith raised the issue of climate refugees and calling on developed countries to help, given that some 60% of Bangladeshis are at risk due to rising sea-levels.
This is the first time that a senior official of any developing country has raised the matter on a global stage.
“We are asking our development partners to honour the natural right of persons to migrate. We can’t accommodate all these people,” The Guardian quoted Abdul Muhith, as saying.
He also urged the United Nations to afford climate refugees the same protection as people fleeing political repression and seeking asylum.
What is the conservative solution to climate change refugees? Deny, make some ignorant comments, and then launch some ill-informed ad-hominem attacks. Foregone conclusion: Let them all die.
An International Organization of Migration report has estimated that climate change will create around 200 million refugees by the year 2050, while another report by the Global Humanitarian Forum states that 300,000 people already die annually due to climate change related causes. Given climate change is largely the result of North-Atlantic and Australian consumption, are these countries ready to take responsibility for the large migration of peoples that will ensue in this century?
Richer and more developed countries could help avert the looming crisis by providing funds for relocation or accepting refugees. Since restricting human migration is the mantra nowadays, relocation help seems like the way that developed countries would go.
Island countries such as the Maldives, Tuvalu and coastal areas are most threatened. However, mass migration due to climate change won’t be limited of people from South to North. With Alaskan villages melting away, Americans are likely to be one of the first refugees of climate change, so conservative skepticism is not really an option for too long.
Climate change is not a matter of faith where action should await public approval. There exists a broad consensus in the scientific community, including 2000 scientists on the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, that the issue poses a grave risk for humanity. The only scientists who disagree have their ‘research’ funded by Big-Oil. Go figure.
In the meantime, 200 million people will be looking for new homes soon, Americans included.
While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases. Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare. At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050. According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way. “The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. Rosemary Rayfuse from the University of New South Wales argued that “a solution to the ‘disappearing state’ dilemma is suggested through adoption of a positive rule freezing baselines and through recognition of the category of ‘deterritorialised state’. It is concluded that the articulation of new rules of international law may be needed to provide stability, certainty and a future to disappearing states”.