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Earth Policy Release - The Rising Tide of Environmental Refugees
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Oct 22nd, 2009 - 13:27:33 |
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Earth Policy Release
Date: Oct 22, 2009 7:40 PM
Subject: Earth Policy Release - The Rising Tide of Environmental Refugees
To: bhuwan007 (at) gmail.com
[image: Earth Policy Institute]
*BOOK BYTE *
October 22, 2009
*The Rising Tide of Environmental Refugees *
Lester R. Brown
Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between
advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive
land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking.
Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth,
are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and may soon be
affected by the projected rise in sea level. As overpumping depletes
aquifers, millions more are forced to relocate in search of water.
Desert expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, principally in the Sahelian
countries, is displacing millions of peopleforcing them to either move
southward or migrate to North Africa. A 2006 U.N. conference on
desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people
could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe. This flow
of migrants has been under way for many years.
In mid-October 2003, Italian authorities discovered a boat bound for Italy
carrying refugees from Africa. After being adrift for more than two weeks
and having run out of fuel, food, and water, many of the passengers had
died. At first the dead were tossed overboard. But after a point, the
remaining survivors lacked the strength to hoist the bodies over the side.
The dead and the living shared the boat, resembling what a rescuer described
as a scene from Dantes Inferno.
The refugees were believed to be Somalis who had embarked from Libya, but
the survivors would not reveal their country of origin, lest they be sent
home. We do not know whether they were political, economic, or environmental
refugees. Failed states like Somalia produce all three. We do know that
Somalia is an ecological disaster, with overpopulation, overgrazing, and the
resulting desertification destroying its pastoral economy.
Perhaps the largest flow of Somali migrants is into Yemen, another failing
state. In 2008 an estimated 50,000 migrants and asylum seekers reached
Yemen, 70 percent more than in 2007. And during the first three months of
2009 the migrant flow was up 30 percent over the same period in 2008. These
numbers simply add to the already unsustainable pressures on Yemens land
and water resources, hastening its decline.
On April 30, 2006, a man fishing off the coast of Barbados discovered a
20-foot boat adrift with the bodies of 11 young men on board, bodies that
were virtually mummified by the sun and salty ocean spray. As the end drew
near, one passenger left a note tucked between two bodies: I would like to
send my family in Basada [Senegal] a sum of money. Please excuse me and
goodbye. The author of the note was apparently one of a group of 52 who had
left Senegal on Christmas Eve aboard a boat destined for the Canary Islands,
a jumping off point for Europe. They must have drifted for some 2,000 miles,
ending their trip in the Caribbean. This boat was not unique. During the
first weekend of September 2006, police intercepted boats from Mauritania
with a record total of nearly 1,200 people on board.
For those living in Central American countries, including Honduras,
Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, Mexico is often the gateway to the
United States. In 2008, Mexican immigration authorities reported some 39,000
detentions and 89,000 deportations.
In the city of Tapachula on the Guatemala-Mexico border, young men in search
of jobs wait along the tracks for a slow-moving freight train passing
through the city en route to the north. Some make it onto the train. Others
do not. The Jesús el Buen Pastor refuge is home to 25 amputees who lost
their grip and fell under a train while trying to board. For these young
men, says Olga Sánchez Martínez, the director of the refuge, this is the
end of their American dream. A local priest, Flor María Rigoni, calls the
migrants attempting to board the trains the kamikazes of poverty.
Today, bodies washing ashore in Italy, Spain, and Turkey are a daily
occurrence, the result of desperate acts by desperate people. And each day
Mexicans risk their lives in the Arizona desert trying to reach jobs in the
United States. On average, some 100,000 or more Mexicans leave rural areas
every year, abandoning plots of land too small or too eroded to make a
living. They either head for Mexican cities or try to cross illegally into
the United States. Many of those who try to cross the Arizona desert perish
in its punishing heat. Since 2001, some 200 bodies have been found along the
Arizona border each year.
With the vast majority of the 2.4 billion people to be added to the world by
2050 coming in countries where water tables are already falling, water
refugees are likely to become commonplace. They will be most common in arid
and semiarid regions where populations are outgrowing the water supply and
sinking into hydrological poverty. Villages in northwestern India are being
abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water.
Millions of villagers in northern and western China and in parts of Mexico
may have to move because of a lack of water.
Advancing deserts are squeezing expanding populations into an ever smaller
geographic area. Whereas the U.S. Dust Bowl displaced 3 million people, the
advancing desert in Chinas Dust Bowl provinces could displace tens of
millions.
Africa, too, is facing this problem. The Sahara Desert is pushing the
populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria northward toward the
Mediterranean. In a desperate effort to deal with drought and
desertification, Morocco is geographically restructuring its agriculture,
replacing grain with less thirsty orchards and vineyards.
In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water
already number in the thousands. In the vicinity of Damavand, a small town
within an hours drive of Tehran, 88 villages have been abandoned. And as
the desert takes over in Nigeria, farmers and herders are forced to move,
squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land. Desertification refugees
typically end up in cities, many in squatter settlements. Others migrate
abroad.
In Latin America, deserts are expanding and forcing people to move in both
Brazil and Mexico. In Brazil, some 66 million hectares of land are affected,
much of it concentrated in the countrys northeast. In Mexico, with a much
larger share of arid and semiarid land, the degradation of cropland now
extends over 59 million hectares.
While desert expansion and water shortages are now displacing millions of
people, rising seas promise to displace far greater numbers in the future,
given the concentration of the worlds population in low-lying coastal
cities and rice-growing river deltas. The numbers could eventually reach the
hundreds of millions, offering yet another powerful reason for stabilizing
both climate and population.
In the end, the issue with rising seas is whether governments are strong
enough to withstand the political and economic stress of relocating large
numbers of people while suffering heavy coastal losses of housing and
industrial facilities.
During this century we must deal with the effects of trendsrapid population
growth, advancing deserts, and rising seasthat we set in motion during the
last century. Our choice is a simple one: reverse these trends or risk being
overwhelmed by them.
# # #
Adapted from Chapter 2, Population Pressure: Land and Water, in Lester R.
Brown, *Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization* (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4
Additional data and information sources at
http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2009/pb4ch02_ss7
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http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/press_room/C87
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[image: Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save
Civilization]
*
Plan B 4.0* is now available for free
downloadingat
www.earthpolicy.org
*Media Contact:
Reah Janise Kauffman
(202) 496-9290 ext. 12
rjk (at) earthpolicy.org*
*Research Contact:
Janet Larsen
(202) 4... ext. 14
jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org*
*Earth Policy Institute
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Washington, DC 20036
www.earthpolicy.org*
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--
Bhuwan K.C.
Member, Global Youth Advisory Panel of United Nations Population Fund,
www.unfpa.org
Country Leader, YES Campaign, www.yesweb.org
Board, Association of Youth Organizations Nepal, www.ayon.org
General Secretary, Youth Engagement in Sustainability, www.yes.org.np
M +977- 97510 04437 | POB 8975, EPC 7282 | E bhuwan007 (at) gmail.com
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