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Can anyone guess where will the first wave of climate change refugees will be from and where they'll be heading too?

noir_lord 7y ago
That's actually an interesting question. Gut response is wherever is currently the hottest but that may not be the case since there are a bunch of factors that will effect it. Good report on it here. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/groundswell---preparing-for-internal-climate-migration https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/gro... Direct Link: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29461/WBG_ClimateChange_Final.pdf https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/2... (PDF)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
yardie 7y ago
Low lying islands like the Maldives will be first. But the population is relatively small. You already have climate refugees in Africa. The Sahara is spreading south. Destroying lives of those that live on the subsaharan border. They flee to neighbouring countries and eventually Europe. The major concern is countries like Bangladesh. It’s a low coastal country with a huge population.
hedora 7y ago
Climate change refugees are already common. For instance, climate change played some role in the current Venezuelan refugee crisis (the one that has Trump separating families and housing people in camps under overpasses, or bussing them to sanctuary cities). Today, the main problem is that their government started to collapse in 2017, so they are unable to supply food to their population. Why did the government start to collapse? Well, they have seen lower crop yields in recent years, which means more food imports, which means they are more vulnerable to embargoes, etc. It only has data to 2016, but this site shows across the board agricultural production collapses in 2015 and 2016. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/venezuela/agricultural-production-and-consumption https://www.ceicdata.com/en/venezuela/agricultural-productio... The government went into disarray in 2017. In 2018 (and maybe earlier; tldr) US sanctions cut off oil revenue. The sanctions are due to terrorism, corruption, human trafficking, and human rights violations, which are, again symptoms of a collapsing government: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf You may also remember tortilla riots a few years back when the price of corn spiked. That probably led to some migration. Arguably, and famines that led to refugees in the last 10-20 years are due to climate change. The issue is that we’re at a tipping point where they will become more common.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  Not sure why you got downvote for an argument made with data sources but I gave you an upvote anyway. Spirited debate is the best thing about this place.
drjesusphd 7y ago
To the extent that the Syrian civil war was aggregated by drought, we may have already seen the first climate refugees.

That's actually an interesting question. Gut response is wherever is currently the hottest but that may not be the case since there are a bunch of factors that will effect it. Good report on it here. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/groundswell---preparing-for-internal-climate-migration https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/gro... Direct Link: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29461/WBG_ClimateChange_Final.pdf https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/2... (PDF)

deleted 7y ago

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yardie 7y ago

Low lying islands like the Maldives will be first. But the population is relatively small. You already have climate refugees in Africa. The Sahara is spreading south. Destroying lives of those that live on the subsaharan border. They flee to neighbouring countries and eventually Europe. The major concern is countries like Bangladesh. It’s a low coastal country with a huge population.

hedora 7y ago

Climate change refugees are already common. For instance, climate change played some role in the current Venezuelan refugee crisis (the one that has Trump separating families and housing people in camps under overpasses, or bussing them to sanctuary cities). Today, the main problem is that their government started to collapse in 2017, so they are unable to supply food to their population. Why did the government start to collapse? Well, they have seen lower crop yields in recent years, which means more food imports, which means they are more vulnerable to embargoes, etc. It only has data to 2016, but this site shows across the board agricultural production collapses in 2015 and 2016. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/venezuela/agricultural-production-and-consumption https://www.ceicdata.com/en/venezuela/agricultural-productio... The government went into disarray in 2017. In 2018 (and maybe earlier; tldr) US sanctions cut off oil revenue. The sanctions are due to terrorism, corruption, human trafficking, and human rights violations, which are, again symptoms of a collapsing government: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf You may also remember tortilla riots a few years back when the price of corn spiked. That probably led to some migration. Arguably, and famines that led to refugees in the last 10-20 years are due to climate change. The issue is that we’re at a tipping point where they will become more common.

noir_lord 7y ago
Not sure why you got downvote for an argument made with data sources but I gave you an upvote anyway. Spirited debate is the best thing about this place.

drjesusphd 7y ago

To the extent that the Syrian civil war was aggregated by drought, we may have already seen the first climate refugees.