Editor’s note: As the climate crisis accelerates, extreme weather is causing crop failures and other disasters. Today’s article shares a grim projection: the world may see more than 1 billion climate refugees by 2050.
This problem is not new. Throughout the last 10,000 years, many civilizations have grown powerful, destroyed their land and water, and collapsed. Our situation today is only different because of scale. Modern civilization is global, and so the problems are worse.
Industrial civilization is a failed experiment. Wealthy consumer societies have been built by vast quantities of fossil energy and harvesting the natural world. Reversing this crisis will require a basic restructuring of our entire society. The economics of growth are obsolete. Destructive industries must be dismantled. Population must be stabilized and then reduced. Consumerism must be abandoned. Wild nature must be protected and allowed to expand and repair itself. And as centralized systems for food production and other necessities fail, new grassroots structures will need to be created.
“The media report on these crises as though they are all separate issues. They are not. They are inextricably entangled with each other and with the culture that causes them…
These problems are urgent, severe, and worsening… [they] are not hypothetical, projected, or “merely possible” like Y2K, asteroid impacts, nuclear war, or supervolcanoes. These crises are not “possible” or “impending”—they are well underway and will continue to worsen. The only uncertainty is how fast, and thus how long our window of action is.”
– From the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet
NB: This report is anthropocentric and focused purely on government aid programs which have limited ability to solve systemic issues.
From The Institute for Economics and Peace / September 9, 2020
Today marks the launch of the inaugural Ecological Threat Register (ETR), that measures the ecological threats countries are currently facing and provides projections to 2050. The report uniquely combines measures of resilience with the most comprehensive ecological data available, to shed light on the countries least likely to cope with extreme ecological shocks. The report is released by leading international think-tank the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), which produces indexes such as the Global Peace Index and Global Terrorism Index.
Key Results
- 19 countries with the highest number of ecological threats are among the world’s 40 least peaceful countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Chad, India and Pakistan.
- Over one billion people live in 31 countries where the country’s resilience is unlikely to sufficiently withstand the impact of ecological events by 2050, contributing to mass population displacement.
- Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are the regions facing the largest number of ecological threats.
- 3.5 billion people could suffer from food insecurity by 2050; which is an increase of 1.5 billion people from today.
- The lack of resilience in countries covered in the ETR will lead to worsening food insecurity and competition over resources, increasing civil unrest and mass displacement, exposing developed countries to increased influxes of refugees.The Ecological Threat Register analyses risk from population growth, water stress, food insecurity, droughts, floods, cyclones, rising temperatures and sea levels. Over the next 30 years, the report finds that 141 countries are exposed to at least one ecological threat by 2050. The 19 countries with the highest number of threats have a combined population of 2.1 billion people, which is around 25 per cent of the world’s total population.The ETR analyses the levels of societal resilience within countries to determine whether they have the necessary coping capacities to deal with future ecological shocks. The report finds that more than one billion people live in countries that are unlikely to have the ability to mitigate and adapt to new ecological threats, creating conditions for mass displacement by 2050. The country with the largest number of people at risk of mass displacements is Pakistan, followed by Ethiopia and Iran. Haiti faces the highest threat in Central America. In these countries, even small ecological threats and natural disasters could result in mass population displacement, affecting regional and global security.
Regions that have high resilience, such as Europe and North America, will not be immune from the wider impact of ecological threats, such as a significant number of refugees. The European refugee crisis in the wake of wars in Syria and Iraq in 2015 saw two million people flee to Europe and highlights the link between rapid population shifts with political turbulence and social unrest.
However, Europe, the US and other developed countries are facing fewer ecological threats and also have higher levels of resilience to deal with these risks. Developed countries which are facing no threats include Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and Iceland. In total there are 16 countries facing no threats.
Steve Killelea, Founder & Executive Chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, said:
“Ecological threats and climate change pose serious challenges to global peacefulness. Over the next 30 years lack of access to food and water will only increase without urgent global cooperation. In the absence of action civil unrest, riots and conflict will most likely increase. COVID-19 is already exposing gaps in the global food chain”.
Many of the countries most at risk from ecological threats are also predicted to experience significant population increases, such as Nigeria, Angola, Burkina Faso and Uganda. These countries already struggle to address ecological issues. They already suffer from resource scarcity, low levels of peacefulness and high poverty rates.
Steve Killelea, said:
“This will have huge social and political impacts, not just in the developing world, but also in the developed, as mass displacement will lead to larger refugee flows to the most developed countries. Ecological change is the next big global threat to our planet and people’s lives, and we must unlock the power of business and government action to build resilience for the places most at risk.“
Food Insecurity
The global demand for food is projected to increase by 50 per cent by 2050, meaning that without a substantial increase in supply, many more people will be at risk of hunger. Currently, more than two billion people globally face uncertain access to sufficient food. This number is expected to increase to 3.5 billion people by 2050 which is likely to affect global resilience.
The five most food insecure countries are Sierra Leone, Liberia, Niger, Malawi and Lesotho, where more than half of the population experience uncertainty in access to sufficient food to be healthy. COVID-19 has exacerbated levels of food insecurity and given rise to substantial price increases, highlighting potential volatility caused by future ecological change.
In high income countries, the prevalence of undernourishment is still high at 2.7 per cent, or one in 37 people do not have sufficient food to function normally. Undernourishment in developed countries is a byproduct of poverty; Colombia, Slovakia and Mexico have the highest undernourishment rates of OECD countries.
Water Stress
Over the past decade, the number of recorded water-related conflict and violent incidents increased by 270 per cent worldwide. Since 2000, most incidents have taken place in Yemen and Iraq, which highlights the interplay between extreme water stress, resilience and peacefulness, as they are among the least peaceful countries as measured by the Global Peace Index 2020.
Today, 2.6 billion people experience high or extreme water stress – by 2040, this will increase to 5.4 billion people. The majority of these countries are located in South Asia, Middle East, North Africa (MENA), South-Western Europe, and Asia Pacific. Some of the worst affected countries by
2040 will be Lebanon, Singapore, Israel and Iraq, while China and India are also likely to be impacted. Given the past increases in water-related conflict this is likely to drive further tension and reduce global resilience.
Natural Disasters
Changes in climate, especially the warming of global temperatures, increases the likelihood of weather-related natural disasters such as droughts, as well as increasing the intensity of storms and creating wetter monsoons. If natural disasters occur at the same rate seen in the last few decades, 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050. Asia Pacific has had the most deaths from natural disasters with over 581,000 recorded since 1990. Earthquakes have claimed the most lives in the region, with a death toll exceeding 319,000, followed by storms at 191,000.
Flooding has been the most common natural disaster since 1990, representing 42 per cent of recorded natural disasters. China’s largest event were the 2010 floods and landslides, which led to 15.2 million displaced people. Flooding is also the most common natural disaster in Europe, accounting for 35 per cent of recorded disasters in the region and is expected to rise.
19 countries included in the ETR are at risk of rising sea levels, where at least 10 per cent of each country’s population could be affected. This will have significant consequences for low-lying coastal areas in China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand over the next three decades – as well as cities with large populations like Alexandria in Egypt, the Hague in the Netherlands, and Osaka in Japan.
The Institute for Economics and Peace is an international and independent think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable and tangible measure of human well-being and progress. It has offices in Sydney, Brussels, New York, The Hague, Mexico City and Harare.
Photo illustration of climate refugees by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
My main comment here is about the headline. The editor’s note hit the nail on the head: this report is anthropocentric, or “human supremacist” as Derrick Jensen would put it. There shouldn’t even be 1.2 billion people on the entire planet, let alone refugees from human destruction of the climate or any other cause. Of course it’s bad that people will be forced from their homes because of the climate catastrophe, but that pales in comparison to the human overpopulation problem that is the No. 1 cause of the mass extinction crisis, not to mention the great harms that the climate catastrophe is causing to the Earth and all the life here, including the mass extinctions that it is starting to cause and that will further exacerbate the extinction crisis that humans have also caused.
One of the fundamental problems on this planet is that humans, the only species with the ability to destroy habitats and ecosystems, and to cause extirpations and extinctions of species, obsesses on itself to the exclusion of all else. Obsessing on climate refugees when our destruction of the climate is doing harms that dwarf that problem is a perfect example of this self-centered, anthropocentric, human supremacist attitude.
Not surprisingly (given that each estimate of human destruction of the Earth is far worse than the last one), this estimate is roughly FOUR TIMES as bad as the one issued by IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) in March, 2019.
That report — just three years ago — predicted between 50 million and 700 million global “hunger refugees” by 2050, with the most probable number being in the 200-300 million range. Likewise, it was only a few years ago that sea level rise by 2100 was estimated at three feet, whereas today’s science says we could see a 3 or 4-foot rise by mid-century.
The brutally simple fact is that we can’t realistically predict the level of catastrophe that awaits us, nor how soon it will be here. Why such vagueness? Two reasons: (1) We’ve never been here before; and, (2) we have no clear idea how many apocalyptic factors we have unleashed, nor how much one factor might accelerate the others.
Projections regarding the total collapse of civilization, for instance, typically look at only one or two factors, while ignoring the rest. For example, global warming estimates are typically based on the effects of fossil fuel use, but do not include the sudden melting of the permafrost — which could literally happen any day now, making global warming vastly worse, and potentially leading to a world where even rats and cockroaches are threatened with extinction.
And yet — simply because we don’t know for sure — the pragmatists and optimists among us (i.e., “climate deniers,” economists, and corporate CEO’s) invariably err on the low side. As a result, they warn of a low-to-medium catastrophe level, when all the graphs tend to be pointing toward worst case scenarios.
To cite a good analogy, it’s as if Western military advisors had reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor by mobilizing the Hawaii National Guard, and warning Japan that future attacks of this kind could destabilize U.S.-Japanese relations.
Or, my great-grandparents might have responded to six of their nine children dying of diphtheria, by reducing their household clothing budget, and raising fewer chickens.
In other words, the ship of industrial civilization is sinking, and our leaders respond as if to organize a committee, and study whether lifeboats are a worthwhile investment.
The countries mentioned above as being most at risk (Ethiopia, Iran, etc.) have seen their populations quadruple or quintuple since 1960, with a few African countries even approaching 1000% population growth, over that period. And yet their leaders respond as if the mere suggestion of “one child per family” were an attack on culture and religion, if not race.
The cultural norm of “people have the right to whatever they want” is a suicidal attack on nature, resulting in a disastrous loss of global fresh water resources, topsoil, forests, and habitat for most earthly species.
Unless we rapidly bring our use of the planet back within the sustainable boundaries respected by all other species, nature may impose limits that deny our right to exist as a species at all.