The Norwegian Refugee – one of the largest NGOs working with refugees and displaced people – released a report in 2008 about climate refugees:
http://www.nrc.no/?did=9268973
where they argue that climate alone is not the spark for migration. So ‘climate refugees’ don’t exist as such. Yet.

Meanwhile, another good source is the respected journal ‘Forced Migration Review’ which came out with a special edition on climate change and displacement, see: http://www.fmreview.org/climatechange.htm
If you are able to get through the jargon and waffle, there are a few good recommendations there, but from what I have read, none of the articles really flag up the scale of crisis we could be facing. It seems they are still referring to IPCC 4th assessment stuff (Nov 07) which is now much superceded with more recent findings, as discussed on this site.

I personally think there should be more joined up thinking by the major aid actors, that looks at all of the emerging crises and how they will affect the poorest, and the likely migration scenarios. These issues include:
- climate change
- peak oil / energy shortages
- falling aid revenues (reflecting economic probs)
- food crisis, following on from last year, now escalating

A coherent response is necessary, that adopts permaculture principles (esp soil restoration), decentralised & simple energy systems and other resilient community designs

Is anyone in the UK planning how to respond to this likely future mass-migration, with all its social, political and economic consequences.

I know that climate change IS happening. We see the evidence of shrinking polar ice caps and retreating glaciers on a regular basis.

Three years ago, I stood on a mountain in the French Alps while an old man from that area pointed out to me all of the changes that he’d observed during his lifetime.

I have absolutely no doubts about this at all.

However, I do have a question for anyone who has studied this much more than I have.

Is there any REAL evidence that all of this is due to the actions of mankind rather than climate change being part of a natural cycle?

After all, the fossil record shows that hippos and crocodiles once lived in the UK. Even with climate change, that would still impossible in 2008.

I find your comment very thought-provoking, and not a rant at all.

Many of those climate-change refugees will head for Britain. We are a rich country with a temperate climate moderated by the Atlantic, in other words better-placed than most to protect ourselves from the effects of global heating. Many much more vulnerable countries have historic ties with us, in other words they were British colonies, English is widely spoken there, their peoples have well-established communities in the UK.

Is anyone in the UK planning how to respond to this likely future mass-migration, with all its social, political and economic consequences?

Once in this presentation, it’s quite hard to pull out of it if you want to, all you can do it click to go on. It seems to end abruptly and unexpectedly, without any real conclusions and with no obvious way back to where you started from.

Prophetic?

I’d like to take this analysis a step further. Assuming Anderson’s trajectory is correct, we’re heading for 2 degree+ long before 2050. As Climate Safety pointed out, Arctic sea ice has melted some 80 years ahead of (IPCC) schedule, and methane gysers are pouring out of frozen lakes in the middle of winter. So, I think we need to look at the warming scenarios again, and the humanitarian impacts we should anticipate.

In particular, in Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America, there could be such enormous weather related disasters, coming one after another, that it will dwarf our ability to respond. Coupled with the economic downturn, donors will have less money to fork out.

Last year I helped write a report for the APPGPOG (parliamentary peak oil group) on the humanitarian impacts of peak oil, as it was May and oil was around $130 a barrel. Should be still available on our site: http://www.reset-development.org
in which we aruged that international NGOs, UN, donors, etc. need to overhaul the way we think about aid, and build-in resilience and relevant training where necessary.

Having worked in this “industry” for years, I know how little it has changed, or adapted. Post-tsunami reconstruction adopted almost no renewable energy or permaculture design concepts. Not because they wouldn’t have been of interest, but because nobody in local Govt., UN coordinators, NGO implementors or local contractors knew very much about it. New houses built in the Maldives have dozens of sockets to drive appliances – on islands where electricity is entirely based on diesel, shipped in at great expense from a long way off. Bottled gas for cooking, and so on. This is only one example, the same can be found in Aceh, Pakistan post-earthquake, etc.

The point is that there is an enormous awareness and knowledge gap within the entire aid network (including local universities in the countries vulnerable to disasters).

Looking back at the 9% or 650ppm/2 degrees factors, I think we need to realise that ferocious weather events or peak oil will happen rather sooner than we think. And local capacity should be mobilised in advance, so that they have access to at least some knowledge about the kind of home grown responsnes that can enable survival.

As Mark Lynas pointed out in 6 degrees, “mankind’s most effective adaptation has been migration”. We need to accept that people are going to move when the climate prevents them to stay where they are. Where can they go and how are we prepared?

Like globalisation, the modern aid industry is largely about bringing in external stuff to keep people alive. Like food, medicines, diesel to run the machines to make the meds do their magic, and so on. If we put the case forward properly – as coherently as done so by Anderson, et al – perhaps the key donors would listen (US, EU, Scandanavians, UK, Japan). The message is clear:

- look at the climate data today (not IPCCs). It’s not good. Project the impacts over the next ten years in the most vulnerable parts of the world. Where most people live.
- Overlay this with peak oil production figures. Run best case (IEA, etc) and worst case (Campbell et al). Pick a point in the middle and use it for this scenario planning.
- Will the standard aid and development package work in this combined scenario ? Probably not. OK, what are the alternatives?
- Resilience planning needed at all levels – training must be rolled out through local and international actors. Every project should be vetted: does it build local resilence to CC and PO? Does it include some capacity building in a relevant area?
- Take note that many of the practices and technologies are coming out of “the South” anyway.

These are some thoughts. Bit more of a rant than a comment.
Great to see this site.

The problem is that the economic meltdown brings down the price of oil so for a while the problem goes away. The price of petrol has come down hugely so there’s no incentive to invest in better mpg. However, low oil price means low oil investment which means when the economy lifts up, there’s no oil to meet to the demand, then the price of oil goes up again and we fall back into recession. What a laugh.

I saw Kevin give very much this talk about a year ago (slight updates). Colin Challen asked Kevin to present it to local Labour party members including MPs and Hilary Benn last spring.

The public audience was many supportive although a few were a bit shell-shocked. I gather the other meeting went less well.

Kevin is human enough to take the mick out of himself – he is the single person in a three bedroom house and the freezer is his mum’s – but my sense is that the politicians just find the consequences too difficult to handle. They simply do not want to have to tell the public that they will have to “give up” some of their toys and that economic growth in all its glory is not a viable future option.

When challenged about this, Kevin’s suggestion was that the time to do it was immediately after an election as this would give the maximum amount of time for things to bed down before the relevant Government had to face the voters again.

To the movers and shakers of Somerset.

I have been visiting (virtually) the Poznan climate change talks via OneClimate http://www.oneclimate.net/ Island in Second Life http://secondlife.com/whatis/ which has me transfixed. There is still time for you to visit at 5.30pm each evening this week. After listening to an energised discussion http://www.oneclimate.net/2008/12/09/not-stupid-poznan about the forthcoming Age of Stupid http://www.ageofstupid.net/ film, which I hope we will show in March in Frome, I took the opportunity to ask Yvo de Boer http://unfccc.int/secretariat/executive_secretary/items/1200.php two questions;

Do you personally think that agreement will be reached to cut emissions by 80% by 2050?… and …
Will Obama’s involvement make a fundamental difference to your negotiations?
You can see his measured but positive responses (‘well I hope so’, and ‘absolutely’) on the OneClimate http://www.oneclimate.net/poznan website and YouTube http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QjMmcvbqk8I&eurl

Here http://www.oneclimate.net/2008/12/10/eu-climate-change-decision-call-gordon-brown-now/ the Youth Delegation in Poznan ask you to take action & call Gordon Brown.

Here http://transitionculture.org/2008/12/10/9-degrees-the-wizard-of-oz-and-sex/ the founder of the Transition Network, Rob Hopkins, explores some of the implications of the latest climate science. I urge you to read this and other articles on his excellent blog now that Somerset has officially joined the movement. We need to take action.

From George Monbiot http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/06/09/about-george-monbiot/;
My reading of the new projections suggests that to play its part in preventing two degrees of global warming, the UK needs to cut greenhouse gases by roughly 25% from current levels by the end of 2012 – a quarter in four years. But how the heck could this be done? Here is a list of measures http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/12/02/whistling-in-the-wind/ which could be enacted almost immediately. They require no economic or technological miracles; but they do demand that the government is brave enough to govern.

Professor Kevin Anderson http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/generate/staffprint/staff-view.php?id=8 “at every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different.”

Best wishes, and please circulate,

Katy Duke
founder member of
Sustainable Frome

Just to throw out some useful links on this, you can watch Kevin Anderson giving the powerpoint presentation that Rob’s provided a link to here: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/climatechange/conference/timetable.php – just below “tuesday 23rd september” – then about 20 minutes in; read a paper which has all the main points from the presentation here: http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/journal_papers/fulltext.pdf; and read a piece from the Guardian on this here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change.

One of the points that’s really striking about this research is that it’s made an academic whose work focusses on climate change make the leap to talk about our economic system.

In the journal article, it says that achieving the emissions reductions they call for won’t be possible “without a sea change in the economic orthodoxy” and that unless we start geo-engineering, it’s “difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with stabilization at or below 650 ppmv CO2e”.

The close of the conference talk on this research is interesting too as Professor Anderson does something “very unscientific” and makes an appeal for the kind of changes in behaviour and social values that Transition works towards, ending with a quote…

“at every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different.”
Roberto Unger

nice article, coincides quite well with JC MacKay’s book; Without Hot Air. freely available

http://www.withouthotair.com/endorsements.html

his book and this article debunks the comfortable notion that “every little helps”. We need big bold steps. leaps in faith and move from the safety of incremental change.
Shane