CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT IN THE NEWS
Indeed, Haiti is considered the most climate-vulnerable nation in Latin America and the Caribbean. But the far-reaching effects of climate vulnerability, such as diminished crop yields in largely agriculture-dependent societies and resultant poverty, play out in countries around the region, posing an urgent challenge to the US as it emerges from years of blatantly anti-immigrant and anti-science policies.
The report is straightforward about the effects of ‘human-induced’ climate change, but lost in the amplification, as well as the media coverage of the stark warnings is the clear connection of climate change to the burning of fossil fuels by a much smaller group of ‘humans’ who hold particular responsibility for the present climate crisis.
For sure, sudden large-scale displacement arising from conflict is destabilizing, most of all for the refugees experiencing it. However, it is paramount that the security sector distinguish that it is not migrants and refugees that are destabilizing the world. In fact, it is the historic contribution to climate change and failure of states to tackle climate change - where 70% of the effects are felt in fragile countries - that are exacerbating vulnerabilities and thus contributing to the multiple drivers that are increasing displacement and forced migration around the world.
While Pakistan was recently recording temperatures too hot for human tolerance, the media was largely focused on the heat wave across the United States. Pakistan is one of the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change, and each region is dealing with the effects of climate change in their own way. With this, displacement will continue to rise.
