No Place Like Home
Three young women from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) came to shoot an interview with me last week for their website. I was interviewed by Rebecca Atwood, Executive Assistant at EJF, Tori Timms, Campaigner (who kindly supplied the bullet points below) and Sara Petrai, EJF Filmmaker.
Armed to the teeth with information, they spoke to me with such passion of the Climate Refugees they had met that no one who ever listens to them could doubt that we are in the throes of mounting disaster from climate change.
Some home truths from EJF: a summary of our discussion on the day:
- Not enough has been done to raise awareness on climate change. It is easy to take for granted that the basics of climate change are ‘general knowledge’, which isn’t the case. It isn’t only the public, but equally many politicians – even those working on climate change – who do not yet understand how the science works, let alone how it can affect people. Tackling this knowledge deficit is such an important part of what EJF does – producing free, objective, good quality information on issues in a way that everyone can understand, in a format that suits different tastes, cultures, ages. You shouldn’t need a degree and to pay a fortune to access the top science journals to get good information on climate change.
- In regards to skepticism on climate change; we need to take the time to explain to people that there is uncertainty about climate change, but that that uncertainty is not enough to warrant doing nothing. The computer models that we rely on to paint a picture of the future are excellent but they are only as good as the information we plug into them. It’s true to say that scientists do not yet fully understand atmospheric and oceanic dynamics. What these models do tell us, and what is supported by scientific records of past and present, is that it is very likely that our planet is changing because of human activities. Since industrialization, human activities have released more than 900 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. CO2 levels are the highest they have been in 650,000 years. Even the most hardened skeptic has to admit that it is incredibly unlikely that this will not have an effect on the climate system.
- The fifty Least Developed Countries (LDCs) produce around 2% of annual, worldwide CO2 emissions. These countries are the least culpable for climate change, yet many of these are being first and worst affected by its effects. We absolutely need to hear their voices at international climate change negotiations. However, in practice, only about a quarter of observers at UNFCCC proceedings come from developing or undeveloped countries. One of the ways EJF works to tackle this massive disparity is by filming the testimonies of people who can’t be at these summits. These are people who have very real concerns, but will never have the opportunity to physically meet with international policy-makers or attend summits.
- Putting a ‘human face’ on climate change will help change how people react and respond to climate change. Climate change is having a brutal impact on the lives of some of the World’s poorest and most vulnerable people, EJF believes their voices should be heard. These people are articulate representatives of climate refugees – people forced from their homes and land by deteriorating environmental conditions associated with climate change. Our films are a means to give an international platform for the hopes and concerns of people who are actually living the reality of climate change.
- In 2010, an EJF team went to Bangladesh to investigate the effect that climate change is having on people living in Bangladesh. What we found was that climate change is very clearly denying rural communities their most basic human rights – such as the rights to water, food, shelter.
We encountered resilient, strong communities that don’t have the means to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change that are already apparent in the regions they live in. When violent storms hit, floods destroy their homes, the open ponds they rely on for water start to become salty or their crops start to fail, this takes their toll on them, their family’s health, and their livelihoods. Some lose everything they need to survive. These are some of the world’s poorest people, and they are being pushed deeper into poverty.
Many of those we interviewed had lived in these areas for generations, and now their families have been pushed beyond the brink by the negative impacts of climate change. They have no choice but to move. Their destination is often determined by their financial capacity and social connections. Very few choose to move internationally; they do not even want to leave their homes. The climate refugees EJF spoke to chose to move to the nearest cities, many will ultimately move to slums. This exposes them to a whole new set of issues, while rapid and unplanned rural-to-urban migration can create huge pressures on city infrastructure and services.
Unlike refugees fleeing persecution, climate refugees are not legally recognized. There is no legislation, agency or institution specifically mandated for their protection and assistance. No existing frameworks or institutions in the domain of migration, displacement or climate change precisely and definitively address the issue of climate refugees, and no international institution has a clear mandate to serve the populations which need human rights protection and humanitarian assistance. For these reasons, EJF is working to secure a new, legally-binding instrument that gives them official recognition and secures their protection and assistance. (A new EJF report summarizing our findings in Bangladesh will be launched within the next few months.)
- We can’t rest on our laurels on climate change. It’s a bigger problem than man has encountered before so we need to be adaptable and smart in how we respond to this threat. Everyone can make a difference. NGOs, governments and industry need to inspire more than just people opening up their wallets. This needs to be about changing the way people think, vote and buy. EJF’s No Place like Home campaign (http://www.ejfoundation.org/page578.html) is working to be a part of this.
- Climate change is more than just an ‘environmental’ issue – it has major implications for human rights, development, environment, migration and the global economy. EJF advocates that governments and international institutions need to systematically link their policies and decision-making with climate change. We believe this is genuinely the only way we can achieve sustainable development.
EJF short films can be streamed from our website: http://www.ejfoundation.org/page592.html
You can download EJF reports and briefings here: http://www.ejfoundation.org/page590.html
And this is exactly the kind of talk which will get you nowhere. Linking anthropogenic climate change with terms like social justice, sustainable development and environmental refugees is just the thing to turn polticians completely off. They need terms which will help them get elected, not defeated. I suggest you reject all of those socialist eco-marxist terms and create a whole new set of terms. Terms more palatable to the right.
Just helping you out.
cheers
Comment by klem on 13/02/2012 at 5:23 pm
EJF are trying to to campaign their case to our governments of the world to guaranty rights to refugees in countries like Alaska and Mozamabique …. But how can governments of the world relocate millions of people. … There is no country who will support this campaign.
I believe this world is large enough to share with the poorest and vulnerable people whom have suffered from climate change.
I have read over EJF reports on there website and I support there campaign to help millions of people who have lost there homes through climate change, but I really feel that it’s like throwing a pebble in the ocean.
EJF are trying to brings this issue of ‘climate refugees’ to the European Parliament but will there ever be help to countries that mean very little to the European government……
you have posted this and many other important campaign,s On your blog and I think it’s a good step forward to give awareness to the younger generation ….
Sorry to be negative…. I do support the great work of EJF … And I really hope that one day EJF get there legal binding to protect climate refugees,also Maybe one day we will all see through the mainstream media what our world has become through climate change!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Ian careless on 14/02/2012 at 1:05 pm
The most salient statement of this piece is “You shouldn’t need a degree and to pay a fortune to access the top science journals to get good information on climate change.” If people have unfiltered access to the breadth and depth of climate science, they will quickly understand that the idea that CO2 is causing global warming (or the more politically acceptable “climate change”) is a theory which has been wholly discredited.
Basic predictions of the climate models (such as excessive heating in the troposphere over the equator) are not found in real measurements taken by radiosonde (weather balloons) or satellites. Satellite measurements of global temperatures (the most reliable and least controversial measure of global temperature) show no warming since 1998 (a peak el Nino year, since when the intensity of el Ninos has been diminishing).
Studies, by three separate teams from the National Solar Observatory and the Air Force Research Laboratory, are suggesting the next solar cycle (25) will be similar to the Dalton or Maunder Minima. These minima occurred during the Little Ice Age which saw temperatures plunge after the relatively high temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period. Scientists studying oceans demonstrate that the recent warming, to the end of the last century, is part of the natural cycle of oceanic oscillations and predict a thirty year cooling phase. The CLOUD experiment at CERN suggests that all the warming of the late twentieth century could be accounted for by a small percentage reduction of reflective cloud cover (albedo) – more of the sun’s rays reached the earth, warming the planet. Indications are that albedo is growing once more. Clearly, the computer climate models on which climate alarmism is based are flawed because they fail to model these natural processes correctly.
The scientific method requires that a theory be exposed to critical independent review but climategate and other evidence shows the extent to which a narrow coterie of scientists supporting the man-made global warming hypothesis subverted the peer review process and suppressed contrary evidence. As Albert Einstein said “no amount of experimentation can prove me right, a single experiment can prove wrong.”
When it comes to the supposed victims of climate change, there is even less evidence to support the idea that extreme weather is caused by global warming. Al Gore in his recent televised climate change alarmathon referred to megafloods in Pakistan displacing 20 million people but Pakistan has a long history of flooding. In 1976 10 million homes were destroyed which suggests many more than 20 million were displaced three years before the recent phase of global warming started. A leading hurricane specialist, Chris Landsea, resigned from the IPCC in protest over repeated, unsubstantiated claims of man’s CO2 emissions causing extreme weather. His 2007 study, of hurricanes over the last 100 years, found no link between climate change and the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. A more recent study by the Institute for Environmental Studies, Amsterdam, found no correlation between climate change and extreme weather. It concluded rising insurance losses were due to expanding populations in vulnerable areas.
Similarly, the predictions of sea-level rise have been vastly exaggerated. There is no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. Levels have risen steadily since the end of the Little Ice Age (mainly due to thermal expansion) and according to to NASA’s satellite data, sea levels show a 6mm decline in 2010 and AMSR-E Global Sea Surface Temperature Variations indicate that oceans are cooling.
There are $billions being milked by banking interests and big business from the carbon agenda. Carbon trading and renewable energy subsidies worth $billions are driving up fuel and food prices which of course hits the poorest.
There are many localised environmental tragedies being perpetrated and eclipsed as the environmental movement is absorbed into this money making machine. Localised weather systems are undoubtedly affected by environmental damage but the obsession with climate change is leading to a massive mis-allocation of resources while enslaving future generations of developing nations in climate change debt.
If you are interested in truth rather than propaganda, I suggest you Peter Taylor’s book, “Chill, a reassessment of global warming”. Peter Taylor is an ecologist with a long history of environmental activism and science policy analysis at all levels of government, the EU and the UN. During the 1980s he was a leading advocate for Greenpeace on issues of marine pollution. In recent years he has sat on the UK National Advisory Group for Community Renewable Energy Initiatives and his communications consultancy Ethos pioneered landscape visualisation techniques for integrating renewable energy projects with other elements of sustainability. During his work on renewable energy strategies, Peter became concerned with the impact of the rush into renewable power supplies on community and biodiversity, and decided to review the science base for ‘global warming’. His book is endorsed by W Jackson Davis who drafted the Kyoto protocol and says it is essential reading for everyone on both sides of the debate.
Comment by Clive Menzies on 15/02/2012 at 3:45 pm
I believe that its important we take action! We dont see the half of it as us westerners have have never really experienced real trauma in that sense.
Comment by Charlotte B on 20/03/2012 at 7:48 pm
Hello and thank you for an excellent website. So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.
According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmental refugees.
Environmental migrants, therefore, are persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees form a specific type of environmental migrant.
Environmental refugees, therefore, are persons compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character.
Comment by Anne on 25/04/2012 at 9:56 am