THE GLOBAL CLIMATE CRISIS IN PERSPECTIVE
Submitted by christian on Thu, 09/10/2020 - 13:43
- The global climate crisis could see more than a billion people displaced from their homes in the next 30 years. The Ecological Threat Register, conducted by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), projected that as many as 1.2 billion people around the world could be displaced by 2050. No country will be able to escape the impact of the climate crisis -- but the world's poorest and most vulnerable populations will be hardest hit. The world's least resilient countries, when faced with ecological breakdowns, are more likely to experience civil unrest, political instability, social fragmentation and economic collapse. More than a billion people live in 31 countries that have low resilience -- meaning they aren't equipped to withstand the impact of ecological change in the coming decades. The regions facing the highest number of threats are Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Not all of these people will be displaced, however it is likely that a large number of them will be. Better-resourced countries in places like North America and Europe will be more able to manage the effects of these disasters -- but they'll likely face huge flows of climate refugees, 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
- The global population currently stands at 7.8 billion. That number is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 -- straining the world's already stretched natural resources. Most of this population growth is expected to take place in countries with ongoing armed conflict, like those in Sub-Saharan Africa. By 2050, global demand for food will increase by 50% and 3.5 billion people could suffer from food insecurity.
- Water scarcity may be an even bigger issue -- already, there are more than 2.6 billion people facing high or extreme water stress, meaning they either don't have enough water for their needs or that their water supply is at risk of disruption. By 2040, a total of 5.4 billion people -- or more than half of the world's projected population -- will live in countries facing high or extreme water stress. India and China, the world's top two most populous countries, will be among those countries. It could also spell even greater violence and conflict, which not only destabilizes economies and governments but drives mass migration. In the past decade alone, water-related violent incidents have increased by 270% worldwide.
- Recent years have seen dramatic increases in natural disasters around the world, which experts have long warned are the symptoms of a worsening climate crisis -- raging wildfires in California, heat waves across Europe, fears of a dam collapse in China and a record-breaking hurricane in the southern United States. Asia-Pacific has been the most affected region; 29% of all natural disasters in the past 30 years have taken place there. Europe has the second highest numbers of natural disasters globally. In 2019, India faced the largest population displacement due to natural disasters, with 5 million people having to leave their homes. Globally, natural disasters displaced 25 million people last year -- and the number will likely keep rising. And these natural disasters strike hardest in poorer countries; they kill seven times more people in the least developed nations than in highly developed ones. It's not because the disasters in poorer countries happen more frequently or with greater severity -- but because those nations are less able to handle the shock.
- All these threats combined will create a migration crisis that can then cause spinoff effects like heightened political instability, global insecurity and greater hostility toward immigrants. International cooperation and foreign climate-related aid will be essential in mitigating these effects and helping developing countries build better resilience. This type of international aid has already increased 34 fold from 2000 to 2018 as the full extent of the crisis became clear -- but they still fall well short of what is needed to address these issues going forward.
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