Andrew Lam's Blog - Posts Tagged "disasters"
Consequences of Climate Change: A World Awash With Environmental Refugees
The modern world has long thought of refugees in strictly political terms, victims in a world riven by competing ideologies. But as climate change continues unabated, there is a growing population of displaced men, women and children whose homes have been rendered unlivable thanks to a wide spectrum of environmental disasters.
Despite their numbers, and their need, most nations refuse to recognize their status.
The 1951 U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as a person with a genuine fear of being persecuted for membership in a particular social group or class. The environmental refugee -- not necessarily persecuted, yet necessarily forced to flee -- falls outside this definition.
Not Recognized, Not Counted
Where the forest used to be, torrential rains bring barren hills of mud down on villages. Crops wither in the parched earth. Animals die. Melting glaciers and a rising sea swallow islands and low-lying nations, flooding rice fields with salt water. Factories spew toxic chemicals into rivers and oceans, killing fish and the livelihood of generations.
So people flee. Many become internally displaced, others cross any and all borders in order to survive.
Experts at last year's American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) estimated their numbers would reach 50 million by 2020, due to factors such as agricultural disruption, deforestation, coastal flooding, shoreline erosion, industrial accidents and pollution. Others say the number will triple to 150 million by 2050.
Today, it is believed that the population of environmentally displaced has already far outstripped the number of political refugees worldwide, which according to the United Nation High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) is currently at around 10.2 million.
Still, accurate statistics are hard to come by.
Because the term "environmental refugee" has not been officially recognized, many countries have not bothered to count them, especially if the population is internally displaced. Other countries consider them migrants, and therefore beyond the protection granted refugees.
Another factor obscuring the true scope of the population is the fact that their numbers can rise quite suddenly -- such as after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, or Haiti's 2010 earthquake which displaced more than 1 million people -- which makes accounting for their number difficult if not impossible.
In 1999 the International Red Cross put the number of those displaced by environmental disasters at 25 million. In 2009 the UNHCR [United Nation Refugee Agency] estimated that number to be 36 million, 20 million of whom were listed as victims of climate change-related issues.
A "Hidden Crisis" No More
Two decades ago, noted ecologist Norman Myers predicted that humanity was slowly heading toward a "hidden crisis" in which ecosystems would fail to sustain their inhabitants, forcing people off the land to seek shelter elsewhere. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, however, the crisis became painfully obvious.
As the world watched in awe and horror while hundreds of thousands of displaced Americans scurried across the richest nation on Earth searching for new homes, it became clear that no matter how wealthy or powerful, no country is impervious.
Indeed, being displaced by natural disasters may very well become the central epic of the 21st century. Kiribati, the Maldives and Tuvalu are disappearing as we speak, as the sea level continues to rise. The World Bank estimates that with a 1 meter rise in sea level, Bangladesh would lose close to 20 percent of its land mass, resulting in countless deaths and millions of environmental refugees. Facing present problems of crop failure, destruction of fisheries, loss of biodiversity and flooding, many have already fled to neighboring India, where they endure lives of immense misery and discrimination.
China, in particular, is a hot spot of environmental disasters as it buckles under unsustainable development, giving rise to rapid air pollution and toxic rivers. Alongside desertification, these man-made catastrophes have already left millions displaced.
John Liu, director of the Environmental Education Media Project, spent 25 years in China and witnessed the disasters there. He offered the world this unapologetic, four-alarm warning some years ago: "Every ecosystem on the planet is under threat of catastrophic collapse, and if we don't begin to acknowledge and solve them, then we will go down."
Solution and protection
Yet as the number of the displaced by failing ecosystems increase, the work for their protection is falling behind. While a political refugee is given some modicum of protection -- the right to shelter and food -- often those who fled their environmentally devastated homeland are seen as mere migrants. When President Obama granted temporary protected status (TPS) to undocumented Haitians living in the United States in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, it was a step in the right direction for human rights. After all, repatriating them back to a living hell would be immoral at best, and at worst, a crime against humanity. But it is but a small step toward addressing pressing needs and legal protection of this growing population.
Many more steps are needed. Policies toward resettlement of the millions of climate refugees should also include addressing issues of reforestation, rehabilitating degraded land and soils, and desalination of low coastal areas. And the International Court of Justice should also step up its efforts to prosecute those responsible for the man-made environmental disasters such as illegal mining, deforestation and dumping of toxic waste.
"One of the marks of a global civilization is the extent to which we begin to conceive of whole-system problems and whole-system responses to those problems," noted political scientist Walt Anderson in his book All Connected Now. "Events occurring in one part of the world are viewed as a matter of concern for the whole world in general and lead to an attempt at collective solutions."
Whether humanity can move toward a global civilization will depend by and large on how it can act collectively to deal with what's arguably the central issue of our time: climate change and resulting human displacement.
There's an old saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats." But in the age of melting glaciers, that tide is an ominous threat. The global age will not be as golden as some had predicted unless this dire challenge is met by whatever means necessary. For rising tides will not just send more refugees fleeing but, if ignored, could swallow humanity itself.
Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of 'Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora' (Heyday Books, 2005) and 'East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres.' His next book, 'Birds of Paradise Lost,' is due out in 2013.
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Despite their numbers, and their need, most nations refuse to recognize their status.
The 1951 U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as a person with a genuine fear of being persecuted for membership in a particular social group or class. The environmental refugee -- not necessarily persecuted, yet necessarily forced to flee -- falls outside this definition.
Not Recognized, Not Counted
Where the forest used to be, torrential rains bring barren hills of mud down on villages. Crops wither in the parched earth. Animals die. Melting glaciers and a rising sea swallow islands and low-lying nations, flooding rice fields with salt water. Factories spew toxic chemicals into rivers and oceans, killing fish and the livelihood of generations.
So people flee. Many become internally displaced, others cross any and all borders in order to survive.
Experts at last year's American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) estimated their numbers would reach 50 million by 2020, due to factors such as agricultural disruption, deforestation, coastal flooding, shoreline erosion, industrial accidents and pollution. Others say the number will triple to 150 million by 2050.
Today, it is believed that the population of environmentally displaced has already far outstripped the number of political refugees worldwide, which according to the United Nation High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) is currently at around 10.2 million.
Still, accurate statistics are hard to come by.
Because the term "environmental refugee" has not been officially recognized, many countries have not bothered to count them, especially if the population is internally displaced. Other countries consider them migrants, and therefore beyond the protection granted refugees.
Another factor obscuring the true scope of the population is the fact that their numbers can rise quite suddenly -- such as after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, or Haiti's 2010 earthquake which displaced more than 1 million people -- which makes accounting for their number difficult if not impossible.
In 1999 the International Red Cross put the number of those displaced by environmental disasters at 25 million. In 2009 the UNHCR [United Nation Refugee Agency] estimated that number to be 36 million, 20 million of whom were listed as victims of climate change-related issues.
A "Hidden Crisis" No More
Two decades ago, noted ecologist Norman Myers predicted that humanity was slowly heading toward a "hidden crisis" in which ecosystems would fail to sustain their inhabitants, forcing people off the land to seek shelter elsewhere. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, however, the crisis became painfully obvious.
As the world watched in awe and horror while hundreds of thousands of displaced Americans scurried across the richest nation on Earth searching for new homes, it became clear that no matter how wealthy or powerful, no country is impervious.
Indeed, being displaced by natural disasters may very well become the central epic of the 21st century. Kiribati, the Maldives and Tuvalu are disappearing as we speak, as the sea level continues to rise. The World Bank estimates that with a 1 meter rise in sea level, Bangladesh would lose close to 20 percent of its land mass, resulting in countless deaths and millions of environmental refugees. Facing present problems of crop failure, destruction of fisheries, loss of biodiversity and flooding, many have already fled to neighboring India, where they endure lives of immense misery and discrimination.
China, in particular, is a hot spot of environmental disasters as it buckles under unsustainable development, giving rise to rapid air pollution and toxic rivers. Alongside desertification, these man-made catastrophes have already left millions displaced.
John Liu, director of the Environmental Education Media Project, spent 25 years in China and witnessed the disasters there. He offered the world this unapologetic, four-alarm warning some years ago: "Every ecosystem on the planet is under threat of catastrophic collapse, and if we don't begin to acknowledge and solve them, then we will go down."
Solution and protection
Yet as the number of the displaced by failing ecosystems increase, the work for their protection is falling behind. While a political refugee is given some modicum of protection -- the right to shelter and food -- often those who fled their environmentally devastated homeland are seen as mere migrants. When President Obama granted temporary protected status (TPS) to undocumented Haitians living in the United States in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, it was a step in the right direction for human rights. After all, repatriating them back to a living hell would be immoral at best, and at worst, a crime against humanity. But it is but a small step toward addressing pressing needs and legal protection of this growing population.
Many more steps are needed. Policies toward resettlement of the millions of climate refugees should also include addressing issues of reforestation, rehabilitating degraded land and soils, and desalination of low coastal areas. And the International Court of Justice should also step up its efforts to prosecute those responsible for the man-made environmental disasters such as illegal mining, deforestation and dumping of toxic waste.
"One of the marks of a global civilization is the extent to which we begin to conceive of whole-system problems and whole-system responses to those problems," noted political scientist Walt Anderson in his book All Connected Now. "Events occurring in one part of the world are viewed as a matter of concern for the whole world in general and lead to an attempt at collective solutions."
Whether humanity can move toward a global civilization will depend by and large on how it can act collectively to deal with what's arguably the central issue of our time: climate change and resulting human displacement.
There's an old saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats." But in the age of melting glaciers, that tide is an ominous threat. The global age will not be as golden as some had predicted unless this dire challenge is met by whatever means necessary. For rising tides will not just send more refugees fleeing but, if ignored, could swallow humanity itself.
Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of 'Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora' (Heyday Books, 2005) and 'East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres.' His next book, 'Birds of Paradise Lost,' is due out in 2013.
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Waste More, Want More: The Unsustainable American Way of Life
SAN FRANCISCO--When I was young, I used to eat food taken from a supermarket's garbage bin. We first came to America from Vietnam in the mid 70s, and my eldest brother got a job working in a supermarket across from our apartment. Among his many chores he found one particularly distasteful: throwing expired food into the garbage bin nightly, then pouring Clorox on top to discourage scavengers and the poor. So without fail he would call friends and relatives to come over in the dark of night and salvage whatever we wanted before he poured the chemical over perfectly preserved bags of cookies, frozen dinner trays, cans of tuna, bags of flour and a myriad of other edible goods.
After a while the supermarket manager caught on to this scheme and had a new trash bin installed with a padlock. My brother was soon thereafter out of a job.
Not much has changed since then as far as being wasteful goes. In fact, it's gotten worse. Sure we recycle, we talk green, and we want to save the polar bears. But Americans still remain as wasteful as ever.
A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council released this week found that Americans "waste 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s." We are throwing away up to 40% of our food, the research finds. That is estimated to be around $165 billion in wasted food each year. And even if we suffer from a long drawn recession, the average family of four winds up throwing away the equivalent of up to $2,200 in food a year.
But then there are the side effects: garbage production in the United States has doubled in the last 30 years. In "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life Of Garbage," Heather Rogers reported that approximately 80 percent of U.S. products are used once, then thrown away, while 95 percent of all plastic, two-thirds of all glass containers, and 50 percent of all aluminum beverage cans are never recycled, but instead get burned or buried. Indeed, the average American discards almost seven pounds of trash per day. Of all people on earth we produce the most waste.
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, yet it consumes more than 30 percent of the world's energy resources, and generates 70% of total global toxic waste. "If everyone on the planet consumed at U.S. rates, we would need 3 to 5 planets to support our consumption!" notes Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.
Not long ago, frugality was a virtue. Now, two-third of our economy is based on consumption. In the age of melting glaciers and rising sea levels, in an age where polar bears drown and frogs die en masse and coral reefs disappear and biodiversity dwindles along with forestland -- in the age, that is, of global warming, where hurricanes ravage cities and towns -- our way of life has become unsustainable. It has created an unprecedented crisis on a planetary scale.
"When consumption becomes the very reason economies exist, we never ask, 'How much is enough?' 'Why do we need all this stuff?' and 'Are we any happier?'" writes David Suzuki, author of "The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature."
"Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences," Suzuki writes. "It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles."
More Americans are beginning to ask these same questions after Katrina. But materialism is a powerful force, and when elevated into a concept called consumerism, refined by the genius of advertising and given the title "American Dream," few can resist. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of our economy. We know we need to change, but like many an overweight person who wants to diet and exercise, we, as a nation, haven't found the will to break the habit.
As it is garbage has become the legacy of the human race. The largest human made or caused structures? It used to be the Great Wall of China. But the newest largest man-caused structure is by far the Eastern Great Garbage Patch - swirling plastics that gather in a gyrating movements of ocean currents - between California and Hawaii that some scientists believe to be the size of Texas.
Back in the 70s when my brother worked in the supermarket and we were impoverished, I remember hauling some of the supermarket's expired food home to my family with giddiness. What Americans threw away was sustenance back home in Vietnam, where children scavenged through piles of garbage for anything salvageable and people canvassed the neighborhoods buying old papers and magazines to recycle or begged for slop to feed their pigs.
My own family and relatives, too, have moved on from our humble beginnings as refugees in America to become middle class Americans whose motto, at times, seems to be "shop 'til you drop." The latest technology, the latest trend in fashion, the newest cars, the best laptop, the latest ipads and iphones -- we've got to have them all.
And yes, though I try to be frugal, I am part of that equation. I have thrown away good food after a dinner party, have bought more than I can eat. I own the latest technology. I am, too, part of the statistics.
Alas, I am alone. Even as Americans are beginning to wonder if our way of life has a direct consequence on the weather, everyone else wants to become us. From China to Bombay, from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro -- everyone wants a piece of the good life a la American style, and our collective desires are putting more pressure on ecosystems already on the brink.
A while back, walking home, I saw two old Chinese ladies looking for aluminum cans and plastic bottles in a garbage bin behind a restaurant near my home. One of the workers came out and yelled at the old ladies to stop.
As I watched the two old ladies scurrying away into the shadows, I thought of my own humble past. But I fear that, with the way things go, with global warming threatening to undermine our civilization, those two old scavengers may well represent our own retro-future.
New America Media's editor, Andrew Lam, is the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost," is due out in Spring, 2013.
After a while the supermarket manager caught on to this scheme and had a new trash bin installed with a padlock. My brother was soon thereafter out of a job.
Not much has changed since then as far as being wasteful goes. In fact, it's gotten worse. Sure we recycle, we talk green, and we want to save the polar bears. But Americans still remain as wasteful as ever.
A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council released this week found that Americans "waste 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia, up 50 percent from Americans in the 1970s." We are throwing away up to 40% of our food, the research finds. That is estimated to be around $165 billion in wasted food each year. And even if we suffer from a long drawn recession, the average family of four winds up throwing away the equivalent of up to $2,200 in food a year.
But then there are the side effects: garbage production in the United States has doubled in the last 30 years. In "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life Of Garbage," Heather Rogers reported that approximately 80 percent of U.S. products are used once, then thrown away, while 95 percent of all plastic, two-thirds of all glass containers, and 50 percent of all aluminum beverage cans are never recycled, but instead get burned or buried. Indeed, the average American discards almost seven pounds of trash per day. Of all people on earth we produce the most waste.
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, yet it consumes more than 30 percent of the world's energy resources, and generates 70% of total global toxic waste. "If everyone on the planet consumed at U.S. rates, we would need 3 to 5 planets to support our consumption!" notes Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.
Not long ago, frugality was a virtue. Now, two-third of our economy is based on consumption. In the age of melting glaciers and rising sea levels, in an age where polar bears drown and frogs die en masse and coral reefs disappear and biodiversity dwindles along with forestland -- in the age, that is, of global warming, where hurricanes ravage cities and towns -- our way of life has become unsustainable. It has created an unprecedented crisis on a planetary scale.
"When consumption becomes the very reason economies exist, we never ask, 'How much is enough?' 'Why do we need all this stuff?' and 'Are we any happier?'" writes David Suzuki, author of "The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature."
"Our personal consumer choices have ecological, social, and spiritual consequences," Suzuki writes. "It is time to re-examine some of our deeply held notions that underlie our lifestyles."
More Americans are beginning to ask these same questions after Katrina. But materialism is a powerful force, and when elevated into a concept called consumerism, refined by the genius of advertising and given the title "American Dream," few can resist. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of our economy. We know we need to change, but like many an overweight person who wants to diet and exercise, we, as a nation, haven't found the will to break the habit.
As it is garbage has become the legacy of the human race. The largest human made or caused structures? It used to be the Great Wall of China. But the newest largest man-caused structure is by far the Eastern Great Garbage Patch - swirling plastics that gather in a gyrating movements of ocean currents - between California and Hawaii that some scientists believe to be the size of Texas.
Back in the 70s when my brother worked in the supermarket and we were impoverished, I remember hauling some of the supermarket's expired food home to my family with giddiness. What Americans threw away was sustenance back home in Vietnam, where children scavenged through piles of garbage for anything salvageable and people canvassed the neighborhoods buying old papers and magazines to recycle or begged for slop to feed their pigs.
My own family and relatives, too, have moved on from our humble beginnings as refugees in America to become middle class Americans whose motto, at times, seems to be "shop 'til you drop." The latest technology, the latest trend in fashion, the newest cars, the best laptop, the latest ipads and iphones -- we've got to have them all.
And yes, though I try to be frugal, I am part of that equation. I have thrown away good food after a dinner party, have bought more than I can eat. I own the latest technology. I am, too, part of the statistics.
Alas, I am alone. Even as Americans are beginning to wonder if our way of life has a direct consequence on the weather, everyone else wants to become us. From China to Bombay, from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro -- everyone wants a piece of the good life a la American style, and our collective desires are putting more pressure on ecosystems already on the brink.
A while back, walking home, I saw two old Chinese ladies looking for aluminum cans and plastic bottles in a garbage bin behind a restaurant near my home. One of the workers came out and yelled at the old ladies to stop.
As I watched the two old ladies scurrying away into the shadows, I thought of my own humble past. But I fear that, with the way things go, with global warming threatening to undermine our civilization, those two old scavengers may well represent our own retro-future.
New America Media's editor, Andrew Lam, is the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost," is due out in Spring, 2013.
