OMNI's War and Warming Anthologies: OMNI CLIMATE REFUGEES ANTHOLOGY #3 June 4, 2024

CLIMATE REFUGEES ANTHOLOGY #3

June 4, 2024

Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology

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CLIMATE REFUGEES ANTHOLOGY #1 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/omni-climate-refugees-anthology-1.html

CLIMATE REFUGEES ANTHOLOGY #2, May 28, 2024 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/05/climate-refugees-anthology-2.html

TEMPERATURE, HEAT, CLIMATE CATASTROPHE Anthology #3, August 29, 2020.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/08/omni-temperature-heat-climate.html

UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification www.unccd.int

JUNE 17, 2021. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/06/omni-celebrates-june-17-2021-unccd.html

UN World Water Day, March 22

UN World Oceans Day, June 8

CONTENTS CLIMATE REGUGEES #3

USA

Tom Dispatch on Climate Migrants and Jane Little.

Jane Braxton Little. “Will We All Be Migrants Someday?”

Jake Bittle. The Great Displacement.

UUFF. “US Internal Displacement.”

Thomas Fuller. “Small towns desperate for water in California.”

Max Brantley. “Northwest Arkansas says send in the immigrants.”

GLOBAL

John Freeman. Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality.
Google Search 11-19-22, 11 entries.
UN Dispatch. UN Human Rights Committee’s landmark ruling.
Olivia Rosane. “Animated Short Film Calls Attention to Children Displaced by War and Climate Change.” Footsteps on the Wind.
Google Search 2021
“Nearly Half the World's Children at 'Extremely High Risk' of Climate Shocks.” ECOWATCH.

TEXTS: CLIMATE REFUGEES ANTHOLOGY #3

USA

TomDispatch/TomGram. “Jane Braxton Little, Climate Migrants in a Hell on Earth.” June 4, 2023.

Uh-oh, my city's sinking. I'm not kidding! According to a new study, New York City, my hometown, is all too literally going down, thanks to those vertiginous towers, including the Empire State Building, constructed on land some of which was sandy and is now giving way. All those Manhattan skyscrapers and the like weigh an estimated 1.68 trillion pounds, writes the Guardian's Oliver Milman, "roughly equivalent to the weight of 140 million elephants." And mind you, this is happening at a moment when the seas and oceans globally are both overheating and rising in a disturbing fashion. Since 1950, the waters around my town have risen approximately nine inches (something that became all too apparent when Hurricane Sandy hit it in 2012).

Sooner or later, to put this in the context of Jane Braxton Little's piece today, some New Yorkers will undoubtedly become climate migrants. And we'll hardly be alone. This planet is on edge. At one point last year, one-third (yes, you read that right!) of Pakistan was underwater, thanks to floods the likes of which had never been seen before. (And Pakistan wasn't alone. Just check out Nigeria or Australia if you don't believe me.)

This year, Canada is experiencing wildfires of an historically unprecedented sort. And none of this, eerily enough, can be considered out of the ordinary anymore. In fact, a new study in Nature Sustainability suggests that, by late in this century, if we human beings don't get a handle on climate change by truly bringing the fossil-fuelization of this planet under control, up to one-third of us could find ourselves living outside what its authors call the "human climate niche" -- that is, in areas where human life could be unsustainable. Imagine that.

No wonder some experts are already suggesting that, in the decades to come, the climate emergency could turn more than a billion of us into migrants on a planet becoming too hot to bear. My old friend and TomDispatch regular Braxton Little has already experienced this reality in an up close and personal fashion. As she wrote in her first piece for this site, she found herself a climate refugee when most of her town in northern California burned to the ground in the devastating Dixie fire of 2021. With that in mind, let her introduce you to the world of climate migrants that could someday simply be the world for all too many of us. Tom https://tomdispatch.com/looking-for-home-in-an-overheating-world/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=08395941ad-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_13_02_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1e41682ade-08395941ad-308836209

“

Looking for Home in an Overheating World:

If Emissions Continue, Will We All Be Migrants Someday?”

By Jane Braxton Little .
Greenville, CA -- Pines and firs parched by a three-year drought had been burning for days on a ridge 1,000 feet above my remote mountain town. On August 4, 2021, the flames suddenly flared into a heat so intense it formed a molten cloud the color of bruised flesh. As that sinister cumulus rose above an oval-shaped reservoir, it collapsed, sending red-hot embers down the steep slopes toward Greenville in a storm of torched trees and exploding shrubs. It took less than 30 minutes for the Dixie fire to transform my town’s tarnished Gold Rush charm into a heap of smoldering hand-hewn timbers and century-old brick walls.

Minutes earlier, the last of the nearly 1,000 residents had bolted, some in shirts singed by flames. We fled with what belongings we could take in the face of a fire few believed would ever destroy our town. I was among the evacuees, escaping with a hastily assembled truckload of journals and notebooks, shoes and shovels, laptops and passports. We scattered in the sort of desperate diaspora that has become ever more common in towns like ours across the West.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.

· TEN

The Great Displacement

About The Book

“The Great Displacement is closely observed, compassionate, and far-sighted.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Under a White Sky

The untold story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future.

Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that as global warming gets worse over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes.

A human-centered narrative with national scope, The Great Displacement is “a vivid tour of the new human geography just coming into view” (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth). From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last few decades, the federal government has moved tens of thousands of families away from flood zones, and tens of thousands more have moved of their own accord in the aftermath of natural disasters. Insurance and mortgage markets are already shifting to reflect mounting climate risk, pricing people out of risky areas.

Over the next fifty years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country’s history. The Great Displacement compassionately tells the stories of those who are already experiencing life on the move, while detailing just how radically climate change will transform our lives—erasing historic towns and villages, pushing people toward new areas, and reshaping the geography of the United States.

US Internal Displacement FROM UUFF about CLIMATE SANCTUARIES
Your Justice Team would like you to read and study this site: https://www.2030climatesanctuaries.org/ This is one of the most important steps our church could take right now. There is a lot here that deserves pondering and focus towards our best actions, now that our alignment is complete with Reverend Steven! Love changes everything, Marquette

Thomas Fuller. “Small towns desperate for water in California.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Aug 15, 2021. Small towns desperate for water in California. Read more...

Max Brantley. “Northwest Arkansas says send in the immigrants.” ADG August 12, 2021. The Daily UpDate.

A decline in foreign workers could spell trouble for continued economic expansion in Northwest Arkansas. Continue reading...

GLOBAL

jOHN fREEMAN. Tales of Two Planets: STORIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND INEQUALITY IN A DIVIDED WORLD. 2020.

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.

In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman’s, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly: Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating further the already devastated. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world.

Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman engaged with some of today’s most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress–from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok, Thailand. The response has been extraordinary. Margaret Atwood conjures up a dystopian future in a remarkable poem. Lauren Groff whisks us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; Yasmine El Rashidi to Egypt, while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria, and Anuradha Roy to the Himalayas in the wake of floods, dam building, and drought. This is a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage about the most important crisis of our times. 318 pages •
READ AN EXCERPT IN THE MEDIA

Google Search 11-19-22, 22 items

Climate change and disaster displacement - UNHCR

https://www.unhcr.org › en-us › climate-change-and-di...

Refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and the stateless are on the frontlines of the climate emergency. Many are living in climate “hotspots”, where they ...

UNHCR - 'Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and ...

https://www.unhcr.org › en-us › news › latest › 2020/11

Nov 30, 2020 — UNHCR's Special Advisor on Climate Action, Andrew Harper, outlines how global warming is driving displacement, and why decisive action is ...

Climate Migration: An Impending Global Challenge

https://news.climate.columbia.edu › 2021/05/13 › clima...

May 13, 2021 — Right now, the world is unprepared to meet the challenge of climate migration. No country offers asylum or legal protection to climate migrants.

Related searches

problems faced by climate refugees

climate refugees 2022

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· IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS

· TRENDING Home Climate

“A Key UN Committee Ruled that Climate Refugees Deserve Special” by Mark Leon Goldberg.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The recent ruling by a United Nations committee that governments cannot return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by climate change is a potential game-changer — not just for climate refugees, but also for global climate action.

The UN Human Rights Committee’s landmark ruling made clear that “without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to violations of their rights … thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending states.”

The ruling elaborates further to say:

“Given the risk of an entire country becoming submerged under water is such an extreme risk, the conditions of life in such a country may become incompatible with the right to life with dignity before the risk is realized.”

The judgment relates to the case of Ioane Teitiota, a man from the Pacific island of Kiribati.

In 2015, Teitiota applied for protection from New Zealand after arguing his life and his family members’ lives were at risk due to the effects of climate change and sea level rise.

The South Pacific atoll Kiribati is seen in an aerial view. There are fears that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago.
AP Photo/Richard Vogel

The Republic of Kiribati is considered one of the countries most at risk of being rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels. The UN committee ruled, however, that in the time that might happen — 10 to 15 years — there could be “intervening acts by the Republic of Kiribati, with the assistance of the international community, to take affirmative measures to protect and, where necessary, relocate its population.” As a result, the committee ruled against Teitiota on the basis that his life was not at imminent risk.

CLIMATE REFUGEES ACKNOWLEDGED
Teitiota did not become the world’s first climate refugee, but the committee’s ruling essentially recognized that climate refugees do exist, a first for the UN body. The ruling acknowledges a legal basis for refugee protection for those whose lives are imminently threatened by climate change.

For several decades, academics and policy-makers alike have debated the existence of climate refugees, with many asserting that because migration can be fuelled by many factors, climate change cannot be singled out as the sole driver of any movement. However, with the acceleration of the climate crisis over the last 10 years, people are increasingly being displaced by disasters, desertification and coastal erosion linked to climate change. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, confirmed that the recent ruling means those displaced by climate change should be treated like refugees by recipient countries. Grandi noted: “The ruling says if you have an immediate threat to your life due to climate change, due to the climate emergency, and if you cross the border and go to another country, you should not be sent back because you would be at risk of your life, just like in a war or in a situation of persecution.” Grandi and some media commentators have predicted the ruling may open the door to surges of legal claims by displaced people globally. But the burden of proof that someone’s life is under imminent threat by climate change remains high. Teitiota’s case is a good example. Despite his arguments that sea level rise, overpopulation and salt-water intrusion were threatening his life and the lives of his family, the New Zealand court and the UN Human Rights Committee ruled against him, saying he could not prove that his life was in imminent danger.

FLOODGATES NOT OPEN YET

And so while this latest UN ruling is a momentous first step in international law, it by no means opens the floodgates to surges of climate refugees. But it does represent a win for global climate action. It’s not legally binding, but it illustrates to governments around the world that climate change will have an increasing impact on their legal obligations under international law. This is great news for citizens and governments of small island states who have long pushed for climate action but have been met with delays and rejections. For example, during last year’s Pacific Island Forum that brings together 16 Pacific island nations, as well as Australia and New Zealand, the 16 islands put forward the Tuvalu Declaration to ask for more action on climate change. But sections of the original declaration were struck down due to reservations from Australia and New Zealand. Australia reportedly had concerns about emissions reductions, coal use and funding for the UN’s Green Climate Fund, while New Zealand also expressed concern about the fund.

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama criticized the final declaration, tweeting: “We came together in a nation that risks disappearing to the seas, but unfortunately, we settled for the status quo in our communique.” Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga also told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison:

“You are concerned about saving your economies … I’m concerned about saving my people.”

Ironically, following bushfires that recently raged across Australia and displaced thousands, concerns have arisen that Australia will soon have to deal with its own climate refugees. The pressure is mounting for world leaders to take serious climate action to aggressively curb greenhouse gas emissions. The latest UN ruling is step towards improving the lives of those most vulnerable and affected by climate change.

Yvonne Su, PhD, International Development and Political Science, University of Guelph

Olivia Rosane. “Animated Short Film Calls Attention to Children Displaced by War and Climate Change.” Oct 22, 2021. CLIMATE

The film Footsteps on the Wind raises awareness about children displaced by war and climate change.

The film Footsteps on the Wind raises awareness about children displaced by war and climate change.

In the last decade, more than 40 million children have had to flee their homes because of conflict and the climate crisis.

To raise awareness about the hardships they experience, but also the amazing resilience they are capable of, an international team of collaborators has come together to make an award-winning animated short film called Footsteps on the Wind, which tells the story of a brother and sister forced to embark on a journey far from home.

“We are trying to raise a lot of awareness about climate change and about the home that we live in and how it can be shaken up and torn apart,” director Maya Sanbar told EcoWatch.

An International Journey

Footsteps on the Wind tells the story of sister and brother Noor and Josef who lose their parents in a violent earthquake.

“The earthquake is a metaphor for anything that shakes your life up, so it could be a war, it could be anything,” Sanbar said.

They are then swept away when the sea rushes in and takes them on a harrowing journey to a new home.

Completing the film was a border-crossing journey in its own right.

Sanbar first had the idea for the film three to four years ago when she heard Sting’s song “Inshallah,” which was inspired by the plight of refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war.

“I’d been wanting to make a film about refugees for quite a while, because I have a family history linked to that theme, and I wanted to do something that was original, not what you see on the evening news,” Sanbar, whose father was pushed from his home in Palestine in 1948, told EcoWatch.

She asked Sting if he would donate the song as inspiration for a film, and he agreed, but it took until the coronavirus lockdown for the project to come together.

The completion of the film itself was an “international labor of love” between Sanbar and producer Kristin Olafsdottir in the UK; co-directors Gustavo Leal and Faga Melo, screenwriter Pedro Paulo de Andrade, and producer Ito Andery in Brazil; and producer Gillian Gordon in the U.S.

Sanbar said working on the film during lockdown could be frustrating sometimes because the team had to design and approve the film’s animation without being able to stand in the same room together. However, she also said there was a lesson in how the team was able to complete the project virtually, crossing borders without spending money or burning greenhouse gas emissions on flights.

The film’s creation, therefore, mirrors its themes. Sanbar emphasized the metaphor of the wind, which can travel anywhere.

“It’s about how do we address our problems across borders, how do we address it as a human race and our relationship with the planet, our relationship with each other,” Sanbar said.

Refugee Voices

The film comes as there is growing awareness about the relationship between the climate crisis and displacement. A recent study from the World Bank warned that as many as 216 million people could be forced to leave their homes because of climate change by 2050.

The climate crisis has already been linked to some notable causes of forced migration in recent years. Drought in Central America’s dry corridor is one of the factors pushing people to leave Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and seek asylum in the U.S. Climate-change driven drought has also been suggested as one cause of Syria’s civil war, according to JSTOR Daily. Overall, 23.1 million people have been displaced directly by extreme weather events every year for the past decade, according to the World Meteorological Organization, though most of these people did not cross an international border.

In this context, Sanbar hopes the film will encourage people to open their hearts to refugees, to perhaps volunteer to house a family or bring a meal to a refugee center. But she also hopes the film can be a comfort to refugees themselves.

“It’s not just a film, it’s a tool that we’ll use for therapy for traumatized kids and adults and to be able to talk about their story but through the characters of the film,” she said.

To that end, the team worked to make the characters and landscapes in the film representative of different races and all five continents, so they would be easy to identify with. They also worked to incorporate the perspectives and voices of refugees. Sanbar conducts workshops with refugee children through organizations like Young Roots and O’s Refugee Aid Team. In one instance, she brought lots of pompoms and sparkles to work with 16 to 17 year old boys. She expected they wouldn’t be interested, and was surprised when they “went full on with the color and the pompoms and the sparkles.”

Film director Maya Sanbar holds a workshop with refugee children.

This experience influenced the visual language of the film.

“We decided to make it very beautiful and colorful because even though it’s a dark story, it’s about the interior color, and the color that we live within our own selves and the world around us,” she said.

Refugee children in Calais and their friends also literally lent their voices to the film, recording the word, “Inshallah” over the end credits.

So far, the film’s artistry and message seems to be resonating. It premiered at Cinequest Film Festival in March, where it won Best Animated Short Film and qualified for the 2022 Oscars. It has gone on to win several more awards since then.

“It’s pushing people to action, to take care of our planet, to take care of our seas, to take care of our plastics… because anything can shake up our lives at any moment,” Sanbar said.

Footsteps on the Wind is currently still running the festival circuit. You can watch it this weekend at the San Diego International Film Festival. To track its progress, you can follow the film itself, Maya Sanbar and her production company Chasing the Light Studio on Instagram

https://www.footstepsonthewind.com/

· Footsteps On The Wind (@footstepsonthewind) • Instagram photos ...climate crisis climate refugees documentary extreme weather

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Climate, Changing Migration Podcast on Amazon Music

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All Climate Refugees Now by Jeffrey D. Sachs - Project Syndicate.

Project Syndicate delivers original, high-quality commentaries to a global audience. In-depth analysis of today's most pressing economic and geopolitical issues. In 13 languages. Long Reads. Most eminent authors. Independent Voices. Active in 156 countries. ‎Economics · ‎Health & Development · ‎Innovation & Technology · ‎Magazine
Climate Refugees - People Displaced by Climate.

Millions are displaced every year by drought, fire, storms, and other natural disasters. People displaced by climate change lack any legal protection unlike political refugees.
Implications For Human Rights - Climate Displacement Refugees.(202) 828-0110 Climate displacement issues depends on a variety of variables tied to human mobility. Read...

Climate refugees

The term “climate refugees” was first coined to describe the increasing large-scale migration and cross-border mass movements of people that were partly caused by such weather-related disasters.Jun 18, 2021.
Climate refugees – the world's forgotten victims - The World ...

https://www.weforum.org › agenda › 2021/06 › climate...
Climate Refugees https://www.climate-refugees.org

Climate Refugees is a research and advocacy organization that calls for the protection of those displaced by climate change.

‎The Problem · ‎Events · ‎Spotlight · ‎Perspectives

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