Because of the war in Ukraine we have seen 6.8 million Ukrainians flee into Europe (ODP, 2022) and we have seen the logistical and social problems the EU has faced in managing the refugees. These refugees seem likely to stay in the EU for an indefinite period and require their host countries to provide shelter, food, and potentially work while they stay. The EU like much of the world is already facing a massive housing crises and an unsustainable cost of living as the gap between inflation and low wages grows. At current the system we live in is buckling under the pressure of a regional war and late stage capitalism. One frightening reality that is looming in the not so distant future is how the worsening and more frequent environmental disastors caused by global warming will affect human migration. With every summer experiencing record breaking heatwaves, harvest are having to be cut earlier and producing less yield in some instances the heatwaves have been so severe crops have outright failed and withered. Alongisde this ther are increasing major flash floods which are also causing crop failure. Such as we have seen this week in pakistan with a death toll in the thousands and crops being washed away.
For more than 70 days now China has been struck by an extreme heatwave, which has began to take its toll on infreastrucure as the 7th largest river in the world has dried up and nuclear plants that use it for cooling and cities and towns that need water to be purified are all failing (Seidel, 2022). The other major issue is the food shortages that will follow. China has a population of 1.4 billion. What happens when their government can no longer provide for them and people decide to start migrating for areas less affected by climate change. Which, in the most likely scenario will be Europe. Europe itself however has also been experiencing repeated record breaking heatwaves in almost every country but notably Portugal, France, Spain and the UK and Greece have seen the worst droughts in 500 years (Newburger, 2022).
Europe is struggling to deal with the climate crises even when being positioned as the area to be least affected. The reality is that Europe is not going to fare much better than the rest of the world. But people who will be hit the hardest first will most likely come from developing countries from the African continent or from South-East Asia. These people will have no choice but to leave their countries as the ability to produce their own food dissappears and this will be exacerbated by squeezes on the global food supply and as such poorer countries will probably not even be able to afford to import food to meet their population needs anymore. Europe and other more secure nations will be tasked with dealing with these people who have nowhere to go. What is most critical now before the situation deteriorates further and becomes untenable is that the UN and countries around the world enact a legal status and rights to climate refugees and lay out the groundwork to ensure their human rights are preserved and that they know what legal rights and protections they are entiteld to. At present the UN has made efforts to establish an agreed international definition for what constitutes as a climate refugee, which can be found on their site. However, countries need to take the innitiative to make these legal binding to ensure when the time comes something has been done to create a credible fair system as it is expected by 2050 their might be over 1.2 billion climate refugees (Zurich, 2022).
References
Baloch, S. (2022). Pakistan declares floods a ‘climate catastrophe’ as death toll tops 1,000. the Guardian. Retrieved 28 August 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/28/pakistans-south-braces-for-deluge-as-death-toll-from-floods-tops-1000.
Newburger, E. (2022). Europe is experiencing its worst drought in at least 500 years. CNBC. Retrieved 28 August 2022, from https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/23/europe-drought-worst-in-at-least-500-years-eu-report.html.
OPD. (2022). Situation Ukraine Refugee Situation. Data.unhcr.org. Retrieved 28 August 2022, from https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine.
Seidel, J. (2022). Retrieved 28 August 2022, from https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/extreme-china-heatwave-could-lead-to-global-chaos-and-food-shortages/D3FVWMBGHJQD355FDM5R43MG4I/.
Zurich.com. (2022). Retrieved 28 August 2022, from https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9Cclimate%20refugees%E2%80%9D%20has,disruption.%E2%80%9D%20But%20the%20extent%20of.