Climate refugees

What is our policy on climate refugees? Simple. We don't have a policy. Why? Because we are not confronted with climate refugees seeking "asylum" on our shores – at least not yet. That doesn't mean we won't be, probably a lot sooner than most people think, certainly within 20 years, so it is worth considering who are climate refugees and how we should treat them.

Climate refugees are those who are confronted with conditions which make life unsustainable in their homeland because of the effects of climate. These effects include inundation and erosion, loss of fresh water and lack of affordable food due to sea level rise, ocean pollution including acidification, over-fishing and climate change caused by global warming. It could also include more frequent and increasingly severe and destructive climate events. Some people, threatened by food shortage will seek refuge in a country, such as Australia, where the essentials of life: fresh water, food and housing are available and perceived as being relatively plentiful.

Rising sea level

A sea level rise of around 2m this century is inevitable and can no longer be avoided, even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased immediately. It will cause massive loss of property, infrastructure, arable land and pollute fresh water along most coastlines, though significant damage seems unlikely before 2050. Low lying islands, coastlines and river deltas will be the first to be affected.

The inhabitants of low lying islands in the Torres Straits will be forced to move to larger islands due to salination of fresh water sources and flooding of arable land, rendering them unproductive. By mid century, all island communities in the Pacific will be affected to some extent, causing populations to become more concentrated and live off decreasing areas of land - or immigrate.

Over 70 percent of the worlds population lives on or near continental coastlines. By 2050 all will be affected to varying degrees by rising sea levels. Some land such as that bordering the northern Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea are likely to be permanently lost due to erosion and more extensive flooding whenever extreme climate events occur. Before 2100 billions will be forced to move to higher ground further inland.

Even more vulnerable are the hundreds of millions who now live on and cultivate the fertile land of the worlds great river deltas. They include the deltas of the Nile, Ganges, Mekong, Yangste-Kiang and many more. All deltas will become prone to flooding, particularly during extreme climate events and increasingly so after 2030.

Not only do deltas support large populations, they produce grain crops and a variety of other food needed to sustain far larger urban populations living in their hinterland. Flooding of deltas and low coastal lands threaten much larger populations. Flooding and salination of the Nile delta would threaten the viability of Cairo, Alexandria and a population of over 50 million, a population which even now can not be fed and watered by the Nile Valley and Delta alone.

Climate change

We are already beginning to see the effects of climate change and extreme weather events on food production. In 2010 they contributed to the loss of a third of the Russian grain harvest, forcing the cancellation of its wheat exports, pushing up the world price of staple grains and causing scarcity, reduced nutrition and increased hunger among more vulnerable populations.

Loss of crops due to flooding in Pakistan, China and Korea have reduced food production on which 100 million rely and the wheat crop of northern India is in decline. Crop production in California's Central Valley is falling because insufficient water is available to meet the needs of irrigators and burgeoning urban communities. Why? Because glaciers of the Sierra Nevada are shrinking due to rising temperatures, yielding less surface water and failing to replenish aquifers quicker than they are being pumped.

These are only the early symptoms of the effects of climate change caused by global warming which has so far seen a rise in temperature of over 1°C since 1900. Failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions is likely to result in a 3°-4°C rise in temperature by 2100, increasing the severity and frequency of extreme climate events which are likely to reduce ability to produce the food needed to sustain rapidly growing populations.

Outcomes

How are people to be fed if the world can no longer produce the food they need or when they loose arable land and potable water due to climate change? The answer is that to survive, they will have no alternative but to move to places where the essentials of life are available. "They" are likely to come from the burgeoning populations of Asia.

Where will they seek refuge? Possibly Canada and Russia with warming climate making their vast northern land mass more habitable and better able to produce crops. Certainly Australia with its well watered, sparsely populated north, its warm year-round climate and perceived inability to resist peaceful invasion from the north. Those perceptions are in fact reality.

In Australia it is assumed that massive grain crops will continue to be regularly produced – but will they? A growing number of farmers recognize that drought combined with a heat wave – akin to that experienced in Russia – could decimate the national grain crops, leaving barely enough to feed the local population, leaving nothing for export and forcing up food prices world-wide.

Attitude

Many Australians' regard the arrival by sea of people seeking asylum with concern. It is becoming common knowledge that the vast majority of asylum seekers arrive by air, often claiming the right to remain in Australia as soon as they land. Each of these new arrivals will ultimately be followed by family and relatives, placing an increasing burden on those responsible for providing housing, food and jobs needed by these people.

Why should this be of concern? Because they also know that it is their taxes that must be diverted into providing housing and socio-economic infrastructure for immigrants. Most of the existing population would prefer their taxes were spent on maintaining or improving their own living standards and providing for residents in need of affordable housing. Will that attitude change in the face of a deluge of new arrivals seeking the essentials of life?

The present rate of arrivals by sea, up to 3 boats a week. This permits orderly processing of new arrivals, checking their identity, background and health, then helping them find housing and work. In the case of a very small minority, entry is refused for security reasons and deporting them to a country willing to accept them raises another problem.

But what if the number of arrivals on our northern shores increased to 30 or 50 boats a week? Could we cope with such numbers? Could we slow, let alone control those arriving on our shores in search of refuge from climate wars, food shortages and outright starvation in the countries from which they come? Indeed could Australia maintain sovereignty as a nation-state over its own territory?

What should our attitude be towards those arrivals? At one extreme their arrival could be stopped by armed resistance, killing those who attempt to land but that may prompt them to come armed. We could try dissuading them from coming to Australia by sending them food but could we ever produce enough for them and ourselves? Or we could welcome an influx of refugees, even if unable to provide the assistance they need without reducing our ability to feed ourselves or limit the stream of new arrivals.

Conclusion

Too hypothetical you may argue. However, there is good reason for believing that unless we effectively and promptly address the cause of global warming, people in countries to our north will face catastrophic loss of food and water within 20-30 years.

It is unlikely to be a problem for at least a decade, so why worry about it? We can expect the world to avert the causes of such a threat by developing and applying technology which will limit global warming.

We already have that capacity but lack the political will to take timely and adequate action. Instead we cast around to justify our inertia putting forward the quite spurious claims that effective action would harm business. It would damage our economy cause massive unemployment and make us less competitive internationally, destroying our export advantage.

We ignore the fact that France and Sweden have abandoned use of fossil fuel to generate electricity without harming their economies. The largest economies in Europe, the UK and Germany are working to achieve a 50% reduction of their 1990 CO2 emissions by 2030. Their economies are slowing because of the Euro and global financial crises, not because of their efforts to reduce their emissions. We shrug our shoulders and think them mad but, as climate changes for the worse and migrants seeking refuge in Australia increase, we will come to a very different view.

The top 10 greenhouse gas emitters (Australia is #15) are doing far too little or nothing to limit global warming. With the exception of European Union countries they have refused to commit themselves to reduce emissions by 2020. That failure entrenches the certainty of sea level rise and climate change having devastating effects on rapidly growing populations to our north.

These effects are going to become evident sooner rather than later. They are no longer hypothetical but an approaching reality.

How should we deal with them?