On Thursday, Feb. 28, Gustavus Adolphus College students gathered in Wallenberg Auditorium to hear the lecture, Climate Refugees: An Unrecognized Challenge At Home and Abroad by Cornell University Professor Dr. María Cristina García. This event is part of a series of Wallenberg lectures established in honor of Raoul Wallenberg.
Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who organized and rescued many Hungarian-Jews from Nazi-Germany. In Budapest, Wallenberg organized a complex and issued fake passports to further these efforts, and his safe houses helped save thousands.
In line with this service, the Gustavus Adolphus College Wallenberg lecture series invites speakers that address crises that loom ahead and crises that are presently occurring.
Climate Refugees: An Unrecognized Challenge at Home and Abroad, in part cosponsored by the Peace Studies Department and Building Bridges, began with a disclaimer by García, “At these times we need more people of good conscience, more people of goodwill. I’m not a scientist, but a historian. In the past year, I spent immersed in the topic of climate change. There are many days when I wish I had not taken up this topic. There are days that it fills me with hopelessness and sadness. But it is a situation that will affect us all.”
Before her lecture at Wallenberg Auditorium, García expressed the difficulty of taking on the topic of climate refugees. As a researcher, her previous three books addressed the obstacles faced by political refugees.
During her time researching political migrants, she noticed that throughout history many political refugees were first faced by an environmental disaster. An environmental disaster that disrupted their way of living, one that their government failed to properly respond to or address.
At first glance these refugees are classified as political refugees, but on closer observation, it is easy to see that climate was, and continues to be, the tipping point.
Environmental disasters as the cause for migration was the main topic of the Wallenberg lecture. García highlighted how historians have written extensively on the impact climate has had in shaping history. Extreme weather events have frequently been part of the human story.
During the lecture, García addressed three events in history where the environment contributed to forced migration, three major tipping points in the western hemisphere in the last hundred years that serve as an example.
In the 1930s, the Dust Bowl caused the displacement of 60 percent of the Great Plains region, and as one of the worst catastrophes in U.S history, the Dust Bowl forced the movement of these displaced individuals into the western states; indirectly affecting these states with immense political, social, and economic consequences.
Further south, the 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua served as a cause for political unrest. Two-thirds of the residents were displaced, and faced food shortage and disease, while dry-season winds worsened the problem with fires created due to the disaster.
The Nicaraguan government accepted aid from countries from 25 other countries worth millions of dollars. Later it was revealed that the Somoza family, prominent Nicaraguan political figures at the time, had stolen much of the foreign aid in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.
Opposition to the regime, which had begun to surface before the earthquake, increased quickly, growing into a revolt that became the Nicaraguan Revolution.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina displaced thousands in Louisiana, United States. As residents migrated to nearby states, the city of New Orleans lost so many workers that the state proceeded to waive restrictions on hiring undocumented workers.
Climate scientists suggest that more of these events are likely to occur in the future. In the last forty years, Earth has lost a third of its arable land. Damage caused by erosion and pollution has degraded soil, surging global demand for food.
Melting glaciers have reduced aqua reserves, caused flooding, and directly forced many populations to migrate. Climate change has arguably increased environmental catastrophes that contribute to crop failure, wildfires, drought and the spread of infectious diseases.
Yet, as García addressed, there continues to be climate deniers in the United States government despite the change of climate affecting military and national security.
The United States military studies climate because the rising sea levels have caused them to restructure their military bases. The increase of national disasters has meant there is also a need for military intervention.
In terms of national security, the loss of land and natural resources will increase warfare as countries attempt to control natural resources. Migration will increase causing civil unrest.
And here lies the problem. As García stated, when climate change fuels migration, the burden falls heavily on neighboring countries. As people migrate to these areas, these nations are faced with political, cultural, and economic conflict.
The international community fails to address these problems at the start. Countries fail to accept that they have an international obligation to assist these people until a major political conflict ensues. “When a group of people are labeled as refugees [without any political context] it is a country’s way of choosing to not be held accountable”.
Most recently, various environmental changes have caused extreme conflict. In the case of Darfur, rainfall had decreased as much as 40 percent, causing severe drought, which served as the catalyst for migration. The lack of water led to conflict between migrants who sought land with more abundant water, and farmers already living in those territories, causing civil unrest. Yet, the international community addressed the conflict as an ethnic conflict.
In 2006, Syria suffered an intense drought that pushed 1.5 million people from rural areas to urban areas. The government of Syria failed to address the drought and popular discontent ensued as rural to urban migration increased. The 2011 uprising was a direct cause of this civil unrest. In present day foreign affairs, we think of Syrian refugees as political refugees-but the first push was environmental.
Under most international refugee acts, refugees are defined in a very precise manner, often leaving climate refugees with no legal protections. García expressed that even with legal protections for climate refugees, countries can still fail to act, as they do with political refugees.
“As the case with Katrina, most people currently directly affected [by climate change] are poor, black, or brown. If FEMA had responded quickly, thousands would not have died; and if the state had responded earlier, less flooding would have occurred,” García said.
The lecture ended with a final send off from García.
“It is easy to feel paralyzed by [this topic]. [But] One can bring about change by being conscious of the choices we make, the food we eat, the homes we live in and the things we buy,” said Garcia. “The more people that choose to live mindfully, the more I urge you to not be non-informative voters. Be involved at the local and state level. Don’t let politicians dictate laws based on financial interest. Imagine what a room full of people can accomplish by being conscious of their actions…When enough change occurs at the local level, it moves up the political ladder and then national government will be forced to address these issues”.