Climate Refugees - Is this our civilization's Titanic collision or is it to be our ultimate coming of Age?
An article by Charlie Stuart Gay.Would you say spending £7.22 Trillion or $9.176 Trillion a year on housing refugees is a sustainable investment?
It may be distasteful to lead with money a discussion regarding the current displacement of millions of people when human suffering and tragedy is present. The utter horrors of unrelenting wars and global gang violence, poverty, famine, flooding, and yes ultimately a simple dream of a better life has led to the escalation of asylum seekers. However right now it is only our governments that are having to figure out how to foot ever increasing bills of migrants crossing borders, and when you hear the news and the sum is a few billion dollars it’s likely you may just flip the channel. What’s a few billion these days…..but a sum of $9 Trillion may have you not ignore.
And why I am is because what you are witnessing at the moment is a trickle. What you will experience is to be indiscriminate to who is to be affected, rich and poor. No government how ever well resourced will be able to handle an unstoppable tsunami of incalculable cost both in terms of money as well as quality and peace of life for everyone. The cataclysmic issue of refugees is to make climate crisis a clear and present danger to you and your family and everyone you know and care about. However by the end of this article I do hint at ways we may be able to take responsibility, innovate new ideas and change the course of how history is to be written. Rewriting history takes more than flipping a channel, so thank you for reading this and then if you wish sharing your own ideas and action steps.
I first encountered refugees on the move in 2005 in northern Mozambique as a consequence of cyclones causing the mass movement of hordes of people, about 80,000 faces, young, old, babies being born, people dying, everyone thrown together in a relocation chaos as a result of seeking higher ground because of flooding. It was unavoidable disaster. Ever since that instantly imprinted memory I have recognized the immediacy of needs that confront the first hours and days in the epicenter of swelling crisis regarding food, water and shelter that collectively have to be activated and dealt with by a mass of in the field care givers. Simultaneously the entire situation has to be backed by a logistics labyrinth that must be implemented through sanitation, energy and health.
Yet this type of chaotic event is triggered in an instant, usually unpredicted, no comfort zone where normality resides, not known or planned for through weeks of preparation and certainly without the vast needs mentioned above and no historic foundation of social services being in place.
I write this article nearly 20 years later knowing that a projected number of what maybe erroneously termed global climate refugees, misplaced from their homes, is projected to be a staggering 380 million by 2030. This number may well be variable and I trust based on many factors still just within our current control it will be a lot lower, but what is a fact today is the country you are reading this in is likely spending billions on housing and looking after only a few hundred thousand refugees. For example the UK government is currently spending £3.8 billion on housing 200,000. This equates to £19,000 a refugee with over £8 million a day on hotel bills for asylum seekers.
The numbers and budgets by 2030 will be unfathomable, impossible to accommodate regardless of the reality of whether the global total is more of less than 380 million. If the number was spot on it would cost us $9,175,890,780,000.
No one can do the maths as there is no budget formula for this scale of likelihood.
This chaos is predicted and its transparent evidence of human suffering, tragedy and cost tells us of its spiraling truth. Hundreds of millions, many of whom will have abandon their own way of subsistence and life, needing feeding and accessible water, needing new areas and shelter to live in, and caregivers to offer health and mental healing. This is not an overnight flood. It’s not a sudden drought and famine caused by a lack of water. It is not a war suddenly erupting, or supply chains being stretched and broken. This chaos is not conjecture which is still how the world views Climate Crisis. Will we still be measuring the sea rising and the ice caps melting and the record temperatures in 2030? How well will we be measuring up to the Sustainability Goals that were laid out as a category road map to divert the global crisis by 2030? How will our cities be responding with millions and millions arriving where you live? Where will they be sheltered? How will they be fed? What rise in economic instability if one government is already spending billions on housing only thousands compared with what is coming? How much social upheaval, increased murder rates and violence will it take for us to collectively recognize this ultimate disaster is playing out in front of us? Be clear - It is coming closer every hour, every day.
Every fact or thought cries out to me that we are collectively navigating our own Titanic into a global unforgiving wall. I liken our collective actions to the captain of the Titanic. He was by all accounts conscious and very good at his job, yet his boss, the owner of the cruise line, cajoled him to change course to smash the record for an Atlantic crossing. Captain Smith ignored his better judgment, changed direction, was in his cabin when the great ship hit the iceberg and ultimately died at the sinking helm. The only difference is instead of hitting a modern melting iceberg, our global vessel which we are responsible for chartering is leading us to unfathomable dangers for all humanity. We are nowhere near on track to meet the Goals and as a result the refugee issue is shaping itself as an ultimate cause and effect tsunami.
However a growing groups of humanitarians around the world have been asking questions, idea thinking and starting to incubate and test solutions that could alter the course of history and steer us into calmer waters before its final hour. A common rhythm of action now is all that is called for, but this change may be the hardest decision humanity has had to be able to make because it is now not a decision taken by the most powerful, or the most wealthy or the one survivor of the fittest. It is a collective decision we all are being asked to take, and that includes you.
Chaos is an interesting phenomenon to experience and I have felt chaos quite a few time in this life. In its epicenter when we are forced to shift from holding on dearly to the past or being crippled in fear of what is to come, there is a grace-filled, peace embracing moment when it can unite us and then our next steps automatically erase age old divides in color, creeds, dogma, gender and even, yes even religion.
Back in 2005 I was able to apply a massive band aid on the hemorrhaging wound when there was life critical need for food. Through my phone and contacts we found the ideal famine porridge meal from a USA Mormon owned company, Nourish The Children from Utah that was making their packets in a China factory, distributed with the help of the charity, Feed The Children from Oklahoma to the caregiver Heidi Baker, a christian angel who had run her mission throughout the civil wars for 19 years before our encounter. I had worked with the founder of Feed The Children the Christmas before distributing food parcels and gifts in downtown Los Angeles so my call to Larry Jones did not go unanswered. Caring companies and individuals came together to cause that fortunate outcome. I couldn’t go to sleep after that as it altered the course of my life and we went on to deliver impact where we could under a humanitarian banner, Humanity Unites Brilliance.
Saying ‘yes I will try to help’ to any request may not be easy and usually this is because someone questions what help can they actually effect, or surely someone else who we think is richer or better qualified can do it. In my case I was a Hollywood based business guy with a bit of courage and a heart. In Mozambique I had learned that the United Nations had run out of a food program months earlier citing a lack of funds. The patrons of the organization I was involved with that was working on land mine detection were and are extraordinary individuals, including Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel, the ‘mother’ of Mozambique who was previously married to a former President who had died before she married Mandela. However our land mine Patrons were not there in the northern territories that day as the flood of refugees arrived. And most importantly the charities in the field, full of service driven caring souls, did not have food or money. I quickly learned that this was a normal lack in humanitarian fields. We may feed today but how do we feed tomorrow?
Yet saying ‘yes I can try to help you’ can however be a simple decision when one is driven by the line I live by now “there is nothing more expensive than ignorance.” I simply could not ignore and, spurred on by blind confidence, on this occasion we miraculously effected a beneficial result and multi million dollars of ideal malnutrition combative porridge was delivered to Heidi within a couple of days. Later we were subsequently able to keep the food pipeline open with help of our benevolent USA based partners. Heidi today still terms it a miracle and maybe it was.
Now it’s 2024, five years since I also wrote another provocative thinking article about Water, The Book of Water - Blue Gold Rush, and the countries that would be most affected by Water Security by 2024. We didn’t know a lot of things when I wrote in 2019 about the pending scarcity and cost of water. We didn’t know the word Covid. Brexit hadn’t divided us. Although we saw the historical signs we hadn’t envisioned wars erupting around the world and the horrors we could view through our televisions occurring in the Ukraine and Gaza. We were forgiving and ignorant of Putin’s demagogic and oligarchical atrocities that now threaten all our safety. We didn’t quite understand why coups occurred in Africa and yet since 2020, there have been nine coups in West Africa, Central Africa and the Sahel region, with other countries struggling.
We didn’t know then how our own governments in Europe and North America would figure out how to deal with more and more issues already effecting their own nations. Would there be inflation and interest rate hikes? What would be your house price? Could we speculate the value of a BitCoin or even a Euro or a Pound and how could a dollar be kept strong? We didn’t know that food security would be unhinging with supply chains breaking. Would our favorite foods not suffer from a new word - shrinkanomics - in the way we remember our childhood Mars bars? - oh how they were super big when I was a kid. What would happen if food and water costs and energy bills just got out of control? And really importantly what leaders could win back our collective belief, trust and respect and navigate us to a peaceful safety.
There is instability everywhere in every country. Let us get one thing clear. Refugee numbers were always going to spiral regardless of climate. People want to leave dangerous lives without hope, for a better life in a western country that offers basic social services, education and healthcare. Today refugees are leaving in ever increasing masses and no one wants them.
The Financial Times reported that this month New York has sued 17 bus companies for bringing thousands of migrants to the city from the Mexican border at the behest of Texas governor Greg Abbott, in a scheme that it says has caused a housing and budget crisis. In a lawsuit filed on January 5th 2024, the office of New York mayor Eric Adams said it was seeking $708mn in compensation from the companies — a sum its lawyers said reflected the cost of accommodating the 33,600 asylum seekers bussed to New York over the past 20 months alone. The bus companies had earned millions of dollars in revenue by assisting Abbott, the filing claimed, violating a New York law that requires those who bring “a needy person from out of state” to “convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense”. Adams’s lawyers further alleged the companies were acting in “bad faith” and with “evil intent”, charging Texas $1,650 per person for their services, while a regular one-way bus ticket to New York City would normally cost just over $290. “New York City has and will continue to do our part in the asylum seeker crisis,” Adams wrote on X. “But we can’t bear the costs alone — and we won’t let those complicit in [governor Abbott’s] scheme get away with violating our state laws.” He added: “We’ll see you in court.”
By land migrant crossings have deadly consequences. 2023 was the most perilous year on record for those trying to irregularly migrate to Spain with 6,618 people losing their lives. There have been reports of thousands of Ethiopians killed at the Saudi Arabian borders. The last official report regarding USA border control came out in October 2023 “In coordination with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, since May 2023, DHS has removed or returned over 300,000 individuals, including more than 45,000 individual family members. DHS has removed or returned more individual family members in the last four months than in any previous full fiscal year.”
By sea we didn’t know that by 2023 migrants would be dying every week crossing the channel to England as their flimsy boats capsized, or over two thousand seven hundred would die in the Mediterranean Sea. We can not hazard a guess of unreported cases and fatalities. This image is the moment Brazilian federal police rescued four Nigerian migrants, who'd spent 14 days at sea on a ship's rudder. The migrants had hoped to reach Europe from Nigeria but were shocked to learn they'd landed thousands of miles away in Brazil.
With us dealing as we do with all the problems humanity faces in this generation, why then would refugee crisis be our Titanic and unavoidably break all of our camels backs? And why are not governments and organizations like the United Nations paying more attention.
The answer is they are! Governments are scrambling today. Former foreign ministers are getting sacked over their past decisions and Forums are convening. The economic strain on Germany one of the biggest importers of refugees with 2.5 million, is massive and the subject has become one of the most debated in parliaments, winning and losing elections across the world.
In fact over 4,200 participants from 168 countries attended the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva in December 2023, including over 300 refugee delegates. A further 10,000 people followed the proceedings online.
The Forum saw over 1,600 pledges made to support refugees and their host communities, including 43 multi-partner commitments led by governments. An estimated $2.2 billion in new financial commitments by States and other actors was announced, including some $250 million pledged by the private sector. These outcomes offered a source of hope to the more than 36 million refugees currently displaced worldwide.
Compare these numbers above with what our multi-partner governments will have to spend in 6 years time. Remember, the projected dollar number based on current maths is over $9 Trillion…. A year.
The 2023 Forum was co-convened by five States – Colombia, France, Japan, Jordan and Uganda, and co-hosted by the Government of Switzerland and The United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
The UK government committed to fifteen new actions, starting with education and committing to building resilience of refugee and host communities to climate impacts and providing sustained support to refugees who settle in the UK.
Columbia was one of the five countries hosting. Why, because migrants are leaving the country? No its the opposite. Columbia does have more than 6.9 million internally displaced persons affected by the internal conflict. Despite ongoing peace negotiations, clashes between armed groups persist, resulting in increased forced displacement and community confinement. UNHCR's efforts include supporting conflict-affected communities in their efforts to return, relocate, and formalize urban settlements.
Colombia also hosts nearly 3 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants, with approximately 2.4 million benefiting from a Temporary Resident Status. Progress has been made in their regularization, but achieving full socio-economic integration and self-reliance remains challenging.
Jordan, also co-hosting the Forum, housing the most refugees equally with Turkey with 3.4 million each, provided opportunity to share their valuable experiences in peace building solutions, social protection, and inclusion.
Our next question to address is what is the impact of climate change on the forcibly displaced and stateless?
This is what the United Nations High Commission for Refugees states on its website:
Climate change is increasingly linked to conflict and human displacement.
Growing numbers of people fleeing persecution, violence and human rights violations occurring in relation to the adverse effects of climate change and disasters need international protection. In 2022, 84 per cent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly climate-vulnerable countries, an increase from 61 per cent in 2010. The scope for durable solutions is also narrowing. In 2020, only one per cent of refugees were able to return home – a challenge which will likely grow, as the impact of climate change further deteriorates basic living conditions and opportunities for development in many countries of origin.
At the same time, a significant percentage of forcibly displaced and stateless people are living in the most climate-vulnerable environments in the world, where – together with their host communities – they lack access to environmentally sustainable resources and resilience to the impacts of climate change. Women, girls and other groups with specific needs often face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change, due to existing roles, responsibilities and cultural norms.
Where is climate change having the worst impact?
Climate change impacts everyone. Especially people who are already forcibly displaced. UNHCR has identified 22 countries of particular concern.
Given their heightened vulnerability to climate change, and the large numbers of forcibly displaced and stateless people residing within them. Projections show that the situation will likely significantly deteriorate in these countries by 2030.
Despite initial investments by the international community to support national governments’ adaptation and resilience efforts in these countries, the poorest areas which host displaced and stateless populations often ‘fall through the cracks’ in national development and adaptation plans and programmes, further exacerbating inequalities and protection concerns for people at heightened risk, and leaving these communities markedly behind.
So where do we go from here and what can we be doing? At the beginning of this article I stated that I believe there are solutions despite this massively bleak prognosis and rapidly brewing crisis.
The pivotal solution is for the number of refugees to change from hundreds of millions and later over a projected one billion refugees by 2050.
And how do we accomplish this? There are countries that have massive ongoing disasters around climate, deforestation, lack of social services, floods, parched lifeless lands, persecutions and wars. There will always be vast numbers mobilizing at a moments notice. However to diminish the number from hundreds of millions we must change mindsets. The grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence or in this case border! It’s just not! And everyone has to choose to be acting with this in mind.
Like I also alluded to based on my experience of 2005 in Mozambique, every decision may not be easy but what if it could be simple?
Dictionary.com now defines a “climate refugee” as “a person who has had to flee their home due to the negative effects of climate change”.
Well what happens if the seas and oceans don’t rise by what is being predicted? Then there would be a vast reduction on the projected numbers based on coastal sea areas as a one meter rise from one meter to two meters changes the outlook across entire countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh.
What would happen if African rural poor farming communities were educated to grow low impact food crops like cassava and plantains or green banana or coconut. The global markets for the two main mono crops, wheat at USD 50 Billion and corn at $250 Billion may be stretching their supply limits, but what would happen if the third largest crop, cassava, expanded its supply exponentially from its current USD 3.645 Billion. This is not impossible and we can all play a role in this as food consumers, farming charity educators, volunteers or government grant agencies.
What would happen if arid dry land was systematically rejuvenated green with water taken from the air and the seas using solar or hydrogen fusion, and regenerated with phytoplankton and algae?
What would happen if conversely deforestation did not persist driven by big business. Do you love chocolate? When you next eat a bar of your favorite brand perhaps recognize the global need for cocoa to satisfy your appetite. Recognize its growers are not regulated and many laborers are paid slave labor wages of around $1,00 for an entire days work. Our desire for chocolate is unconsciously causing migrants to move.
What would happen if this farmer below at Hope Farm in Liberia sold me $100 of plantains from their car boot, and as well as me buying the crop paying $100 currency, he or she also received a fractional token or coin from a user base economic exchange as an additional reward? What would then happen if you went into your supermarket and paid $5 for the pancake or cookie or pasta made with the same plantain processed into flour and exported from Liberia and you too received a fractional token as well as a reward for your part in conscious capitalism.
My answer would be that the grass then would not be greener on the other side of the fence. What were in the past poor 100% import reliant African countries would now suddenly be self supporting, paying fair wage and refugees would not want to be refugees. Social Services could even become universal which is a huge deal and motivator to a possible refugee and family as Africa and South America are experiencing population explosions amongst their poor whilst North America, Europe and Asia are stabilizing birthrates. The have and the have nots, with a collision between overpopulation and poverty in large parts of our world and overconsumption in the West is a massive inducement to mobilize when you know the difference between $1.00 a day income and $15 an hour if only you can get your family across borders. Added to this is the knowledge of previous immigrants experience that did make it….
“Wow if only we could get to xxx/ that Country where my relatives and friends are now. They are being looked after so well, two of them have jobs and they are even able to send us money now to help us with our dreams.”
You may think this is far fetched and fanciful. It is not. I have experienced first hand Mozambique and Liberia which were both ranked when I arrived “the poorest country in the world,” where civil war and unstable governments do that to a population as they turn them upside down.
But take the exceptional example of Malawi, another poorest country in the world and where Madonna adopted orphans. We have all been moved by harrowing images of an emancipated starving child hanging from a Mother’s breast, desperate for a drop of milk.
However two years after a new President came into office with a mandate to increase farm subsidies results were instant. In 2005, a year after expanded subsidies kicked in, Malawi harvested a grain surplus of half a million tonnes. In subsequent years it exported grain to Lesotho and Swaziland, as well as 400,000 tonnes of maize to Zimbabwe.
Later corruption and charges towards the President of excessive financial hoarding meant that the example of Malawi shows the good and the bad but this was twenty years ago and Africa has changed dramatically in this time.
There is no denying that Climate unfortunately has many negative devastating effects today and there are vast tracks of lands in Sub Sahara countries that are making it near impossible to sustain life. Life is without doubt not greener on that side of their fences.
The stark fact is there are 50 million starving people across the continent today as you read this. (please do not ever normalize this number or the $9 Trillion number in the first sentence of this article.)
Chaotic Emergence is everywhere but we are just not hearing the emergency sirens.
It might be clear that those fleeing an extreme weather event, such as storms or flooding, require emergency protections. Here, it’s easy to attribute the cause of displacement to climate change. But the task is more difficult when the impact develops over time, for example when droughts lead to land degradation and the loss of economic opportunities.
Climate change is also a threat multiplier, meaning it exacerbates existing vulnerabilities. The decision to leave one’s home is usually based on multiple factors. At what point can we say climate change is the driving factor of displacement? And if moving is only partially motivated by climate change, does that mean the people affected are not deserving of safe migration routes and protection?
I sense too therefore that the mass labeling of refugees as “climate refugees’ is a misnomer.
I personally like using these two powerfully connected labeled words as the world is just not getting the mass danger to all of humanity that climate crisis is bringing to us. Last year the Amazon rainforest which is termed the “lungs of our world” had its record drought in 50 years, and there are growing concerns about the warming seas and the consequence of the health of algae which produces 50-80% of the oxygen you breathe. Without the rainforests and the algae it will be impossible for us to breathe naturally. For reasons way beyond me many people are still in non caring denial and there is nothing more expensive ultimately than ignorance. Have you measured the ice caps melting or change in global wind currents? No of course not, but how could you. However none of us can deny refugees arriving onto our streets, being housed in our hotels, eating our foods. This is why your television and media is highlighting every day either the plight of the refugees journey or the cost to you the tax payer for those that make it into your country. Ask a previously innocent Sweden where crime rates have spiraled and murders are being attributed to the refugee issue.
I have just lived with my family for eleven years in Tulum on the Caribbean Sea rim of the Yucatán in Mexico, where we also farm on ancient Mayan lands. I have seen the effect of weather patterns delivering vast tracks of sargassum seaweed onto prestine beaches every season. I have felt a six degree warmer Gulf of Mexico that because of this warming has made the sea an ultimate weapon for increasingly dangerous sized Hurricanes hitting USA coastlines. I have felt what 85-95 degree weather is every day, day in day out.
Then I return to the UK this winter and I write this article as the tenth storm of the season hits the Shires - not Mozambique or the Gulf of Mexico, but the English Countryside. When I was little did we really suffer from ninety nine mile an hour winds as a norm! People in England think we are mad to be in England during a winter when we could be in Mexico. If you felt extreme heat every day every month every year would you not want to go somewhere else?
Mexico has long been the thorn and blame for refugees entering the United States. It is its next door neighbor and the springboard for every country south to travel through Mexico to attempt border crossings often buying tickets from organized crime and cartels. Will a wall across the Southern border really be the solution? In 2030 we will certainly know things we do not know today, and its interesting to know that for the last two years more people have returned legally to Mexico from the Unites States than the other way around. The grass proved not to be greener.
But importantly at the same time refugees can not all be labeled climate refugees. They are not. Climate is a massive mobilizer but so is the age old motivator of people just wanting a better standard of life free of the hazards and crisis they are increasingly facing.
Rather than try to reduce the experience of climate mobility into one, provocative, label, we do need discussions and international policies capable of creating comprehensive labels that recognise the diversity of experiences and address the context-specific needs of people on the move due to climate change and due to all other factors. This will enable us to focus more clearly and concentrate in solutions where climate is not the main motivator for mobility.
For example there are over 740,000 migrant Haitians in the USA, with the most in New York. Yes there was a hurricane in 2010 but other reasons include persecution, gang violence, frequent economic crisis and the recent collapse of basic government functions.
And because no one, no government can ever do the maths on 380 million within 6 years or over one billion by 2050 we must all work together to help keep empowering a majority of refugees where possible to stay happily and purposefully in their own countries. We will never be able to normalize the issue. Just think on the strain of food, water, shelter and energy in your neighborhood. We will never be able to fling a band aid on the issue and think it can magically go away.
The issue is not ultimately the issue it is how we are responding to this issue which will likely determine the destiny of humanity.
New Los Alamos
A colleague of mine, John, has suggested maybe it is time for us to take a leaf out of USA history and replicate the thought process of building a Los Alamos town maybe in an arid desert or deforested jungle glade or on the Antarctica ice. Let us uplift a modern day Oppenheimer to cause and maintain life through this New Los Alamos. Robert Oppenheimer if you haven’t seen the movie was selected to bring together the smartest international team. It was a city of foreigners and not just British and American, but German and Italian. The importance of the hour united brilliant people for common purpose. They all possessed the curiosity to ask the biggest questions that delivered the toughest answer. The group that assembled to live at Los Alamos also had the skills and talents as well as passion and commitment for as long as it would take them to deliver the ultimate weapon of destruction.
Today could we clone the drive of Oppenheimer and the brilliance of his group for the sole purpose of innovating and establishing the ultimate solution to be embraced by the world to keep humanity not only safe but thriving? Even if it costs one trillion dollars or more - that’s nothing compared to what is budgeted and spent to protect ourselves from each other every year. It may also be a fractional tenth of a budget that could be needed on refugee asylum seekers alone.
One issue to overcome with this thought is the USA had one single original purpose at Los Alamos. To build the most destructive bomb before Germany did, and not to share its secrets with Russia and the rest of the world.
It must also bring forward multiple interconnected designed plans and innovations to be to be answers for decades to come. What ever is the solution now has to be universally embraced and implemented and this includes China, entire industries and every big corporation risking their bottom lines. Cooperation and circulation of all resources freely rather than the sake of a shaky stock market price must be what materializes.
Clearly at the current rate every independent government is going to flounder and likely fail. Can the United Nations do this. I fear not. We have to be activators not activists now. We do not have decades. We have only a few years to 2030 and even less based on the compounding issues we are all experiencing materializing.
And if we do not do this we risk everything, so please do not get distracted by climate or non climate refugees.
Refugees
To summarize we have seen the huge current economic burden generated by the displacement of millions of people due to unrelenting war and gang violence, poverty, famine, flooding, and ultimately the dream of a better life…. the cost of this continual mass migration is staggering….we know the published numbers. Our refugee problem is now global, getting progressively worse, and with no real solutions emerging.
And then add Climate to the word = Climate Refugees
Now imagine the exponential growth in this global mass migration that will result from the impact of climate change. Whole coastal communities lost to rising seas, vast swathes of land no longer able to sustain cultivation, dying oceans that can no longer feed the billions that eke out their daily sustenance from the heated waters, …. if 200,000 refugees cost £3.8 billion pounds to house, feed, educate and provide basic medical services, what will be the cost of caring for climate refugees 1000 times greater in numbers than the geopolitical refugees we see today?
Now for some good news!
The prevention of the compounding, logarithmic impact on human populations, turning into billions of climate refugees can be addressed… with the best and brightest minds on the planet brought together with an unlimited budget to find solutions in 5 years not 50…this was the genius of the Los Alamos project, which almost destroyed the world. Time for a new focus…a Los Alamos to save the world.
Having lived and called home England and Australia before I moved to the United States for 30 years as well as Mexico for eleven years and worked extensively across Africa, and now writing this article back in England, over my life I have learned first hand the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. There are amazing and different attributes in every country with every citizenship. I am also consistently encouraged as I have often glimpsed prosperity in the darkest of places for example in Kibera the largest slum in Africa in the middle of Nairobi where we were involved with women micro enterprise, putting rain catchers on roofs and education support. Prosperity with the matriarch and family intact, all supporting and respecting each other with children dreaming for the opportunity of careers and even being a President, like their half brother Obama!
And look at Liberia, a country where a black tribal king put a poor tribe into slavery and sold to Portuguese to bring to the States. Slaves own chaotic emergence took its history and resulted in emancipated Liberians slaves from the poor tribe returning to their motherland now reading, writing and educated. Then out of alignment again as the king tribe was threatened and a moment in time took a prosperous proud country flying a resemblance of a USA flag into hell, blood diamonds and child soldier armies.
Hell was everywhere twenty years ago. Yet in the middle of chaos a moment came when the women prayed, the women said “enough and no sex men until this war stops” and the women elected in the first ever woman President in Africa. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf then brought a young courageous child disarmament boy leader, Kimmie Weeks out of exile in the USA to be the national orator and unite the scarred yet healing youth of their beloved country. I have been honored to witness their individual and collective emergence as we have worked along side our friends for the last seventeen years.
Out of Chaotic Emergence can indeed come Authentic Expression. It may have taken three hundred years of the above paragraph to play out but it did. The USA sent “free slaves” back to resolve a problem and forced migration occurred in 1816 with the formation of the American Colonization Society and inevitably on July 26 1847 Independence of Liberia occurred.
Kenyans love being Kenyan as much as Pakistanis are so proud of Pakistan. I traveled the world for so long and you could never take the Englishman out of me. How many times in your life have you been asked “where are you from?” And even if you are Arnold Schwarzenegger who is so grateful like I have been for what the United States has brought him, Arnold has always been so proud of his Austrian childhood, and then dirt poor he was taken in by mentors in London and Portsmouth as he grew his body and mind! He then arrived into America and the rest is history.
Who can blame a migrant, a refugee as they walk with opportunity as their dream. I was an opportunist driven by circumstances allowing the cause and effect of my life decisions to play out around me. The USA was first founded by the opportunist refugees that set sail on the Mayflower from Amsterdam seeking freedom as Spain declared war in Europe. Many in the USA today will be giving thanks to their great grand parents who escaped Europe on boats clinging to their suitcase possessions and the tiny hands of their children. We are all opportunists in our own lives.
We are all opportunists in our own lives.
Today the compounding effects across our planet has so much of humanity on the cusp of being refugees, running or walking away, seeking a just and fair society to live amongst, to have access to basic food, water, energy, shelter and health. This is something all 8 billion of us want for our lives and it may not just be the poor in remote countries, the 2 billion who live on less than $2 a day. No, we are seeing again with Ukraine and Gaza how chaos makes successful working people and entire families and communities into refugees overnight, reducing life possessions into one hastily packed bag.
There is still Time…..please…..there is still enough time.
Ultimately there is way more that connects us all on this Planet rather than separates us and none of us can ignore the plight of or problems caused by migration. The effects of continued ignorance will be cataclysmic. So as in 2005 I can not ignore, and I say “How can I help?” My suggestion to you is unlike the Titanic when many of the passengers were asleep in their beds as the first icy waters gushed through the gaping holes sheered open by the deadly iceberg, you are awake right now and you can see this happening in front of you.
Therefore do not be lulled into false belief that governments and money have the issue of refugees covered and all will be OK and normal for you. It is very unlikely for the grass to remain as green on your side of the fence, and in some cases there won’t be green grass but dirty water. We must all collectively work together, participating however each of us can help, and as a consequence to this giant conscious effort future refugees will not become refugees on the move but valued members of their own nations. There is still time for you to believe that Climate Crisis is real and importantly act and influence its outcome.
There is still time for every child in vulnerable communities to be educated through high school and for vocational training empowerment colleges to promote self honor and responsibility. There is still time for all the food to be grown to support its hungry humanity. There is even still time for us to liberate water and make it more readily available. There is still time for us to build habitable shelter and homes. There is still time for us to recognize that we can be connected rather than divided, regenerating trust between us. And importantly there is still time for us to act in knowledge that we are not apart from nature, but just a small part of nature.
We are not apart from nature, but just a small part of nature.
If we do all these things and influence our future in a healthy way, then it is much more probable that governance can be stable, we all live in a just and fair society, our communities flourish and we too one day do not become a refugee or homeless.
If you have any ideas do not hesitate to share them and use our Substack chat link on the website , or just email us at connect@sanaraway.com.
If you want to see how we look at tackling issues today and over the last twenty years please visit http://influencefoundation.co . Then if you feel up to it get engaged with us or those you respect and choose to be involved with.
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Thank you.