Month: March 2023

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Glacial Lake Flooding Threatens Millions Worldwide 

30 March 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson

Fifteen million people worldwide are threatened by devastating flooding from glacial lakes, new research has found. 

The study, led by a team at Newcastle University, calls for “urgent” action to help avert future deaths from such floods. 

Deaths can be caused either directly by the floods, which are “highly destructive and can arrive with little prior warning,” or by damage to property, infrastructure and agricultural land. 

More than half of the globally exposed population live in just four countries: India, Pakistan, Peru and China. 

Much like other natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, floods from glacial lakes represent not just a threat to life but a major displacement risk for millions worldwide.

Last year, a glacial lake in Pakistan burst its banks and wiped out a bridge downstream, as well as damaging nearby homes and two powerplants. 

Melting Himalayan glaciers have also been identified as having fuelled last year’s devastating floods in Pakistan, which left a third of the country underwater. Those floods reportedly displaced over 32 million people. 

This study was the first to try and map where people are most at risk from “glacial lake outburst floods,” as they are known.

Since 1990, the study says that the number and size of glacial lakes has grown rapidly along with downstream population. This is because glaciers are shrinking due to global warming. 

The lakes, which form in hollowed out glacier beds or on top of existing glaciers, can also trigger “positive feedbacks” causing further ice loss. 

The study found that 15 million people live within 50 kilometres of a glacial lake, placing them at risk from flooding. In Asia, a region where there is likely to be little warning of flooding or certainty as to how powerful floods will be, one million people live within one kilometre of such lakes. 

Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region is most vulnerable to such flooding. However the study also said that a lack of research on flood risk in the Andes “urgently” requires attention, with the second- and third-most dangerous basins found in Peru and Bolivia. 

The study said improvements to early warning systems such as time lapse cameras for flooding are “urgently needed,” alongside other measures such as evacuation drills. 

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UN Chief: Rising Seas Risk “Biblical” Levels of Migration

23 March 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson

United Nations secretary general António Guterres has warned that rising sea levels could cause climate migration on a “biblical scale”, with the current rate of global warming representing a  “death sentence” for entire countries.

Addressing the 15-member UN Security Council in New York last month, Guterres once again sounded the alarm bell for the “unthinkable” consequences of rapidly melting ice sheets and glaciers. 

Antarctica and the Greenland ice cap are now between them losing 420 billion tons of ice mass annually according to US space agency NASA, he said. 

The resulting sea level rise could cause low-lying communities and entire countries to “disappear forever,” Guterres told the Council. There would also be “ever-fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources.”

Addressing the “root cause” of rising seas, the climate crisis, Guterres said the world is currently “hurtling past the 1.5°C warming limit that a liveable future requires” — a limit that would still see sizeable sea-level rise.

“Every fraction of a degree counts,” said Guterres. “If temperatures rise by 2 degrees, that level rise could double”. Currently the world is “careening towards 2.8°C — a death sentence for vulnerable countries.” 

“Under any scenario,” Guterres said that countries like Bangladesh, China, India and the Netherlands are all at risk. And mega-cities on every continent will face “serious impacts”, including Lagos, London, Mumbai, New York and Buenos Aires. 

The danger is “especially acute” for nearly 900 million people who live in coastal zones at low elevations, said Guterres. “That is one out of ten people on earth.” 

Guterres stressed that the effects of global warming are already being felt. Himalayan melts have worsened flooding in Pakistan, he said, while also citing flooding in West Africa, such as that suffered recently in Nigeria.  

The impacts of rising seas must also be addressed, including international refugee law, he said. “People’s human rights do not disappear because their homes do.” 

The International Law Commission had last year considered a “range of potential solutions” to the problems caused by rising sea levels, including continuing statehood despite loss of territory, ceding or assigning portions of territory to an affected state, or even establishing confederations of states.

Guterres’ latest dire warning on the climate comes as even half-hearted efforts to address global warming have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which have diverted political attention from the issue. 

Last year, he said the world was “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe”, with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C – as set out in the 2015 Paris agreement – on “life support”. 

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Migration or Non-Migration to Adapt?: Assessing the Impact on the Well-Being of the Population

March 2023 – by Virginia De Biaso

Virginia De Biasio ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University of York (UK). Her research interests include natural resources justice, territorial rights, environmental justice and climate-induced migration.

The islands of the Republic of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean are one of the world’s most vulnerable nations to climate change. Sea-level rise, changes in temperature and in the frequency of precipitations, extreme weather events are affecting the territory of Kiribati and its natural resources. Lack of resources or changes in their availability have an impact on the living conditions of the population of Kiribati. Given the close link between the lifestyle of the I-Kiribati and their peculiar ecosystem, the well-being of the local population has been severely affected by climate-related changes in their surrounding environment.

The aim of this report is to assess how the population of Kiribati is affected by climate-related changes on their territory and its natural resources. The report examines the impacts of climate change on different indicators of individual well-being: survival and subsistence economy; health; work opportunities; traditional knowledge and culture.

There is evidence that climate change and its effects on the fragile ecosystem of Kiribati lead to a deterioration in the living conditions and in the well- being of the local population. Different strategies have been considered and implemented by the Kiribati Government to address this situation: adaptation within the territory of Kiribati, which may include internal displacement; and cross-border migration and relocation. This report concludes by examining the different challenges of climate-induced migration, both internal and cross-border, on the well-being of the I-Kiribati.

Migration or Non-Migration to Adapt?Download

Supervised by Lauren Grant, Director of Field Research at Earth Refuge.

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A “Dangerous Link”: Climate-Fuelled Violence in the Lake Chad Basin

Lake Chad in Nigeria's northeastern Borno State

1 March 2023 – by Cosmo Sanderson

A new report has found climate change is fuelling violence that has led to the displacement of over 5 million people in the Lake Chad Basin, calling for action that recognises the “dangerous link” between the issues. 

Refugees International released a report in January arguing that the influence of climate change on conflict and displacement in the basin has been “ignored for too long”. 

Governments and agencies need to “move beyond” an approach that focuses only on regional security, according to the US-based NGO. “That approach not only misses the worsening impacts of climate change and displacement but overlooks how they fuel insecurity.”

The Lake Chad Basin serves as an important source of freshwater and fish as well as a trading hub for the four countries that share its shores: Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger.  

However for the last 13 years the region around the lake in all four countries has been ravaged by conflict and violence. The UN estimates that 24 million people are now affected by the crisis, with around 5.3 million displaced. 

In its report, Refugees International says the crisis and displacement caused are often “viewed through the lens of regional security” – including attacks by Islamist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria. 

But the report argues that the uptick in conflict and displacement has been fuelled by increased competition for land, water and food as a result of global warming.  

A “prime example” of this came in Cameroon in 2021, when climate-driven scarcity triggered tensions between fishing, farming and herding communities – resulting in an “eruption of violence”. Around 60,000 Cameroonians sought refuge in neighbouring Chad as a result. 

The report called for a then-upcoming summit on the Lake Chad Basin, which took place last month, to “address the nexus of climate change, violence and displacement” as part of its plan for stabilising the region. 

Speaking at the conference, Niger’s foreign minister Hassoumi Massoudou acknowledged that action taken so far seems “very far from the reality” of the needs of those being exposed to the “cumulative effects of insecurity and climate change.”

Over US$500 million in aid was pledged at the conference, although this sum is far short of the estimated US$1.8 billion the UN has said is required.