Day 20 of the Collapse Advent Calendar: “Dissolving Boundaries” a beautiful piece of music by Anoushka Shankar.

The piece is from an entire album inspired by the plight of displaced children and families. Full music piece here: http://bit.ly/DissolvingBoundaries

Embedded is a performance to this piece by Contemporary and Kathak dance artist, Vidya Patel.

“Research indicates that the Earth’s climate is changing at a rate that has exceeded most scientific forecasts. Some families and communities have already started to suffer from disasters and the consequences of climate change, which has forced them to leave their homes in search of a new beginning.” ¹

Predictions

“In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that the greatest single impact of climate change could be on human migration—with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption. Since then various analysts have tried to put numbers on future flows of climate migrants (sometimes called “climate refugees”)—the most widely repeated prediction

being 200 million by 2050. “²

This is only a prediction and quantifying environmental migration is challenging. While data gaps persist, research methodologies are constantly being improved.

Current Data on environmental displacement

“At the end of 2019, around 5.1 million people in 95 countries and territories were living in displacement as a result of disasters that happened not only in 2019, but also in previous years. The countries with the highest number of internally displaced persons were Afghanistan (1.2 million); India (590,000); Ethiopia (390,000), Philippines (364,000) and Sudan (272,000).” ³

“Slow-onset processes such as droughts or sea level rise also increasingly affect people’s mobility worldwide. Specific data not yet available though case studies highlighted. “

"Climate refugees"?

The term “climate refugee” is often used in the media and other discussions. However, this phrase can cause confusion, as it does not exist in international law. A “refugee” is defined as a person who has crossed an international border “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” (1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees). ⁴

Sources:

¹https://www.unhcr.org/climate-change-and-disasters.html

²IPCC Migration & Climate Change Report Download link: https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/njlite/srex/njlite_download.php?id=5866

³https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/environmental_migration

⁴https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html