A protest at the Rafah border checkpoint. Flickr / Steve Rhodes. Some rights reserved.
Anthropogenic climate change is heating the earth ten times faster than natural changes over the last 65m years. Scientists concur that our current path could lead us to a 4C rise by the end of the century, which would be cataclysmic for humanity. Even avoiding such a global doomsday with a 1.5-2C rise, a widely accepted international aspiration, would still bring widespread catastrophes and a Day of Reckoning for many.
Amid environmental instability and threats, people migrate, as evident throughout human history. Due to current climatic changes, many are already silently migrating—from the Andes, the Himalayas, the Sahara. With a 2, 3, 4C rise or more, large-scale population shifts will be unavoidable, to find basic necessities to survive and to escape dangerous environmental threats. And yet still there are no effective or widespread mechanisms to safeguard the masses forced to move.
