Climate change refugees aren't characters in a novel about the future. They're here.
They're on islands facing inundation within the next few years, like Tuvalu, the Maldives and the Carterets. And they're in the U.S. itself. The Government Accounting Office is recommending that the country develop an agency that could deal with issues related to relocating our own climate change refugees.
According to the GAO, residents of 31 Alaskan villages are in line to become climate refugees soon because rising temperatures are causing flooding and erosion. One town has been planning for this contingency since 1994, but damage caused by warming-related conditions is outstripping plans to resettle the Eskimos who live there. The village is Newtok, whose 350 inhabitants are already seeing their houses settle into the softening ground or be sucked down the Ninglick River, which runs into the Bering Sea nearby. As their wooden sidewalks sink into the mud, they are preparing to move to a new settlement on Nelson Island.
The estimated cost of relocation for this tiny band of villagers is $130 million. Who wants to think about the cost when larger populations start having to be relocated? And all the endangered villages are in a bind because an official decision to relocate can leave them ineligible for funding to improve existing infrastructure, like water and sewer and power plants, that the communities need until the inhabitants actually move away.
More and more voices are calling for national and global policies to deal with the issue of climate change relocation. The GAO recommends that the U.S. establish a lead government agency to give some direction to relief efforts for the Alaskans and future climate change refugees. And a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, urges that international bodies develop programs for dealing with climate change refugees, adding that the problem will lead to humanitarian disasters and political instability if it is not immediately addressed.
