Turkey is located on a major human trafficking route and last year the authorities intercepted more than 50,000 citizens of poor countries who were trying to get a better life in the West. It is unclear how many successfully reached European Union member states. The other event was the publication, after much diplomatic wrangling, of a devastating report on climate change, prepared by more than 100 experts from all over the world. The delay in reaching an agreement was due largely to the unwillingness of some of the world’s most developed nations to accept responsibility for global warming, which is estimated to be more than 90 percent man-made.
If the dire predictions made by climate scientists prove correct, climate change could soon produce a new class of migrants. This is not a vague threat that might appear in the distant future: the challenge is imminent. The report published on Friday suggests that 75 to 250 million Africans will face water shortages by 2020 and crop yields may decrease by up to 30 percent in some parts of Asia, while increasing in others. And millions of people, living in coastal or low-lying areas, will be flooded every year as sea levels rise.
The countries likely to bear the brunt of these climactic changes are among the poorest and the least equipped, financially and technologically, to deal with the new challenge. Inevitably we will see more population movement. Turkey may be affected both directly, with drought more likely in parts of Anatolia, and indirectly, as a transit country for migrants. Europe and the rest of the developed world, which already have the feeling of being under siege, could face new waves of migration.
This raises some fundamental questions. If the West, as this recent report suggests, is largely responsible for global warming, should not developed countries bear the cost of helping less advanced states face the consequences of climate change? Texas, for instance, produces more carbon dioxide emissions than 120 developing countries with a total population of 1.1 billion taken together (Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Making Globalization Work”). How can developing countries be compensated for or helped to adjust to climate change? Rainforest countries have formed a coalition and are demanding to be compensated for maintaining their forests, which provide a service to the world. Perhaps pollution taxes could be imposed on energy-intensive commodities and be used to help affected countries support their own populations.
We are still far from a solution, but it is already clear that these issues will become acute problems in the not-too-distant future. Economic migrants are not recognized as refugees. In fact, in order to get asylum, people forced to flee their countries need to fit narrow criteria of persecution that were defined after World War II. The West is not willing to accept poverty as a justification for migrants seeking refuge. But if rich nations do not want to see more people displaced by poverty arriving on their doorstep they will have to find more effective ways to help other nations develop their own economies. And increasingly this will mean helping them face the challenge of climate change.
