Rising Tides : Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century

Global climate change and global refugee crises will soon become inextricably interlinked. A new tsunami of climate refugees flows across the earth. We are now at the moment of truth.

Climate change is with us and we need to think about the next big disturbing idea - the potentially disastrous consequences of massive numbers of environmental refugees at large on the planet. In 2020 the United Nations projects that we will have 50 million environmental refugees mostly from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. How will people be relocated and settled? Is it possible to offer environmental refugees temporary or permanent asylum? Will these refugees have any collective rights in the new areas they inhabit? And lastly, who will pay the costs of all the affected countries during the process of resettlement? Environmental refugees are a problem beyond the scope of a single country or agency.

"Rising Tides deals masterfully with a neglected crisis, how climate change is driving migration. The discussion of the interrelationship between conflict-driven migration and climate-driven migration is fascinating. The crisis is upon us: Many of the Mediterranean displaced people are climate refugees, not conflict refugees. Some are both. The work is easily grasped by the general reader, and its source material is a gold mine for interested experts. Wennersten and Robbins don’t shy away from grim conclusions: The climate refugees aren’t going home, and the global community needs to accommodate them. The work broaches solutions both practical, like reforestation, and political, like the need for a new international charter for handling non-conflict refugees." - Christopher E. Goldthwait US Ambassador retired