San Diego’s Climate Crisis: The Impacts Of A Warming World On Refugee Communities

Speaker 1: 00:00 This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Cavanagh. Climate change often impacts some of the world's most vulnerable people as part of our ongoing coverage of San Diego's climate crisis. KPBS reporter Priya Schriefer takes a look at how people around the world are becoming climate refugees Speaker 2: 00:18 Hussein. Hey Nuer came to the United States from Somalia more than three decades ago to study as a foreign military exchange student. After completing his training, Nora said he felt unsafe returning to his home country because of the ongoing civil war. He applied and was granted asylum here in the u s Speaker 3: 00:38 the country was in a blue tickle. Turmoil want to see that, but I left the country. People were divided so badly. Speaker 2: 00:47 It's resettling in San Diego. Neuro has helped dozens of families from east Africa make a new home in San Diego, which has one of the largest populations of Somali refugees in the world. While Somalia has been suffering from civil war and political turmoil for decades, experts say drought, which causes food and security has been a main driver of mass migration throughout the region for generations. People in nurse family have supported themselves through farming, but in recent years, drought has forced them off their farms and into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Speaker 3: 01:23 They rely on the rain and if they miss one season of that, the claim is going to be devastating on the food on what are would be scarce. Speaker 2: 01:37 Rom Lassa, he is the director of the Partnership for the advancement of New Americans, a nonprofit dedicated to refugee rights. She's also seen the impacts climate change has had on migration. Speaker 4: 01:49 So what's happening and what I know, um, that people tell us is they leave their rural communities, um, in search of food and search of water during drought, um, and they're going into other land. You'll see a lot more conflict as well that kind of exasperates on ready, highly volatile, you know, violence. What is already happening is violence. I'm in persecution and then the climate crisis exasperates that, okay. Speaker 2: 02:16 According to a recent study, Somalia is the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change. The United Nations says the drought in Somalia has caused 49,000 people to leave their homes in search of food and water so far this year, nor says that he's seen many able bodied men in east Africa joined armed factions simply to survive. Speaker 3: 02:39 Well, many people, I don't know. We from that homes to seek help to find food and water. Many youths that are attracted by the [inaudible] and army functionalist like our Shabbat or warring function is and kilometer change also boosted the tension between the clients. Speaker 2: 03:09 Worldwide studies show more than 17 million people have been displaced because of weather related disasters like droughts, wildfires and extreme temperatures. Rom Rama nothin is a climate sustainability professor at the Scripps Institution of oceanography Speaker 5: 03:26 probably in about 10 to 15 years. That's going to be the biggest problem. They're going to face refugees, migration, the social undressed that would cause if you don't have a governance system. Speaker 2: 03:43 Newer says for too long, climate change is taken a back seat to other issues. Speaker 3: 03:48 The international community and the local government Speaker 6: 03:53 sure Speaker 3: 03:54 didn't do much and didn't give much attention about the climate change. The focusing on war, on terrorism and the pirates. But this is a really a pattern and issue that's affecting people's lives in east Africa. Speaker 2: 04:15 He hopes politicians and policy makers will wake up to the reality before it's too late. Speaker 1: 04:21 Joining me is KPBS reporter, Prius, ether and Pria. Welcome. Thanks. So 14 9,000 people in Somalia this year have been forced to move from their lands because of drought. Obviously they are not all coming to the u s so where are they going? Speaker 2: 04:39 Right. So many of them are ending up in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, but the majority of them are actually staying within the borders of Somalia. So, you know, we hear a lot about urbanization that's happening all over the world. People moving from rural areas to urban areas. And oftentimes that's happening because of climate reasons, because of droughts. And when you have two seasons in a row where you're not getting the right amount of rainfall, these people are basically forced to go anywhere just to try to survive, to have food and water. And then in addition to that, um, the refugee that I spoke with in my story also mentioned that many of these people are joining armed factions, whether that's the Somali military or other armed groups that are offering these people who are struggling with famine, uh, food and water and they simply need that to live. And that's also contributing and exacerbating the political violence that you're seeing in these regions already. Speaker 1: 05:38 Are these Somalians and millions of people like them, are they being designated as climate refugees or is that a designation that countries don't yet acknowledge? Speaker 2: 05:47 Right. So yeah, that's not like an official State Department designation as of right now. But what you're seeing is a lot of these people initially moving for climate change reasons and then ending up in places in the Middle East like Syria. A lot of people are saying that many of the Syrian refugees that have ended up in Europe and even here in the United States originally were climate migrants. And that's how they, you know, would be classified by many of these climate change experts. But once they got to those bigger cities, they were then dealing with civil wars and other violence that they also had to flee from. And, and ended up in, you know, countries like the United States. Speaker 1: 06:26 Tell us more about Dr Rom Roma Non-fun warning about climate migration becoming the biggest problem the world community is about to face. What kind of trouble does he see a rising from these population shifts? Speaker 2: 06:39 Right? So he's saying that we're going to see this happen really rapidly. And actually, you know, I was able to find a World Bank study that projected that in the next 30 years. So by 2050, we're going to see 140 million people move within their own countries, borders because of climate change. And there are three regions of the world that this most severely impacts that Subsaharan Africa, uh, with 86 million people, South Asia with 40 million people and Latin America with 17 million people. So the, these are huge, huge numbers, but the World Bank suggests and many of the climate change experts, including Dr Rom Raman often say that with concerted effort, with proactive action and programs, if we look to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world, we could really cut that number down by as much as 80% or more than a hundred million people. So essentially he's trying to sort of have a call to action here and say that if we address this now we can really see those numbers dramatically decrease. Speaker 1: 07:47 To bring it back to our border here, we've heard that climate change and drought in Central America is causing much of the migration of people across Mexico and then hoping to enter the u s has this reason been acknowledged in any way by US officials? Speaker 2: 08:02 Right. So actually right now today is the United Nations general assemblies climate summit. And I was just reading in the news that president Trump did actually surprisingly come. He wasn't scheduled to come to that summit, but he did. And so people are maybe seeing that as perhaps a step in the right direction for acknowledging climate change. But his administration has notoriously tried to minimize the impacts of climate change. And the EPA has actually said that, uh, water quality and ocean pollution are bigger global threats than climate change. But we've seen for the past several years, government officials saying that this is a huge crisis. The Department of Homeland Security actually put that in their 2014 planning document. They said that climate change is indirectly a fueling or it's basically considered a threat multiplier. So many of those same arguments that you heard from my rep, the refugee and my story and Dr Rom ramen often that in a climate change is sort of contributing to terrorist activity violence. It's increasing poverty. So many government officials are aware of this, but you know, the Department of Homeland Security in addition to the United States military are doing a lot to, um, you know, beef up security on the border. But a lot of people would argue, critics would argue that they're not doing enough to try to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and perhaps be more proactive in that approach. I've been speaking with KPBS reported Prius, truther and Priya. Thank you. Thank you. You're listening to KPBS midday edition.