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Suzanne Goldenberg in Newtok, Alaska, with video by Richard Sprenger, the Guadian, May 2013,
Newtok, Alaska is losing ground to the sea at a dangerous rate and for its residents, exile is inevitable.
A child plays in a flooded area of Newtok village. More than 180 native communities in Alaska are experiencing flooding and loss of land as ice melts due to climate change.
Photograph: Brian Adams
Suzanne Goldenberg in Newtok, Alaska, with video by Richard Sprenger
What is a climate refugee?
The immediate image that comes to mind of "climate refugees" is people of small tropical islands in the Pacific or of a low-lying delta like in Bangladesh, where inhabitants have been forced out of their homes by sea-level rise.
The broader phenomenon is usually taken to be people displaced from their homes by the impact of a changing climate – although the strict definition of a refugee in international law is more narrow including people displaced by war, violence or persecution, but not environmental changes.
With climate change occurring rapidly in the far north, where temperatures are warming faster than the global average, the typical picture of the climate refugee is set to become more diverse. Sea ice is in retreat, the permafrost is melting, bringing the effects of climate change in real time to residents of the remote villages of Alaska.
These villages, whose residents are nearly all native Alaskans, are already experiencing the flooding and erosion that are the signature effects of climate change in Alaska. The residents of a number of villages – including Newtok – are now actively working to leave their homes and the lands they have occupied for centuries and move to safer locations.
Unlike those in New Orleans forced to leave their homes because of hurricane Katrina, their exile is not set in motion by a single cataclysmic event. Climate change in Alaska is a slow-moving disaster. But its effects are already very real for the native Alaskans who will be America's first climate refugees.
One can only read these 3 articles as a warning - Global Warming is happening and will have severe effects.
We could minimize those effects if we take action now.
CO2 emission trade does nothing to stop the warming
Lowering our daily CO2 emission footprint is the way forward !
Ak Malten, Pro Peaceful Energy Use America's first climate refugees - the first of a series of 3 articles at the Guardian
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