Unearthed today: where will everyone go?

Morning! 

I’m reading about… climate change and mass migration

Pro-Publica, the New York Times and the Pulitzer Centre have teamed up to model how climate refugees might move across borders as the world warms. The investigation draws on modelling conducted by scientists into the impact of global warming and – for the first time – puts it together with a global picture of the implications for migration.

“As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen…. By 2070, the kind of extremely hot zones, like in the Sahara, that now cover less than 1% of the earth’s land surface could cover nearly a fifth of the land, potentially placing 1 of every 3 people alive outside the climate niche where humans have thrived for thousands of years”

The implications are stark and are already being seen in the countries they leave, and those they move to. Instead of turning to nationalism – which is one possible outcome – governments need to actively prepare for the reality of climate change migration. The key part of the story – which is based on some quite astonishingly detailed modelling – is less the predictions of mass migration and more the analysis of what happens if that migration is not allowed to take place trapping millions of people in areas increasingly hostile to human life facing an intersection of climate, political and economic threats.

It goes to the heart of the debate around adaptation which, it turns out, is only about sea walls if you happen to live in The Netherlands or another wealthy nation. “There is no more natural and fundamental adaptation to a changing climate than to migrate. It is the obvious progression the earliest Homo sapiens pursued out of Africa, and the same one the Mayans tried 1,200 years ago. As Lorenzo Guadagno at the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration told me recently, “Mobility is resilience.” Every policy choice that allows people the flexibility to decide for themselves where they live helps make them safer.”

But if the developed world responds by closing it’s borders – and depriving nations of the billions needed to adapt – something counter-intuitive and very bad happens. Population in some of the worst hit areas surges, even as the temperatures also rise. Millions are trapped and many will die from heat, but also from starvation and conflicts over food and water – all whilst developed economies increasingly wall themselves in.

You, quite obviously, have to read this thing. It all lends a new perspective to the discussion over the link between action on climate change and anti-racism. The burden of being trapped on the wrong side of walls would fall – massively – to people who are not white. Flipping back to Ayana Johnson in Time, this is complex, but the complexity is what matters. “There is an impulse to oversimplify and say climate justice is racial justice, to use an equal sign. While they are inseparably intertwined, they are also distinct, layered. In the wise words of feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

And… the pandemic triggering major business calls on climate

In many areas – cars, planes, US fossil fuels, we’ve seen a retrenchment away from acting on climate, but in others the pandemic is pushing things forwards. The FT reports on how the pandemic has persuaded some investors and asset managers of the potential financial damage from global warming. Perhaps they are reading articles like the one above.

Until the virus, “there was still a significant portion of the investor base” that believed tackling climate change “could wait until tomorrow”, he adds. “That has changed. Companies and investors are starting to look at the importance of acting now.”

“Rather than drive investor attention away from climate change, the pandemic has cemented interest, with many investors fearing the economic fallout seen during the pandemic could be replicated if the world fails to halt global warming, says Mirza Baig, global head of governance at Aviva Investors.”

“There has been a big shift in the past five years: the understanding, the awareness of climate change has grown enormously, particularly in the last year,” says Eugenia Unanyants-Jackson, ESG research head at Allianz Global Investors.

“It is a physical risk to people, it’s a big risk to our investment portfolios, and we need to do something.”

Taking a bit of a hand-break turn to… chicken. Stay with me here. If you are a chicken chain then how you feed your chicken is a similar cimate-risk to how a bank invests. Now, it’s not clear there is actually much you can do about this other than stop being a chicken chain but the FT reports that Nando’s, the South African restaurant chain, plans to trial feeding chickens algae and insects as part of efforts to sharply reduce its carbon emissions over the next decade.

It could be greenwash, we’ll see… but it’s better greenwash at least than offsetting.

Three things you need to know

UK needs to actually do something if it wants to meet climate targets (Times): Says the grid operator. It says the target will be missed if ministers focus only on decarbonising the energy and transport sectors and neglect efforts to change consumer behaviour and the way homes are heated. The Times also reports that Boris Johnson is to end Britain’s support for “dirty” global oil and gas projects for fear of tarnishing the country’s reputation on climate change.

The three-gorges dam is set to be tested by heavy rain (WSJ): The chance of something bad happening here may be very small, but the bad thing that could happen would be truly terrifying. Here’s another link without a paywall (Nikkei).

Critics hit out at ‘stupid’ cuts to EU’s green transition fund (FT): The impact of that long negotiation over the EU’s bailout fund has come home to roost with a massive cut to the “Just Transition Fund”. “The decrease in the JTF is not helpful — it is stupid,” said Bas Eickhout, a Green MEP from the Netherlands. He warned that the scale of the cuts — pushed for by the “frugal” alliance of Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden to reduce the final volume of a coronavirus spending package — would give an “easy argument” to countries who oppose higher emissions goals. “It was stupid prioritisation from the frugals,” he said.