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Beyond Violence: Drought and Migration in Central America’s Northern Triangle
›Starting in 2014, the number of migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—surged, with border apprehensions increasing fivefold from 2010-2015. While apprehensions have declined from their peak, emigration from these countries has not necessarily slowed, and the conditions the migrants are seeking to escape have not changed. Experts blame the region’s widespread criminal violence for spurring migration. But the Northern Triangle countries also share similar ecology, staple crops, and vulnerability to climate events. While environmental and natural resource factors are just part of the complex picture, understanding how they intersect with other migration drivers is key to creating and implementing effective policy responses.
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A More Just Migration: Empowering Women on the Front Lines of Climate Displacement
›“It is often expected that women care more, and therefore women are going to volunteer, and be the saviors” in times of crisis, said Eleanor Blomstrom, the Program Director and Head of Office for the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), at a Wilson Center event on climate displacement and the changing role of women. A panel of experts discussed the impacts of climate change that not only force women to move, but also put them disproportionately at risk. By integrating gender dimensions of climate-related displacement into research, policy, and programs, we can gain a better understanding of the challenges that women face and support women’s efforts to be changemakers for their communities as they adapt to climate threats. “All issues are women’s issues,” said Blomstrom.
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The Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Photos Show Bangladesh Camps Are Vulnerable to Impending Monsoons
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Women on the Front Lines of Change: Empowerment in the Face of Climate and Displacement
›With a swiftly changing climate comes rapidly rising sea levels, more frequent storms, and rising inequality. Slow yet consistent events like sea-level rise, as well as extreme events like hurricanes and other climate disasters, can force women and families from their homes. As the climate continues to change, adaptation will become more difficult, spurring some to leave home in search of safer ground. In the face of climate-induced instability, women are not just on the frontline of impacts, but also at the forefront of solutions.
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Safe Passage: China Takes Steps to Protect Shorebirds Migrating From Australia to the Arctic
›Every year, millions of shorebirds migrate to the Arctic to breed—some coming from as far away as Australia and New Zealand—and then head back again. Nearly all of the birds making this journey spend time in the food-rich intertidal mudflats of the Yellow Sea ecoregion, on the east coast of China and the west coasts of the Korean peninsula. But as China’s economy has grown, around 70 percent of the intertidal mudflats in the Yellow Sea area have disappeared—the land drained and “reclaimed” for development. All of the more than 30 species of shorebirds that rely on the mudflats are declining, and those that stop there twice a year are declining at a faster rate than those that stop only once. If the current trajectory continues, the Yellow Sea—once known as the cradle of China—will become the epicenter of extinction.
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As Fiji Leads COP-23, Camari Koto Reflects on Climate Resilience in the South Pacific Islands
›Climate change poses an undeniable threat to small island states, but many islanders do not even know what climate change is, says Camari Koto, an indigenous Fijian academic and educator at the University of the South Pacific and member of the Resilience Academy, in our latest podcast. “They know it’s happening, they are unconsciously [taking] adaptive responses,” and certainly feel the brunt of its effects, she says. “But they don’t see climate change as an immediate threat.”
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COP-23: Can More Transparency, New Technology Save Small Island States?
›As the Climate Conference of Parties (COP-23) wraps up in Bonn, Germany, the prime minister of the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, which is sinking a few millimeters every year, made an impassioned call for transparency in the Paris Agreement “rule book” and for ratcheting up worldwide ambitions to reduce climate change. While informal texts were drafted to guide implementation of the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, formal adoption of these rules will have to wait until COP-24, to be held in Poland next year.
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An Unholy Trinity: Xinjiang’s Unhealthy Relationship With Coal, Water, and the Quest for Development
›Sitting shotgun in a beat-up vehicle en route to Tashkorgan a small town in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, I soaked in the magnificence—or what I could see through the dust-coated windshield. The unpaved and rocky road, which carves through the precipitous Karakorum pass, will be (when finished) a key link in China’s “One Belt One Road” plan to connect China to Pakistan. China’s ambitious plans for westward expansion will demand an almost inconceivably enormous amount of energy and resources, and water-scarce Xinjiang will play a central role. With plans like these, how can China meet its water needs?
Showing posts from category migration.