Review - Climate Change on the Move by Michael Werz and Kari Manlove

By Barbara Wheat 

Countries around the globe have had to deal with the effects of emigration and immigration, but according to authors Werz and Manlove, the world will soon become familiar with another type of migration as climate migrants flee areas affected by the warming of the planet and the resulting dwindling resources. In their article, Climate Change on the Move, Werz et al. highlight the challenges the world will face once climate refugees are on the move en masse.  

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World population recently crossed the 7 billion mark, and according the United Nations, is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 (Wertz et al. 73). Growing populations faced with decreasing natural resources, and hit with increasing natural disasters such as hurricanes and drought as a result of climate change, may not be able to cope with these “extreme circumstances” (74). An estimated 200 million people could become climate migrants by 2050. 

Many areas expected to be hit the worst by climate change may be the least able to cope with the effects. Areas identified as being most at risk include:

-Asia: warming will shrink freshwater resources adversely affecting 1 billion people;

-Africa: agriculture yields could fall by 50%, food and water insecurity;

-Latin America: melting snowcaps will harm agriculture areas (73).

The authors also cite security issues as a cause of concern as the mobilization of climate refugees will likely aggravate conditions in areas already facing conflicts. Areas most likely to be hit hard by climate change are also the most vulnerable where government and political instability currently put their people at risk.    

With the huge number of climate migrants expected in the coming years, it seems vital to take this into consideration when studying the globalized world. Thomas Friedman’s in-depth analysis in The World is Flat does not address issues related to the warming of the planet and how it will affect people around the world. His vision of the flat world seems to assume that all the pieces of the puzzle will fit nicely together. Closer inspection of problems in the world calls upon us to reconsider the globalized economy from angles other than that of the mega-corporation.

References:

Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat. A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.
Updated And Expanded. 2005, 2006. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York. Print.

Werz, Michael, and Kari Manlove. Climate Change on the Move. D. Stanley Eitzen and
Maxine Baca Zinn, eds. Belmont: Wadsworth Centage Learning, 2009. Print.