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| Uganda Is the Most Refugee-Friendly Country in the World bron |
The European Migrant Crisis Is A Nightmare. The Climate Crisis Will Make It Worse.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants are seeking refuge in Europe, but millions more will be displaced as the climate warms.
The hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in Europe or dying on the way to its shores could be a harbinger of things to come, researchers and policymakers warn, because a potentially greater driver of displacement looms on the horizon: climate change.
Zo begint het artikel waar ik naar verwees. Wie zijn verantwoordelijk voor de klimaatverandering, waarvan de gevolgen absoluut niet te overzien zijn? De mensen, de volkeren die de sinds 1945 geldende Amerikaanse doctrine m.b.t. kapitalisme omhelst hebben, afgedwongen of niet, baserend op consumptie en militarisme. Wie gaan vrijuit? De veroorzakers. Juist die breiden hun vrijheid tot handelen steeds verder uit onder het mom van vrijheid. Dit, en niets anders, is het wezen van de vroegere strijd tegen het zogenaamde communisme en nu de War on Terror.
Culturele diversiteit wordt vernietigd, de natuur wordt verwoest en uitgeroeid. Overschouw maar eens de wereldwijde economische en sociale ontwikkeling vanaf 1945 en de gevolgen. In deze korte periode heeft een grotere omwenteling plaats gevonden als in de gehele geschiedenis van de mensheid daaraan voorafgaand. Het “product” mens is echter hetzelfde gebleven. Waarschijnlijk zijn er tientallen, zo niet honderden generaties nodig om dit wezen aan de ontstane kunstmatige wereld aan te passen. Een wereld vol gif, radioactiviteit en meer van die zaken waartegen de huidige mens geen verweer heeft. Er zal dus een kunstmatige, geen natuurlijke selectie volgen om hem te doen “evolueren”.
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Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2007 |
In de eerste fase zitten we nu. Het bouwen van muren zal niet helpen. In verband hiermee attendeer ik op het weblog Geopolitiek in perspectief van mijn vriend Paul Lookman. Zijn weblog bevat veel uitstekend materiaal op grond van zijn belezenheid, kennis en ervaring. Wereldwijd. Het weblog is goed documenteerd met veel verwijzingen, nuttig om op verder onderzoek uit te gaan. Volg het!
Enkele dagen geleden gaf Paul Lookman een opmerkelijk artikel door. Hier het eerste gedeelte…
Migration, climate and security: the choice
by Paul Rogers
The forces driving people’s movement into Europe were already apparent in a near forgotten incident of 1991.
In August 1991, with the world’s media dominated by the chronic instability in Russia and the aftermath of the violent eviction of the Iraqi army from Kuwait earlier that year, a sequence of events in the Adriatic Sea provides an uncanny foretaste of the current surge of desperate people across the Mediterranean from north Africa, as well as overland from Syria through Turkey, Greece and beyond.
One consequence of the collapse of the Soviet bloc was the disintegration of the already weakened Albanian economy in the winter of 1990-91. The long-time leader Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985, had bequeathed a stagnant and unstable economy which, by the end of the decade, was ensuring increasing poverty in an already poor country. In the early months of 1991, many young Albanians were attempting to get across the Adriatic to a better life in Italy. They had little success.
Then, in August, the situation had become so desperate that merchant ships were hijacked by thousands of young people, especially in the port of Durrës, and the crews forced to set sail for Italy. At least 10,000 of them were on the 8,000-tonne merchant ship Vlora – some reports said twice that number – when it made the 200-kilometre crossing to the southern Italian port of Bari. Caught by surprise, the police there tried and failed to stop the refugees coming ashore; some even jumped overboard to swim towards land. The incident made news across Europe, at least for a couple of days, but then the media moved on.
Faced with this huge number of sudden arrivals, the police rounded them up and detained them in the only place in the city that could handle such a number securely, namely the local football stadium. There, they started the process of enforced repatriation to Albania. A few were allowed to stay; most were forced home. But the Italians did at least provide substantial financial aid to the faltering government in Tirana, and even arranged for Italian army units to distribute food within the country.
Within a few months, Albania began to make a slow and tortuous recovery. All that was left of the experience were images of desperate people jumping off a ship and trying to get ashore. Today, however, the resonance with people clambering ashore from flimsy dinghies onto Greek islands – or facing police in the centre of Budapest – is all too apparent.
The long-term view
