17/01/2021

Air Pollution Will Lead To Mass Migration, Say Experts After Landmark Ruling

The Guardian - 

Call for world leaders to act in wake of French extradition case that turned on environmental concerns

People wearing facemasks to protect themselves against air pollution in Beijing, China, in 2018. Photograph: Wu Hong/EPA-EFE

Air pollution does not respect national boundaries and environmental degradation will lead to mass migration in the future, said a leading barrister in the wake of a landmark migration ruling, as experts warned that government action must be taken as a matter of urgency.

Sailesh Mehta, a barrister specialising in environmental cases, said: “The link between migration and environmental degradation is clear. As global warming makes parts of our planet uninhabitable, mass migration will become the norm. Air and water pollution do not respect national boundaries. We can stop a humanitarian and political crisis from becoming an existential one. But our leaders must act now.”

He added: “We have a right to breathe clean air. Governments and courts are beginning to recognise this fundamental human right. The problem is not just that of Bangladesh and the developing world. Air pollution contributes to around 200,000 deaths a year in the UK. One in four deaths worldwide can be linked to pollution.”

The comments follow a decision by a French court this week, which is believed to be the first time environment was cited by a court in an extradition hearing. The case involved a Bangladeshi man with asthma who avoided deportation from France after his lawyer argued that he risked a severe deterioration in his condition, and possibly premature death, due to the dangerous levels of pollution in his homeland.

The appeals court in Bordeaux overturned an expulsion order against the 40-year-old man because he would face “a worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution” in his country of origin.

Yale and Columbia universities’ environmental performance index ranks Bangladesh 179th in the world for air quality in 2020, while the concentration of fine particles in the air is six times the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum.

Dr David R Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and environment, agreed with Mehta’s analysis, telling the Guardian: “Air pollution causes 7 million premature deaths annually, so it is understandable if people feel compelled to migrate in search of clean air to safeguard their health. Air pollution is a global public health disaster that does not get the attention it deserves because most of the people who die are poor or otherwise vulnerable.”

He explained: “My work is really focused on increasing recognition and implementation of everyone’s right to live in a healthy environment, which surely includes clean air. I’m involved in a couple of really important lawsuits on this issue in South Africa and Indonesia. The good news is that we have solutions that simultaneously address air pollution and climate change primarily by rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use.”

Alex Randall, coordinator at the Climate & Migration Coalition, said safe and legal routes to allow people to migrate needed to be established.

“Cases such as this, where air quality or other pollution become a reason for preventing deportation, are certainly important steps forward. They may potentially lay the foundations for other future cases in which the impacts of climate change provide grounds for allowing people to stay. In fact, several other cases mostly relating to people from climate vulnerable Pacific island nations have started to do this.

“However, these cases do not usually set legal precedents and people moving across borders due to climate change impacts remain in a legal grey area.”

According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, one person every 1.3 seconds is forced to leave their homes and communities due to the climate crisis but millions lack legal protection. It has called on all countries to rapidly and fully implement the Paris climate agreement.

A ruling by the United Nations human rights committee a year ago found it is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis.

Tens of millions of people are expected to be displaced by global heating in the next decade.

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The Planet Is Dying Faster Than We Thought

Live Science - 

A triple-threat of climate change, biodiversity loss and overpopulation is bearing down on Earth.

Charred trees are seen along Pallet Creek Road during the Bobcat Fire in Valyermo, California, September 18, 2020. Climate change is poised to exacerbate the frequency and intensity of annual wildfires. (Image: © Kyle Grillot/ Getty)
Humanity is barreling toward a "ghastly future" of mass extinctions, health crises and constant climate-induced disruptions to society — one that can only be prevented if world leaders start taking environmental threats seriously, scientists warn in a new paper published Jan. 13 in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science.

In the paper, a team of 17 researchers based in the United States, Mexico and Australia describes three major crises facing life on Earth: climate disruption, biodiversity decline and human overconsumption and overpopulation.

Citing more than 150 studies, the team argues that these three crises — which are poised only to escalate in the coming decades — put Earth in a more precarious position than most people realize, and could even jeopardize the human race.

The point of the new paper isn't to scold average citizens or warn that all is lost, the authors wrote — but rather, to plainly describe the threats facing our planet so that people (and hopefully political leaders) start taking them seriously and planning mitigating actions, before it's too late.

"Ours is not a call to surrender," the authors wrote in their paper. "We aim to provide leaders with a realistic 'cold shower' of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future."

What will that future look like?

For starters, the team writes, nature will be a lot lonelier.

Since the start of agriculture 11,000 years ago, Earth has lost an estimated 50% of its terrestrial plants and roughly 20% of its animal biodiversity, the authors said, citing two studies, one from 2018 and the other from 2019.

If current trends continue, as many as 1 million of Earth's 7 million to 10 million plant and animal species could face extinction in the near future, according to the new paper.

Such an enormous loss of biodiversity would also disrupt every major ecosystem on the planet, the team wrote, with fewer insects to pollinate plants, fewer plants to filter the air, water and soil, and fewer forests to protect human settlements from floods and other natural disasters, the team wrote.

Meanwhile, those same phenomena that cause natural disasters are all predicted to become stronger and more frequent due to global climate change.

These disasters, coupled with climate-induced droughts and sea-level rise, could mean 1 billion people would become climate refugees by the year 2050, forcing mass migrations that further endanger human lives and disrupt society.

Overpopulation will not make anything easier.

"By 2050, the world population will likely grow to ~9.9 billion, with growth projected by many to continue until well into the next century," the study authors wrote.

This booming growth will exacerbate societal problems like food insecurity, housing insecurity, joblessness, overcrowding and inequality.

Larger populations also increase the chances of pandemics, the team wrote; as humans encroach ever farther into wild spaces, the risk of uncovering deadly new zoonotic diseases — like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — becomes ever greater, according to a study published in September 2020 in the journal World Development.

While we can see and feel the effects of global warming on a daily basis — like record-setting heat across the world and increasingly active hurricane seasons, for instance — the worst effects of these other crises could take decades to become apparent, the team wrote.

That delay between cause and effect may be responsible for what the authors call an "utterly inadequate" effort to address these encroaching environmental threats.

"If most of the world's population truly understood and appreciated the magnitude of the crises we summarize here, and the inevitability of worsening conditions, one could logically expect positive changes in politics and policies to match the gravity of the existential threats," the team wrote. "But the opposite is unfolding."

Indeed, just last week a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change revealed that humans have already blown past the global warming targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, and we are currently on track to inhabit a world that is 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than average global temperatures in the pre-industrial era — slightly more than halfway to the United Nation's "worst-case scenario."

Nations have similarly failed to meet basic biodiversity targets set by the U.N. in 2010, the authors note.

NASA: 2020 tied for the hottest year on record, matching 2016.

The dark future described in this paper is not guaranteed, the authors wrote, so long as world leaders and policymakers start immediately taking the problems before us seriously.

Once leaders accept "the gravity of the situation," then the large-scale changes needed to conserve our planet can begin.

Those changes must be sweeping, including "the abolition of perpetual economic growth … [and] a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use," the authors wrote. 

But the first step is education.

"It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to … avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and 'tell it like it is,'" the team concluded.

"Anything else is misleading at best … potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst."

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David Attenborough's Heartbreaking Plea After Admitting ‘I Don’t Have Long Left’

Daily Express  - 

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH has made a heartbreaking plea to humanity to change its relationship with nature after the legendary TV presenter admitted "I don't have long left"
BBC legend Sir David Attenborough. (Image: GETTY)
 
Best known for his appearances in numerous documentaries over the years, Sir David has also been a lifelong climate change activist. 

The 94-year-old first found fame after working in the BBC production team in the Sixties and soon cemented his place as a national treasure. 

 Since then, he has travelled to every continent on the globe, and Netflix’s new film ‘A Life On Our Planet’ was released in September as a testament to his defining moments.

But the naturalist revealed during an interview with 60 Minutes why working on the documentary was particularly tough for him.

He said: “Even the biggest and most awful things that humanity has done pale into insignificance when you think of what could be around the corner.

“There could be whole areas of the world where people can no longer live.

“The hottest temperatures ever have been recorded in Death Valley, yet we are such optimists that we say ‘well, that’s interesting isn’t it?’

“No, wait a few months, wait another year, and see it again.”

David Attenborough made a heartbreaking plea. (Image: GETTY/YOUTUBE)


60 Minutes

Sir David explained some of the heartbreaking changes he has seen to the planet over the years.

He added: “Coral reef is one of the most dramatic, beautiful and complex manifestations of life you can find anywhere.

“But during my last trip it was like a cemetery – all the coral had died.

“That’s because of the rising temperature and acidity.

David Attenborough first started presenting in the Sixties. (Image: GETTY)

“We live in a finite world, we depend on the natural world for every mouthful of food that we eat and every lung-full of air that we breathe.

“If it wasn’t for the natural world then the atmosphere would be depleted of oxygen tomorrow.”

In a call to action, Sir David pleaded with humanity to make a change while it still can.

He added: “If there were no trees we would suffocate.

“I think the pandemic is helping people to discover that they need the natural world for their very sanity.

“People who have never listened to a bird’s song are suddenly thrilled, excited and inspired by the natural world.

Sir David at a Christmas show in London zoo. (Image: GETTY)

Prince Charles and Princess Anne meet David Attenborough at Lime Grove Studios. (Image: GETTY)



“They realise they are apart of it. By saving nature we are saving ourselves.”

It comes just two years after Sir David admitted he does not think he has long left to live and "can't bear" to think of the future after he is gone.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, he said: "I don’t spend time thinking about that because I can’t bear it.

“I’m just coming up to 93, and so I don’t have many more years around here. 

“I find it difficult to think beyond that because the signs aren’t good.”

He added that not enough work has been done in his lifetime to prevent the devastating effects of climate change.

He said: “My generation is no great example for understanding – we have done terrible things.”

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