Faced With Rising Temperatures, People May Seek Asylum (axios.com)

Europe is already struggling to absorb an influx of refugees from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa. Germany alone has taken in more than a million people since 2015. This wave of immigration has led to political upheaval, with the rise of right-wing political parties in Germany, Poland, Austria, and Hungary, among others. Now a new study, published in the journal Science, shows that the current surge in refugees may just be a preview of what's to come due in large part to global warming. From a report: At an average growing season temperature of about 68 Fahrenheit, which is the optimum one for agriculture, the number of applications for asylum was lowest. As the average temperature rose, so did the number of people from Somalia, Bangladesh and other warmer climate countries seeking asylum. But when cooler countries -- such as Serbia and Peru -- got warmer, fewer applications were received. The acceptance rate for asylum application to the EU is less than 10%. But when there was a spike in applications tied to weather fluctuations, the admittance rate rose to about 30%, suggesting agencies who evaluate the applicants find their cause worthy.

Comments

Context would be useful

[XXongo]

Would be useful if this were given some numerical context. How do the numbers of refugees due to climate compare to the numbers of refugees due to war and due to oppressive governments?

Re:Context would be useful

[Hal_Porter]

That would require someone do a multivariate analysis. And they won't do that because it would show civil war, oppressive governments etc are more strongly correlated to refugee flows than climate.

Actually one big driver was getting rid of people like Gaddafi who stopped migrants coming to Europe. The EU had a deal with Gaddafi. Then France and the UK toppled him and Libya became essentially a failed state.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Turkey also uses refugee flows as a foreign policy tool - they turn on the tap when they want more money from Europe.

https://www.euractiv.com/secti...

So how much is climate a cause? Not much. Weather probably does have some impact though - mainly because if you're going to cross the Med or walk across Europe you'd be better off doing when it's not freezing cold. But weather and climate are not the same thing.

Re:Context would be useful

[hey!]

Actually this is a good point, but you're presupposing that these two causes of refugee flight are mutually exclusive. In fact they work synergistically. Environmental stress creates economic disruption, creating political unrest, encouraging people predisposed to fight oppressive governments rebel. That in turn prompting oppressive responses which exacerbate the underlying crisis and further erode the regime's credibility. This takes resources and focus away from the response to the underlying disaster, and in any case the inevitable favoritism and corruption push the regime to the brink of collapse.

Take Syria, a perfect storm scenario. It's had a horrifically brutal, but *stable* regime for decades. A multi-year drought depopulated the countryside, further reducing its own agricultural output and creating large urban concentrations of unemployed young men ripe for radicalization. Then a transient spike in global wheat prices created shortages of subsidized bread and huge price spikes in market prices. This was

It's hard to say how much better an honest and generally popular Syrian government would have weathered the crisis, but this much is clear: while oppressive governments *can* produce refugees on their own, they don't necessarily do so. But put a country where people hate and fear their government under stress, and you'll get refugees.

Re:Context would be useful

[meglon]

http://archive.defense.gov/pub...

You living in your own private fantasy land doesn't mean jack shit to reality.

Re:Context would be useful

[thegarbz]

3) Inside the EU the migrants can claim asylum and even if they are refused they're unlikely to be deported

Using an Anti-EU tabloid as a reference doesn't really help this point here. The fact is while few migrants are deported in figures, that is only because the official figures count people who are forced out using the country's resources. e.g. 580 people were deported from Germany in 2016. While that number is low 55,000 ended up leaving voluntarily after their asylum claim was denied.

Deporting people is expensive so it doesn't happen a lot, so why do people leave voluntarily? Well it's actually damn hard to find even a place to live let alone work as an illegal immigrant in many EU countries, and as soon as your asylum claim is rejected you don't qualify for any state sponsored aid / housing anymore either. Not exactly a good thing when winter comes.

4) The numbers of asylum seekers who are likely to find work is minimal. Of the million plus migrants who arrived in 2016 only 54 found a job

Wow following up an express article with Breitbart. That is class.
Speaking of I was working next to a building in Germany which got converted into temporary accommodation for people who were granted asylum. The building went in about Feb 2016 in quite a damn small town. Of the 50 people in there, more than half of them had a job by the time I left Germany (we shared some services with them including security and catering so chatted to them a bit). I find it amazing that half of the number of that reliable source all came from one little building in one little town in a little corner of Germany. They must be extremely lucky.

It's a shame that Breitbart doesn't have a printed edition, I'm running low on toilet paper.

I.e. if Turkey or Libya open the floodgates then there's nothing the EU can do legally to stop large numbers of people being dependent on benefits in the EU indefinitely.

i.e. you get EU legal advice from far right anti-immigration and anti-EU fake news sources. Shame on you and shame on whoever modded you insightful.

Suspicious reasoning

[SuperKendall]

Is it really climate that drives people from Somalia or Bangladesh? Or is it instead the fact those countries are pretty unstable and people want to get to a more stable area?

Especially if you are talking refugees, and not simply immigration requests. "Refugee" implies something catastrophic they are fleeing, not slightly warmer weather.

They're illegal aliens, not "refugees".

[Anonymous Coward]

It's absurd to call them "refugees".

Real refugees have 2 primary goals:

1) To reach the nearest location where the immediate danger they face is no longer present.

2) To return to their origin as soon as it is safe to do so.

In the case of Syrians, the locations matching those criteria would typically be within Syria itself. They could find safety without ever leaving the country.

In rare situations, some Syrians might find Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, or even Iraq to be closer. But that's as far as they'd ever need to go to reach safety, while still being able to return home as soon as possible.

There's absolutely no legitimate reason for any Syrian to have made the long journey to a Europe nation like Greece, never mind distant European nations like Germany, Sweden or the UK.

The same goes for anyone coming from Africa. At least Syrians can say there is something resembling a real war going on in their nation. That's not true for nearly all of the Africans. They conditions might not be good, but they're nothing like Syria.

It's even worse when it comes to those from Afghanistan, given how far away Afghanistan is from Europe.

Anyone traveling thousands upon thousands of miles to Europe, through numerous safe countries, and with no intent to ever leave Europe, is not a "refugee". They're illegal aliens, and that's exactly what they should be referred to as. They should also be immediately deported.

Bangladesh crop yields up, not down

[SuperKendall]

They're not running away from slightly warmer weather, they're running away from the secondary effects of that warmer weather: Too much rain/not enough rain, crop losses due to higher temps

The truth is those factors alone are not enough to convince most people to move. Several years of bad crops and California farmers are still farming.

You aren't suffering from a lack of imagination, just a lack of understanding the overall conditions of the regions people are leaving. "Poor crop yield" is so far down the list it doesn't even register, and makes very little sense for some of the areas talked about (like Bangladesh).

In fact, it turns out that Bangladesh crop yields are going up, if you look at potatoes the output is up - in fact the real problem with crops this past year was not warmer weather, but flooding. Even so total agricultural production was up 2.9% overall, so why would people be refugees from Bangladesh based on crop yields when they are up?

No place to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Real refugees have 2 primary goals 1) To reach the nearest location where the immediate danger they face is no longer present. 2) To return to their origin as soon as it is safe to do so.

In the case of Syrians, the locations matching those criteria would typically be within Syria itself. They could find safety without ever leaving the country.

I take it you know nothing about the Syrian crisis, then.

What place in Syria is it that you believe is "where the immediate danger they face is no longer present"? The few places within Syria that aren't in a war zone with boundaries that are constantly changing... are jammed to overflowing with the eight million people who are already displaced within Syria; the largest internally displaced population in the world. About six in ten Syrians are now refugees, most of them internally.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34189117

Re:For those of you wondering why this is so bad

[The Cynical Critic]

Ummm... The only problem with this is that now that countries have had the time to process most of the mass that arrived in Europe during 2015, it's become clear that actual refugees only make up a minority of those masses. Massive amounts of people saw an opportunity for a better life in Europe and simply hitched a ride with the actual refugees. Even Sweden, having a reputation of being very welcoming to immigrants, has been rejecting about 70% of all asylum applications and the deportation of immigrants who have finally exhausted all of their options is becoming a bigger and bigger problem across Europe.

Not only is it becoming harder and harder to get the countries to take back all of their citizens, Iraq being particularly difficult, a lot of the immigrants have decided to simply not accept that their asylum application got denied. Instead they've either gone underground, thinking if they stay long enough they can eventually get permanent residence, or have started roving around Europe applying for asylum in multiple countries using false identities (as per the Dublin process if you have your asylum application denied in one country other EU countries will not even consider any further applications by you).