Environmental Damage Increases Migration

Via BIB, Jo-Shing Yang at Truthout examines U.S. water policies in the Southwest near the southern border:

On October 21, 2008, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne inaugurated the ground breaking of the new Imperial Valley water reservoir near the U.S.-Mexico border. The 500-acre $172.2-million reservoir, to be completed in August 2010, will store surplus Colorado River water for use by coastal Southern California, southern Nevada, and central Arizona; previously this water had been flowing to Mexico and used by its cities and thousands of Mexican farmers.

This reservoir, along with the $250 million project to line a 23-mile stretch of the All-American Canal, also in the Imperial Valley, with concrete to prevent water seepage to an underground aquifer, Mexicali Valley aquifer, which is used currently by Mexican cities and farmers, means that there will be substantially less water from the Colorado River and dire consequences for Mexico.

. . .

Like the southwestern United States, which has been suffering from a decade-long drought which began in 1998, northern Mexico also has been afflicted by a punishing drought since 1992. This year, the extreme drought in Mexico continues, unrelenting. Climate scientists have predicted that the entire region from southwestern United States to north-central Mexico will be hit especially hard by global climate change and its associated extreme weather disruptions and extreme droughts.

. . .

Scholars of climate and water resources have cited stories of poor farmers who find it more difficult to tap into groundwater to irrigate their subsistence crops using traditional, manual techniques due to a combination of factors: deforestation, drought, over-withdrawal of water by cities, and over-pumping of water by agribusiness and large ranchers.

In Tamaulipas (the Mexican border state across from the Lower Rio Grande River Valley), there were news reports of farmers who have not been able to irrigate their crops since 1996 and have had to switch from the lucrative corn crop to sorghum. In other words, the drought and water scarcity have exacerbated Mexico's food crisis for the urban poor and for medium-size and small subsistence farmers.

. . .

The severe water shortages have intersected with soaring migration of Mexicans into the United States in the past decade and food crises in Mexico in the past two years. Among other critical issues such as NAFTA and biofuels production, Americans who seriously want to address the issue of undocumented immigration from Mexico into the United States must fundamentally address global climate disruptions which led to extreme drought in Mexico, the issue of water privatization in Mexico, and revisit water allocation and U.S.-Mexico water treaties to include how both countries will find common solutions to unrelenting drought in the face of climate disruptions affecting the Colorado River and the Rio Grande.

. . .

The next time Southern Californians water their lawns or central Arizonans fill their swimming pools or the Las Vegas casinos display their elaborate waterworks in those fancy fountains as if they are actually in Venice and not in a desert, they should think that they are taking water away from their neighbors across the border, those desperately poor peasant farmers in northern Mexico who rely on that water for their very survival and who now must depend on extremely costly water trucked over long distances. More children, elderly, and sick people-an untold number of Mexico's poor and frail-may die of waterborne diseases.

Many of our so-called illegal aliens may be, in fact, water refugees or environmental refugees. With intensifying global climate disruptions, there will be more of this category of people in Mexico. Water is a basic human right, not a commodity to be fought over in resource wars. Given the historic nature of the mega-drought in the Colorado River Basin, seven states and Mexico will be holding more talks over the allocation of Colorado River.

And from Vivirlatino, young activists are making the connections between migrant rights and the environmental movement.

Yesterday I felt the power of youth, and the moral legitimacy of young people speaking truth to power - of being bold and not letting injustices stand; of offering leadership; of youth organizing for a better world. A Youth Climate Movement holds this same power, and as young climate activists strive to integrate a deep understanding of power, race, class, and gender into our movement, we would do well to explore the links between our work and the struggles of immigrant youth and their families across the country.

We in the U.S., as principal carbon emitters, have a responsibility when it comes to this issue. The young people in our immigrant rights demonstration held signs that said "our immigration is forced migration" - articulately making visible the effects of policies like NAFTA, and the havoc they have wreaked on Latin American countries, creating the economic hardship that forces families to move in order to survive.

We know that as Climate Crisis intensifies, millions will be displaced from their homes - especially along the equator (and disproportionately in countries that are not responsible for the crisis).

Where will they go?

Once again the effects of U.S. behavior will create a tidal shifts in human migration. Will we step up to the responsibility for helping our world to adapt to a shifting climate? Will our country be the beacon of hope it has aspired to, a refuge for tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free? Unless we sharply move toward a sane and humane immigration policy, we will see an acceleration of barbaric dehumanization of people searching for a better life, as more and more people are displaced, forced to adapt to a world with increased drought, famine, floods, new pathways for disease, super storms, intensifying wildfires, shortages of water, and rising sea levels.

The political challenge of transforming our immigration policy to one that is compassionate and human will only grow more difficult as more people search for a new place to call home. Let's work for immigrant justice now.

We know from tragic experience that drought can initiate or intensify conflict, especially in underdeveloped regions like Darfur:

Reoccurring periods of drought and environmental degradation have become major obstacles in Sudan, especially in the western, rural region of Darfur. These periods of drought are cyclical, a trend which started in the mid-1980s. Since the devastating impact of drought and famine in 1984/85, Sudan has suffered from drought in 1989, 1990, 1997 and 2000 (Morrod 2003). Consecutive periods of drought brought crop failure and loss of livestock and pastureland (Morrod 2003). Changes in rainfall patterns in the last twenty years resulted in the decline of rainfall intensity and shortened the duration of rainfall; the rainy season, which normally lasted from May through September, shortened to the months of June through August (Bonde 2005).

The southward encroachment of the desert, desertification, presents a serious threat to the livelihoods of the existing farming and nomadic communities. Environmentalists and the humanitarian community attribute reoccurring drought and desertification as the main factors instigating conflict in Darfur. The phenomenon of cyclical drought has affected the entire Sahe; one in every five years is dry, resulting in agriculture collapse, migration of people and, thus, increasing the probability of conflict over limited food, land and water resources (Morrod 2003).

It's time for the public to take a closer look at how the issues of migration and environmental degradation are linked, and formulate policies that address the issues together.