CIDA - Environmental Refugees

Get used to the term "environmental refugees" because the reality of Africans on the move as a result of climate change is about to number in the millions. And before someone starts claiming, "Can't those Africans get their own house in order?" just remember that the West is the main cause of the climate change crisis (80%) soon to descend on all of us. If the UN is right, the number of refugees migrating from this cause will easily outnumber traditional refugees in the next few years.Part of the reason this term has been largely unpublished and unread is because a paradigm shift has been occurring while aid and legal experts continue to use old language. The UN defined refugees as the following in 1951: "People with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." But today, millions of people are preparing to migrate around the globe, not because they are being persecuted or branded, but because there is no more water, arable land, or there is the permanent presence of drought.CIDA perhaps should have been in these locations, not just in Africa, as it became apparent that a massive problem was emerging. The unexpected migration of refugees into complex ecosystems can easily disrupt the delicate balance of biodiversity wherever they settle. This livelihood of people influenced by the urge to survive can create a conflict of interest with long-term goals of environmental sustainability. I have witnessed this personally and repeatedly, as thousands fleeing from the droughts of Darfur overwhelm the existing services we have already established in the Aweil East region of south Sudan. Soon enough, the fragile ecosystem that exists in the traditional areas of settlement will be depleted due to the arrival of the newcomers.This is urgent because the threat is imminent and the effect on CIDA's long-established programs can cause system failure. The likelihood of severe desertification continuing in the sub-Saharan regions of Africa is now probable. Located around the developing world are 135 million people threatened by severe desertification, and an additional 550 million who are subject to chronic water shortages. The UN Climate Change Panel now states that these numbers will grow shortly to 180 million and one billion respectively.You can easily guess what's coming - conflict over meagre resources, death, disease, diplomatic disputes and few solutions. This is precisely why more foreign aid is required today, not less. Do we honestly expect worldwide trade or private enterprise to take massive funds of their yields to fight this emerging catastrophe? They can help lift places like Africa from poverty, but they will never tackle a problem as significant as this - it's not in their mandate. This is very serious stuff, yet here we are are debating whether we need foreign aid at all. Or we let people like Dambisa Moyo convince us that private enterprise heals all ills. These are the distracted ramblings of an even more distracted elite.The climate change conference upcoming in Copenhagen will ask developed nations for billions to assist the bottom billion, whose lives have been made desperate in part by our own culpability in the realities of climate change. This isn't the time to be debating aid. The urgency is there to make it effective and quickly distribute it. Nothing else will stop what is around the corner, and yet we quibble.Where is CIDA in all this? I don't know and I do really care. Those with vision in its midst should not only be sounding the clarion call for action, but should also be leading the way with effective sustainable programming for this coming scourge. Did we honestly think we could just debate aid while millions prepare to move? We need leadership and we need a CIDA that leads the way. We are still waiting.