WEBVTT - War and peace-building on a heating planet 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.880 Welcome to Zero. I am Uctra Drati. This week war 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:20.720 on a Heating Planet. Hello, upshut hi mightily. It's been 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:24.400 six months you've been producing Zero. What's your experience being like? 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:26.920 When I tell people about this job, I say, this 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:29.880 is a show about climate change and emissions, but I 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.680 think very quickly start talking about all the other topics 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:36.960 that this show ends up touching. So we've done just 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:39.800 in the last couple of weeks alone shows about refrigeration, 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.120 and talked about tomatoes. We've talked about health policy, We've 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:44.120 talked about. 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:48.479 Shock skins, shack skins, help farms, and electric transformers. 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:52.640 Yeah, so there's a wide range, and that I think 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.480 is one of the things that has kept this job 0:00:55.720 --> 0:01:00.240 really interesting. Obviously, one thing we returned to a lot 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:01.280 is politics. 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:04.880 Well, also because this has been such an election year, 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.319 and I think we will talk about politics a lot more. 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.840 And this week's episode feels particularly timely off the news 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:14.920 we've been reading about from Germany, where the government has 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:19.560 instituted new expanded border patrols after coming under a lot 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:21.320 of pressure to control immigration. 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.959 And it's only weeks after there was a knife attack 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:28.280 where a Syrian man who had been denied asylum went 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:29.520 donn a stabbingspree. 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:32.960 We mentioned all this because today's guest is Andrew Gilmour. 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.640 He's the executive director of the Berghoff Foundation based in Berlin, 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:39.840 and he spent thirty years with the United Nations, and 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.800 he's been thinking a lot about how pressure on the 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:48.520 climate can lead directly and indirectly to more migration and 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:53.360 more conflict, particularly as the planet gets warmer. Take a listen. 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:56.440 Under even the best case scenario, there's going to be 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:01.960 a much higher increase of refugees and migrants coming to 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.320 Western Europe and North America. But to do it in 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.520 a way that then doesn't lead to such elitical reaction 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.280 that the far right is the beneficiary, and that's going 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.440 to be an extremely hard balancing lag and it will 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:18.239 require a lot of courage on the part of politicians 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:23.280 to start persuading populations that migrants are not a bad thing. 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.639 And Andrew has distilled all this into a book it's 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.920 called The Burning Question, which both of us read. It 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.840 addresses climate and conflict and asks why does it matter? 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.560 What I really liked is it's a wide ranging look 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.840 at this question, which, as climate journalists we've had at 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.639 the back of our mind over the past few years, 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.680 especially with the wars in Ghaza and Ukraine and Sudan, 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:49.520 and it helped me think through how exactly climate links 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:50.280 to all this. 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.519 Yeah, I thought it was really interesting that the book 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.920 starts looking at what took place well before this man 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:03.600 made excel in warming that we're seeing, going back to 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:06.560 how the al Nino effect perhaps played a cause in 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:11.280 contributing to the French Revolution, or how climate variability led 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.600 to weakening the Spanish Empire and the Ottoman Empire, things 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:18.440 that we don't really think about, where weather patterns have 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:24.080 a direct impact on how people live and how empires 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:24.800 rise and fall. 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.640 That's right, and that's particularly interesting right now with the 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.840 migration patterns and what it's doing to politics. The UN 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:36.000 estimates that nearly three million refugees will need to be 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:41.880 resettled next year. That's from conflicts, economic crises, and climate change, 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.320 and that number has gone up twenty percent. So I 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.240 learned a lot from speaking to Andrew and drawing on 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.320 his insights. We spoke about how much full link can 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.840 you really draw between climate and wars happening today and 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.560 what can you do to address both climate change and 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:15.400 bring peace to the world. Andrey, you're welcome to the show, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.599 Thank you very much. So it's particularly interesting reading a 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.239 book like this and speaking with you now in twenty 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:24.000 twenty four at a time when there are so many 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.279 wars going on around the world in Gaza and Sudan 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:30.520 and Ukraine. But the thing that stood out to me 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.280 was that few, if any conflicts in the world can 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.200 be shown to be caused by climate change. And yet 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:41.880 throughout the book you point out how climate change is 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:46.720 acting as a threat multiplier, often increasing the risk of conflict. 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.920 Are there any modern wars that have been directly caused 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:51.760 by climate change? 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:56.200 To this day, I'm not aware of any war in 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:02.080 history that has been solely caused even primarily caused by 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:07.320 climate change. However, I'm convinced and there is a large 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.719 body of evidence to suggest that this is the case. 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:15.320 Not that climate directly causes war, but that it contributes 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.160 to war, that it is a major exacerbating factor, that 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.560 it complicates matters, that it heightens tensions and makes conditions 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.039 so hard that communities find it harder to live with 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.719 one another than they did before. There are many parts 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.880 of the world I would say, particularly in Central Africa 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.760 and the Sahel region, and also parts of the Middle East, 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:44.720 in particular Syria and Iraq, where recent increases of temperature 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:50.280 have almost certainly played a role in making conflict worse 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:54.640 and harder to resolve. What I think is more important, however, 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.840 than the academic debate that has taken place so far 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:04.680 regarding whether the one degree of global warming that we've 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.560 seen so far has contributed much to conflict, is I 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.880 think the projections that the next degree, that is we're 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:17.200 heading quite fast towards reaching the next degree of global warming, 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:19.240 will lead to more conflict. 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.080 Let's look at what happened in Yemen, going back to 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.200 the oil boom in Saudi Arabia of the nineteen seventies. 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.839 There are so many variables involved in any conflict. Could 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:32.320 you explain what has happened over the past few decades 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:34.839 in Yemen and how we've ended up in a place 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:39.080 where a terrorist group is able to hold the global 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:41.400 supply chain back in the Red Sea right. 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.280 One of the key points of Yemen is that, quite 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.960 aside from the fact that that has been growing desertification 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:55.960 and frequent rout is also the fact that the underground aquifers, 0:06:56.240 --> 0:07:01.560 the water supplies underneath the ground have been grown mostly overused, 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:06.599 and paradoxically, it was the use of solar power pumps 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:09.760 for irrigation that has made things worse. That sounds almost 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:15.200 counterintuitive that something as benign as renewable energy can actually 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.640 lead to worse effects of climate change, but that has happened. 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:21.840 The use of solar energy has made it easier to 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.160 pump water out from the agrivis, which means that the 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:30.520 reserves are now incredibly low, so much so that the 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:36.040 viability of entire communities is at stake now. During the 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.920 seventies and eighties, a number of people from the Yemen 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.119 went to Saudi Arabia in the oil boom to start 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.920 working from there. During those periods, a number of local 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:49.960 terraces for farmland and villages collapsed because there was no 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.240 manpower to look after them, which speeded up the erosion 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:59.240 and the collapse of local vegetation and the situation we 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:03.080 are now seeing now. The wars of the last nine 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.800 years since twenty fifteen have certainly made things considerably worse 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.480 in terms of environmental degradation, but it's not a direct 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:11.960 impact of climate change. 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:15.680 But are there any lessons that we can draw from. 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:21.640 How over these five decades where there was migration because 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:26.800 of an oil boom that led to lower agriculture and 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:34.199 thus poorer soils. Then that led to lower rainfall droughts 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:38.800 which caused, as you say, use of pumps to draw 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.520 from aquifers, and sort of this poor spiral that things 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.440 get into until you get at her risk group that 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.120 is holding a global supply chain to account. Are there 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.480 lessons that we can draw from this conflict to avoid 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:53.600 future conflict? 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:59.920 Strangely, since Yemen, despite the extent of the environmental degradation 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:05.560 and the overuse of the water supply, I would say 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.840 lessons could perhaps more easily be drawn from other countries 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.439 that experienced the Arab Spring, such as Libya and Syria. 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.760 And what we saw there in Syria but also in 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:24.680 Iraq was a prolonged drought which took place against a 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:31.040 backdrop of a very repressive regime in Syria, and one 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:35.160 also that was corrupt and where local farmers were already 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.120 in the very very dire straits indeed as a result 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:44.920 of the desertification, meaning that their farms were no longer viable. 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.600 And in fact I was living in nearby Iraq during 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.480 the fighting of two thousand and six in two thousand 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:56.319 and eight, and you could see the frequency of sandstorms 0:09:56.360 --> 0:09:59.640 which people said they had never seen of such intensity 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.720 in and see in their lives before. And this was 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.000 actually part of a five year drought that in both 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:11.400 Syria and Iraq came on top of serious human rights abuses, 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:16.440 on top of really strong levels of corruption and leading 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:22.120 to communities having to leave their houses and their abilities 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.120 and moved to cities where they lived in terrible conditions 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.840 and were actually ripe for discontent. And when the Islamic 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:33.439 State burst upon the scene in both Syria and Iraq, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:38.520 taking advantage of the discontent, it pushed them into joining 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.439 the most extreme group of all, the Islamic State. And 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:48.079 I think that is a particularly strong example of how 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:54.120 the interplay between human rights abuses and bad governance in general, 0:10:54.720 --> 0:11:01.199 when combined with a major ecological disaster such as emanated 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:04.960 from the drought, that can lead to something as explosive 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:05.600 as we saw. 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.439 Now let's talk about Ukraine, because you write in the book, 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:15.240 nobody would claim that Russia's motivation for invading, occupying, and 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:18.800 seeking to eradicate the idea of Ukraine as a nation 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.520 in February twenty twenty two was related to climate change 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:28.920 directly or even indirectly. But the Ukraine world does have 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:30.840 climate implications. 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:33.199 Yes it does, and thank you for making that point, 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.920 because I would never claim that the major reason for 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:39.280 Putin deciding to invade was anything to do with that. 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.800 But there are certainly a number of implications, one of 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:49.800 which was the example the rocketing increased spiral of oil 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:55.160 prices as a result, which led to a positive result 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.800 for once it led to a greater determination to find 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:03.120 renewable energies as a cheaper source of fuel. Both Gaza 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:07.960 and Ukraine have very much increased the divide between the 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:13.520 developed world and the lesser developing countries, and this has 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:18.599 also led to more difficulties coming up in climate negotiations. 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.320 And this has taken even further when it comes to 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.679 example the Russian veto of measures at the United Nations 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:29.160 that could resist climate insecurity. 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:34.040 And you end the chapter on Ukraine by saying the 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:39.000 entire field of climate insecurity has therefore suddenly taken on 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:43.880 a new and additional meaning, even if policymakers don't seem 0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:49.200 to have grasped it yet. But sitting here knowing what 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.200 we know about climate and what it's going to do 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:57.240 to the planet with greater certainty than ever before. It 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.920 is something that militaries have started to think about, at 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:04.880 least over the past decade or even two decades, and 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.960 this phrase that climate change is a threat multiplier is 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.320 something that is now talked in security circles. So have 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:17.120 you seen that open the door for better planning and 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:18.560 policy making in the future. 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:25.000 Yes, I definitely have, and I would encourage this, but 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:30.480 not everybody does. Indeed, the entire expression climate security is 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:34.280 a phrase that some people shy away from because they 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:39.480 believe that even using that phrase encourages a security first 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.640 approach to what is not fundamentally a security issue, and 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:46.320 I would take issue with that. I think there is 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:50.959 a strong argument, for example, either using the United Nation 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:55.360 Security Council to get involved in matters relating to climate 0:13:55.440 --> 0:14:00.080 change and their impact on dec security, but also involving militaries, 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.520 and they can be extremely positive and I myself saw 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.080 that in Iraq during the war, where for reasons that 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:11.520 weren't necessarily connected to fear of climate change in general, 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:15.280 but for a very practical desire to save the lives 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:19.880 of US troops. There was a very important initiative that 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:24.280 took place amongst the military who because they needed to 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:29.000 provide diesel fuel to their forward operating basis in large 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:33.560 quantities in order to help their soldiers live under bearable 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:38.280 conditions in the desert using air conditioning. But their great 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:42.840 concern was that their fuel convoys were being targeted to 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:48.160 ambush by groups connected to al Qaeda and later the 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:52.760 Islamic States. So they took the perfectly sensible decision that 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.040 to reduce the number of convoys and thereby to reduce 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.040 the number of deaths of people on those convoys, they 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:03.600 would start using solar energy. And because they are so 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:07.720 well resourced, militaries can often do things at scale on 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:11.560 a way that civilian agencies do not have the capacity 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:15.600 to do so. So Yes, indeed, I've seen in many instances, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.360 and the US military is clearly whatever that the political 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.840 views of the people concerned. They seem to be very 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.760 well aware of the climate implications of what can happen 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.440 to them as a result of example, rising sea levels, 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.440 and they know that obviously their basis that can become 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:36.200 underwaterhare in a few years time, are going to be 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:40.520 completely useless. So there is definitely hope in my view 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:43.120 from engaging with the militaries. 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.520 And so when it comes to potential solutions that would 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.920 try and tackle this nexus of climate conflict and migration, 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.960 there are two sets of solutions. One is, obviously we 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.880 have to tackle climate change by reducing emissions, and that 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.440 is an example you talked about, which is militaries around 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.600 the world which are huge users of fossil fuels can 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.960 start to reduce their own greenose gas impact. But then 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.560 there is a whole set of other solutions that can 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:17.920 be applied on the policy making on climate adaptation, on 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.560 environmental peace building that you mentioned that would allow for 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:28.080 reduction in conflicts. Could you talk through these solutions, because 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.520 you have mentioned those in your book, but they all 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.120 seem to be at quite an early stage. 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:38.360 That is correct, They are indeed at an early stage, 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:40.960 and I will indeed go through some of them, one 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.520 of which is the relatively new practice of environmental peace building. 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:50.360 This I think has great potential, but it has only 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:54.320 been tried in relatively few places to date. It is 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:57.920 based on the thinking that you might be able to 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:03.320 resolve tension between communities if you don't go straight for 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:07.359 the most important issues that has divided them, but actually 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:12.120 focus on some lower hanging fruit, as it were, first 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.159 of all, teaching them about the impact of climate change 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:20.560 and how it affects not just them but other peoples. 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.439 They know that each time they have a new drought, 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.360 each time there is a flash flood, that there may 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.520 be an increase in recruitment into extremist radical groups, but 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:33.320 they don't necessarily know that it is even affecting the 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:35.920 whole of their country. I'm talking about places like Somalia 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.320 now or Iraq and many other places actually also in 0:17:39.359 --> 0:17:43.000 the Sahel Malei, chad Nisia and places. Many of them 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:46.480 of course, are concluding that it is no longer possible 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.240 living in areas that are so exposed to extreme heat 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.800 and desertification that they have in some cases decided that 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:56.959 there is no point even trying to live there. So 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:00.080 they're going to try to migrate either within their their 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:04.280 own country to cities or further down the road, presumably 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.600 to other countries and other continents. So to break that that, 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.040 one has to be able to start coming up with 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.400 measures in the countries that they are leaving to persuade 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.760 them that there's actually a future there, and I think 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:20.480 that environmental peace building and the development measures that would 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.720 come with them could be a way of doing that. 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:27.479 And could you talk through the success stories, even if 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:29.200 they are at a small scale right now. 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.400 Yes, my own organization, the Bako Foundation, of example, we've 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.520 been working for three years in Somalia and a bit 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.760 less in Iraq, precisely in the conditions that I've been 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:46.720 talking about, working with communities that are very much at 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.320 odds with some of their neighbors, whether it's for ethnic reasons, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.800 or for sectarian reasons, or for reasons of competition over 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:58.120 natural resources. But getting them to sit down together and 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:03.679 confronting some of their problems and seeing that actually cooperation 0:19:04.160 --> 0:19:07.760 on these issues can actually lead to progress. There, we 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.640 are finding successes. The common solutions could be, for example, 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:15.359 a solar powered irrigation scheme. It could be joint management 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:20.160 of a wildlife serve, it could be a desalination project. 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:24.640 We've been doing that most recently in the south of Iraq, 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:28.000 where working with people who have been forced to leave 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:33.240 their farmlands and move into urban areas, where as in 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:35.439 many other parts of the world the urban areas do 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.639 not welcome Suddenly a large influx of income is so 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.640 very major tensions and violence has broken out between them, 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.919 but we are finding that we're able to help resolve 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:46.640 those tensions. 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:49.679 So a lot of the conflicts that start tend to 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.240 start because of resources, either its land or its water. 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:58.520 Now those are cause for creating conflict, but could they 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:02.000 be used to find ways to build peace? 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:10.680 Yes, I mean what are the main drivers of displacement? 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:15.080 The displacement that is caused as a result of both 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:20.679 conflict and climate change is any country's ability or inability 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.080 to feed itself. So I think investing in forms of 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.080 agriculture that could be better suited to a change in 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:32.880 climate would help enable that adaptation and thereby remove sources 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:36.400 of tension and also the need to seek life elsewhere. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.560 One example that I think has a lot of promise 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:43.080 is known as the system of rice intensification, which is 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.960 an example of targeted as system. It's an agro ecological 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:51.320 approach used in places like Afghanistan or Nigeria and Mali, 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:57.399 which can include tripling grain yield, enhancing incomes, and helping 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.720 water conservation as well as lowering meat emission. So it 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:05.560 has many advantages, but in this particular context. By providing 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:10.280 higher incomes to farmers, it can help people a stay 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:15.159 on their lands and feel less of an imperative to 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:16.879 compete with their neighbors. 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:22.800 After the break, Andrew and I talk about how some 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:27.480 politicians are turning refugees into a wedge issue. If you're 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.240 finding this episode insightful, please take a moment to rate 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.440 and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and even YouTube. 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:45.439 It helps other listeners find the show. One of the 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:47.840 stats that stood out to me from your book was 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:50.040 that as of May twenty twenty two, there are about 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:53.919 one hundred million people who'd been displaced from their countries 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:56.840 as a result of many things, but about a third 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:01.760 of those were because of climate events. Now, with climate 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.200 change on the March, we are likely to see that 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:09.840 number grow quite rapidly, and it comes at a time 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:15.160 when evil actors, bad actors, politicians can actually use that 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:19.160 kind of event to their advantage. You write about how 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:23.440 Russia used its influence over Belarus in twenty twenty one 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:28.400 to push migrants from Afghanistan and Iraq into Poland, Lithuania, 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:31.800 and Latvia in a way that was engineered to drum 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:36.040 up fear of migrants and destabilize the politics in those democracies. 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:39.720 Will we see more of this happening as the planet 0:22:39.880 --> 0:22:41.080 is being warmed. 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:44.280 Yes, I think we will. We are seeing a number 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:48.360 of very allowing trends at the moment. One, we are 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:53.240 currently living through a period of more conflicts than at 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:56.840 any time since nineteen forty five. It's estimated that there 0:22:56.840 --> 0:23:01.680 are fifty nine separate conflicts going on at the moment. Secondly, 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:06.680 we are seeing an ever increasing rate of global warming 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.280 as new records seem to be being reached every week 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:17.320 almost And Thirdly, we are seeing the growth of right 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:22.040 wing parties in the United States and Europe that are 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:27.080 anti immigrants but also to climate change skeptics or more 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:31.119 often deniers. So it's like a perverse irony in a 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:37.320 way that the same people who prevent governments from doing 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:43.840 major measures to help combat climate change are those that 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:48.440 then profit from what they call a flood of migrants 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:51.719 coming in who have been forced to come because the 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:55.359 North hasn't actually taken proper measures to reduce emissions and 0:23:55.400 --> 0:23:59.679 do major adaptation measures. So I think these are very 0:23:59.800 --> 0:24:03.520 run trends, and the key is to find ways to 0:24:03.800 --> 0:24:06.399 understand that there is going to be under even the 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:09.480 best case scenario, there's going to be a much higher 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:15.320 increase of refugees and migrants coming to Western Europe and 0:24:15.359 --> 0:24:17.199 North America. But to do it in a way that 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:21.280 then doesn't lead to such a political reaction that the 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:24.080 far right is the beneficiary, and that's going to be 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:27.680 an extremely hard balancing to act, and it will require 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:31.119 a lot of courage on the part of politicians to 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:36.000 start persuading populations that migrants are not a bad thing, 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:40.280 that actually, in an era where there's actually a population 0:24:40.440 --> 0:24:44.920 decline in Western countries and indeed many other countries, immigrants 0:24:44.920 --> 0:24:47.520 are going to play a very important role in keeping 0:24:47.560 --> 0:24:49.600 economies and societies flourishing. 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:54.119 Now, I'm a reporter who's been covering climate change and 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:58.200 impacts and solutions for the past six seven years, and 0:24:58.640 --> 0:25:02.240 what I have noticed is that as a person who 0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:05.600 understands the world, who is learning about the world, climate 0:25:05.680 --> 0:25:08.800 change is forcing me to be empathetic in ways that 0:25:08.880 --> 0:25:13.320 I had not been empathetic in the past. You have, 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:15.920 of course, worked in all sorts of areas. You've worked 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:19.359 in conflict areas and human rights, and now you're focused 0:25:19.400 --> 0:25:24.719 on climate. Are you seeing that change come through in 0:25:24.840 --> 0:25:29.320 people you meet, is their higher level of global empathy 0:25:29.440 --> 0:25:33.960 being grown because these climate events are global, and there 0:25:34.000 --> 0:25:36.879 are all these interconnections that you're able to draw from 0:25:37.000 --> 0:25:41.439 human rights to conflict to resources in the work that 0:25:41.480 --> 0:25:41.679 you do. 0:25:44.080 --> 0:25:49.639 I certainly see that people younger than me I'm sixty 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:53.760 years old, that people twenty thirty forty years younger than 0:25:53.800 --> 0:25:59.560 me are much more open to compassion and empathy for 0:26:00.119 --> 0:26:05.200 victims of human rights in general, but particularly those forced 0:26:05.240 --> 0:26:07.399 to leave their homes as a result of climate change, 0:26:07.400 --> 0:26:11.720 because their environmental awareness is so much higher than those 0:26:11.760 --> 0:26:15.320 people who are nearer my age. And in that sense, 0:26:15.720 --> 0:26:17.920 it is one of the areas of optimism that we 0:26:18.000 --> 0:26:19.080 can indeed point. 0:26:18.840 --> 0:26:22.200 To now when we talk about climate solutions, which is 0:26:22.240 --> 0:26:24.639 what I do day in and day out, there is 0:26:24.680 --> 0:26:30.159 a tendency among many climate activists that holds back some 0:26:30.280 --> 0:26:32.960 of the climate solutions because they want it to be 0:26:33.040 --> 0:26:36.560 done in a perfect way. But when I take a 0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:38.920 step back, and I'm taking a really big step back, 0:26:39.240 --> 0:26:41.840 I look at how the world has changed over the 0:26:41.880 --> 0:26:46.359 past century, say, and I look at trends which show progress. 0:26:46.680 --> 0:26:51.280