Climate-driven mass migration transforms populations and breeds sectarian violence

Evidence

Recent years also have seen mass migrations of people from heavily populated poor countries to more habitable or prosperous ones. Some are migrat-ing from life under harsh economic conditions in search of a better life. Others are seeking a safe haven from internal civil or ethnic strife. And still others are environmental refugees forced to migrate because of the declining habitability of their region as fertile land turns into desert through prolonged drought and loss of water resources. Poor regions are especially vulnerable to rising temperatures, because if their crops fail or their water sources dry up, they have no reserves to draw on. The oft-repeated scene of hordes of emaciated people struggling to survive under squalid conditions in refugee camps is more likely to depersonalize and dehumanize them than to raise social compassion. These large-scale international migrations, which will swell with increasing environmental destruction, are transforming national populations, becoming the source of major regional upheavals that breed sectarian violence. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2573

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the environment-migration-violence link that parallels military displacement chains I’ve read on forced migration in fragile states.