Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-first Century

Andrew Baldwin of Durham University reviews Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-first Century by John Wennersten and Denise Robbins. John Wennersten and Denise Robbins examine the links between global climate change and global refugee crises. The authors argue that climate change is with us and we need to think about the next big disturbing idea – the potentially disastrous consequences of massive numbers of environmental refugees at large on the planet. In 2020 the United Nations projects that we will have 50 million environmental refugees mostly from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The book raises important questions.  How will people be relocated and settled? Is it possible to offer environmental refugees temporary or permanent asylum? Will these refugees have any collective rights in the new areas they inhabit? And lastly, who will pay the costs of all the affected countries during the process of resettlement? The authors conclude that environmental refugees are a problem beyond the scope of a single country or agency.

Read the review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918318770161.