Global Justice

How richest fuel global warming - but poorest suffer most from it Independent

By the end of tomorrow the average Briton will have caused as much global warning as the typical Kenyan will over the whole of this year, according to a report.

The findings highlight the glaring imbalance between the rich countries that produce most of the pollution and the poor countries that suffer the consequences in the forms of drought, floods, starvation and disease.

The World Development Movement (WDM), a poverty campaign group, has drawn up a "climate calendar" showing the dates when the UK will have emitted as much CO2 gas as other countries will in a year.

Unsurprisingly, the poorest counties such as Chad, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo produce virtually no carbon emissions. Even populous countries such as India will be overtaken in its emissions by the UK in a month's time. In fact, 164 countries in the world have a smaller carbon foootprint than the UK, while just 20, mainly including the major oil producers as well as the US, have a larger one.

By the end of tomorrow the average Briton will have produced 0.26 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

War in Iraq Propelling A Massive Migration - washingtonpost.com

Wave Creates Tension Across the Middle East

AMMAN, Jordan -- Inside his cold, crumbling apartment, Saad Ali teeters on the fringes of life. Once a popular singer in his native Baghdad, he is now unemployed. To pay his $45 monthly rent, he borrows from friends. To bathe, he boils water on a tiny heater. He sleeps on a frayed mattress, under a tattered blanket.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Life on the Burma-Thai border

If you did not know that the town of Mae Sot was in Thailand, you would probably assume it was in Burma.

Burmese script is written on almost every shop front, most of the men walk round town wearing longyis (sarongs) and traditional Burmese teashops are on every corner.

The presence of so much that is quintessentially Burmese is unsurprising, given that Burmese nationals in this border town now outnumber Thais by more than two to one.

Iraq, Iraq-Syria: Call for aid as Iraqi refugees' misery compounds

www.reliefweb.int

Wars of the world: how global warming puts 60 nations at risk - Independent Online Edition > Climate Change

As scientists deliver a detailed report on the impact of climate change this week, an 'IoS' investigation shows it will spark a major rise in conflicts

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Published: 01 April 2007

Scores of countries face war for scarce land, food and water as global warming increases. This is the conclusion of the most devastating report yet on the effects of climate change that scientists and governments prepare to issue this week.

More than 60 nations, mainly in the Third World, will have existing tensions hugely exacerbated by the struggle for ever-scarcer resources. Others now at peace - including China, the United States and even parts of Europe - are expected to be plunged into conflict. Even those not directly affected will be threatened by a flood of hundreds of millions of "environmental refugees".

Whose Oil Is It, Anyway? - New York Times

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Jacob Magraw-Mickelson

TODAY more than three-quarters of the world's oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn't always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world's oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world's largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.

Global Warming Could Spur 21st Century Conflicts - CommonDreams.org

OSLO - Droughts, floods and rising seas linked to global warming could spur conflicts in coming decades, experts said on Monday, the eve of a first U.N. Security Council debate on climate change.And the poor in tropical regions of Africa and Asia are likely to suffer most, perhaps creating tensions with rich nations in the temperate north which are likely to escape the worst effects of warming widely blamed on use of fossil fuels.

"Global warming increases the potential for conflict," said Janos Bogardi, head of the U.N. University's Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn.

"The most imminent effect is probably desertification and land degradation," he told Reuters. His group has projected that climate change might force hundreds of millions of people from their homes in the long term.

Bogardi said the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, where 200,000 people have died, was "probably the most prominent example" of a conflict partly caused by land degradation.

In the longer term, rising seas caused by melting icecaps and glaciers could swamp large tracts of countries such as Bangladesh, forcing millions to migrate and raising the chances of conflicts over shrinking land.

Could global warming cause war? | csmonitor.com

A new report warns that conflicts over water and food could intensify as the climate changes.

For years, the debate over global warming has focused on the three big "E's": environment, energy, and economic impact. This week it officially entered the realm of national security threats and avoiding wars as well.

Climate, Conflicts to Displace Billion

By IOL Staff

"We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world," said Davison CAIRO -- No less than one billion people will be forced to flee their homes in the next four decades because of the effect of climate change and burgeoning conflicts, the charity Christian Aid said in a report on Monday, May 14. "We believe that forced migration is now the most urgent threat facing poor people in the developing world," said John Davison, the lead author of the "Human Tide: the real migration crisis" report. "We estimate that over the years between now and 2050, a total of one billion people will be displaced from their homes." Scientists predict that average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 3.0 degrees Celsius this century because of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, causing floods and famines and putting million of lives at risk. "The impact of climate change is the great," said the report.

UN warns of five million Iraqi refugees - Independent Online Edition > Middle East

Half of displaced people have no access to food aid

By Patrick Cockburn

Published: 10 June 2007

Omar, a Sunni driver, lived in a pleasant house in a Shia neighbourhood of al-Jihad district in west Baghdad until he decided that it was too dangerous for his family to stay.

He moved with them to Damascus, but it was too expensive and he had no chance of getting a job.

He returned to his home in al-Jihad, but when he arrived his neighbours said that the Mahdi Army Shia militia had left a message for him. It said that if he ever re-occupied the house, they would kill him.

Thirstier World Likely to See More Violence - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum
By Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service
March 16, 2007

A strong link between droughts and violent civil conflicts in the developing world bodes ill for an increasingly thirsty world, say scientists, who warn that drought-related conflicts are expected to multiply with advancing climate change. "Severe, prolonged droughts are the strongest indicator of high-intensity conflicts," said Marc Levy of the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York. These are internal conflicts, not between countries, and involving more than 1,000 battle deaths, Levy said at a press briefing in Washington last week. Such conflicts tend to occur about a year after a "severe deviation in rainfall patterns", he said. Levy and colleagues used decades of detailed precipitation records, geospatial conflict information and other data in a complex computer model that overlays all this onto a fine-scale map of the world. "Major deviations from normal rainfall patterns were the strongest predictor of conflicts," he said. "I was surprised at how strong the correlation is."