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What is a climate refugee?

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  What is a climate refugee? January 25, 2020 This is an assignment I did for a MOOCs course run by the University of Melbourne in 2013. It in many ways echoes the present so I want to add it to my blogs. I worked hard but got 95% for my efforts. Getting a graphics to fit from my PDF file was difficult.  What is a climate refugee? Refugees have been traditionally thought of as stateless people fleeing from wars and persecution. Forced Migration is a related term that was used in a recent report by the Environmental Justice Foundation 1  on the impact of climate change in Bangladesh. Indeed this report is a good start to learning about the impacts of global warming on the most vulnerable of communities in the Indian subcontinent. Whether climate refugees or forced migrants we are talking fundamentally about survival, not a better life but almost any life at all, and the likely permanent displacement of people from their homes, communities, and nations due to rising seas. In 1990 the IPC
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Email_flyer

  Hi XYZ Hope you and yours are well, safe and covid free. XYZ and I are well and have recently become grandparents to a beautiful boy called ............. See attached. Our daughter married her partner of many years so we now have a son-in-law to add to our family. He is a journalist with DW and behind the excellent Planet A series on YouTube. Hope your news is also good.  [Personal paragraph above to start the email variable according to the receiver] I haven’t been idle and am writing about the launching of an important project at www.ecovillagers.live which has been a lot of work, blood, sweat and tears. Indeed it’s the culmination of over 20 years of support for indigenous communities in Brazil suffering due to the impacts of climate change. A short 30 second flyer is attached that summarizes  the project. It is clickable and can take you to the website. The Welcome page explains it all.   The website is rich in content with many links and videos on climate change, includin
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  Welcome to the IMAD Blog   This multimedia space will include: News updates and text information Videos of construction work in Ecovillages Videos on: climate change biodiversity agroforestry Image galleries, or photo albums Opportunities to share, comment, and provide feedback    
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Meditations. No man is an Island. Donne and Hemingway. Images. Charity starts at home but doesn't end there. Like climate change, pandemics and wars it becomes global. Foreign affairs may seem distant but concern us all, economically, geographically, and morally. Just as they did during the Spanish Civil War.  Are you an island entire of itself?"  Draft only
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Along the Gringo Trail

  Along the Gringo Trail. A retrospective on South America Due to a family wedding in May, and the arrival of my daughter and partner from Berlin my blogging has stalled somewhat and I was a bit lost for what to write next. The volcanic eruptions in Guatemala this week reminded me of the time I spent in that wonderful country on 2 trips there in 1980, when heading south and then back north many months later. For the first time in my life I climbed an “extinct” volcano and for a while wondered if it was the same volcano wreaking death and destruction. The tragic TV footage made much look all too familiar and set me off on this blog of South America and my travels there.  Living the life of an expatriate was at the forefront of my mind in my late 20s and early 30s. My first foray abroad, other than my regimented year in Vietnam as a soldier, came in my second year after graduating and not long after The Dismissal of the Whitlam government on Remembrance Day in November 1975, an event
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Brazil. The good, the bad, and the ugliest.

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Brazil: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly In 1980, with my Spanish at an advanced level, my backpack and travel checks procured, along with my essential guidebook, I was ready to depart on my next big adventure, south of the border.  I must have been serious as I'd quit my day job which included teaching ESL adults, migrants, and refugees. Here I come South America and the Gringo Trail, I thought, here I come Vito in Brazil,  and Brazil's many wonders, good, bad, and ugly. My long flight has a short stopover in Hawaii before it landed in L.A. Then it was an overland trip through Central America, and then another flight from Panama to Ecuador. Every country had its good, bad, and ugly. There was color with fine food, music, and many friendly people, especially in Nicaragua which had recently overthrown a despotic dictator, Somoza in July 1979.   There were heavily armed soldiers, curfews, and an intimidating military presence on many street corners.  In Mexico, I was tear-gassed:
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