This cartoon has been widely shared on social media recently in reaction to the catastrophes in the Mediterranean, where thousands of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East have died trying to reach Europe by boat. (The image is actually from 2014- and was originally drawn by cartoonist Simon Kneebone about immigrants attempting to reach Australia from Indonesia.)
It immediately made me think about a recent article by Owen Gaffney of the Stockholm Resilience Centre calledĀ āWalking the Anthropoceneā, and which I wrote about on this blog a few weeks ago. The pieceās reference to migration from Syria, as well as the extended metaphor it develops of us (as all humanity) in a boat sailing into the uncharted waters of a new geological epoch in earthās history (known as the Anthropocene), has clear links to the subject the cartoon is referring to, as well as its visual elements.
It consequently made me think about what might be some of the reasons pushing these desperate people to make such dangerous, and often tragically unsuccessful, journeys- and whether some of these drivers might be related to the negative socio-environmental impacts and conditions that are being observed/predicted in the theories of the Anthropocene concept.Ā
I then noted the blog post from the WRI,Ā āRegreening Africa Could Help Stem the Tide of Migrationā, which captures many of these issues in the context of the current situation in the Mediterranean- and makes the association with core, and interlinked, environmental issues such as soil fertility degradation, droughts, and crop failure in the regions from where the migration stems. Ā Ā
āEuropean Union leaders have been wrestling in recent weeks with the surge of the āboat peopleā tens of thousands of refugees from Africa and the Middle East crossing the Mediterranean in overloaded boats in the hopes of finding a better life. Many of these migrants died during the journey.Ā
Refugees like the boat people are fleeing poverty and the loss of their livelihoods in the wake of political instability, conflicts and more deeply rooted issues like land degradation and food insecurity. While media reports have focused on the political crises, rural communities in the drylands of the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and Syria face crop failures linked to declining soil fertility and droughts.
It goes onto state that in order to deal with the migration problem European leaders will need to understand, and address, some of these fundamental environmental drivers if they are to effectively deal with the issue- and furthermore refers to a WRI report on potential solutions around developing and scaling up environmentally aware practices of land and water management by local farmers in the affected regions.
āAs European leaders respond to the refugee crisis, it would be good to consider more than a military crackdown on migrant smugglers, increased surveillance of illegal migrants or allocation of additional resources for resettlement. The situation provides an opportunity to think deeply about what can be done to alleviate underlying, systemic problems of degraded land and food insecurity in the countries of origin. A new WRI report shows that a new āgreen revolutionā in Africa could be a solution.ā
As the impacts of climate change, as well as other environmental transitions of the Anthropocene era, develop to have greater impacts around the world, then the issues of mass migration (and furthermore the human tragedies that we are seeing just now) driven, at least in part, by such environmental changes are only likely to increase- and at a potentially significantly greater scale.Ā
Owen Gaffney pointedly concludes his article,Ā āWhile we ā Homo sapiens, the sometimes-wise ape ā have traveled far, we did not travel together, nor take the same route. But weāre all in the same boat now.ā
That boat is our planet, and we are all passengers on it. The migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean are just those closest to its edge at this point- and are desperately trying to move to a seemingly safer part of the ship (which āwise apeā wouldnāt?). But, as we continue to undermine the integrity of the boat and its ability to function as a system, the pressure on the whole structure, and everyone on board (alive now, and in the future), are being increasingly put in danger and at riskā¦ Ā
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