Not only do birds fill us with awe and wonder, but they also provide food and feathers, and keep insects and rodents in check. Their ability to warn us of the drastic ways we’re changing the world’s ecosystems, climate, and water cycles can’t be ignored. By working to ensure more species don’t go the way of the passenger pigeon, we’re also protecting ourselves from the effects of environmental destruction.
Habitat loss is a major threat for birds and other animals, and destroying green spaces where birds and animals live also reduces carbon sinks. According to many scientific studies, between sixteen thousand and seventeen thousand plants and animals are threatened with extinction because of human activity, mostly through habitat loss. This includes 12 percent of all known birds, 23 percent of mammals, and 32 percent of amphibians. Climate change is predicted to sharply increase the risk of species extinction within our own children’s lifetime. According to the IPCC, 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species assessed will probably be at increased risk of extinction if global average temperatures continue to rise with escalating emissions of carbon pollution.
Animals are especially at risk in the Arctic, where global warming is occurring more rapidly than elsewhere, with more severe consequences. The international community has flagged global warming as a major threat to the survival of polar bears. In 2006, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, listed the polar bear as a “vulnerable” species. In a 2015 update of its Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN flagged “loss of sea ice habitat due to climate warming as the single most important threat to the long-term survival of the species.”37 Polar bears, which are extremely important to the culture and livelihoods of indigenous people, travel over sea ice to get to their prey. The IUCN update says, “An annual ice-free period of five months or more will cause extended fasting for the species, which is likely to lead to increased reproductive failure and starvation in some areas. According to recent sea ice projections, large regions of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago will be ice-free for more than five months by the late 21st century; and in other parts of the Arctic, the five-month ice-free threshold may be reached by the middle of the 21st century. Warming Arctic temperatures could also reduce habitat and increase the incidence of disease for prey species such as ice seals, placing the polar bear at further risk.”38 The bears also face threats from pollution, resource extraction, oil spills, and other development. As top predators, polar bears help keep northern ecosystems in balance. The IUCN is working with Canada, Norway, Greenland, Russia, and the United States on a Circumpolar Action Plan to help the bears survive.
The IUCN says 35 percent of bird species, 52 percent of amphibians, and 71 percent of reef-building corals are “particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”39 Scientists like famed Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson have described the current wildlife crisis as a silent epidemic, because it receives so little attention from governments. As individuals, we must conserve energy, shift to cleaner sources, and demand that our industrial and political leaders address issues such as pollution and climate change. And we can work to protect wetlands and other bird habitat. We can also join the legions of citizen scientists who are contributing to avian knowledge by posting information to sites such as eBird.org.
Climate Change Exacerbates Conflict and Refugee Crises
CONFLICTS AND REFUGEE crises aren’t new, but 2015 was marked by particularly devastating events. As world leaders and experts prepared to meet in Paris to address the climate crisis, refugees from the horrific conflict in Syria were fleeing for camps in neighboring countries and into Europe, many of them not making it in their shoddy and overcrowded boats.
Just as it’s not always possible to definitively connect one extreme weather event entirely to climate change, it would be wrong to blame the Syrian crisis solely on climate change. But many analysts have noted a connection. Although the country has been beset by conflict over differing political and religious ideologies, as well as resources, many experts note that drought and increasing water scarcity—caused in large part by climate change—forced many people to flee from agricultural areas to cities. Along with an influx of Iraqi war refugees, that caused Syria’s urban population to increase from “8.9 million in 2002, just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to 13.8 million in 2010,” according to an article in Scientific American.40 The article quotes a 2015 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA: “The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.”41
Poor management and political decisions before and during the crisis have exacerbated the problem, but the climate connection is being seen in many conflict-ridden areas.
As some parts of the world heat up and experience increased drought or flooding, with subsequent damage or devastation to agricultural systems, more refugees will leave increasingly uninhabitable areas, or areas where they can no longer make a living or grow food. As in Syria after the 2007–10 drought, many will make their way to already overburdened cities. Still more will flee to countries where the effects of climate change aren’t as bad or where infrastructure makes it easier to cope with the consequences.
Organizations including the International Red Cross, World Bank, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report that “environmental refugees” now outnumber political refugees and that the problem will get worse as the effects of climate change create harsh or even unlivable conditions in many parts of the world. And, unlike political refugees, environmental refugees are not protected by international law. Many are fleeing from rural or coastal areas to urban centers in their own countries.42
Scientists say that drought and desertification affect almost 30 percent of Earth’s land surface and threaten the well-being of more than a billion people worldwide. Although the cumulative effects of overgrazing, over-cultivation, deforestation, and poor irrigation are factors in desertification, so too are climate change and extreme weather. The deterioration of dry-land ecosystems has already created desert-like dead zones that can no longer support human life in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa. No region is immune. Close to three-quarters of North America’s dry lands, including parts of the prairies, are vulnerable to drought. Many people have already been displaced from areas around China’s expanding Gobi Desert, northwest Africa’s Sahara Desert, and the Horn of Africa, among other places.
Sea-level rise is also displacing a steadily increasing number of people. In Bangladesh, half a million people were left homeless when rising sea levels started to submerge Bhola Island. According to National Geographic, “Scientists predict Bangladesh will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 due to flooding caused by climate change. The loss of land could lead to as many as 20 million climate refugees from Bangladesh.”43 Other coastal areas and island nations, including many places in North America and Europe, will also be affected.
Throw political conflict into the mix and the situation becomes even more volatile. Studies by the UN and others have concluded that drought and environmental degradation from climate change, which caused rapid spikes in food prices, probably contributed to the 2010 Arab Spring uprising and the 2007 Darfur conflict. As fossil fuels become increasingly scarce and difficult to obtain, conflict will also be likely to increase in already volatile areas where those resources are located.
All of this is occurring as the world has only reached warming of less than 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels. Failing to limit global average temperature increases to 2 degrees, or the 1.5 degrees called for in the Paris Agreement, could have absolutely devastating consequences. According to the World Bank, an increase of 2 degrees would increase extreme heat days from four to sixty-two days in Amman, Jordan; from eight to ninety days in Baghdad, Iraq; and from one to seventy-one days in Damascus, Syria.44 In Beirut, Lebanon, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, “the numbers of hot days are projected to reach 126 and 132 days per year respectively.” Those numbers will rise significantly if world temperatures go above 2 degrees. The increased number of hot days, along with decreasing rainfall, will have serious impacts on water availability