Rising Tides

Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century

John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins

Narrated by Gary Roelofs

Available from Audible

Book published by Indiana University Press

Global climate change and global refugee crises will soon become inextricably interlinked. A new tsunami of climate refugees flows across the earth. We are now at the moment of truth."

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. 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? Environmental refugees are a problem beyond the scope of a single country or agency.

John R. Wennersten is an environmental affairs writer and author of Global Thirst: Water and Society in the 21st Century.

Denise Robbins is a writer and communications expert on climate change issues in Washington, DC.

REVIEWS:

“This urgent wakeup call to the growing crisis of climate refugees offers an essential, continent-by-continent look at its dangers and solutions, arguing that the crisis of climate refugees requires global, concerted solutions beyond the strategic, fiscal, and legal capability of a single country or agency.”

—Choice

“This chilling and urgent call to action spares no detail in its mission to present the facts on a looming humanitarian disaster. Climate-change warning messages too often focus on the environment without going into specifics of how humans will be hurt by global warming. Rising Tides singlehandedly rectifies this issue.... Thanks to an equal reliance on current events and models, as well as the authors’ thorough understanding of geopolitics, the case is beyond convincing”

—Foreword Reviews

“A must read for policymakers and those in positions of power, especially the ones who remain in a state of denial about climate change and refuse to do enough to address the crisis.”

—The Hindu