Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Red Cross climate change is exacerbating conflicts – a claim which has been soundly debunked by a detailed study into the correlation between drought and conflict.
Climate change is exacerbating world conflicts, says Red Cross president
‘It’s obvious some of the violence we are observing … is directly linked to climate change,’ says Peter Maurer
Climate change is already exacerbating domestic and international conflicts, and governments must take steps to ensure it does not get worse, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross has said.
Peter Maurer told Guardian Australia it was already making an impact and humanitarian organisations were having to factor it into their work far earlier than they were expecting.
“In many parts of the world where we work it’s not a distant engagement,” he said.
“When I think about our engagement in sub-Saharan Africa, in Somalia, in other places of the world, I see that climate change has already had a massive impact on population movement, on fertility of land. It’s moving the border between pastoralist and agriculturalist.”
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“It’s very obvious that some of the violence that we are observing … is directly linked to the impact of climate change and changing rainfall patterns.”
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The study I mentioned which debunks this claim was a detailed look at whether drought makes conflict more likely.
Assessing the relative contribution of economic, political and environmental factors on past conflict and the displacement of people in East Africa
Erin Llwyd Owain & Mark Andrew Maslin
According to the UN Refugee Agency in 2016 there were over 20 million displaced people in Africa. There is considerable debate whether climate change will exacerbate this situation in the future by increasing conflict and thus displacement of people. To explore this climate-conflict-refugee nexus this study analyses whether climatic changes between 1963 and 2014 impacted the risk of conflict and displacement of people in East Africa. A new composite conflict database recording major episodes of political violence (MEPV) was compared with climatic, economic and political indicators using optimisation regression modelling. This study found that climate variations as recorded by the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the global temperature record did not significantly impact the level of regional conflict or the number of total displaced people (TDP). The major driving forces on the level of conflict were population growth, economic growth and the relative stability of the political regimes. Numbers of TDP seemed to be linked to population and economic growth. Within TDP, ‘refugees’ were recorded as people that were forced to cross borders between countries. In contrast to TDP and conflict, variations in refugee numbers were found to be significantly related to climatic variations as well as political stability, population and economic growth. This study suggests that climate variations played little or no part in the causation of conflict and displacement of people in East Africa over the last 50 years. Instead, we suggest rapid population growth, low or falling economic growth and political instability during the post-colonial transition were the more important controls. Nonetheless, during this period this study does shows that severe droughts were a contributing driver of refugees crossing international borders. This study demonstrates that within socially and geo-politically fragile systems, climate change may potentially exacerbate the situation particularly with regards to enforced migration.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0096-6
If climate change isn’t to blame for conflict in poor countries, what is?
One intriguing possible explanation is that organisations like the Red Cross might be inadvertently creating conflict and instability by dropping vast amounts of aid money into poor countries, much of which ends up in the hands of tyrants and corrupt bureaucracies.
“For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!”
The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.
July 04, 2005 12:00 AM Print Feedback
SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…
Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.
SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
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According to Shikwati, aid money promotes the very corruption and political instability which the study I quoted suggests leads to large scale conflict.
Much of the aid money provided by charities is stolen by tyrants and corrupt bureaucracies, who use that money to perpetuate their miserable rule far beyond what would have been possible without do-gooders inadvertently financing their repression.
But perhaps it is easier for aid organisations to blame climate change, than to take a long hard look in the mirror.
I understand that some officials were called WaBenzi–the Benz people.
Yep. https://www.google.at/search?q=africa+novelist+my+mercedes+is+bigger+than+yours&oq=africa+novelist+my+Mercedes+is+bigger+than+your&aqs=chrome.
Et tu, Red Cross? Strop the drama. The check is in the mail.
Why I donate to the Salvation Army. They’re about helping people. And do. The RC is not fit to hold their coats when it comes to being there immediately following a tragedy, IMO. High marks went to the Salvation Army from the firefighters and post 9/11’s on site workers. Same story post Katrina. Same story everywhere. The RC was governmentized/politicized years ago. Head of RC drew six figures at one time and majority of the RC’s budget went to (assume it still does) RC salaries. And the first thing the RC does when it gets on site somewhere is start asking for donations.
The RC was politicized by WW2 ( or before ) … a unit of soldiers entered a town where the RC was filming themselves giving coffee to actors ( in Army uniform ) …wouldn’t give ANY to the real soldiers .
My father was one of those real soldiers . ( 99th )…
We still don’t ” give ” to them ….
Sweet Old Bob,
My Dad was a WWII vet… Pacific Theater. He told me of the exact same experience… troops had to pay for RC coffee and donuts, while other charitable organizations provided such refreshments at no cost to the troops.
It’s extremely obvious that (and VERY sad) that so many people are so willing to completely sell out for a phony cause!
Real scientists have wasted their entire academic lives (not to mention their chance of doing dome real research) promoting a political cause called AGW that is purely about power and greed.
Others are desperately announcing they have prostituted themselves at the altar of money and greed daily.
News media long ago gave up any credibility and actual reporting and now truth seekers must investigate on their own and always be skeptical of major news media.
Shikwati: “If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.”
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes (In Ethiopia) I would not have believed it. He is exactly right of course! But too, funds from events like Live Aid actually did help and is still helping, but much of the money has been soaked up by corruption. Oprah Winfrey has sponsored/still sponsors the Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia for young women, many of whom are actually still girls.
Patrick – dead on. +1000
How to make a socialist utopia
Step 1. Make the population dependent on the government.
Step 2. Divide the population
Step 3. Oppress all free thinking and entrepreneurship.
Step 4. Control the media and education institutions.
Plus so many more steps. These are just a few to start with.
The trifecta is
1) control the education system (to control future thought)
2) control the media (to control the narrative)
3) control the Supreme Court (to control the government)
These were the three pillars of the Socialist Fabian Society. Worked real good until the internet came along and blew up the monopoly on the Media. Thanks to wonderful sites like WUWT, people now have the ability to verify the lies of the left. SCOTUS just got taken away as well. The left is so pissed they are talking about expanding court so they can pack it if the ever get back control. All that is left is to destroy the monopoly the left has on education …. the academia that brings us CAGW.
How do you destroy the hold on the educational system when parents are simply NOT interested. They don’t care what the government does to their kids as long as the kids are out of their hair. I see no overwhelming love for children by parents. They sold them to the government to do as they wish with.
Sheri, where do you live? Parents around here are totally interested. Our neighborhoods are heavily hispanic, many recent arrivals without documents. They are well aware that their situation is tenuous and they want their children to take advantage of the educational opportunities while they can. In my 30 years of teaching in our El Monte, CA, public schools I have had almost total parental support, even though the parents themselves have limited education and limited resources.
There’s a reason why home schooling has exploded in popularity in the last few decades.
If these bloated bureaucracies stopped giving aid to poor countries they would have no reason for being. Can’t have that! They keep sending the aid and draw their large salaries fully knowing that the aid is going to corrupt dictators and not those who need it. Shameful.
“But perhaps it is easier for aid organisations to blame climate change, than to take a long hard look in the mirror.”
CAGW, the indispensable excuse offered up by corrupt, incompetent bureaucrats everywhere. It is truly the all-purpose cover story.
I’m not sure if this claim is really non-sense. I find every effort for climate change makes sense especially if there are actual deeds that give even minor results.
The best long term way to help a nation is to trade with them. Governments would be better off just using aide money to buy goods from the country. It would drive development of industry in the country which is all the help they really need. You will get famine and natural disasters which need immediate help but everything apart from that should be trade.
You have hit the nail on the head LdB.
Ethical Capitalism is the solution but very elusive; as wisdom is in very short supply these days.
There was an American who had taught in three countries in southern Africa and thirty years later he did an overland trip from one end of Africa to the other. He took one flight through a trouble spot which could have been Ethiopia.
He said that thirty years of aide had achieve exactly zero benefits for the Africans and he also said that when he was hitchhiking the aide workers were the worst of the lot by just driving straight past him in there latest Landcruisers.
The other problem in Africa is the World Bank demanding that they grow crops that are not natural within their regions.
We had one charity in NZ that went down the gurgler when people discovered only about ten percent actually went to charity.
10%?! It’s WAYYYYY less than that!
Patrick MJD
My late father in law was in the UN in it’s early days, when it actually did something. He was a forester stationed in Africa, South America, the Middle East and Cuba (he knew both Fidel and Raul very well, not nice people).
In his retirement he despised the idiot Bob Geldof for his social justice campaigning and his naive expectation that even a dribble of the money he raised would get beyond corrupt African officials.
The old man’s contention was that the UN couldn’t manage it so why does the prick imagine he can do anything other than line the coffers of some corrupt officials.
Nor did the old man ever take a backhander from the many corrupt regimes he worked with. His modest inheritance bequeathed to his grandchildren attest to that, not much more than his house and some savings from his pension.
While I mostly agree with you about Geldof and Live Aid the fact is the money raised did do some good for ordinary people and, believe it or not, was still working for ordinary folk as late as 2005. I have/had close ties with Ethiopia/Ethiopians until 2012.
The UN on the other hand. I know people in Ethiopia who worked for the UN and resigned in disgust at the abuse of funds exhibited by “officials” (Parties, wiskey etc etc).
“One intriguing possible explanation is that organisations like the Red Cross might be inadvertently creating conflict and instability by dropping vast amounts of aid money into poor countries”
Having worked for 5 years in 5 different countries for ICRC I feel qualified to set the facts right.
ICRC does not drop any money to anyone. It provides humanitarian aid to those affected by conflict. This is usually not long-term. It refuses to hand over the financial details of projects to the authorities.
Don’t confuse ICRC with IFRC and national societies (e.g. American RC). They respond to natural disasters.
Regards
M
Find yet another Red Cross President.
The new one got to have new ideal vision aside the traditional leadership Red Cross need.
Quite possibly just lazy cynical fundraising. The guy probably has an assistant who told him that the Australians seem suprisingly gullible when it comes to global warming (or at least much of the Australian media is), so this is what he should say to tug on the Australian heartstrings and pry open their wallets.
I bet he says a different thing when in Japan or China.