Humanity and environmental change
figure 3). These case studies demonstrate the fear the recipient nations of large scale environmental migration often feel. This is the reason, for instance why Kenya has forced Somali refugees to stay in UN tents (as shown in figure1) rather than in more permanent structures out of a fear that they will stay permanently rather than returning to Somalia. Humans have often been able to avoid migration by adapting their behaviour to any changes in climate they face; I will not be discussing genetic adaptations as these would extend over too great a period of time. Humanity is fortunate to have a wider range of ways to adapt its behaviour than most animals.
Many nomadic pastoralists of North Africa and the middle east are having to give up their traditional nomadic existence due to the encroachment of desert on their traditional pasture lands
For instance between the years 1988 and 2012 the number of Berber families who crossed the Atlas Mountains biannually with their herds, has fallen by approximately 97% from 410 families to just 15 (see figure 4). 75 Declining rainfalls in Morocco have been one of the major factors that have forced
many Berbers to take up sedentary lifestyles. Similarly the Bedouin population of Egypt has struggled in the face of years of drought that has disrupted natural grazing cycles which has forced many Bedouins to give up their nomadic ways and settle down in villages. However environmental change is not always to blame for nomadic peoples being forced to alter their lifestyles. Many of the Bedouin peoples in Jordan have been forced in to permanent settlements due to the creation of nature reserves in what were formerly their tribal pasture lands. In 1993 the Ata’ta, a Bedouin tribe in Jordan where prevented from using their traditional pasture
Figure 4: Many of the remaining families have had to supplement their income by bringing tourists along
lands when the Dana Biosphere Reserve, a 320 square km nature reserve in western Jordan, was created.
Some communities are facing less obvious environmental change than desertification. In the Mekong Delta of Vietnam local people have to cope with increased salt water intrusion (see figure 5). Salt water at levels strong enough to damage crops and livestock (4 parts per 1000) has reached 55 kilometres in land 76 with devastating effects on an area reliant on agriculture for its economy. As a
75 Source 6 76 Source 3
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