Jennifer Good, Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, wrote a piece recently published in the Toronto Star about the connection between population displacement and climate change.

Good writes:

Arctic Circle temperatures hit 30 C last week. Wildfires in Greece destroying villages and taking lives. British Columbia and Ontario battling forest fires that rage out of control.

The extreme weather list goes on. The summer of 2018 is demonstrating that the consequences of climate change are devastatingly real.

Two years ago, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees declared that population displacement is irrefutably linked to climate change, citing numerous “slow” and “fast” onset examples of climate-related incidents — floods, storms, wildfires, extreme temperature, coastal erosion due to rising sea levels — and climate change “threat multiplier” consequences, such as food insecurity and financial instability that exacerbate already-existing socio-political issues. The UNHCR pointed out that, “climate change sows seeds for conflict [making] displacement much worse when it happens.”

Continue reading the full article here.