Environmental studies and Forestry

Question 1
The movie “Climate Refugees” shows how climate change has affected the cultural, sovereignty, and global security issues. Over the years, human actions in the globe have impacted climatic changes leading to the destabilization of international politics. The intersection of overpopulation, the plight of climatic change, and lack of resources has illuminated the need to change the national and global security implications to guarantee that countries do not run out of water and food due to climatic shifts such as droughts. Currently, many concerns have been identified in the world including increased environmental degradation, natural disasters, droughts, and extreme weather conditions (“Climate Refugees”, 2018). This has posed potential security risks and challenges given the scarcity of natural resources, emission of CO2, drought, among other natural calamities.
The movie “Climate Refugees” reflects concrete human problems affecting millions of people due to extreme weather conditions including drought and desertification. The UN has started the mass migration plan where individuals will be moved as refugees to countries with better environmental conditions. Newt Gingrich and John Kerry believe that the changing climatic conditions are likely to cause humanitarian disasters that will inevitably cause political instability. The movie “Climate Refugees” illustrates a factor whereby food shortages, drought, and desertification will cause the mass migration of people.

The estimated number the environmental refugees is 200 million; this will cause potential ethnic, cultural, social, and economic instability and tensions in the world (“Climate Refugees”, 2018). The effects might be extreme and go beyond international boundaries. Political figures such as John Kerry, Nancy, and Newt featured in the movie proved that the impact of climate change had become wreaking havoc, given the increased number of environmental refugees in the globe.
Question 2
The expected natural calamities caused by climate change are likely to affect how human rights and environmental laws intermingle. Drastic weather and climatic conditions will force people to move across national and international borders as ecological refugees. Governance of environment displacement becomes a broad issue as it is likely to suffer from vertical and horizontal fragmentation with the actors. Interest in environmental migration is identified across fields of environment, movement, human rights, development, humanitarian relief and disaster management. Currently, most refugees reside in their countries given that only party of their population gets affected. However, climatic conditions may worsen, forcing refugees to cross international borders; this could create a threat to peace to global security. Therefore, representatives from countries are required to develop laws that govern the environmental refugees to guarantee their safety and security.
The movie “Climate Refugee” proves that most international laws and policies are built to govern permanent environmental refugees who are affected by climate-induced disasters including desertification, the rise in sea-level, and acidification, among others. Governance is necessary as it strengthens transition of exchange from their countries of origin, during transit, and destination. However, based on the film it is evident that the policies implemented by the government focus on giving short-term aid to the displaced population. On the contrary, the number of trapped populations is high; this means that in some instances some individuals are forced to have resettlement as the only option to save their lives (“Climate Refugees”, 2018). Such people may need more help from the government than being moved temporarily. Consequently, due to the global climatic shifts, persons may also be forced to move across national borders, which may lead to failure of the states.
Question 3
Alongside natural factors, humans also play a role in causing climatic changes, particularly global warming. Some of the actions that I do which cause climate change including driving cars. A high number of individuals in the world have cars; this means that in a minute there are over one million individuals burning gasoline, natural gas, coal, gasoline, or any other fuels commonly used for driving cars or making electricity. These activities release a massive amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. The use of aerosols such as pesticides releases tiny pollutant particles in the atmosphere. Open landfills also emit greenhouse gasses such as CO2, nitrous oxide, methane and water vapor. These gasses emitted from power plants and cars absorb infrared radiation from the sun hence, heating the earth’s surface and atmosphere (“Climate Refugees”, 2018). The increased earth’s temperature also results to rise in the sea level.
Land use shift is also another leading human activity that has resulted in climate change. People are using areas that were initially dark forests to cultivate crops and other human activities such as construction, which has caused deforestation. In addition to this, the number of trees planted compared to the trees cut is low. Thus, this increases the earth’s albedo. Green regions such as forest have a low albedo, which means that the sun’s energy is absorbed. However, areas without trees and those that have bright ice and snow do not incorporate the solar radiation instead it is reflected into space. Thus, with a decrease in the amount of energy absorbed the weather and climate is also affected.

Work Cited
Climate Refugees. (2018). YouTube. Retrieved from, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCdOZ5AdCos&vl=en