Life on Earth is under enormous stress from a rapidly changing environment and climate. A recent study in Nature show how human societies are already impacted by a changing climate in at least 467 different ways. For example, increased water evaporation and increased air capacity to hold moisture, due to warming, have lead to extreme drought in places that are commonly dry (California, Middle East and Southwest Asia) that have lead to higher risk of heatwaves and wildfires. Warmer ocean waters enhances evaporation and wind speeds thus intensifying downpours and the strength of storms and risk of flooding from storm surges aggravated by sea-level rise. 

The cumulative changes from a disrupted climate are so massive and the speed at which they are occuring so rapid, only comparable to when a meteorite killed the dinosaurs som 65 million years ago, that many species will have a hard time adapting. Species must either tolerate the change, move, adapt, or face extinction. We know that species on land are moving polewards by 17 km per decade and marine species 72 km per decade. And just like terrestrial mountainside species are moving upslope to escape warming lowlands some fish species are driven deeper as the sea surface warms. This in turn impacts human well-being and is already forcing people to migrate.

The current socio-economic paradigm has not changed in accordance with occuring biophysical changes and will not be able to handle the mounting pressure unless it adapts or transforms into something new. A rapidly changing world cannot be navigated by concentrated, rigid, hierarchical, short-term social systems that resist change and tries to maintain status quo. We know this to be true of all living systems, including human societies. Civilisations fail to adapt to changing environmental conditions because they try to maintain high levels of sociopolitical complexity (large armies, bureaucracies, social stratification, occupational specialisations) and focus on expansion instead of dissolving into decentralized, smaller, more flexible and innovative units that are able to respond to change more effectively. That's why corporations, with global scope, are doing better than nation states. And why local communities and municipalities are responding more effectively to changes than governments. 

However, the limiting conditions, resource availability, under climate change make adaptation in place difficult since entire regions are becoming increasingly uninhabitable. Thus forcing people to migrate, just like other species do. This in turn puts extra pressure on national governments as social tensions increase over remaining resources. States that fail to provide essential services for their citizens eventually foster uprisings and risk internal conflict and collapse. We already see this occuring in the Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Isreal/Palestine, Egypt). 

Unless governments take seriously the need for fundamental change of the sociopolitical system they will be unable to handle to shift to a post-carbon society able to cope with climate change. Trying to expand and pile on further sociopolitical complexity to the system will not work.

New research from the McGill University, published in Nature Communications, maps the distribution of our planet's lakes. It clearly shows how the last ice age shaped and formed many of the 1.4 million lakes, larger than 10 hectares, that contain 15% of all the lake water in the world. Dark blue color indicates density of lakes, and as the map shows the highest density can be found in the northern hemisphere, in regions previously covered in large ice sheets. The rest of the worlds lake water, 85%, can be found in the 10 largest lakes. About half of the lakes are freshwater and the other half are salt lakes.

Global distribution of water volume stored in lakes and reservoirs with a surface area of at least 10 ha. Source: Messager et al. (2016)

Researchers from the Max Planck institute have calculated that summer temperatures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could become so hot within the coming 30 years that human habitability is compromised. Hot summer days south of the Mediterranean could see temperatures around 46 °C that, together with all the desert dust and air pollution, could become intolerable and force people to migrate.

More than 500 million people live in MENA, a region that is already experiencing drought problems and conflict over water resources. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970 while population has exploded, leading to overexploitation of groundwater basins. 

In a recent story by Reveal we could read how global leaders are becoming increasingly worried about water shortages. The growing water crisis in the Middle East is thought to have contributed to destabilizing the region, sparking civil unrest and war in Syria and Yemen.

According to a 2009 cable from the U.S. Ambassador in Yemen, “Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences” 

Of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that people become desperate when the most vital of resources for survival becomes scarce. The once arid region is turning more and more into a desert, both due groundwater depletion and shifting climatic zones. 

Even if climate change is limited to a global mean temperature increase of 2 °C warming over land will be stronger and extreme temperatures can increase well beyond +2°C. As such, heat waves and water shortages will only worsen over time as carbon emissions rise and unsustainable usage of aquifers continues. 

The migration flows from the MENA region into Europe and elsewhere will most likely increase in the future as people have no choice but to move from their drying land. 

Humans need clean drinking water, food and energy to survive. These things used to be public goods but we decided, somewhere along the road, to make them private goods. This means that an individual have to make, or inherit, money so she/he can purchase these basic necessities. Those who don’t have money get “weeded out”. This is the human created system that has replaced natural selection. Nowadays it doesn't matter if you are clever, healthy, kind or cooperative as long as you have money. 

Actually money is the wrong term, what a person needs is capital. There are many types of capital but we humans have decided that financial capital is the most important, compared to e.g. social or ecological capital. Again this is because with financial capital we can get other types of capital that we need for our survival and wellbeing. So we accumulate financial capital, as much as we can get, at the cost of degrading other capital bases. We degrade and destroy ecosystems that generate a stable climate, clean water, food and fuel so that over time these resources start to deplete and the cost rises. 

The cost keep rising but the world doesn't pay attention since it’s the most vulnerable that are hit first. It is not until poverty results in death or degradation results in extinction that we start wondering “what is going on?”. We sympathize but feel safe as long as it's happening somewhere else or we have a pile of financial capital to turn to. But what happens if lots of people start deciding that it’s easier to just “move” when rivers dry up, trust breaks down or conflict over remaining resources break out? Syria being a case in point.

Or what happens if the economy takes a beating, perhaps even a sudden crash, that wipes out all your financial capital and/or source of income, what will you do? In some places people can rely on the government, receiving benefits to cover minimum expenses. But what if the crash is so bad that everyone needs benefits at the same time? A healthy government could perhaps manage it. But what if all the government gets in trouble and yours can’t fund the entitlement programs anymore? Now you don’t have a job so you can’t earn money to buy basic goods and the government can’t help you out, you will have to rely on friends and family (community). If that doesn't work perhaps you will move. Greece comes to mind.

The end conclusion is that a growing number of people will have to move as a form of adaptation to rapidly changing socioeconomic or ecological conditions. This, in turn, will create hostility between the “haves” and the “have nots” since there is a limited amount of resources left. The majority are among those who have little since the overall resource pie is shrinking but the minority have more power within the current system since resources are becoming more expensive. This situation will grow worse over time until the majority have had enough. And the a major clash is unavoidable. 

At this point, perhaps, the system that we humans created can be replaced. But some of the social and ecological damage can never be reversed. Whatever happens, we have to be prepared for some very turbulent times.

When soils become eroded, fresh water scarce, landscapes deforested, the air polluted and climate unstable, species either adapt, move or go extinct. Because the climate is changing so rapidly most species have a hard time adapting to new conditions. Evolution would have to occur 10,000 times faster than it typically does in order for most species to adapt and avoid extinction. And so they move instead, along with the shifting climatic zones. According to a 2011 study, species are now moving to higher elevations at a rate of 11.1 meters per decade and to higher latitudes at an average of 16.9 kilometres per decade. 

Life cycle events like mating, blooming and migrating that follow seasons are also changing. Mismatches in timing of births and food availability will inevitably lower population sizes of many species while pests and pathogens thrive due to warmer temperatures. Even if some species are able to migrate there are still many hinders (cities, high-ways etc.) on their way to territories where the competition for food will be tough. Highly specialised species and those who already live in the most northern regions might go extinct. For example, many Arctic species like the caribou, arctic fox and snowy owl are losing their habitat and the food they depend on at a rapid pace.

Human population mobility is not that different. For many of the poorest people of the world mobility is sometimes the only adaptive strategy available. Most sub Saharan African countries are finding it difficult to cope with existing climate stress, not to mention future climate change. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and storms have a direct impact on human migration patterns while long-term changes such as desertification and deforestation can lead to declining living standards that indirectly pushes people to move. Already at +0.85°C warming, since pre-industrial times, we see a drastic increase in the number of displaced people.

Furthermore, when essential resources become increasingly scarce or costly tensions rise and conflict can break out. In Syria a devastating drought forced millions of farmers to abandon their fields in search of alternative livelihoods in the city. And when food prices spiked in 2008 and 2011, along with oil prices, food riots and civil unrest broke out in a number of countries where people spend a large part of their income on food. Some of these conflicts have turned into full on wars which further reinforces migration.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) some 26.4 million people have been displaced by disasters (geophysical and weather related events) every year since 2008. The likelihood of being displaced by disaster today is 60% higher than it was in the early 1970s. The number of displaced people from natural disasters spiked during the strong El Niño years of 1997/98 which does not bode well for this winter and next year, with a similarly strong El Niño now taking shape. Losses from natural disasters and conflict increasingly outpaces the adaptive capacity of a growing number of people around the globe who are forced to relocate permanently. According to UNHCR, one in every 122 humans are now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum. The number of conflicts have increased during the last decade and 15 newly erupted or reignited conflicts have broken out since 2010.

Shows total people of concern (refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced, returnees, stateless, and others of concern to UNHCR) in 15 countries as of 2014. Based on UNHCR - Global Trends 2014: World At War

The conflict in Ukraine together with 502,500 people crossing the Mediterranean and the large number of Syrians in Turkey (1.59 million) has lead to a doubling of refugees in Europe between 2013-2014, according to the UN Refugee Agency. While Germany and Sweden accepted the biggest volume of asylum seekers the largest proportion of refugees are located in Turkey and the Russian Federation.

Most people in Europe, and elsewhere, are currently focused on issues of immigration with endless political debates and moral outrage in mainstream media. People think that we are experiencing a political crisis but it's much worse than that. Migration is only a symptom of the real underlying predicament - limits to growth in a finite world. As long as society tries to grow its population and economic activity we will continue to experience mounting social and ecological stresses, for example in form of: increasing inequality, disruptive climate change, mass migrations, hunger, epidemics etc. These pressures are warning signals that indicate overshoot, this is a fact, and yet we refuse to talk about limiting population growth or downsizing our economy (i.e. lowering our energy per capita consumption).

Irreversible change in carrying capacity means that a return to their homeland will be impossible for many refugees. Since ecological deficit is a global phenomenon, millions of ecorefugees will be seeking new locations. But very few places will have the biocapacity necessary to take them in without undermining their own ecological capital. Are there any lifeboats (nations) in suitable condition to accept ecorefugees on a long-term basis? 

If we have a quick look at different country's biocapacity as measured by the ecological footprint network we can see that Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, Russia, Latin America and parts of southern Africa still have (in theory) the ecological capacity to host more people. While most countries located around the equator are in serious overshoot. However, not all countries are in overshoot for the same reasons, for example, the UK is a tiny country in landmass and have to rely on imports for pure survival while the US has plenty of land and could in theory support itself but not with current per capita over consumption.

Eventually, resource depletion and biophysical stresses will grow so large that the economy and population will have to contract. This view is based on scientific evidence of population dynamics in a closed natural system. We can always hope for the best, but we better prepare for the worst, like any prudent risk manager would.

As most people probably have noticed by now, there is very little real wealth generation in today’s economy. Most of the economic activity these days consist of wealth transfers, from the poor and the middle class to the financial elite. This is why we see such huge and widening gaps between rich and poor (80 people own 50% of all global wealth). When the resource pie isn't growing anymore then one person's gains will always imply another ones loss, it's a zero-sum game.

Absent abundant, cheap energy (especially oil) the economy cannot grow and more people go broke and become excluded from the marketplace. Only the rich will be able to afford to keep on over consuming. Our society has tried to “paper over” this problem by piling up ever more debt (borrowing purchasing power from the future), but we have now reached a level when people cannot or are unwilling to take on more debt. And this is also why we see falling commodity prices, there just isn’t enough demand. Instead we have debt deflation. In time, depressed commodity prices could lead to falling supply which in turn could be devastating for food production and transportation. All the while pollution is growing and climate change becomes more severe.

Meanwhile, in Europe, social unrest and political extremism is on the rise once again. The so called “refugee crisis”, however, is neither temporary or political in nature. Ideologies like left or right-wing doesn’t matter anymore, only those who accept ecological limits and those who don't. We are simply too many people on a planet with a limited amount of natural resources and unstable climate. Now we have to share what’s left of the Earth’s riches, and people do not like it. Especially not the rich.