Last year alone, 24.2 million people were forced to leave their homes due to natural disasters. Tackling climate change is not only an ecological issue but a serious social one. By the middle of the century, the number of refugees searching for a new place to live could rise to one billion. The expansion of renewable energies can serve as part of a solution to this problem. Decision-makers from research and science, leading environmental and social organisations, and the renewable energy sector discussed this complex of issues at the RadioKulturhaus.

On the website of the UN Refugee Agency, it states that over the last 20 years the number of natural disasters as a consequence of climate change has doubled. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), over the last 40 years the risk of being affected by natural disasters has even increased by 60%. Last year alone, 24.2 million people in 118 countries were forced to leave their home regions due to natural disasters. On top of that, these figures don't include refugees who had to leave their countries due to prolonged extreme weather events such as drought. By the middle of the century, some forecasts suggest, refugee numbers could increase tenfold. "This naturally depends on the measures that are put in place between now and then," notes Johannes Wahlmüller, climate and energy spokesperson for the environmental organisation GLOBAL 2000, adding: "How severe this crisis becomes will depend greatly on how successful efforts to reduce climate-damaging greenhouse gases turn out to be." "Climate change is exacerbating hunger and poverty and forcing more and more people to abandon their home regions. We're already seeing this in our projects in various countries that we support," explained Michael Bubik, Managing Director of Diakonie Eine Welt, continuing: "Yet those affected contribute next to nothing to climate change. Supporting these people is therefore a matter of humanity and common decency."

Climate change is a key driver of displacement

At the latest since the climate conference in Paris, the urgency of climate protection has been impossible to ignore. Ahead of this year's climate conference in Bonn, 15,000 scientists issued an urgent appeal and a "warning to humanity" to world leaders, urging them to waste no more time and tackle climate protection with determination. "Climate change has progressed faster than we thought possible just a few years ago," explains Herbert Formayer, Professor at the Institute of Meteorology at the University of Vienna, adding: "Austria in particular has done far too little in recent years. There is an urgent need for action." Gerhard Wotawa, meteorologist at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) and Chair of the Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA), adds: "The issue of environmentally and climate-driven migration will become increasingly significant in the future. Without rapid climate protection measures, living conditions across the entire Mediterranean region and sub-Saharan Africa will continue to deteriorate over the next 30 to 40 years. Combined with the partly extremely high birth rates in these countries, we must expect serious problems." As far back as 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the link between climate change and displacement.

Climate change as a trigger for conflict

Climate change often plays at least some role in many conflicts. It is also one piece of the puzzle in the causes of the current conflict in Syria. Before the outbreak of violence, more than 1.5 million people had to abandon their livelihoods following several years of severe drought. The population fleeing to the cities found no work there. This situation provided fertile ground for fundamentalist groups. "The strained climate situation and the increasingly frequent natural disasters are worsening conditions worldwide for people who are already living under difficult circumstances, particularly women and children. As a result, human rights violations are on the rise," reports Annemarie Schlack, Executive Director of Amnesty International Austria, adding: "Our role in this area is to support human rights defenders who are working on the ground to improve living conditions."

Renewable energies as a solution

On the one hand, oil and gas represent a reliable source of income for many terrorist groups. Fossil fuels thus help to keep violent conflicts going. "Austria sources the majority of its energy from countries that have a different set of values to our own. A large proportion of people in Austria feel threatened by these foreign values. Yet we continue to support them economically through our energy purchases," observes Peter Püspök, President of the umbrella organisation Erneuerbare Energie Österreich (EEÖ), adding: "Energy imports from politically unstable countries can, with a bit of goodwill, be replaced by domestic energy from sun, water, wind and biomass. In addition to the positive effects on the climate, this improves our trade and balance of payments and dries up the sources of terrorist financing." On the other hand, renewable energies avoid climate-damaging emissions and thus protect the climate. To halt climate change, the energy supply must be fully transitioned to renewable energies. The more we work towards creating a CO2-free society, the more we also help to ensure that climate-driven displacement doesn't increase further and that many people don't have to leave their homes. Austria must therefore also step up its support for other regions of the world on their path towards a sustainable energy supply based on renewable energies, through technology transfer, knowledge-building and financing."

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