Rising Seas: The Social Inequality of Mass Displacement
“Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet over the next 100 years. Say ten feet over the next 100 years. And it puts all of the low-lying areas on the coast underwater. Let's say all of that happens. You think people aren’t going to sell their houses and move?”
This is how Ben Shapiro responded to questions about sea level rise in 2017 — by making the nonsensical declaration that people would be able to sell underwater homes and implying that such mass relocation is a non-issue. What Shapiro neglected to acknowledge were the people worldwide who will be left with neither home nor nation, the billions of dollars that will be lost in infrastructure and jobs, and the disproportionate damage done to disadvantaged groups as a result of sea level rise.
In the central Pacific Ocean sits an archipelago called the Kiribati Republic. These thirty-three islands, home to over 112,000 people, are predicted to be completely underwater by the year 2100. The highest point in Kiribati is only a few meters above sea-level and much of the nation’s coastal towns have already been flooded and destroyed. Kiribati citizens have been on a slow trek inland to flee the ocean’s pursuit, but, ultimately, there will be no land left in the nation for them to occupy.
Thus the question arises: where will the citizens of Kiribati go?
For a brief period, Kiribati and New Zealand had a deal that New Zealand would open its borders to Kiribati civilians fleeing sea-level rise and treat them as refugees. This deal, however, was thrown into jeopardy with the case of Ioane Teitiota.
In 2010, Kiribati citizen Ioane Teitiota applied for asylum in New Zealand. He was already living in the country prior to his application, but when his visa expired he sought permanent citizenship for himself and his family. In his application, Teitiota cited rising sea levels as a life-threatening condition that prevented his return to Kiribati. At the time, New Zealand denied his application and deported Teitiota. However, Teitiota’s case did not end there. He continued to fight his claim through several courts systems, and, in January of 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) reviewed his citizenship application from an entire decade prior.
The UNHRC ruled that New Zealand’s denial of Teitiota’s claim and subsequent deportation violated Teitiota’s human rights. They found that sea-level rise qualified as a life-threatening condition in Teitiota’s home state, and that thus New Zealand had acted unlawfully by sending him back. This decision is a major turning point because it officially recognizes climate change as a cause of human displacement. Previously, whether or not climate counted as a legitimate reason to seek asylum depended on the government reviewing the claim. Now, the ruling by the UNHRC means that countries which send asylum-seekers back to states where climate threatens their lives will be found in violation of human rights obligations.
Teitiota’s case has given the term “climate refugee” official weight.
New Zealand’s reluctance to accept Teitiota is the result of several factors that form many nations’ attitudes around refugees. First, many potential host countries fear the strain that a plethora of climate refugees may put on their resources of water, food, and housing. Scores of people across the world have already been forced to migrate domestically from rural areas to urban centers, and there is truth to the claim that this shift puts strain on these increasingly-dense cities. Now, foreign governments fear having to open their borders to immigrants and dealing with such resource scarcity on a much larger scale.
Second — and perhaps a fuelant of the first reason — rampant xenophobia from citizens puts pressure on governments to keep out as many immigrants as possible. This anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise across the globe for decades, and culminated most infamously with the United States’ declaration to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and with Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union because of potential upticks in immigrant quotas.
There is a certain irony, however, to the exclusion of climate refugees by western nations. The residents and business of Kiribati, which altogether produce a miniscule amount of fossil fuels on the global scale, will be forced to abandon their ancestral homeland because of sea-level rise. Meanwhile, developed nations such as the USA and Britain, who produce the vast majority of the world’s fossil fuel output and thus created the conditions for sea-level rise to become a problem, refuse to offer refuge. There is a certain violence to this act of creating the conditions for these island nations to sink and then leaving their inhabitants to drown.
Worldwide, there is a trend of disadvantaged communities being those who bear the worst burden of climate change impacts. Here in the Bay Area, the people who will be most harmed by sea-level rise are those who are low-income and live in affordable housing, or those who do not have a home at all.
Perhaps the most vulnerable community in all the Bay Area is that of the Canal District in San Rafael, according to Dr. Kristina Hill of UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. At a mere ten inches of sea-level rise, the Canal District is projected to be entirely underwater. (Current projections say that the seas will rise by at least one foot and possibly up to eight.) A majority-immigrant, majority-low-income area, the Canal District is one of the few affordable housing options in notoriously-expensive Marin County. To lose the Canal District would be devastating not only for the individuals living there, but it would also exacerbate Bay Area’s issue of a lack of affordable housing.
In Berkeley specifically, the most vulnerable community to sea-level rise is that of the Berkeley Marina. Three feet of sea-level rise would give the Marina intense flooding, five feet would cause partial submergence, and eight feet would put the Marina completely underwater. The Marina is by and large inhabited by unhoused people. A large unhoused encampment stretches along the Marina and there are several shelters in the area. Flooding of the Marina would eliminate the resources offered by those shelters, leaving an already-vulnerable population with very few opportunities for aid. Additionally, flooding would push those experiencing homelessnesscurrently occupying the Marina into other parts of Berkeley, such as People’s Park, causing denser living.
The Marina is also at an increased risk because of the nature of the ground on which it rests. The Marina used to be a landfill, and though it has since been converted to living space, the ground there is still less stable than solid Earth.
This means the Marina faces two unique challenges. The first is groundwater. As Dr. Kristina Hill of UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning explains, groundwater is essentially underground liquid that moves through the small spaces in the Earth’s bedrock. In former landfill sites, such spaces are larger, and so the water moves more freely and thus causes more damage. The second challenge is toxic waste. Securely underground, toxic waste usually doesn’t cause issues for people living above it. However, rising sea levels are contributing to the rise of groundwater, and as Dr. Hill explains, “groundwater is mobilizing benzene and cancer-causing chemicals.” As the groundwater bubbles up through the soil to the surface, it brings with it toxic pollutants. How long before we see the impacts from these chemicals? Dr. Hill answers, “I bet they’re already happening.”
The damage upon the Bay Area as one whole community will be severe as well. When the seas reach their predicted increase of six to nine feet, both the San Francisco and Oakland airports, segments of the three major highways crosscutting the Bay Area, and the campuses of Facebook and Google would flood. If all this highly expensive and heavily utilized infrastructure were to be submerged, Dr. Hill warns that “we would have a completely disrupted regional economy.” Travel to the Bay Area would be stunted, causing serious issues for San Francisco, where $8.4 billion are generated from tourism annually. Google would relocate, taking with them at least 45,000 jobs (Facebook would also relocate and take jobs, although they do not disclose the number of employees they have in the Bay Area). In regard to this severity of flooding, Dr. Hill puts it plain and clear: “We can’t let that happen.”
Thankfully, Dr. Hill believes there is a solution. The Netherlands has begun to utilize floating houses as a preventative measure to the damage from sea level rise. The plan essentially works by excavating dirt from an area, building a levee between the excavation site and the waterline, creating within the excavation site an artificial pond, and then constructing on top of the pond floating decks similar to apartment buildings or communal living.
The excavation itself is inexpensive, simply moving pounds of dirt (which can serve to build the levee) and then filling the empty space with water. The units within which people would live are currently being manufactured as close by as in San Jose. The only unknown cost is the buoyant decking for the homes, as such construction is not mainstream practice in the United States. However, as Dr. Hill points out, such manufacturing will create jobs and thereby may help stimulate the economy.
Kiribati is not going down without a fight, either. Though the ruling by the UNHRC on Teitiota’s case is a victory enabling Kiribati climate refugees to seek asylum in foreign nations, the ultimate desire for Kiribati citizens is that they are able to stay in their life-long homes. Current plans by the Kiribati government are to, quite literally, raise the island up above the waterline through a similar method of excavating soil and building levees. Though the notion of lifting entire islands sounds almost fantastical, it is not impossible. Artificial islands have been built before, and Kiribati has international support. According to Dr. Hill, the Dutch have offered dredging boats to aid the task.
However, there is still a strong likelihood that Kiribati will sink. In keeping with the plan entitled “Migration with Dignity,” the Kiribati government has already purchased an island in Fiji for Kiribati residents to relocate.
Ultimately, huge numbers of people will be displaced, billions of dollars will be lost in infrastructure, and entire swathes of land will be swallowed by the sea. Yet those affected will rebuild. In this sense, Ben Shapiro is correct — these vulnerable communities will be able to start again. The issue with his statement is that they shouldn’t have to. It should not be an expectation that the disadvantaged abandon their ancestral homes, pack up their lives, and start all over again in an unfamiliar and strange land just so that individuals like Shapiro and countries like the United States can continue to enjoy the wealth and excess afforded them by fossil fuels. His statement, stripped to its bluntest meaning, declares that the desires of certain people outweigh the lives of others. It is a statement in support of class divide, global inequality, and ultimately, a landscape permanently altered by rising seas.
