Haitian Earthquakes and Middle Eastern Heat Waves

Welcome to our first YFCR monthly newsletter. Every month we will publish a newsletter that covers timely issues surrounding the environment and climate refugees. These include long-term environmental issues that have lead to displacement, recent news concerning refugee legislation and conditions of refugee camps, and natural disasters that have led to migration. This week we have chosen to spotlight the Haitian earthquakes and Middle Eastern heat waves.

Haiti has been hit with multiple natural disasters during the month of August. OCHA stated that the death toll of the 7.2 magnitude earthquake alone has risen to around 2,200 people. Hundreds are still missing and around 12,000 are injured. These people are in need of aid, many having lost their homes with 130,000 homes damaged or severely destroyed. Just two days later, a tropical storm swept in and halted almost all humanitarian efforts in the affected areas. While the government is working with national and international humanitarian partners, the situation has been severe and given Haiti’s long history of natural disasters, the country seems to have never had time to truly recover from environmental devastation. According to US AID, which assists Haiti in times of disaster, these events in addition with the civil unrest and endemic poverty, have led to food insecurity and other humanitarian needs that plague the country. While many of the refugees from Haiti are eventually driven out due to economic and political reasons, it is obvious that environmental problems heavily increase the severity of the economic and political issues they face. 

The UNHCR found that there are about 82.4 million refugees as of 2021. While the majority of these people are internally displaced, about 26.4 million of them are refugees who have been forced to flee their countries. Refugees are constantly met with hardship, but lately, it has been harder for them to receive resources because of the lack of water infrastructure and droughts. This also is a struggle for the countries that are housing the displaced people. Many of the countries that hold refugees do not have sufficient water in order to support their own residents and the refugees they've received. For example, EcoMENA stated in an article that Jordan, one of the most water-scarce nations in the world, houses about 1.3 million refugees, mostly from neighboring countries. These water-scarce countries with a large population of refugees constantly battle illness and water borne disease, because there is not enough water for sanitation and cleaning.

Recently, the Middle East and Northern Africa have been battling extreme heat waves and temperatures too intense for human life. While a heat wave will pass, the area has been plagued with drought for around 20 years. These countries are pumping huge amounts of groundwater to make up for the lack of surface water, and when you throw climate change and water mismanagement into the mix, the severity of the situation only gets worse. Countries such as Iran, that have been struggling greatly, are even reaching the point where some areas will soon become uninhabitable. Tensions are rising as communities struggle to plan out how they will divide and manage water resources, such as lakes and rivers. Iran is a perfect example of this since just last month, three people were killed while protesting the issue. According to the UNHCR there are around 800,000 refugees in Iran as of October 2020. Lake Urmia, which was immensely relied upon by the people of Iran, has shrunk to more than half of its size. While there is still a large amount of water in the lake, the main issue is that the lake is hypersaline, which means that it is an extremely salty body of water. With water getting scarcer and scarcer, many farmers have resorted to using Lake Urmia for irrigation, but the high levels of salt are only causing damage to farmers' crops. These extreme heat waves will not only result in residents have insufficient amounts of water, but food and resources as well.

Photo Credit: Smithsonian Magazine