Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World

Journalist Vince (Transcendence) warns of a “great upheaval” in global migration resulting from climate change in this bracing clarion call. “Fleeing the tropics, the coasts and formerly arable lands, huge populations will need to seek new homes,” she writes; “you will be among them, or you will be receiving them.” In taking size of the current state of the world, Vince looks back at hundreds of thousands of years of crises and the human responses to them: “whether for exploration and adventure, from disaster to safety, for a new land of opportunity... under duress and by kidnap,” Vince argues, migrations have a long history of having “transformed” the world. She lays out a course of action for the coming decades, considering international borders (making a case with some strong stats on how immigration can improve a country’s economy, and noting that “opening borders doesn’t have to mean no borders”), the changing nature of urban environments (“Around the world, the most successful migrant cities tend to be dense but not too high”), and the need for strong social welfare policies as well as infrastructure investment (she suggests building geographically distributed low-income housing “so there are no ‘pure’ rich-only or native only neighbourhoods”). Assertive and provocative, Vince’s work is worth a look for policymakers concerned about the future of the planet. (Aug.)