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One of the Greatest Costs of Global Warming
September 17, 2013 Environment

Is supposed to be the forced relocation of entire villages that will be inundated with water. Never mind that sea levels rise slowly, and that these relocations are expected to take place on time scales far longer than “normal” migration, and this poses no particular difficulty. For now, I found this little (celebratory) news story interesting/ironic?

Village

As part of an ongoing effort to reduce human conflict with wildlife, the Indian government has been encouraging communities living in and around nature reserves to relocate for the sake of peaceful coexistence — and last month, everyone in Ramdegi did just that. Around 200 families agreed to accept incentive packages to move beyond the reserve’s borders, freeing the land to be reclaimed by the surrounding biodiversity.

This is not the first time an entire village has moved out so nature could move in. Across India, nearly a hundred communities have already voluntarily relocated to widen tiger reserves, and dozens more are expected to follow suit in the years to come.

human capacity for compassion in making room for nature just might prove to be the greatest quality of all.

Hmm. We can relocate entire villages for the sake of a few buffalo and cats, but …

"4" Comments
  1. …not for a flood. Ignoring costs, letting nature move in to flourish is more understandable than letting nature in to destroy, especially when “we’ve” caused the “destruction”.

  2. The guys in the UN are still waiting for eighty trillion carbon credits, and I bet there will be a big feeding frenzy, if it happens, One of my bets is that the people in Bangladesh never would ever see a dime of this grand redistribution of your and my wealth. Anyone want to take any side bets with real money? Your own money, as opposed to other people’s?

  3. The jungle moving back into a village in India is one thing; the ocean moving back into Battery Park is another.

    • Good example, especially since parts of the battery (particularly a little north and west of it) were ORIGINALLY underwater until we dug up the Hudson and used the landfill to make more land in Manhattan. But that’s just a coincidence. The question would be whether over the course of 100 years a place like the Battery can be slowly relocated as buildings’ lives come to their useful end, and reasonably cost-effective methods of holding back floodwaters are built out in the interim. The challenge is most severe in lower Manhattan given the large fixed costs there already (many, many, many tall buildings and subway infrastructure), so if that problem seems manageable there, I’d argue it would be more tractable elsewhere.

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