Updated post
I was fortunate to have been sent a hardback copy of Gaia Vince's Nomad Century six weeks ahead of publication, which takes place in just over a week's time on the 25th of August.
This is a particularly useful book for geographers and geography teachers and students, as it explores themes which are included in all courses at whatever level: migration and movement, climate change, food and water security, demographic change and conflict.
Migrants lead to economic growth. They improve our livelihoods (have you used the NHS recently) and often do jobs which we might not be prepared to do ourselves. We will need a great many dementia nurses in the coming decades. Gaia gives the example of immigrants who go on to create brands and start companies. The sons of immigrants include Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Alphabet. The Pfizer vaccine was developed by migrant workers.
There are a great deal more of course, and these are unpicked across the book's 12 chapters.
It starts by explaining 'the Storm' that is to come: "a great upheaval... it will change us, and our planet".
This is driven by the climate emergency and demographic change. It is a threat not to the planet, but our species.
We have seen this summer more locations breaking the barrier of 50 degrees C which with humidity is not liveable. People living in a band close to the equator and tropics will have no choice but to move. They need to be facilitated to do that rather than prevented.
There will be a number of belts of habitality which are showed on one of the maps in the book. People will aim for these arks.
Borders will need to become increasingly porous and their status renegotiated. The migrants will not be kept out, and they will number in the billions.
And anyone reading this could potentially become one of 'them', as sea levels rise, crops fail and energy, food and water supplies which we see as 'safe' show themselves to be anything but (witness the river levels in the UK, Europe and the USA - which get the majority of the news coverage of course).
And the UK's climate is as vulnerable as any to changes in atmospheric patterns driven by melting ice in the Arctic changing ocean salinity and the uncertain state of the jet stream. We won't like what replaces it.
The storm will be brought by what Gaia calls the "Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene", whose horses are shod by climate change: "a threat multiplier".
The Four Horsemen are fire, heat, drought and flood.
Heat is a particular threat, partly because the oceans have protected us from temperature rises up to now. Thawing permafrost releases methane and melting Arctic ice changes the albedo of thousands of square miles.
After the opening explanation of the storm to come, Gaia focusses on a range of issues in successive chapters, setting out why movement will take place, and how that can be facilitated.
The chapter called 'Leaving home' explains why so many people will leave their homes, and with them disrupt the movements of our 'stuff' whose flows can be seen on maps of shipping routes, internet cables and other products. For this Gaia goes into our past (an area she has also explored in her excellent previous book 'Transcendence' which I have used for its sections on the importance of stories and narratives and language for humanity.)
Some elements are also drawn from the travelling that Gaia did in order to write her book 'Adventures in the Anthropocene'. She talks about that here.
This movement can be seen in our DNA. Even those who spout nonsense about the need to keep migrants out of Britain would find, if their DNA was tested that they were anything but British... who belongs anywhere?
In 'Bordering on Insanity' there is a very useful diagram which shows the human climate niche: the zones of latitude where most of humanity lives (currently). This niche is almost all in the Northern hemisphere of course, and Gaia explains how our climate niche is shifting north at around 400m per year. We are going to have to get over our out-group prejudice. Anyone living in the UK is climatically 'lucky'.
The arguments against those who are all for keeping out migrants are easy to dismantle. Gaia uses the example of Governer Kristi Noem from South Dakota. In April 2021, she tweeted:
She was presumably unaware that South Dakota only exists because "thousands of undocumented migrants from Europe used the Homestead Act from 1860 to 1920 to steal land from Native Americans without compensation or reparation".
Many countries are facing depopulation and a reduction in the number of births. Some countries have introduced systems for applying points to those wanting to enter for various aspects of their education and skillset and age.
What makes someone 'highly skilled'?
Much of the movement is also from rural areas to urban areas. I liked this sentence as a discussion point:
"Rural living is the single largest killer of humans today, owing to poorer access to healthcare, clean water and sanitation; greater levels of poverty and malnutrition and riskier livelihoods".
She talks about the Nansen Passports issued after the First World War in response to a need. She suggests that:
"Our best hope lies in cooperating as never before: decoupling the political map from geography".
We need to live where the resources are, as we used to.
In 'Haven Earth' Gaia explores areas which I have other books on by Laurence C Smith - with expansion of northern cities. Trump wanted to buy Greenland after all for a reason. Why not read 'America City' for more on this theme as well it's fiction, but entirely plausible. Greenland is already seeing the start of agriculture. This chapter also mentions other examples I've previously blogged about including Seasteading, and new nations funded by Bitcoin tycoons. One area that has been mentioned recently is charter cities. Gaia explores how migrants might be housed and explores the word 'slum'. She outlines how Spitalfields and the Brick Lane has developed from its time housing immigrants in poor quality housing. There is also the Spanish city of Parla, which I hadn't been aware of but could become a useful case study to research a little more with social housing.
This book is potential case study / vignette gold in that regard. 3D printed houses perhaps...
Things don't always go according to plan when developing urban schemes, with bad examples such as Bijlmermeer which I remember teaching about back in the late 1980s, before a terrible plane crash in 1992, which I remember well.
There are quite a few references to Germany's stance on migrants through the decades. In 2015, Angela Merkel famously opened the doors to a million new arrivals with the phrase: "Wir schaffen das" ("We'll manage")
Gaia also explores the need for sustainability, particularly within the Anthropocene cities which will house many of the migrants. Cities are not currently designed to cope with heat, and even air conditioning is not enough as it simply spreads the heat around to somewhere else. It also requires a stable supply of energy and there are going to be issues there too - Spain has already restricted temperatures for air conditioning this summer for example.
How will cities be developed to be resilient? The IKEA BoKlok is mentioned here.
The final quarter of the book looks at particular things we will need for our newly distributed populations: Food, Water, Power and Stuff.
Food we can't do without and there will be issues facing food production in the future with higher temperatures and other consequences. The city dwellers of the future will require an increase in food production, but we have seen crops growing at reduced rates this summer in the UK due to water issues and high temperatures. We also have a reliance on a relatively small number of crops. Rising temperatures will reduce the carrying capacity of the Earth. The oceans may not provide the same amount of protein for those nations that rely on them as well, but we may look to algae as one option it is suggested.
Gaia suggests that lab grown meat is not the answer, or fish farming because of expense. Insects are consumed by billions regularly already, but they could be used to feed animals instead, freeing up crops for human consumption. It is likely that many people will transition towards a more plant-based diet.
I have a unit on the issues with feeding the world's population in 2050 and the chapter on food provides a great deal of additional input for that.
We will need to consider the distribution of wealth and the idea that economic growth is a good measure of 'progress'.
There is another useful section on the need for a circular economy and much better use of scarce resources, including the need for car ownership.
Water is another vital resource and is likely to end up being the biggest driver of migration. Some communities rely on shrinking glaciers for their water, or groundwater which is getting harder and harder to access. Cape Town almost ran out of water a few years ago (something I talked about at an IB event in Geneva at the time)
The book is recent enough to consider the response to Ukraine's refugees as a 'test' for some countries which neighbour the region - we don't come out well in that regard.
Gaia offers hope throughout the book even as she lays out the threats we face. "A liveable planet is not a lost cause". It's a book with an optimistic message despite the issues laid out in the first third of it.
"Migration will save us, because it is migration that made us who we are." We all make continual virtual migrations through the products we consume, whether that be food or raw materials.
There is also the need to restore nature and to help nature to heal areas that have been damaged with collaboration between nations needed.
Part of this would be facilitated by a planned move into the large cities that Gaia talks about earlier in the book, freeing up space for nature (and food production).
There is some mention of geoengineering, which has been talked about for decades and is not without controversy with some saying it would have unintended negative consequences.
The book concludes with an 8 point manifesto for the future action that will be needed.
Wir schaffen das.
There is a list of further reading at the back of the book - I think I have most of them on my shelves - and plenty of referencing of reports and documents which would reward further investigation by teachers (and/or older students interesting in finding out more).
The book is available to pre-order from all the usual online places, and from next week you can pick one up from your local independent book shop. It is very readable and full of facts that teachers will want to jot down as they read and will certainly be
Image: Book and review in 'The Observer' last weekend - Alan Parkinson and shared under CC license
Update
A review in today's Guardian, following a LONG READ written by Gaia on Thursday.
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