Displaced Americans

As the world watched in awe and horror while hundreds of thousands of displaced Americans scurried across the richest nation on Earth searching for new homes, it became clear that no matter how wealthy or powerful, no country is impervious.

Indeed, being displaced by natural disasters may very well become the central epic of the 21st century. Kiribati, the Maldives and Tuvalu are disappearing as we speak, as the sea level continues to rise. The World Bank estimates that with a 1 meter rise in sea level, Bangladesh - with a population of 140 million - would lose 17.5 percent of its land mass and along with it river bank erosion, salinity intrusion, flood, damage to infrastructures, crop failure, destruction of fisheries, and loss of biodiversity.

China, in particular, is a hot spot of environmental disasters as many of its places buckle under unsustainable development, giving rise to air pollution and toxic rivers.

As the number of the displaced by failing ecosystems increase, the work for their protection is failing behind. While a political refugee is given some modicum of protection, often those who fled their environmentally devastated homeland are seen as mere migrants. When President Obama granted temporary protected status to undocumented Haitians living in the United States in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, it was a baby step in the right direction for human rights.

After all, repatriating them back to a living hell would be immoral at best, and at worst, a crime against humanity. But it is a small step toward addressing pressing needs and legal protection of this growing population.

Reforestation

Many more steps are needed. Policies toward addressing a solution involving the millions of climate refugees should also include addressing the issue of reforestation, and rehabilitating degraded land and soils, as well as addressing desalination of low coastal areas.

Those involved in man-made environmental devastations - illegal mining, toxic dumping, and oil exploration -that cause natives to flee should be held fully accountable in international courts and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and be held responsible for the resettlement and compensation of those they displaced. No doubt these efforts are more than challenging but they are the necessary steps in the right direction.

"One of the marks of a global civilization is the extent to which we begin to conceive of whole-system problems and whole-system responses to those problems," noted political scientist Walt Anderson in his book "All Connected Now." "Events occurring in one part of the world are viewed as a matter of concern for the whole world in general and lead to an attempt at collective solutions."

Whether humanity can move toward a global civilization will depend by and large on how it can act collectively deal with what's arguably the central issue of our time: climate change and resulting human displacement.

There's an old saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats." But in the age of melting glaciers, that tide is an ominous threat. The global age will not be as golden as some had predicted unless this dire challenge is met by whatever means necessary. For rising tides will not just send more refugees fleeing but, if ignored, could swallow humanity itself.

Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora" (Heyday Books, 2005) and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His next book, "Birds of Paradise Lost," is due out in 2013.