Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The World Bank predicts we may see 140 million climate migrants before long, and given the chaos that even a million people fleeing the (partially drought-fueled) crisis in Syria created, we better come to grips.
On a recent Saturday, the Overland Park, Kansas, Farmers’ Market bustled with customers by 7:30 a.m. Amid dozens of vendors, four graduates from the New Roots for Refugees program sold sustainably grown kale, plump cucumbers, enormous scallions, bright red cherry tomatoes, and more.
The governments of the United States, Mexico, and Central American countries need to confront the root causes of migration and allow migrants the basic rights afforded to them by international laws.
Seven months after Juan and Jonathan Leija were forced to evacuate their flooded homes during Hurricane Harvey, the cousins face challenges that go beyond just recovering their lives. Building back isn’t easy for anybody, but the Leijas are doing it as looming policy decisions threaten to uproot them again.
With IMBY we wanted to answer the question of how, starting from design and production methods, we could build a house that could foster social integration and civic engagement in a sustainable model. And this can only be done by empowering the people.
There’s a difference between simply settling somewhere and finding a home. Refugees are faced with this reality every day — among new neighbors in a new city, building a sense of belonging is no small task. Working to create a place for oneself is a bold act of hope for a new life. So, what can public spaces do to help create a sense of place for refugees?
While there is no one park or town square that can accommodate 22.5 million people, which is the global refugee population according to recent UN estimates, public spaces can still play a key role in addressing today’s global refugee crisis.
I am part of a group of 12 people living in the village of Saleres, Valle de Lecrín, close to Granada in Spain. We come from Europe, West Africa, South America and the Middle East. Some of us are called refugees, others expats, some locals, others migrants and some foreigners.
In projects across the UK, people are growing, preparing and sharing food together. In this time marked by unpalatable narratives of us and them and who deserves to be where, food can create a common ground on which to meet.
Just outside of Chapel Hill, 32 ethnic Karen, Chin, and Burmese immigrant families are transforming the 5-acre nonprofit Transplanting Traditions Community Farm into a haven that reminds them of the war-torn homes and farms they were forced to flee.
The Lemon Tree Trust is a United Kingdom-based nonprofit organization which facilitates greening innovation and urban agriculture in refugee camps in Iraq, Uganda, and Jordan. “People are arriving with almost nothing and are literally making home, so the garden becomes representative of a space that people have control over, some ability to be creative, and a space to just be in after they’ve undergone this process of forced migration,” says co-founder Mikey Tomkins.
Talking with those farmers in the Tenosique train yard felt, in a way, like a scene from a sequel to the movie The Road in which a father and son walk across a post-apocalyptic North America devastated by an unknown cataclysm. In reality, though, I was just in a typical border zone of the Anthropocene,
