Environment Expansion of uninhabitable zones - in the context of the period at the beginning of the 21st century

Environment Expansion of uninhabitable zones - in the context of the period at the beginning of the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, it was pointed out that billions of people may be forced to live in regions that fall outside the comfortable climatic conditions in which human civilization was built, namely, the average temperature range of 13 to 25 degrees Celsius. The prediction that without migration, one-third of the earth's population would be forced to live in regions with average temperatures exceeding 29 degrees Celsius, and that extreme heat like that of the Sahara Desert would become the norm was already being voiced as a scientific alarm at this time.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, set a goal of limiting the temperature increase to within two degrees Celsius, but the withdrawal of the United States and the expansion of emissions by emerging countries made the protocol ineffective. As a result, global warming progressed, with heat waves occurring frequently in India and Pakistan, and temperatures exceeding 40°C day and night becoming the norm in the Middle East, leading to an increase in deaths. In the Sahel region of Africa, droughts and food shortages have worsened, and the outflow of refugees has become an international problem. These phenomena shook the world not as future threats but as crises that had already begun.

The population explosion and rapid urbanization during this period also exacerbated the situation. Hundreds of millions of people in South Asia and Africa, where cooling systems and power grids were inadequate, were exposed to extreme heat, and heat stroke and water shortages became social problems. Although efforts were made to develop heat-resistant crops, energy-efficient building materials, and high-efficiency cooling technologies, economic inequalities limited their spread. As a result, the practical solution of emigration emerged, and high-latitude regions such as Canada and Northern Europe attracted attention as potential new settlements. It was also around this time that the new issue of "climate refugees" emerged in the post-Cold War international order.

Thus, the expansion of uninhabitable zones was depicted as a phenomenon that intertwined scientific findings, population dynamics, international politics, and technological limitations, and as a crisis of human survival deeply rooted in the historical background of the early 21st century.