Geographical 2020-12 UserUpload Net

84 Pages·2020·15.02 MB·English

Geographical

www.geographical.co.uk
December 2020 • £4.99
MAGAZINE OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY (WITH IBG)

CAN WE PREDICT
CLIMATE MIGRATION?
TIM MARSHALL
ON BELARUS
EARTH PHOTO:
THE SHORTLIST

WHY ENGLAND’S AGE OLD NORTH–SOUTH
DIVIDE IS GETTING WORSE

A COUNTRY
DIVIDED

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Contents

December 2020 • Volume 92 • Issue 12

47
SPOTLIGHT ON:
SABAH
Pockets of abundance
in the land around the
Kinabatangan River in the
state of Sabah hint at the
destruction beyond

CLIMBING FOR
CHRISTMAS
Every autumn in the
Caucasus Mountains,
men climb to the top
of Nordmann firs to
harvest pine cones

MOVING STORIES
Climate change is forecast to
trigger mass migration, but are
these predictions really accurate?

EARTH PHOTO: SHORTLIST
Shortlisted images from Earth
Photo, the prestigious competition
developed jointly by Forestry
England and the RGS-IBG

18
28

63

WORLDWATCH
6 Mother’s microbes
8 Bushmeat
9 Climatewatch
10 Cartogram: space travel
12 I’m a geographer:
Steven Amstrup
14 Zoos and conservation
15 Geopolitical hotspot:
Belarus
16 WildEast programme
17 Fishing for the future

REGULARS
54 Geo-graphic: energy
inequality
56 Reviews
60 Geo-photographer:
Matthew Maran
72 Where in the world?
73 Crossword
74 In Society; RGS–IBG events
78 Discovering Britain
82 Next month: ylang ylang;
Readers’ corner

DEPARTMENTS

COVER STORY

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December 2020 • 3

36

THE NORTH/SOUTH
DIVIDE

England has long suffered
from a North–South
divide that plays out
particularly starkly in
education, transport and
health. Despite numerous
attempts to tackle it, the rift
shows no sign of healing

LOOKING FURTHER
It’s hardly the usual build-up to Christmas. As the UK continues to tackle
coronavirus, it’s uncertainty and silence that fills the air rather than joy, laughter and
that more 21st century sound of Christmas: the babble of shoppers. But, with several
companies offering online delivery, one aspect of the festive period may yet stay the
same – the Christmas tree. After all, if we’re going to spend so long at home, why not
fill it with the heartening scent of pine. Yet, how many of us really know much about
these lifeforms from a forest far away, which come to briefly share our home?
It’s easy enough to find out where your selected tree was grown – it might be
Denmark or Norway or even the UK. But this is only the second half of the story.
Before growing, someone has to pick the seeds and a huge number of these come
from one small region in Georgia. Eighty per cent of Nordmann fir trees sold in
Europe are thought to have started life in the Caucasian nation, which exports
between 25 and 70 tonnes of Nordmann seeds annually. On page 22, Clément
Girardot and Julien Pebrel travel to meet the men who pick these seeds. Unsatisfied
at low prices and poor workers’ rights, they may well wish that Christmas tree
consumers were willing to look a little further into their trees’ lifecycle.
Looking further also lies at the heart of Chris Fitch’s investigation into the
statistics frequently circulated about climate migration (page 28). Vast numbers of
people have long been predicted to leave their homes due to the climate crisis, but
where do these figures really come from? And how can they be verified? What Chris
finds is a situation much more complex than simplistic headlines suggest, revealing
that in the face of the challenges to come it’s important to be prepared, both to face
the threats and to carefully question them.
Katie Burton
Editor

Welcome

Contributors

‘Very few people
know much about
their Christmas tree,’
says French freelance
journalist Clément
Girardot. ‘When you
think about Christmas
trees, you don’t think that
it’s an industry with many
similarities to the coffee
or chocolate industries,
where raw material is
extracted in one country
and processed in another
with a lot of inequalities
involved, but this is the
case.’

‘The creation of hundreds
of millions of refugees
has been an anticipated
consequence of climate
change for decades,’ says
writer and author Chris
Fitch. ‘But does it do a
disservice to people in
developing communities
to suggest that, at the first
sign of environmental
change they’ll pack up
and leave home? There
are many reasons why
such a mass movement of
people might not unfold
on a large scale.’

‘The Thames plays a
rich and vibrant part
in our past as well as in
the 21st century, for me
this makes it one of the
world’s most fascinating
living monuments,’ says
Ann Morris. ‘It’s home to
me, and millions of others
living within reach of its
banks, as well as to an
extraordinary collection
of wildlife from Britain’s
rarest bumblebee to some
of the largest aggregations
of wintering waders and
wildfowl in the UK.’

Geographical

December 2020 Volume 92 Issue 12

4 • Geographical

Publisher Graeme Gourlay

Editor Katie Burton

Designer Gordon Beckett
Staff writer Jacob Dykes
Subeditor Geordie Torr

Cartographer Ben Hennig

Operations Director Simon Simmons

Sales and Marketing Director Chloe Smith

Editorial Advisory Board
Chris Bonington, Ron Cooke,
Nicholas Crane, Rita Gardner,
Robin Hanbury-Tenison,
Annabel Huxley, Vanessa Lawrence,
Nick Middleton, David Rhind,
Antony Sattin, Nigel Winser

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