FOR MORE INFORMATION:
DR. LEILA ZAKHIROVA, associate professor, Political Science
(218) 299-4823
AMY KELLY, College Communications and Media Relations director
(218) 299-3642
CENTENNIAL LECTURE ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND
POPULATION GROWTH IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Dr. Leila Zakhirvoa, associate professor of political science at Concordia, will present a Centennial Scholars Lecture, “Heat, Drought and Famine: The End of Population Growth in the Muslim World?” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 28, in Morrie Jones Conference Center A-B, Knutson Campus Center.
Zakhirova's research examines the link between climate change and population growth in Muslim-majority countries. Her primary objective is to challenge the demographic forecast of the 2015 PEW study, which projects the Muslim world expanding faster than the Christian world and as a result, Islam could surpass Christianity as the world’s predominant religion for the first time in history. Zakhirova’s research provides an alternative framework by rethinking population projections in Muslim majority countries for the next 50 years vis-a-vis climate change.
Zakhirova argues that with the rapidly deteriorating climate, the probability of population growth will be constrained in areas that are a) more impacted by global warming and b) less prepared to cope with the changes. Climate change is generally expected to cause more drought, famine, and extreme heat, which will make living conditions unsuitable for human existence and have a detrimental effect not only on population growth but quite possibly on human survival in some places. Climate change is not likely to be the only cause of instability in the Muslim world, but if temperatures continue to rise while rainfall continues to decline in already hot and arid regions, food production will be severely limited forcing those who can afford to migrate and those who cannot to perish. Whatever the precise role of climate change, it seems quite conceivable that extreme warming on a scale not experienced in millennia could contribute directly or indirectly to massive population reductions in the Muslim world, which has few resources with which to avert such reductions.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
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