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The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC), goes beyond the headlines of rising sea levels or temperatures. It shows the full extent of the threat to human existence in a warming world.
It explains how extreme weather conditions, drought, habitat loss, species loss, urban heat island, and destruction of food resources and livelihoods are all becoming more severe. Scientists are now more certain that climate changes are having an impact on migration.
People who contributed the least to climate change are most affected by climate-related displacement. Thanks to the repeated failure of the world’s major powers to address climate change, extreme weather in Central America, fires and storms in North America, flooding across Europe and Asia, and drought in Africa are forcing people to move.
The Red Cross confirmed last year that it was already dealing in the aftermath of climate change in all 192 countries it serves.
The IPCC report recognizes that migration is a form of climate adaptation – and that it is already occurring. This is a critical correction to the common narrative that climate-linked displacement is a problem to be managed in the near future.
This view is often accompanied in wealthy countries by fearmongering about climate refugees. Across the Global North, ever more public money is being funnelled into a growing border-security and surveillance industry that promises to tackle the “threat” with a “Global Climate Wall.”
The industry’s lobbyists and political allies claim that advanced networks of weapons, walls, drones, surveillance technology, and lawfare will be needed to protect powerful countries against future waves of climate displacement.
Climate walls are not designed to provide such protection. They threaten civil liberties (in wealthy countries as well as elsewhere) and divert funds from meaningful climate action to the pockets of crisis profiteers. Worse, they are closely connected to the fossil fuel sector, global finance and the arms industry, who profit from the conflicts that produce refugee flows (and which climate change will increase).
These false solutions already endanger lives and livelihoods. In 2020-21, 2,000 people were killed in the Mediterranean due to illegal “pushback” policies in the European Union (EU). People who are turned away at the US-Mexico border flee extreme weather conditions and are now languishing unindefinitely in detention in countries ranging from Australia to Britain.
The IPCC report has the right to emphasize the importance of decarbonization to stop further displacement. But we cannot stop there. We must press the governments of major emitters and receivers of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to help countries that are at risk of irreversible loss or damage due to climate change. If the global climate movement focuses solely on renewable energy, and not on alleviating the suffering caused by the climate emergency already here, it will fail.
What else should we do? First, we must protect both the right of movement and the right of staying. Climate finance is vital to build resilience and limit migration. It is also essential to improve disaster warning and relief systems.
However, we also need financing to enable safe movement of people when needed. Most displacement takes place within countries and not between borders. Therefore, it is important that we ensure that the poorer countries have the financial resources they need to manage both long-term and short-term resettlement.
Second, when climate-linked displacement crosses borders, we need to respond with pragmatism, compassion, and not paranoia or profiteering. Instead of spending money on surveillance infrastructure and dystopian military, the money should be used to support legal and safe routes for those who need to move.
Today’s dominant political impulse is to try and divide people based on their birth circumstances. We could have more resources and a new political vision to ensure that both host communities and newcomers benefit from immigration.
Third, we must increase our understanding of what constitutes climate-linked displacement. People who are fleeing from storms, fires, or floods need support. Climate change is also a major factor in resource shortages and income loss, political instability, violent conflicts, and political instability. We must resist any attempts to limit who counts as a climate-displaced persons.
We can’t wait for disaster to strike before we act. We need to start thinking about ways to plan migration with dignity so that people in vulnerable areas can move before the worst happens.
Despite its shortcomings the IPCC report recognizes that human migration is an important component of the solution to the wider crisis of climate. Both in the Global North as well as the South, vulnerable, displacee, and indigenous communities have already seen their lives altered by climate change, fossil-fuel extraction, pollution, and climate change.
They have much to teach us about preserving life in a heating world, if we seize the opportunity to bring people together, to foster cross-border problem-solving, and to push back against the petty nationalism that has hamstrung the world’s pandemic response.
There are already solutions to displacement. Also, there are legal and moral foundations for establishing practical agreements among governments. International action is needed to ensure that everyone has a safe and dignified life.
A climate movement that has learned how to protect human life to its fullest must be at forefront of this effort.
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