This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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What should the world do about climate migrants?

By:   []

Date: 2022-05 

Climate change is a threat multiplier. It exacerbates existing inequalities, like economic unevenness between countries, inequities among populations due to race, gender, class, and so on. It also reaches into every corner of modern life, making it futile to approach it through the usual issue silos. We need a comprehensive approach that builds on points of intersection to create sustainable economies and ensure that rights and justice are secured.

Workers, women, and those populations most affected by the global pandemic and structural inequities need to be central to deliberations in both climate and migration arenas. Policy desperately needs to catch up with this reality. It needs to recognise the rights of those displaced due to climate and the need for avenues for safe migration that offer long-term solutions.

Moving as the Earth warms

Instead, there has been growing concern in the run-up to the IMRF that the GCM’s laudable commitments to addressing the adverse drivers of migration and to ensuring “safe”, regular and orderly migration are being watered down and even contested. Hedging on commitments and progress is especially concerning given the consequences that we are already seeing on a daily basis worldwide. Consider the recent stories shared during a virtual event on women, migration and climate:

Thousands of the women responsible for packing bananas on plantations in Honduras lost their jobs in the aftermath of recent hurricanes. These storms have become larger and more frequent with climate change. While unions fought to reinstate their jobs, the women waited months for production to come back online without income and or social support.

Persistent droughts, irregular rainfall, higher and more extreme temperatures, and flooding are affecting the entire region of Central America, including its ‘drought corridor’. Local agricultural production has drastically diminished, fuelling population displacement and out migration. This is evidenced by regular ‘caravans’ of migrants seeking safe travel to new destinations.

Instability in conflict areas of Africa is growing. Families internally displaced by climate-related factors in Nigeria have not only experienced physical threats, harassment and violence, but have lacked state support for medical care, access to electricity, sanitary conditions, education for children, and more. Many see little recourse but to move again, within the region or beyond, for safety and survival.

The Environmental Justice Foundation has estimated that in Bangladesh, often cited as one of the most “climate-vulnerable” countries in the world, one in every seven people could be displaced by climate-related factors by 2050. Upwards of 18 million people are projected to need to move because of sea-level rise alone.
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/what-should-the-world-do-about-climate-migrants/
[2] url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
    
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