Season 1, Ep. 8: Should we call people climate refugees?

Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.

Art and documentary

‘Climate Refugees (external link) ’, by Michael Nash, Multicom Entertainment Group (2010)

‘Fleeing Climate Change – The Real Environmental Disaster (external link) ’, by Thomas Anders, DW Documentary (2019)

‘Planet SOS from Palau to Alaska: Where will climate refugees go when the tide rises? (external link) ’, by Al Jazeera (2019)

‘The Age of Consequences (external link) ’, by Jared P. Scott, STARZ Documentaries (2016)

Donate or get involved!

‘Hudara (external link) ’: Standing with communities

‘Refugees International’

‘UNHCR’: Climate change and disaster displacement

Media

‘A new kind of climate refugee is emerging’, by Willem Marx, NPR (2 December 2022)

‘As the Planet Warms, Canada Faces an Influx of Climate Refugees (external link) ’, by Hanna Hett, Wired (18 September 2022)

‘Beyond environmental refuge (external link) ’, by Robert McLeman, TEDxUOttawa (18 October 2021)

‘Does climate change cause migration? (external link) ’, by Daniela Paredes Grijalva, TEDxDonauinsel (21 July 2022)

‘How climate migration will reshape America (external link) ’, by Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times (15 September 2020)

‘Human migration and global environmental change (external link) ’, ‘MigSoKo project, YouTube (2 February, 2022)

‘Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change (external link) ?’, by Gaia Vince (17 November 2022)

‘The great climate migration has begun (external link) ’, by Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times (23 July 2020)

Research projects and policy

‘Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (external link) ’, Geneva

‘MigSoKo (external link) ’ Research Group, UFZ Leipzig, Germany

‘Sustainable Development Goals (external link)  (SDGs)’, United Nations

‘Global Report on Internal Displacement 2022 (external link)  (GRID): Children and youth in internal displacement’, Internal Displacement Monitoring Center

International agreements and conventions

‘The 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol’, United Nations

‘Global Compact on Refugees (external link) ’, United Nations (17 December, 2018)

‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (external link) ’ (GCM), United Nations 10 December 2018

‘Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change (external link) ’, RCC Kampala, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Ministry of Water and Environment of Uganda (29 July 2022)

‘The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants’, United Nations (19 September 2016)

‘The Paris Agreement (external link) ’, UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) (12 December 2015)

‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’, United Nations (1992)

Books

Ginty, A. (2021). ‘Climate change solutions and environmental migration: The injustice of maladaptation and the gendered ‘silent offset’ economy (external link) ’. Routledge.

McLeman, R. (2013). ‘Climate and human migration: Past experiences, future challenges (external link) ’. Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges. Cambridge University Press.

Miller, T. (2017). ‘Storming the wall: Climate change, migration, and homeland security (external link) ’. City Lights Books.

Behrman, S., & Kent, A. (eds) (2022). ‘Climate refugees: Global, local and critical approaches (external link) ’. Cambridge University Press.

Rosignoli, F. (2022). ‘Environmental justice for climate refugees (external link) ’. Routledge.

Academic works

Ebi, K. L., & McLeman, R. (2022). ‘Climate related migration and displacement (external link) ’. BMJ.

Groth, J., Ide, T., Sakdapolrak, P., Kassa, E., & Hermans, K. (2020). ‘Deciphering interwoven drivers of environment-related migration–A multisite case study from the Ethiopian highlands (external link) ’. Global Environmental Change.

Groth, J., Hermans, K., Wiederkehr, C., Kassa, E., & Thober, J. (2021). ‘Investigating environment-related migration processes in Ethiopia–A participatory Bayesian network (external link) ’. Ecosystems and People.

Hauer, M. E., Fussell, E., Mueller, V., Burkett, M., Call, M., Abel, K., ... & Wrathall, D. (2020). ‘Sea-level rise and human migration (external link) ’. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.

Hermans, K., & Garbe, L. (2019). ‘Droughts, livelihoods, and human migration in northern Ethiopia (external link) ’. Regional Environmental Change.

Hermans, K., & Ide, T. (2019). ‘Advancing research on climate change, conflict and migration (external link) ’. DIE ERDE: Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin.

Hermans, K., & McLeman, R. (2021). ‘Climate change, drought, land degradation and migration: exploring the linkages (external link) ’. Current opinion in environmental sustainability.

Høeg, E., & Tulloch, C. D. (2019). ‘Sinking strangers: Media representations of climate refugees on the BBC and Al Jazeera (external link) ’. Journal of Communication Inquiry.

McLeman, R., Wrathall, D., Gilmore, E., Thornton, P., Adams, H., & Gemenne, F. (2021). ‘Conceptual framing to link climate risk assessments and climate-migration scholarship (external link) ’. Climatic Change.

McLeman, R. (2019). ‘International migration and climate adaptation in an era of hardening borders (external link) ’. Nature Climate Change.

McLeman, R., Fontanella, F., Greig, C., Heath, G., & Robertson, C. (2022). ‘Population responses to the 1976 South Dakota drought: Insights for wider drought migration research (external link) ’. Population, Space and Place.

Wiederkehr, C., Ide, T., Seppelt, R., & Hermans, K. (2022). ‘It’s all about politics: migration and resource conflicts in the global South (external link) ’. World Development.

Magdalena Perzyna

Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. As global temperatures rise, vulnerable areas around the world are facing environmental disruptions and extreme weather events. Challenges like floods, drought, and deforestation are causing a fundamental shift in the daily lives of many in the global South. These kinds of environmental shifts are forcing people from their homes and livelihoods, creating climate-related migration. Today, we're exploring the idea of a climate refugee. It's a popular term in the media. But is such terminology accurate? Two researchers will help us unpack the catchy phrase and guide us through some of the nuanced intersections between the environment and migration. But first, we'll hear from Daniela Paredes Grijalva. She's a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna, and a member of the Global (De)Center.

Magdalena Perzyna

In 2019, Daniela was on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a place where just months earlier, a strong earthquake had caused a tsunami and a rare phenomenon called soil liquefaction. The consequences were absolutely devastating.

Daniela Paredes Grijalva

In February 2019, the death toll had been over 4000 and over 170,000 people were displaced. Financial losses, which are obviously also difficult to calculate, but they surpassed the $1 billion mark. The homes of 60,000 families were severely damaged or destroyed. Well, in short, it was a terrible time for the people of Sulawesi, especially central Sulawesi.

Magdalena Perzyna

Daniela wanted to learn about how these disasters impacted mobility on the island. She wondered, who left, who stayed, and why? So as part of her research, she interviewed a wide range of people.

Daniela Paredes Grijalva

I started talking to humanitarian and development workers in Indonesia that had been involved in the post disaster response. I was trying to understand the logics with which these organizations operated on the ground, to try to identify if this intersection of environment and human mobility was something that they were doing explicitly or not.

Magdalena Perzyna

The more Daniela spoke with different actors, the more she realized that many organizations had very specific ways of describing who their beneficiaries were. For example, some would refer to them as "disaster victims". But Daniela quickly learned that these kinds of terms did not always reflect how Sulawesi residents described their own experiences. So, she kept asking questions.

Daniela Paredes Grijalva

During one of my interviews, I kept on asking about, well, what about this term? And this is obviously a limitation, or more than a limitation. The angle with which I was coming, right from university. I want to have my categories clear, what words am I talking about? What concepts so I kept on asking, What about refugee? What about displaced person? What about internally displaced? What about international migrants? What words are you using in your work? And I did end up annoying the person on the other side [laughing]. And they got back to me saying regular people, just regular people.

Magdalena Perzyna

This response prompted Daniela to think more deeply about how environmental disasters are just one of many challenges people face. And it was an important reminder on how the environment intersects with other fundamental human rights.

Daniela Paredes Grijalva

These interactions, I heard of people who, those who hadn't registered births or marriages. And because of that reason could later not make any claims to disaster compensation or participate in relocation programs. That seems like a pretty basic or fundamental thing that also needs to be addressed. And I think that's a good reminder for those of us working in this field of environmental migration. Yes, it's a specialized field. At the same time, I guess the challenge is how do we connect it to basic human rights?

Magdalena Perzyna

Just as important a lesson for Daniela while being on the ground in Sulawesi was the fact that many people prefer to stay and self-organize to mitigate their circumstances. Their approaches to dealing with the disasters were often different from that of aid organizations.

Daniela Paredes Grijalva

It's common in post-disaster responses to bring in tents and build camps. When I talk to communities that self-organized, they did not build tents. What they did was go to the forest and gather natural materials that were available to them that they were familiar with and that were, relatively light in case of aftershocks or other earthquakes and left enough space for people. They didn't cramp people into a single camp. That was not the logic, right? Often times, people decided to go back to the same [place] and build these temporary shelters from materials they've gathered in the forest, exactly in the same place or not too far away from their destroyed home because that was their land. They had attachment to that land.

Magdalena Perzyna

Seeing how many local residents responded also ran contrary to the media narrative that those impacted by climate disasters want to go to the global North.

Daniela Paredes Grijalva

Talking to people on different islands of Indonesia, I rarely encountered people who after traumatizing disasters, like earthquakes, wanted to actually, wanted to actually leave the country.

Magdalena Perzyna

Many thanks to Daniela Paredes Grijalva for sharing her experience in Sulawesi with us. Here to help us separate the myths from the facts surrounding climate-induced migration is Dr. Kathleen Hermans, head of the MigSoKo research group at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig Germany. Her work looks at the links between environmental change and human migration in the tropics. And Robert McLeman, Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and policy adviser on the effects of climate change and global migration patterns. Thanks to you both for joining me! People love a catchy phrase, and the term climate refugees seems to have taken root. What exactly does the term refer to? Robert let's start with you.

Robert McLeman

So the term refugees is an old word, it goes back hundreds of yours and historically it meant anybody who simply migrated because they had no other choice, but they had to migrate. After World War II, that term actually became codified in the United Nations Convention about refugees which said that, under international law, a refugee is someone who is forced to leave their home and cross an international border because of persecution, violence, or other factors like that. So, we have this international definition of what a refugee is. When people start to use the term environmental refugee or climate refugee, they're implying people who must leave their homes because of typically natural disasters or extreme storm events or floods or things like that. But it's, it's more of a lay term that really doesn't fit under international law.

Magdalena Perzyna

Kathleen, do you think climate refugee is a useful term?

Kathleen Hermans

The term climate refugee supports a narrative that climate migration is kind of a crisis and the phenomenon is largely originated in the global South and poses a burden on the global North, if not even a threat to the global North. So, in that sense, I don't really consider it as a very useful term. It plays with the fear of people. And also, the scientific evidence for all this is lacking which makes it actually quite kind of misleading.

Magdalena Perzyna

The UN has terminology to define who a refugee is, do you think climate refugee should be added to their definition?

Robert McLeman

There's a challenge that we face right now, in the sense that we have a definition of what constitutes a refugee, there's a UN Convention about it and in theory, the international community is obliged to protect people who are displaced because of violence and conflict. But we do a very, very poor job of doing so. There are millions of refugees in places like Kenya and Turkey, and all around the Middle East, people who meet the existing refugee definition, but they are not receiving protection, they're not being resettled. They're not receiving any assistance whatsoever from the international community. So, I think like a lot of people, I hesitate, when people say, well, let's expand the definition of a refugee to include this new class of people who must move from their homes because of environmental reasons. The question I have is, are the resources going to be put into place to allow these people to be resettled, to receive protection, if they need to relocate. Until I see more progress on the existing refugee population around the world, which right now is, estimates range from anywhere from 30 to 60 million people, depending on the circumstances. If we're doing such a poor job already, do we really want to create a new class of people if they're not actually going to receive that protection? And also, the other thing to think about is that there are other options for dealing with this challenge as well. Maybe it's something that's better dealt with in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Maybe it's something that's better dealt with in the context of the New York Convention on Safe and Orderly Migration and Refugee Protection. There's a lot of different international policy tools that could be used and mobilized to help people who are exposed to climate-related risks better adapt, whether that means staying in place, whether that means moving. But I don't know if expanding the existing Refugee Convention definition is perhaps the best policy tool for doing so.

Kathleen Hermans

Well, I totally agree with what Robert says and including a certain group of people into the conventional the definition of refugee automatically means also excluding some others. And this would potentially mean, it could potentially weaken the Convention as such. An alternative approach, on top of that what Robert already mentioned might be to come up with a, we are creating a new convention, but it might be, but it might be a very long process, and governments might not really want to engage in that.

Magdalena Perzyna

What areas of the world are most likely to create environmental migrants and why? Robert?

Robert McLeman

In one sense, we already know where environmental migrants are found. Each year, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center in Geneva releases statistics, annual statistics on people who've been displaced from their homes by floods and droughts and storms, and wildfires and so on. And each year without fail going back over the past decade, there are certain countries that are in the top 10. So, we're talking about China, Vietnam, Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the United States. So, without fail, large numbers of people each year are displaced from their homes by weather related events that will be made worse by climate change. So, in one sense, there's no mystery about where folks are being displaced. Plus, we have more episodic events. So, for example, in East Africa, right now, there's a severe drought and so a lot of people are being forced to migrate because of that. In Australia a few years ago, we had people displaced from their homes by wildfires. In British Columbia, we had people displaced by floods two years ago. So, we already know where these things are happening. So, in one sense, the future is going to be a lot more people displaced in those countries by similar events. Added on to that is that sea levels are rising, and that increases the threat to coastal communities of extreme storms and storm surges and king tides and, and salinization of coastal land. And so there will be a lot of coastal areas that are also extremely exposed to the impacts of climate change. And this ranges from everything from small island states in the Pacific, where, you know, everybody lives within a meter or two of sea level to large states or large cities, like Shanghai, or Dhaka city in Bangladesh, which are large urban areas that are situated very close to sea level and are therefore exposed. So, we're talking essentially about an upscaling of people on virtually every continent who are at threat of displacement because of climate change.

Magdalena Perzyna

Kathleen, where are people going?

Kathleen Hermans

Most people they stay within their own national border. So, they don't cross international borders, they don't travel long distances, but they stay close to the places where they actually live, at least as far as they are able to do so. So, this entire misperception about people moving from the global southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere because climate change pushes them to do so, that's actually quite wrong. People stay where they - prefer to stay where they used to live.

Magdalena Perzyna

In talking about environmental migrants, we mainly talk about those who are moving. What about those who are left behind those who can't or don't want to move?

Kathleen Hermans

Well, indeed, I mean, if you talk about climate mobility, we also need to talk about immobility. And it's just a matter of fact that the majority of people remains in situ. Also, in facing climate change and climatic risk… So, for example, in one of our research on climate adaptation strategy, of nearly 10,000 rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa drylands, we found that one in four households actually engages in migration as a response to any sort of environmental change. This also means that 75% apply a variety of strategies to adapt to environmental changes, climate changes in situ. And this is mainly related to farming practices, natural resource management, and so on. So, to me, the question is, why do people actually stay? And the reasons for this can actually vary extremely among people, but also communities. And as you already indicated, some people don't want to leave their homes because they're attached to the place where they live. Others don't leave because they have responsibilities at home, and this restricts them to move. And then again, as I say, when they want to leave, but they don't have the resources because they lack the money for the journey. Migration is expensive, they suffer from bad health conditions. Or they simply miss a social network that can support or advise them. And it's particularly this latter type of immobility, this involuntary mobility that can be problematic, because it can increase existing inequalities, it can create new ones, it can also intensify or create future vulnerabilities to climate change. So, I think, taking together and immobility and its reasons are just as diverse as mobility.

Robert McLeman

So yes, when we think about migration, I mean, we often are simply talking about the movement of people from point A to point B, but it's actually a much more complex system. So, when people move, what they often do is they're moving for economic reasons, or social or family related reasons, as well as perhaps environmental reasons. And once they move, they often try to remit money home to loved ones who remain behind, and that money is reinvested to help strengthen the resilience of the household. In some cases, whole communities will rely on remittances to help build up their capacity to adapt to a changing climate, or to changing economic conditions. And so, the key thing to think about when we're talking about environmental migration is to look at it within the context of the wider economic system, and the wider social systems that exist in places that are exposed to climate risk, because it's part and parcel of a larger process of adaptation.

Magdalena Perzyna

What do you think is the biggest myth or misconception about climate induced mobility?

Kathleen Hermans

Well, for me, the deterministic narrative that climate change leads to massive waves of migration, these so-called climate refugees from the Southern into the Northern hemisphere, with entire regions or community being abandoned, and people having no choice other than leaving. This, I think, for me is probably the biggest misconception about climate-induced, migration. It's still very persistent, though. And, yeah, there's pictures often used and maintained both by left and right wing parties to justify their own political programs and goals. And it can be strengthening border control regimes, or it can also be to push action towards climate protection, whatever it is, yeah.

Robert McLeman

I think one myth is that everybody, at least in Western countries, northern countries, seems to think that it happens to other people in other places. And I think that misconception is starting to change as more and more climate related disaster events hit places like California and Vancouver and British Columbia, and Western Europe and so on. But there's still this perception that it's happening to other people in other parts of the world, typically poor people in poorer parts of the world, and that those of us who live in high income countries can sort of, you know, we can take our time and we don't really need to, you know, it's not an urgent humanitarian crisis, when in fact, you know, if we look at our own history, here in North America, for example, during the 1930s, we had hundreds of thousands of people displaced by drought, during the Great Depression. As I've mentioned, we've had a number of extreme flood and storm events. In recent years, we've had wildfires in California. And we're in the midst of a mega drought in Southwestern United States right now, where water supplies are falling dangerously low in places like Phoenix, Arizona, Los Angeles and other parts of the Southwest. And if those drought conditions don't ease in the next couple of years, there will be a water-related crisis. So, I think that's the key thing that we need to dismiss with this myth that it happens only to poor people in poor countries.

Magdalena Perzyna

Given what climate change is doing to the planet, global warming, drought and rising sea levels. Should government start planning for more of this kind of migration?

Robert McLeman

Yes, absolutely. Anybody who thinks that in a climate disrupted future, there's going to be less migration and less displacement is living in a fool's paradise. They're deluding themselves completely. And we see this already, like I said, last year, in 2022, almost 25 million people around the world were displaced from their homes by floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires. And those events are going to happen with greater frequency and intensity. In a world where the climate has changed. And unless we get our greenhouse gas emissions under control, those numbers are only going to increase. So, the question becomes, when do you start planning for this? And I was involved in a project a few years ago, just before the pandemic, where the governments for the cities of Seattle and Portland in the Western United States, called in a group of experts, and essentially what they wanted to know was, 'when can we expect more migrants from the southwestern United States because of drought and water scarcity'? And the reason they wanted to know now is that if they're going to have an increase in migrants arriving from the southwestern United States, they need to start building infrastructure now to accommodate these people. Things as mundane as electrical transmission towers and water treatment plants and sewage and so on. Because it takes 20 to 30 years from the moment of conception to the actual rolling out of these large infrastructure projects to accommodate population growth. And so that's an example of a group of communities that are thinking ahead. But these are very localized examples. And I think, and I hope that governments are starting to recognize that this is not some over the horizon problem. We are at the horizon, these things are already emerging. So again, the question becomes, how are we going to actually manage these population displacements and the desire to migrate created by climate change?

Kathleen Hermans

I totally agree with Robert. Absolutely. So, to me, the question is how this should or could happen. And as I just said, today, national governments, they often seek reasons to justify a politics of closed borders, or intensifying border control regimes to prevent the so-called climate refugees from entering their territories. And so, climate migrants are viewed as a threat to national security, even though there is no substantial evidence to support this claim. So, for me, a first important step would be to change the political discourse. So, governments need to acknowledge that migration has always been a part of human behavior. And it's not good or bad, per se. So being mobile or becoming mobile can have both positive and negative effects on human wellbeing for both sending and receiving communities. And in addition to that, and in addition to that what Robert just mentioned, politics needs to listen to those who are directly affected by climate change and climate risks. And they need to listen to their needs, they need to listen to their imaginations of their own futures. And this sounds quite trivial, but it's hardly taken into account in national international policies.

Magdalena Perzyna

We've touched on policies a little bit. What measures need to be put in place now to help mitigate the difficulties environmental migrants face?

Robert McLeman

The first step is obviously the international community needs to actually act upon the international climate agreements, the Paris Agreement, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and get greenhouse gas emissions under control because that's at the root cause of this. In terms of, but even if we do act on climate change, and we are acting very slowly, there are there are going to continue to be people who want to move or who need to move because of climate change and its impacts. And so, the wider narrative in Western countries in the last decade or so has been to look at migration generally, for whatever reason, as a problem that needs to be controlled, that needs to be limited. Every Western country, every high-income country is happy to receive migrants who are computer programmers or medical professionals and so on. But generally speaking, they are very reluctant to receive migrants in general and certainly do not want to receive refugees or people who are displaced from other countries. And when those events happen is referred to as a 'migration crisis'. And that mindset, regardless of why people are moving, that mindset needs to change. We have countries in North America, in Europe, in Asia using military technologies, drones and surveillance tools. And often, in many cases, the military itself to try and prevent people from moving across borders, and in some cases, even within countries. And that mindset needs to change. We need to look at migration as something that when it's done properly and properly means giving migrants rights and protections, the same as other people. When it's done properly. Everybody tends to benefit. The receiving communities, the sending communities, the migrants themselves. When we try to control and restrict migration, what we do as governments is we force migrants into the hands of organized crime, we force them into dangerous behaviors, clandestine border crossings, and things like that. And they are never allowed to enter into the legal workforce. And so one of the things that I've emphasized in my own career is that migration is going to happen. What the challenge is, is what are the circumstances under which it's going to happen? Is it going to happen openly and regularly with rights and opportunities for all? Or is it going to be done in the shadows? And when it's done in the shadows? That's when migration becomes a problem.

Magdalena Perzyna

Kathleen, what do you think?

Kathleen Hermans

Well, I think in line with what we just discussed, I think there is no need for policies that aim to avoid climate migration and closing borders. For all the reasons that were just mentioned. I think the question to be addressed in policymaking should be, how can migration improve the well-being of populations that are affected by climate change? So, for example, last year, the Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change was signed by a couple of nations from East Africa, including the Horn of Africa. And this declaration was or is considered a milestone that supports thinking in the direction of mitigating difficulties that environmental Americans face. And the aim is to prioritize and to stimulate global support to deal with the impacts of climate change on human mobility. So, this is all kept rather broadly. But it calls for greater cooperation between nations to adequately respond to the diverse consequences of climate change and migration. And of course, it remains to be seen how this declaration will be implemented in reality, but it sounds promising. And in principle, this is the way forward, so focusing on cooperation, focusing on exchange and focusing on learning from each other.

Magdalena Perzyna

Looking to the future, how do you see us adjusting our behavior and adapting to a new climate reality?

Kathleen Hermans

It's a good question. We don't know what the future will bring. But given that climate change will intensify, there will be an increasing need to adapt to these changes, just as just mentioned, and likely this will also increase mobility. It's difficult, however, to predict human behavior and future migration dynamics, for a couple of reasons related to assumptions, related to uncertainties, related to many, many aspects. And above all, human behavior. Migration is not necessarily rational, and it can be quite counterintuitive. Still, I think it is likely that some regions that are currently populated will become unsafe or perhaps even uninhabitable. So, think about regions that are expected to experience climatic conditions which are similar to those that we currently find in the center of the Sahara only, or think about densely populated low-lying coastal areas that will be threatened by sea level rise. And in such situations movement out of these regions or even planned relocations are quite a likely consequence. Yes.

Robert McLeman

Unfortunately, I see us doing it reluctantly, slowly and only in response to extreme events or crises. We've known about the risks of climate change for many decades now. We've known about the impacts that climate change has on communities, on households, on cities, on countries. The science has been very clear for many years, what the risks are. And the social science has also been very clear for many years now, at least 15 to 20 years about how people respond to climate risks, and how institutions can either facilitate effective responses or how poor policies and poor institutional decisions restrict people's ability to adapt and can actually create situations where people are worse off. As a scientist when I see the international community lurching so slowly forward on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, on implementing the sustainable development goals that we've agreed upon for several decades now, on trying to put into place reasonable policies and practices to deal with refugees and migrants. And it's moving so slowly, at a time when the environmental changes that we're experiencing are happening at much faster paces. So unfortunately, I would like to be optimistic, it's always nice to get to the tail end of a podcast and say the future is rosy and that you know, we're on the right track, and so on. I genuinely feel that our policymakers are not on the right track. And the only time they get on the right track is when there's been a crisis in their home country and they suddenly realize, 'Oh, my goodness, we need to do something'! The way that we prevent people from being involuntarily displaced from their homes, is to make them better able to adapt and cope with these changes. And part and parcel of that means making them less poor than they are today. If poor countries, 50 years from now are no longer poor countries, we have gone a long way towards reducing a lot of the involuntary displacement risks that we're going to face. But conversely, if poor countries 50 years from now are still poor, we simply create humanitarian crises of the of the type that quite frankly, we're not well equipped to deal with.

Magdalena Perzyna

Given what you've shared with me, do you think anyone has the risk of becoming an environmental migrant?

Robert McLeman

I would not say that anyone has the potential to become an environmental migrant, I think everybody has the potential to experience loss or harm because of the impacts of climate change. I can't think of a single community where people live in some sort of wonderful bubble where the natural environment does not have affect their well-being directly or indirectly. So, for example, perhaps we you know, someone who's fortunate enough to live in a community where there's rarely any sort of extreme weather events or, you know, shortage of water or any sort of, you know, limitation on natural resources. The reality is that our global economy is an interconnected one. So, we have a drought in Australia, food prices rise in the Middle East. We have a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, food prices rise. We've seen this during the pandemic, supply chain disruptions on everything from, you know, from automobile parts to microchips. So, these sort of systemic interconnections within the economy means that even if you are fortunate enough to escape the direct impacts of climate change, you're never going to be immune from the larger societal and economic consequences of climate change.

Magdalena Perzyna

Kathleen, do you have anything to add?

Kathleen Hermans

I mean, it's true that we are today, we're talking about people leaving regions that were quite rich in the recent past, and that were for example, considered as being touristic hotspots, like talking about the Mediterranean regions here in Europe. And that we know now because of extended drought periods, of water scarcities, of extreme demands that people leave those regions. And of course, this comes together with a couple of other reasons for leaving, just as Robert mentioned, but it's certainly something that occurs, and we are talking about. I am not going to say that everybody of us can be a potential climate migrant. But in principle, everybody who's highly exposed and sensitive to climate change and who has limited capacities to adapt in situ in principle can become a climate migrant.

Magdalena Perzyna

Thanks to Dr. Kathleen Herman's and Professor Robert McLeman for joining me today and thank you for listening. This is a CERC Migration and openDemocracy podcast produced in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Borders & Belonging on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on climate induced migration, please visit the show notes. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening!