Throughout this podcast, we’ve talked a lot about human migration events we are witnessing today. We’ve examined how displacement, poverty, persecution and economic opportunity have all contributed to human movement throughout history. But what I want to address today, is how the earth’s changing climate may act as another factor that drives human migration into and out of certain countries. And most importantly, how our slow response to climate change may put more than just those in developing countries at risk.

So what will human migration look like in the future? What factors will drive the movement of the human race? And how will we address the growing need for humans to seek asylum, for reasons other than persecution?

We’re spending the last episode of this series in the country in which I call home, New Zealand. To examine the effects of climate change on human migration, and how the international community plans to address this new category of refugees.

Whether or not Climate Change is a real thing is no longer a question I think we should be asking. According to the New Zealand Government, there is an astounding amount of evidence that tells us that the average temperature of the world’s atmosphere has been increasing over the past 150 years.

This evidence includes:
A reduction in snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere
Changes in the heat stored in the ocean
And changes in rainfall patterns resulting in more floods, droughts, and intense rain (New Zealand Ministry for the Environment 2018)

Despite the vast amount of scientific evidence supporting this claim, efforts to address the effects of climate change, and limit our contribution to the problem, have remained weak. Among my peers, while most of us agree that climate change is an important issue, we don’t often don’t think about it as an immediate threat. And this psychological response is a part of the reason why policymakers have made so little progress in encouraging us to change our behavior.

Things get worse as you move up the chain of command. Climate change policy is not seen as a priority, and at worst, it’s seen as a hinderenous to country growth and development. Just last year, the United States pulled out of what was probably the most crucial piece of climate change-related policy in this decade.

The scary thing is just how much of a threat climate change poses to our daily lives. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time” (IPCC 2013).

Around 10 percent of the world’s population live in low elevation coastal zones (Greenfieldboyce, 2007). But by 2100, sea levels may rise by as much as three feet, submerging inhabited islands and coastal areas. With this comes the risk of contaminated drinking water, interference with agriculture, and the disappearance of entire coastal communities (Harvey 2015).

And it’s not just rising sea levels that pose a threat. Last year, wildfires tore through Southern California forcing thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes. Hurricanes in Florida and Texas forced even more to flee. By 2500, the middle of this century, it’s estimated that climate change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people (Gemenne 2011). Quoting directly, “If this group formed a country, it would be the fourth-largest in the world, with a population nearly as large as that of the United States”.

But while climate change will affect nearly everyone on the planet, those in developing nations will likely be affected the most. Extreme weather events and tropical diseases can wreak havoc in these regions, with inadequate housing increasing the likelihood of displacement (Martin 2015).

The Pacific Islands are some of the most susceptible to the effects of climate change. Already, at least eight low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean have disappeared under rising seas (Klein, 2017). Thousands of people have already fled, including those from Tuvalu and Nauru, which, because of poverty and proximity to the sea, represent what Tom Bawden, the Environmental Editor for the Independent, has called “the ground zero of climate change” (Bawden 2015).

And this is where my home country of New Zealand comes in. In 2017 the New Zealand Government announced it was considering a world first by creating a new visa category to help relocate those in the Pacific Islands who had been displaced by climate change. One immigration specialist estimated that there are at least 3000 people in New Zealand who, while officially classed as overstayers, could also lay claim to being climate refugees if these new rules were implemented (Wilson 2017).

Currently, there is no standard definition for what a climate refugee is under international law. In fact, climate migrants aren’t even officially recognized as refugees, and as such are afforded none of the protections that come with this status. There doesn’t even exist a global agreement on how to help the millions of people who have already been displaced by natural disasters.

And New Zealand doesn’t have the cleanest track record when it comes to acknowledging this category of migrants. In 2017, two families from Tuvalu made cases to New Zealand’s immigration and protection tribunal for refugee status. The families had fled their homes after experiencing a lack of access to clean and sanitary drinking water due to the effects of climate change.

Despite their claim, the New Zealand tribunal ruled that the families did not qualify for refugee status since they were not at risk of persecution. Ultimately, the family was forced to return to Tuvalu (Bonnet 2017)

Here is a paragraph I pulled from UN Dispatch:

This kind of migration (climate change migration) is hard because it doesn’t fit the traditional framework of migration. Migration is often viewed in terms of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors. Refugees, forced out of their homes by violence they have no control over and at risk of death, are ‘pushed’ into other countries, while economic migrants are ‘pulled’ to other countries by the prospect of better opportunities. But with environmental migration, it is difficult to say whether a person was ‘pushed’ or ‘pulled’ from their country.

It’s easy to say that lack of food security and disappearing land ‘pushes’ people from their homes, but neither one of these things are due to violent conflict or risk of persecution, the things asylum seekers must prove in their claim. At the same time, it is easy to conclude that dwindling opportunities due to environmental changes ‘pulls’ people to other countries, but this lack of opportunity is not within their control and can often be the only means for their continued survival (Kurtis 2017).

A new concept has emerged amongst academics called survival migration. Originally coined by the scholar Alexander Betts, survival migration recognizes that people may have excellent reasons for fleeing not just from persecution, but also from the effects of environmental change, food insecurity, and state fragility (Maley 2016, 39).

Despite this, we’re still pretty far from reaching concrete policies regarding climate refugees. Solutions to climate change often are bounded by state borders and are limited by the concept of private property (Jones 2017, 147).

But climate change does not observe borders, states or boundary lines. Hurricanes destroy human settlements both in the United States and the Philippines. Oceans strip fish life across the world. And rising sea levels will affect both countries that produce pollution and those that do not.

I’ve been accused by my friends of having a very apocalyptic outlook of the future. And, probably rightly so. It’s hard to spend most of your time at university reading about human rights and migration issues, and not come out feeling a little disheartened.

I’m pessimistic by nature, so when I’m confronted with issues like the refugee crisis, climate change, and mass migration, it’s sometimes easier to develop a level of apathy about the whole thing, and just switch off.

But I think this is dangerous.

It is all too easy when confronted with crises like the European refugee crisis, to lose sight of the individuality of refugees and the specific experiences of suffering, separation, and dislocation.

Now, back in Episode 1, I said that I wanted to find tangible solutions to the issues addressed in this podcast. And then I paused, acknowledging how silly that sounded. These are big issues, things that even the United Nations and individual states continue to struggle with.

So, here is my two cents on what I think you and I, the little guys in a big world of power players, businessmen and politicians, can do to address some of the issues brought up in this podcast.

First, you can become better informed, which you’ve already started by listening to this podcast’s eight episodes. Unless, of course, you just skipped to the end, in which case, hi, I’d love for you to check out the other seven episodes.

If you are a voting member of a democracy, I can’t express to you how much your vote actually matters. What issues and policies make it to the debate floor  depend so much on how you vote, and who you vote for. But it’s really hard to vote effectively when you don’t know what issues you think need to be addressed, and which candidates will actually get behind those issues.

There is this video on Infowars that is a good example of what happens when voters are ill-informed about their candidates and their policies. The question posed was, “Who do you want to be US president and why.” Just listen to these responses.

I truly don’t mind who you vote for, but please from the bottom of my heart, have a better answer for voting for a candidate than ‘not Hillary because of the twitchy thing.’

Next, you can donate. Now, I know that it can feel impersonal. But I truly believe you can make an impact by donating to whatever organizations you deem as providing a service that improves society as a whole. A couple of good ones to start off with are UNHCR,  Refugees International, and World Relief.

And finally, I want us to remember that there is always hope. I know that this podcast was a bit of a downer in some ways. So I want to end this series with a final anecdote.

I was wondering the streets of Barcelona on World Refugee Day, and I ran into a group of people who had set up a row of canvases outside of town hall, and who were proceeding to paint in what was at least 30-degree weather. I learned they were from an organization called ‘Drawing for Smiles’ and I had a chance to talk to one of their members.

“We organized the drawing of a comic book, and we are going to paint it live.”

And then he said something that stayed with me:

“We’re here to say welcome. Refugees are welcome.”

Bibliography

Arnall, A. “Introduction to Politics of Climate Change: Discourses of Policy and Practice,” Geographical Journal 180, 2014, 98-101

Bawden, Tom. “Thousands Are Fleeing the Pacific Islands on the Front Line of Climate Change.” The Independent. December 02, 2015. Accessed August 06, 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-thousands-flee-pacific-islands-on-front-line-of-climate-change-a6757796.html.

Bonnett, Gill. “Climate Change Refugee Cases Rejected.” Radio New Zealand. October 24, 2017. Accessed August 07, 2018. https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/342280/climate-change-refugee-cases-rejected.

Burkett, M. “A Justice Paradox: On Climate Change, Small Island Developing States, and the Quest for Effective Legal Remedy,” University of Hawaii Law Review 35, 2013. 633

Curtis, Kimberly. “”Climate Refugees,” Explained.” UN Dispatch. April 24, 2017. Accessed July 19, 2018. https://www.undispatch.com/climate-refugees-explained/.

“Evidence for Climate Change.” New Zealand Ministry for the Environment. May 30, 2018. Accessed August 06, 2018. http://www.mfe.govt.nz/climate-change/why-climate-change-matters/evidence-climate-change.

Gemenne, François. “Why the Numbers Don’t Add Up: A Review of Estimates and Predictions of People Displaced by Environmental Changes.” Global Environmental Change 21 (2011). Accessed August 7, 2018. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.09.005.

Greenfieldboyce, Nell. “Study: 634 Million People at Risk from Rising Seas.” NPR. March 28, 2007. Accessed August 06, 2018. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9162438.

Klein, Alice. “Eight Low-lying Pacific Islands Swallowed Whole by Rising Seas.” New Scientist. September 7, 2017. Accessed August 06, 2018. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146594-eight-low-lying-pacific-islands-swallowed-whole-by-rising-seas/.

Harvey, Chelsea. “Sea Level Rise Won’t Just Cause Flooding — These 5 Other Impacts of Rising Oceans Are Just as Bad.” Business Insider Australia. February 18, 2015. Accessed August 06, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/5-terrifying-impacts-of-rising-sea-levels-2015-2?r=US&IR=T

Martin, Richard. “The Science Behind the Pope’s Declaration on Climate Change.” MIT Technology Review. March 28, 2016. Accessed August 06, 2018. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538586/climate-change-why-the-tropical-poor-will-suffer-most/.

“Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2013.

Wilson, Tim. “NZ Could Win Global Kudos with Climate Change Refugee Visa but Workable Policy Tricky, Says Expert.” 1 NEWS NOW. November 8, 2017. Accessed August 07, 2018. https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/nz-could-win-global-kudos-climate-change-refugee-visa-but-workable-policy-tricky-says-expert.