Climate Migration 101

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CHAPTERS 

[00:01:29]: How climate change contributes to migration decisions today 

[00:03:53]: Sudden-onset versus slow-onset climate impacts and their effects on mobility 

[00:06:57]: What data can—and cannot—tell us about the scale of climate-related migration 

[00:10:19]: How climate change affects refugees and migrants beyond initial displacement 

[00:13:52]: Immobile or “trapped” populations in climate-vulnerable contexts 

[00:16:15]: The term “climate refugee” and its limits in international law 

[00:19:40]: Geographic patterns and emerging areas of concern 

[00:22:44]: Migration’s potential role in supporting climate adaptation and the green transition

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:02.16] 

Hi there. This is Changing Climate, Changing Migration coming to you from the Migration Policy Institute. This is a podcast dedicated to unraveling how climate change is affecting the way people move and in some cases can't move around the world. My name is Julian Hattem, I'm your host and I'm also the editor of MPI's online magazine, the Migration Information Source, which is dedicated to exploring and demystifying migration trends worldwide. Today's episode of the podcast is going to zoom out to provide a 30,000 foot view. It's our introductory course. We're calling it Climate Migration 101. I know there are a lot of big questions out there about how climate change is affecting migration, so let's answer them. To help me tackle some of these big issues, I'm joined today by Lawrence Huang. Lawrence is a colleague of mine here at MPI where he has become our go to Climate Migration expert. It was only a matter of time until we got him on the podcast and I am very pleased to welcome him today. Lawrence, how you doing, man? Thanks for coming on.

[00:01:12.12] 

Thanks for having me. Lovely to be here.

[00:01:14.22] 

So let's start with a simple question that I know does not have a simple answer, right? Is climate change a major driver of migration today?

[00:01:24.20] 

Good question. And yes, definitely not a simple answer. I mean, the short answer is yes, it absolutely is. There is no doubt that climate change is a growing reason why people are moving, both within countries and internationally. Once we get past there, though, it gets a bit more complex. So what we know is that people don't tend to move just because of climate change. Instead, what we know is that people tend to move because climate change is affecting various other things that make them choose to move or be forced to move. Things like conflict. And we're seeing, not a direct link, but a pretty good link between instances where natural resources are getting scarce or hard to come by and conflict which leads to people moving. Or think about coffee farmers in Guatemala and who we know during times of drought tend to be forced to move, whether that be to another city, to a city within Guatemala, or as is increasingly the case internationally. So we see people being forced to move indirectly through all of these different the ways that climate impacts their livelihoods. But we're also looking at increasing numbers of people being forced to move because climate change is making natural disasters more severe, more frequent.

[00:02:49.08] 

And when we, when we're seeing massive cyclones and hurricanes and floods, those tend to be associated with sort of the 20, 30 million people of displacements each year.

[00:03:01.22] 

And one of the things that gets to, is kind of a critical point here, which I think is worth drilling deeper down onto. Right. Which is that climate change manifests in a lot of different ways. Some visibly direct like cyclones, hurricanes, these things that are kind of more common, fast onset events we'd like to call them, right. Which can take place in just a few days or a few hours. And then there's slower onset events, sea level rise, desertification, long term droughts, etc. Which take place over years and decades for migration. Like what's the difference, what is the difference between these kind of rapid onset displacements that happen overnight, more or less, and these longer term slower onset events that can take place over much longer periods of time?

[00:03:48.05] 

Yeah, good question. I think the difference here is actually quite intuitive. So if you're looking at a sudden onset event, a fast onset event, you've got a cyclone that leads to immediate large scale displacement. Think about, you know, even in the United States, where we are floods in cyclones or hurricanes in Florida, right. You see massive numbers of people moving. If it's a really large sudden onset natural disaster. The key thing though is that most people tend to return. So if you look at those sudden onset events versus those slow onset climate events like sea level rise, like desertification, like the glacial melting, you don't see those being directly linked to such massive displacements, massive numbers of people moving. If sea level has risen to the point where you aren't able to adapt in place where your, I mean, if your house is underwater, you cannot return. And that is sort of the edge case, that's the extreme case. But yeah, the distinction here is between fast onset events that lead to immediate, but often temporary, usually temporary displacement, and these slower onset events that make certain areas of the world just much harder to live in and therefore are associated with longer term, often permanent movements, usually internal, sometimes international.

[00:05:11.07] 

And when you talk about things like the Guatemalan coffee farmer who can no longer for whom coffee is no longer profitable, or places like conflict, those tend to be slower onset factors. Right, that's, that's one of the distinctions

[00:05:24.08] 

that is generally true. I think we're getting to a place in the world where actually the distinction between sudden and slow onset may become less useful. Because we're looking at Guatemala or Bangladesh countries, especially regions within countries where either disasters and these sudden onset disasters are becoming so routine and frequent that it's having a similar effect, or where these slow and sudden onset events are intertwining. And I think I often talk about the Mekong River Delta where we've Got really significant sea level rise. And that's a slow onset event. But what that's doing is actually making it so that when there is a flood, a sudden event, the flood is worse because the sort of baseline sea water level is higher. And so these two are definitely interplaying. But the general trend of sudden onset, think about the cyclone, lots of people leaving but eventually coming home versus a slower onset. That, that binary is still generally true

[00:06:30.06] 

for now, but they can't compound each other. I guess you, let's put some numbers on this briefly. You mentioned what tens of millions, 30 million something displacements per year? I mean, give me some numbers. How many people currently move because of climate change? Because in kind of quotation marks now and in the future and I guess how many, how many of those movements are permanent? To the extent we can say permanent migration versus short term temporary displacement.

[00:06:57.07] 

You're laughing because none of us know the answer to that question. And anybody who is saying that they know that, you know, 1.2 billion people are going to move is wrong and, or lying. The simple fact is you cannot predict how many people are going to move because of climate change because we don't know who counts as a climate migrant. So if you ask the person showing up at the US border, did you move because of climate change? The answer will almost universally be no. Because they moved because going back to our hypothetical Guatemalan coffee farmer, because of livelihoods, because of security, because they want a better life, or, and, and because, you know, they are fleeing gangs and persecution and all these other events. Climate isn't the direct factor. So you, if you sort of follow up with them and ask them, is climate part of the factor, part of the reason why they're moving? Often the answer is yes, but because we don't have a clean definition of, you know, is climate, to be a climate migrant, do you, is it you are moving only because of climate change or is it you are only moving in, in part because of climate change?

[00:08:11.06] 

Because we don't have that, we cannot estimate the number of people who are moving because of climate change. We have some pretty good models and data. So we have pretty good data on the number of disaster displacements each year covering most of the world. And that number is growing and tends to be between the 20 and sort of high 20s of millions of displacements. That does not mean that 20, 30 million people are being displaced each year because often the same person is being displaced. Many times there's a flood, you leave, you come back, there's another flood. We also have fairly good modeling of slow onset related internal climate migration from the World bank where it's a little over 200 million. Their expectation, their prediction, if all things go as they are currently, that we will have about 200 million internal climate migrants by 2050. The important thing to note about that model is in their model, if we take strong climate action and that means cutting emissions, investing in adaptation, working out how to help people move in safe ways, that number drops. Their prediction is it could drop by 80%. So yes, that's still a huge number, but that's not a huge number that will happen.

[00:09:35.04] 

It's a huge number that could happen if we don't take action.

[00:09:38.22] 

I guess let's expand the scope a bit more. Right. How else is climate change affecting migration? I mean, yeah, what does it mean for people who might want to migrate but might not be able to or who are already migrating? Seasonal labor migration, things like that? I guess what else is going on? Let's back up a bit.

[00:09:57.12] 

Yeah, no, I love this question because we think about climate and migration and we immediately think about ways of people moving because of climate change. Actually the policy problems that we need to deal with in the short term that are going to lead to huge, even human suffering and economic and socioeconomic issues. It's not around huge waves of climate migrants. It's actually climate change is going to really harm and adversely affect migrants and refugees who are moving because of non climate related reasons. And there's a few ways in which we can think about this. One is around refugees. Whether they are living in camps in urban areas, wherever they are, they're often clustered in places where they are really vulnerable to climate and environmental risks. A couple examples, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are geographically clustered in a place called Basho Chan or in a certain area where they're really vulnerable to floods, to landslides and to cyclones. And there was a cyclone just a few months ago in early to mid 2023, which really posed a lot of risk. There are about a million Rohingya living primarily in shanties or in really non, you know, not in cyclone resistant shelters.

[00:11:20.14] 

You look at, there's another example is Belize where they had a huge wave of migrants coming from Central America decades ago, fleeing conflict. Climate did not play a link a part of that at all. But they often live in informal settlements outside of the cities which they just, they're not climate resilient settlements. I heard, I was talking to somebody who's doing a project in Belize where they said that actually there's one road leading out of the settlement. And that road, whenever it rains, literally gets washed away. The severity of the rains, the frequency of flooding, it's getting so bad that literally the settlements get isolated. You cannot leave and enter. So there's this, this element around protecting refugees and migrants in their settlements and making them more climate resilient. The other, other element to note is that transiting, moving is getting more dangerous, can get more dangerous because climate change is making desert deserts hotter. And if you are walking through the desert to get to the United States, to get to the European borders, that can get dangerous. There are also examples of families going from Guatemala and then transiting through Mexico. And it was during flood season, there were really heavy rainstorms.

[00:12:50.15] 

And that actually led to health problems because if you are moving irregularly, you are not necessarily, you don't really have, I mean, you don't have shelters. So there's that element. And then the other element to raise is around what we call trapped populations or immobile populations. So we often talk about all these people moving because of climate change, but actually a lot of people aren't moving both because they don't want to move. And here the typical example is we have really good anecdotes and evidence from Pacific island communities who are really trying to adapt in place because they have spiritual ties to the water, to the land, to where they are. They don't want to move, or because they are other communities who can't move. So migrating is expensive. It's hard. We don't have pathways for people to move. And that means that a lot of people who are really suffering in climate vulnerable contexts can't move even if they want to move.

[00:13:53.21] 

That's interesting. There's this common phrase about climate refugees which, as we will discuss, is not a thing. That's a, that's a term of ours that is a popular narrative term, but doesn't really exist in law. But also this notion that you bring up of climate refugees being refugees by other senses, but who are affected by climate change and even though climate change was not a factor in their becoming refugees, now is a factor in their life as refugees, I think there's a, an interesting and tragic relationship there. But, but tell me, let's talk about this word, climate refugees. That's not a thing, that's a meaningless term. What does that mean?

[00:14:31.01] 

It's not meaningless, but it's not a thing.

[00:14:34.16] 

Because you talk about the difficulties of moving, the lack of legal pathways to move. Say more about that. Why? Why is it so hard?

[00:14:42.02] 

Yeah. So let's talk about what is a refugee. We have a convention, a legal, a global convention from 1951 that says there are five grounds for you to have to claim asylum. Climate is not one of them. It's race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership in a political social group. Lots of debate about what those mean. But climate clearly doesn't fit into one of those five grounds Instead. And that means that if we're trying to create a global legal definition of climate refugees, we are going to have to reopen the convention. You're going to have to have political discussions, international law gets in play and, and there's no appetite to do that. And doing that is risky. And in today's political climate, it is highly unlikely that that would lead to more protection. It would lead to less people being able to claim asylum and get refugee status. Climate can sort of play a role in how people can claim asylum. So if you are a member of an ethnic minority who is unable to get water because there are, there's scarce water, it's a drought, and the government or the local authority or the community decides that only the dominant ethnic group can access the water, you are, through your status as an ethnic minority, potentially eligible for asylum.

[00:16:11.03] 

But climate itself, no. This gets to the broader point that we don't have pathways. We don't have legal pathways for specifically climate migrants to move. Generally speaking, there are sort of, there are a few efforts to make climate specific pathways. So look, Argentina is trying to do a program where people who are displaced by disasters in the region can get protection. In Argentina, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development IGAD in East Africa has a protocol where disaster displaced people who move across borders can access protection. These are ongoing efforts, but notice in both cases it was disasters. We don't have climate specific pathways for people to move because of desertification, because of sea level rise. And importantly, these are the exceptions. We don't have global permanent pathways specifically for climate migrants. And to a degree there is an argument that we shouldn't because.

[00:17:18.24] 

Say more. Why?

[00:17:20.07] 

So this is perhaps controversial, but the fact is that people affected by climate change aren't always the most vulnerable and they don't generally fall within our convention definition of refugees. Um, I mean, I'm Australian. We had wild, we had fires, bushfires a couple years ago led to lots of people losing their homes. We had massive floods where I'm from in New South Wales led to people being evacuated. Climate plays a role in that. I don't particularly think that, you know, my friend who had to leave his Home at the bottom of a hill because of a flood counts as a climate refugee and should be able to move. There are really vulnerable people affected by climate change and we need to figure out solutions and protections. Climate doesn't necessarily mean that you, that, that this is a group of climate affected people who necessarily should be prioritized over conflict affected people over the poorest of the poor for all sorts of legal pathways in today's climate, in particular in the global north, in sort of North America, Europe, certain other countries, we're not, we don't have appetite for expanding and getting, you know, huge numbers of people into the country.

[00:18:45.01] 

So why do we think that sort of adding climate into this is going to change that? There's a real risk that the all the focus and advocacy, if not done well, backfires. So there's a role for talking about climate change in terms of opening pathways, but it is one of a long list of reasons why people move and we shouldn't lose sight of that.

[00:19:09.10] 

You talk about Argentina, you talk about East Africa, the Horn of Africa, you've mentioned the Pacific a couple of times. I'm curious, to what extent can we talk about hotspots of migration place certain places of the world where climate change is and is projected to continue aggravating conditions to make migration or displacement more likely? Is that a useful framework? I mean, are there places that these issues are coming to the fore more than elsewhere?

[00:19:40.13] 

There are places where there is more attention to these issues. You mentioned a few around the Pacific. There's a lot of attention there, rightly so. There's also a lot of attention in, take Central America, right, Hugely climate vulnerable certification, all, all these sorts of climate related events. But you've also got to take that with a grain of salt because a lot of the concern there is around migrants moving to the U.S. border. Right. And that's not necessarily, you know, concern around Central Americans primarily. People who move because of climate change move internally and we've got to keep that in mind.

[00:20:21.19] 

So concern and vulnerability are not necessarily one of the same, or political attention and vulnerability are not necessarily overlapped perhaps.

[00:20:28.24] 

Exactly. I think there are definitely hotspots insofar as we know that there is a large internal migration in South Asia that can be linked to climate change. We know that there are severe droughts, severe climate events in East Africa that lead to people moving. For now, we can talk about hotspots, what I sort of think five years down the line, 10 years down the line, we may not be talking about hotspots anymore because climate Change is getting worse, we all know that. And the impacts on migration are going to be everywhere. So we need sort of ambitious solutions. And we can still talk about hotspots, but we're probably not going to be talking about all of Central America as a hotspot. We need to be doing better than that. Actually, one thing that we've looked into is the role of modeling. So this is really big global models, or these big regional and continental models about where people are going to move. Useful at sort of a first level. But if I am a government, if I am a local authority, if I'm a development actor, you know, I'm a UN organization and I could try to figure out, like, where do I build cyclone shelters so that people aren't displaced, where do I help people diversify their livelihoods?

[00:21:42.04] 

That's not big regional hotspots. We need to get really granular and local. And I think that's an area where we're seeing modeling move, but we're seeing some actors move. But it's still a lot more needs to be done.

[00:21:58.00] 

We are almost out of time. But I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you a question that kind of flips the script here a bit. So far, we've basically been talking about how climate change affects migration. But how does migration affect the fight against climate change? I mean, I guess what role does or can migration have in transitioning to a greener future and more generally in mitigating some of the damaging impacts of climate change?

[00:22:22.24] 

Yes, a few colleagues and I are looking at this, and we talk often in sort of the climate world around the green transition, around the just transition, decarbonizing economies, people building up capacities to do renewable energy to green economies and sectors in rich countries, in highly industrialized countries. One of, if not the major obstacles to the green transition is skills and labor. We do not have the people we need with the right skills in the right places. There is a lot of potential to fix this. And we often talk about migration as adaptation or harnessing migration for the green transition. We have this, we've talked about that sort of at the rhetorical level and at the sort of big global processes and the cops and things like that. We haven't actually figured out how to do that yet. And I think that's a big open question that we need to do, we need to solve.

[00:23:23.19] 

What might that look like? I mean, we talk about migration, development generally, which can involve a migrant leaving the poorer country, a less industrialized country moving to a more industrialized country, making some money, sending that money back, bringing that money back, and kind of bringing back skills and other things they learn abroad. How does that fit in the Green Zone particularly?

[00:23:45.08] 

There is some, there is this sort of goal of the win, win, win, where there is a win for the migrant who gets to move and, you know, build an income. There's a win for the destination country because migrants the migrant brings skills. The migrant could be, you know, have particular skills or experience doing battery production or, you know, working in a particular more sustainable type of agriculture. And then they also either send remittances home or they return home and they transfer their knowledge and the skills and they support the green transition in their country of origin as well. We don't really have good examples of this yet, but that's sort of the goal and it needs to happen. And I think we're at the point now where policymakers have started to realize it needs to happen. You know, European policymakers are talking about the year of skills and really looking at skills partnerships with third countries outside of Europe to see sort of what partnerships could they do. Where they help train would be migrants in Morocco, in other places, in, in other third countries with the skill so that they can come to Germany, Denmark, Sweden and sort of support the green transition there.

[00:25:01.14] 

We haven't really seen that happen yet and certainly not at scale, but that's what that looks like.

[00:25:08.17] 

That's super interesting. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we should probably wrap things up there, but this was super great. Lawrence. Thank you so much for coming on. This was a really interesting. I'm glad we could do this.

[00:25:18.22] 

Thanks for having me. That was fun.

[00:25:21.18] 

Lawrence Huang is an associate policy analyst with MPI's international program. He focuses on the migration dimensions of climate change and COVID 19, and you can follow along with what he's up to on Twitter @LawrenceHuang9. Changing Climate, Changing Migration is a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute, a leading nonpartisan independent think tank dedicated to analyzing immigration policies and trends around the world. Make sure you catch every new episode by subscribing to the podcast. Wherever you get your audio content, find the archives online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. And while you're there, you should check out MPI's other podcasts. World of Migration explores cutting edge issues in global migration and Moving Beyond Pandemic questions what we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and check out our Migration Information Source magazine. Be sure to sign up for the Migration Information Source newsletter, which comes out twice a month, featuring fresh thought and analysis you can subscribe through our website at migrationinformation.org. We are grateful for the support support of The Rockefeller Foundation for this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. Dive deeper into our analysis of climate change and migration by checking out a special edition of the Migration Information source online at migrationpolicy.org/climate. And if you have thoughts about this episode of the podcast or other ideas we should pursue or anything else, reach out to me directly.

[00:26:58.19] 

You can send me an email at [email protected]. Yoseph Hamid produced this episode with assistance from Lisa Dixon and editorial input from Michelle Mittelstadt. Our theme music is Touch by Patrick Patrikios. Once again, I'm Julian Hattem. Thank you for tuning in.