A Note of Caution about Exaggerating the Climate-Migration Link

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CHAPTERS 

[00:04:31]: Mobility constraints: why the most vulnerable may be unable to migrate 

[00:07:02]: Climate narratives and policy responsibility: interpreting the link 

[00:10:53]: Jakarta case study: land subsidence, urban development, and flood risk 

[00:15:50]: Bangladesh: rural-to-urban migration and environmental change 

[00:17:43]: Development and migration: how income and opportunity shape mobility 

[00:23:07]: Limited mobility in crisis settings: the case of Yemen 

[00:24:45]: Communicating climate and migration 

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:02.22] 

Welcome back to another episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. This is a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that interviews experts about how climate change is affecting migration. I'm your host, Julian Hattem. I'm the editor of MPI's journal the Migration Information Source. And in conjunction with podcast we have a series of articles about the climate migration link. Those are online at migrationpolicy.org/climate. My guest today is Hein de Haas. Hein is a prominent migration scholar and among many other things, the lead author of the Age of Migration, which is a classic migration studies textbook. He is a geographer and sociologist and a professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam and the director of the International Migration Institute there. He's also professor of Migration and Development at Maastricht University and the United Nations University - MERIT. Hein, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

[00:01:00.10] 

It's great to be here. Thank you.

[00:01:02.12] 

There is a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric out there predicting that there will be hundreds of millions or even a billion so called climate refugees over the next few decades for several years now you have expressed a good degree of skepticism about some of those predictions. Why should we be hesitant to buy into these narratives that such large numbers of people will migrate because of the impacts of climate change, and particularly that they will migrate internationally to Europe and to North America.

[00:01:31.13] 

Now let me first say that climate change is an extremely serious issue. And anything what I'm going to say should never be sort of hijacked or misused as climate change denial, because it's exactly the point I'm not trying to make. The main point I'm making is you cannot make a direct connection between climate change and the environmental stresses that will inevitably cause in the world and massive international migrations. That is simply not how it works. First of all, because the links are very indirect. And secondly, if there are going to be communities, and there will be communities all around the world that will feel the effects or the adverse effects of climate change, it's rather going to impede the long distance mobility rather than to facilitate and it doesn't diminish the problem. But I in a way reverse the analysis as say, the biggest victims of adversity, whether it's environmentally related to or other forms of adversity that could be politically political conflict or violence, are the ones who cannot move because movement is generally a way to sort of protect yourself from adversity. And what we also know, and there's a lot of research out there on the effects of weather related disasters, other natural disasters, long term droughts, mobility.

[00:02:42.24] 

What we know is that if people really have to move, there tends to be a short term and temporary movement, and certainly not over long distances. So instead of sort dismissing the problem, I think making the link to massive international movements is simply not backed up by any evidence. Certainly contemporary immigration couldn't be explained by that. But even in the future, I think it's highly unlikely that climate change induced environmental stresses will lead to massive international movements across borders. That's simply not what the evidence seems to suggest. So I think people who advocate that view may in a way use the fear of migration and xenophobia as a way to plea in favor of carbon emission reduction. But I think it is really typical case of being right for the wrong reasons. We have really good reasons to be very concerned about climate change. But link it to massive international movements is not only intellectually dishonest, because I think anybody who's done serious research on the issue realizes that you cannot make the connection, but it can also have the unfortunate effect of sort of increasing sort of apocalyptic fears about these masses of migrants coming all to the Global North.

[00:03:53.07] 

Because more likely people who will be adversely affected by climate change will be the people who cannot move at all.

[00:04:00.17] 

That's very interesting. And so I guess it sounds like what you're saying is that people tap into kind of a pre existing kind of xenophobic or nationalistic anti migration or skeptical migration narrative in order to advance a climate change or a narrative in support of tackling climate change. I guess, what is the damage of that? I mean, why is that so bad?

[00:04:21.21] 

Now first of all, I think there can be all sorts of reasons to be concerned about migration or have opinions about migration. But I think sort of baseless fear mongering is never going to solve any problem in terms of discussing, for instance, if you do talk about real displacement, whether related to climate change or political factors, or displacement for development projects, a lot of people are being displaced by governments for all sorts of infrastructure and development projects, natural reserves for instance as well. That is a much bigger number. And people sometimes realize and that is of course political in its causes. And I think by making this simplistic link between is the climate, it also gives governments a sort of easy way out of blaming the climate. So for instance, first of all, it's very difficult to make a direct link between a particular natural disaster and climate change. Take the idea that we will have an increased incidence of hurricanes. Now most climate scientists seem to agree on the point that global warming will increase the incidence of extreme, extreme Weather events including, including hurricanes. Now, accepting that as a fact, in a way, let's just assume this is true.

[00:05:33.17] 

And most climate change scientists seem to agree on that. The real issue is people's vulnerability, because if the same hurricane of the same strength hits a country like Haiti compared to the United States, the number of victims is way higher. In Haiti, that is basically because people are way more vulnerable. They live in houses that are much easier, they will collapse much easier. There is less government services to help people out. But even if you look for instance in hurricanes in so called developed countries, look at hurricane Katrina. When that hit New Orleans, it were the poorest, often African American communities that were particularly hit. And many people actually died because they didn't have cars, no social connections outside of the city. They couldn't find refuge out of the city. And these were also the people living in the most low lying areas of New Orleans. And we do disproportionately hit. I'm giving that example to say, well, it really depends, you know, and a natural disaster creates lots of stresses. But whether people will have to flee or will indeed face personal danger for their belongings or their lives very much depends on the vulnerabilities.

[00:06:39.24] 

And there is a governmental responsibility. The second problem is that sometimes it can get worse. For instance, in the Maldives, the Maldives government, yeah, has often claimed that they will be the first victims of, you know, sea level rise. But actually, if you look closer at the matter, there is a policy of the Maldives government to basically evict populations from all sorts of small islands and centralize them on a few central islands. And that's been a long term policy desired by governments of the Maldives. But now suddenly they use the climate change argument to say, well, you have to leave your islands because your life will become unsustainable in the future. Whereas the real motive is tourist development. They want to evacuate those islands. And they're using in a way, climate change as an excuse. Instead of saying we need to make sure that communities are being made resilient against long term changes in the environment. So it is very tricky. And I've worked a lot in North Africa, particularly in Morocco, and there's also a tendency there to sort of blame the climate change. Now because they say it's just a drought creating problems in agriculture, you could also say, well, dry land agriculture has always depended on irrigation and it requires a very good social organization and often also government regulation.

[00:08:00.22] 

But when then big developers come in or industries are being built or tourist complexes and they don't pump too much water you know, underground water resources that may lead to water scarcities in agriculture. Now that is in a way a man made problem that is not directly related to climate change. Of course, in the longer term you could say that increased droughts in particular areas of North Africa can exacerbate those problems. But in terms of what's happening right now, this is more linked to direct human intervention development project rather than climate change. But then it also can provide an excuse for in way governments to dismiss their responsibility for creating those problems in the first place. That is very tricky. It is very tricky to make the direct link because there is no direct link, that is for sure. Of course there can be an indirect link, but there is always the question about how are governments protecting the most vulnerable people to those environmental adversities and those are the people often who don't have the resources to move over long distances. There's very good research on, for instance, down in West Africa and other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and on the effects of drought, for instance, on the human mobility.

[00:09:13.22] 

And although different studies show different results, the overall picture that emerges is that long distance migration actually decreases in years of high drought because people literally don't have the resources. And it is linked to a broader problem. Now in a way, the problem is that there is very few climate scientists that are sort of into migration studies and there are very few migration scholars that are sort of into environmental studies. So it's very difficult to make that connection. And overall there is a tendency in the media amongst climate change scientists to tap into very simplistic models about what drives migration that roughly depict migration from and within poor countries as a sort of desperate response to misery. And that is the overall image we are getting. That totally ignores that case of migration scholarship that shows that by and large migration requires a lot of resources, is very much a planned event by families. It is certainly not something that the poorest of the poorest could afford. And particularly when we talk about long distance migration across borders. So what we now for instance, see in Europe, but also I think in the United States, that cross border movements, for instance, from Central America to the United States or from Africa into Europe are then directly linked to climate change.

[00:10:41.15] 

And it is a very, very problematic link to make.

[00:10:44.22] 

I think you've used the phrase depoliticizing displacement with regards to this conversation. Right? Is that another way to say political leaders are pointing to climate to blame for some of their own failings or other lackluster developmental initiatives and kind of. Yeah, pointing the blame elsewhere?

[00:11:01.13] 

Yeah, depolitization is a bit of an academic term to basically say, take the political dimension of. So it is to deny that there is an environmental element. Of course, if you have a multi annual drought or indeed there is a real long term change in weather patterns, that is going to provide a challenge, obviously. But what it eventually means for people's livelihoods depends a lot on what governments do to mitigate those impacts. I mean, I can give you a very simple example. I mean, you can say, well, if it were true that in North Africa there would be less rainfall, you know, over the longer term it doesn't automatically destroy agriculture because it very much depends on, for instance, irrigation. And to give you a simple example, I mean if you switch from flood irrigation, which is the traditional form of irrigation in oases, for instance in North Africa, to drip irrigation, you can make massive water savings. So just a simple example, there are all sorts of technical interventions you can imagine to make people more resilient against the negative effects of climate change on the longer term. And the other problem is to make this very simplistic link again between, for instance, if you would go to North Africa, to a country like Morocco, and you go to the south of these countries and this is sort of dry land on the edge of the Sahara, you can find oases that are dying.

[00:12:32.21] 

And at the same time you witness, if you talk to people, that many people migrated away. And then it's very sort of tempting to make that link. Oh, there is no longer rain. That is why people move away. But I've done research for two years in those oases and actually the relations, they're exact other way around because small scale peasants often also people didn't have any land at all. They were like sharecroppers or former slaves in the south of Morocco. They moved away because they saw my as an opportunity to gain a better livelihood, to have a more diverse income portfolio. Some of them moved abroad and that meant they became less dependent on agriculture and they started to neglect agriculture. And you could in a way say that in some oases agriculture has become less important for people. People have withdrawn from agriculture. In some cases, old irrigation systems have collapsed. Of course that is an unfortunate development, but the actual relation is the exact other way around of what you would expect. Now if governments of course can intervene to make sure irrigation systems are being maintained and to prevent over pumping of groundwater resources, for instance, by big industries or big farmers or hotels that cater to tourists.

[00:13:51.22] 

But if government don't do that and have a sort of laissez faire approach. It will of course, force small peasants out of agriculture. But again, it is really, I'm giving those examples to say these links are way more complex. So I'm not saying, you know, climate or weather or environmental factors don't play a role, but it is very tricky. I can give another example that is the main cause of increased flooding and cause many coastal areas in the world, for instance, Jakarta is suffering from more and more. In Indonesia, for more and more flooding is land subsidence. Basically the land is sinking. And it is because people, when they start building cities and other, you know, urban development industries, they start to drain the water because we don't like malaria, we like to have dry feet. But what typically happens if you pump away water, it means the soil and rocks gets more compact and the land starts to sink. Some areas of Jakarta are sinking by 15 to 20 centimeters a year. Sea level rises about 3 millimeters a year. And there's a lot of studies on other coastal cities like Dhaka in Bangladesh, or Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, or Bangkok and Thailand or Manila, that show that land subsidence, which is directly caused by human intervention, drainage of water basically from the soil, is the prime cause of increased flooding.

[00:15:15.13] 

And then of course, it's a complicated issue that cannot be easily solved. In a way, it's easier for a government to say, well, this is sea level rise, instead of saying, we need to do something about water management and making sure that the lands are not sinking too fast. So on the longer term, of course, sea level rise is going to add on to those challenges, but it can simply not explain what we're seeing right now. And in some cases, the evidence seems to challenge a lot of those narratives. For instance, in Bangladesh, some quite good studies have tried to calculate the amount of land loss and land gains in the delta areas, basically in Bangladesh. And they showed that there is a net land gain actually of the last decades instead of loss now. It doesn't mean that in the future. I cannot go too much into the physical geography of this. It cannot. It doesn't mean that in the future there may not be a challenge. But certainly what some organizations are doing is to suggest that, for instance, large scale rural urban migration in Bangladesh is a result of climate change and sea level rise.

[00:16:17.21] 

There is simply no evidence to support it. It seems much more likely that large scale rural migration in Bangladesh, like in so many other countries in the world, is just part and parcel of a more general process of economic modernization, industrialization, less labor and agriculture, demographic change that has moved Humanity massively from rural urban areas. Now that is of course posing challenges for governments, but then the link is very easily made to climate change and simply the link cannot be made.

[00:16:50.16] 

I wonder to what extent it's fair then to group climate change in with some of the things that people like to consider as root causes of migration, crime, corruption, etc. Many of which tend or under development, poverty, many of which tend to not necessarily be things that are handed down from man, but are the product of government action or inaction and could be affected by government inaction or action. But whatever path the government takes or other policymakers take ends up kind of exacerbating vulnerabilities in a very complicated way that eventually makes some of the benefits and means of migration outweigh the cost and the challenges. Is that a fair way to look at it, that these some of the climate impacts are similar to other so called drivers of migration? Or is that a little bit off base?

[00:17:43.17] 

Well, I think first of all it's a much more indirect factor. Of course, climate, weather and other environmental factors all play a role in determining whether people can make livelihoods in the place they live, that is for sure. But it is a much more fundamental problem. It's the overwhelming tendency to see and portray migration as a result of poverty and misery and all sorts of problems. We just know from research that development leads to more migration instead of less migration. We have to reverse the whole relationship. So of course adversity, whether environmental, economic, political, can lead people desire to leave. But we just know, and I've said it before, that people actually not able to move out. What we typically see is that once people get access to better education, slightly better economic resources, a bit more money, better connections, more people generally tend to go on the move. And that explains why the most important immigration countries in the world are not the poorest countries in the world, that the countries with the highest rates of urbanization are not the poorest countries in the world. Actually development speeds up migration and that goes exactly against the sort of standard analysis.

[00:18:55.08] 

And it also means that extreme impoverishment will actually impede migration, will make people, we use a sort of fancy term for that, involuntary, immobile. It means that people cannot move out. And that is in a way the real problem. Because what we often see, if there is environmental adversity, it could be indeed drought or something like that, that migration can be a way in which people can continue their livelihoods. It sounds like a paradox, but by having some people migrating, let's say to another region or to a town or to a city. It can actually enable rural households to stay where they are because they can tap into extra resources. And that is linked to another problem that is still see the so called third world as masses of poor peasants that completely depend on agriculture. We're increasingly moving away from that world. Less and less communities in the world are completely dependent on agriculture. We live in an increasingly interconnected world in which people tap into all sorts of resources. And migration has played a key role as a sort of insurance mechanisms for people living in marginal situations. And this is not about massive south north migrant migration waves.

[00:20:08.03] 

This is primarily about local and national movements of people. So movements within countries. Look at the large scale migrations that happened within China over the last decade. There are as many internal migrants in China as international migrants in the world. The real population movement has been from rural to urban over the last century and a half. You could basically say that is the fundamental shift from rural to urban livelihoods. And climate change can play a role there, but it's not really going to change that fundamentally. It may accelerate that process perhaps in the future. And the irony in a way is that humanity has massively moved to areas of greater environmental vulnerability, which means cities located in river valleys or coastal areas. And also you find most delta areas in those areas that are most prone to flooding. So people actually have moved from areas of lower environmental vulnerability to areas of higher vulnerability. And as some peasant, I think it was a research done in the Limpopo Valley once said, the good land is there where the floods are. And that is the irony of the whole story. So you cannot make that very simplistic direct link.

[00:21:23.12] 

Yes, climate and weather, of course, places plays a role in determining people's livelihoods, but it depends a lot on other factors. So it is just simplifying a very complex relationship. But the most fundamental, I think, flaw in the thinking is to think that extreme impoverishment will lead to massive international movements. And we just know, actually extreme impoverishment, empirically speaking, and we know that from research, has the exact opposite effect.

[00:21:51.04] 

And you talked about involuntarily immobile populations. Sometimes we have called those, those trapped populations with people stuck amid the consequences of climate change and other factors. What are the consequences of that? I mean, what are people missing out on? In previous episodes of this podcast, and there's been some research that's talked about migration as a form, as a way to build resilience against climate change. Does inability to migrate because of you don't have the resources, the money, I mean, could that make the consequences of climate change worse, I guess. What happens if poor trapped populations. Why is being a trapped population so bad?

[00:22:27.12] 

I mean, in cases of disasters, we have seen it in Hurricane Katrina, you end up dying or losing all your properties. So, yeah, that seems quite obvious to me. I mean, it also applies to refugee movements. There's a horrible civil war going on in Yemen, has been going on for years already. We see very few refugees arriving in Europe. What part of it is geography is farther away than Syria, but part of it the fact that it's the poorest country in the Middle east and North Africa. People don't have the resources to move out. Nobody talks about it. There's no moral panic about the civil war in Yemen. And it's a way in a cynical story because they don't appear at the border. But you could say that those people trapped in their own country in situations of horrible conflict are the biggest victims. So if we are, I mean, it is the moral outrage that I think is problematic because if we would really be outraged, morally outraged about, you know, violence and injustices, we should first of all care about those who don't move at all. But what we see, the political momentum only gets going on the moment refugees arrive at the border of Western countries.

[00:23:31.13] 

Then suddenly it's being defined as a problem. So I think again it taps into these deeper fears about massive inflows from conflict, for instance. And I think the climate change narrative tries to tap into exactly the same fears. And I think it's the wrong game to play. And that is really my. Because sometimes I have been confronted with quite a emotional reactions. For instance, when I give a talk on this topic as an environmental geographer, sometimes in my audience there are people who are in the beginning upset or as if I'm denying climate change. And I always try to be very careful. That's the last thing I'm trying to do. I'm as concerned as you about climate change and the irresponsibility currently of international community. Do something structurally about it or not doing enough right now, that's real problem. But to connect it to massive international migration is empirically not just because the United nations environmental program already had withdrawn a lot of the maps they put online about massive climate migration because they started to realize it is not credible. So I think in the longer term, the sort of climate sort of activists that use that argument may shoot themselves into their feet because I think it is damaging their long term credibility.

[00:24:45.09] 

And I think that is the real danger of playing this game in a way but it's also, I think, intellectually dishonest because I think any person who's looked at this issue seriously knows that it doesn't work like that.

[00:24:58.20] 

This was a super fascinating discussion. Hein, thank you so much for coming on. Hein de Haas is a professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and a founding member and co director of the International Migration Institute, as well as professor of Migration and Development at Maastricht University UNU-MERIT, and he has blog posts on climate, migration and many other issues at heindehaas.org Hein thank you so much. This has been real fun.

[00:25:21.11] 

You're welcome. It's been a pleasure.

[00:25:25.09] 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. You can find all the episodes for this and every other MPI podcast online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. You can also subscribe to the podcast on all the major podcast services. And while you're there, please give us a review that makes it easier for other people to find us. Stay in touch with MPI by following us on social media. We're on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and you can send me an email at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you. This episode was produced by Yoseph Hamid and made possible with the assistance of Julia Yanoff and Lisa Dixon. Our music is called Touch by Patrick Patrikios. My name is Julian Hattem. Thank you again for tuning in.