How Climate Migration Works

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio

0:15Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there and this is Stuff You Should Know. Is it getting hot in here or is it just me edition? Yeah, that's right. Well, you know what we can do? We can just migrate to another part of the iHeart offices here. Yeah, nice. A nice, cool studio. Yeah, they really do keep them cool. Frankly, cold. Yeah, and that's the last fun we're going to have on this episode because this is not so fun. That is not true. There's plenty of places for jokes here. Okay, all right, good. Do you remember we did one on comas and we had jokes?

0:54So come on, we can do this. Yeah, that's a good point. So we're talking climate migration, and it's a really interesting topic. This was your idea, actually. And I tip my hat to you. Thank you. And I'm just joking. I'm not wearing a hat. See? Another joke. So the thing that surprised me, so climate migration, we should just tell people off the bat is where people have to move somewhere else because extreme weather, droughts, basically anything, extreme temperatures, anything that has to do with climate change, ruining where they live. Yeah. That's climate migration. Human-wise. Yes. Like there's an animal climate migration we're not even going to talk about.

1:40No, we did a whole episode on plant migration that was due to climate too. So this is, yes, that was a good catch. This is human-specific. And one of the things that struck me about this is there's a there's not a lot of like solid agreement on exactly how bad things are going to be. Yeah. And exactly how far people are going to have to move. And even among the people who do agree, the experts who do generally agree on some stuff, they're still like, I don't know that this is going to be as bad as it's being portrayed, like, say, in the media. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we'll get to some studies and stats and things.

2:18But the stats, you got to keep in mind, are kind of a guess because, as Libya points out, or maybe we'll just talk about that when we get to the stats part. OK, but I just wanted to put a I wanted to put a lid on the hysteria because, like you said, we just don't know yet. And it might not be as bad as we think. There might be some pluses. There are definitely going to be some minuses. But it's something that we're talking about now. And it's decades enough into the future that we have time to prepare for it. It's kind of like we went from, OK, let's stop emitting greenhouse gases to, OK, it's too late for that.

2:53Now we have to figure out how to deal with the repercussions of that. That's where we're at. But we have a little bit of time. And if we start thinking about and talking about how to do this smartly and responsibly without, again, becoming hysterical and over planning and overdoing it, we could we could do this right and make it as comfortable as possible. Yeah, we being specifically the United States, because there are other parts of the world that are already sort of proactive rather than kind of, like you said, being reactive and waiting when potential refugees are just sort of at the border saying like, we have no place to go because our place almost said habitat.

3:33I guess humans have a habitat, right? Yeah, sure. Is that true? Yeah, every animal has a habitat. Okay. I didn't know if I was being callous by considering us all just animals. Were you being a speciest? Maybe so. But speaking of the U.S., you know, you do hear a lot of talk about that kind of thing, like, oh, people are going to be coming into our country. You know, depending on who you talk to in this country, some people might welcome them. Some people might not. But as Livia is very astute to point out, generally what we're talking about nowadays, the more common thing that you're seeing is people don't want to leave their home, you know.

4:11Yeah, that's a big point. They'll move as kind of close as they can to where they're from rather than say, hey, let's just pick up and go to a completely different country where I know nothing about it and I don't speak the language. Like what's generally happening is if there's a climate issue, like let's say, which could look like a lot of things, we're going to talk about a lot of them, it could mean I just can't farm here anymore because it's so drought prone or my coastline is disappearing or there was a natural disaster here, so I have to leave. People want to move close to where they are, so they're generally saying, like, all right, I can't be out here in the farm area anymore, so let's move toward the urban centers, and that's why a lot of these urban centers in the global south are popping at the seams.

4:55Yeah, and it's going to definitely get more poppy for sure as we go. But as it stands right now, especially say like you can take California for an example, they deal with wildfires. Like that's just a fact of life and it's getting to be a much more frequent fact of life. So if you leave your house because there's a wildfire in your backyard, you are technically a climate migrant right then. But if you go back and rebuild or your house didn't end up burning down, you're basically following the current pattern of climate migration. You're leaving long enough for you to take yourself out of harm's way during the disaster, the extreme weather event, and then going back.

5:39But if you do that enough times, some people are going to just get tired of that and they're eventually not going to go back. and that's kind of like how climate migration, at least say in the United States right now, is starting to look or starting to establish itself. Right, but the idea is that I guess if you're moving away from where wildfires are more rampant, you're going to move to a place probably as close as you can, unless, you know, in America, if you have like family on the other side of the country or something where those wildfires generally don't happen, maybe you'll do that. But if we're talking about countries, you're probably moving within your country.

6:22And within your country, it's not like, oh, well, I'm at a place where the climate problem isn't a problem. So it's not solving a bigger problem. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And even more so, like if you're a migrant, even within your own country, like you said, say, like to an urban center or something like that, a lot of times when you show up, you might show up with all of your neighbors, your entire community, maybe your entire region if the, say, like the drought is bad enough. And the city's not like, hey, we just happen to have all this extra free housing for you guys, so come on in.

6:59Very frequently, you'll end up in what amounts to a refugee camp. It's a climate refugee camp, but it's essentially the same thing as any other refugee camp. There's usually not running water. There's not good infrastructure. And this is a point that I hadn't thought of, but Livia pointed out, you're maybe even more vulnerable to natural disasters now because you live in a tent. So if a sandstorm comes along, you're in trouble because you just are in a tent rather than, say, the house that you had to leave because your farm was no longer producing crops. Yeah. And also you're you're living like perhaps in like a shanty town on the outskirts of town and you're going to see increased poverty.

7:41That's going to be an unstable situation. And then violence comes along oftentimes in these places. She found one study from 2022 of Central African migrants. 5 % reported that they moved specifically for environmental reasons, but 50 % said, yeah, but that played a part in the decision to leave. Like, whether or not they're saying, like, no, the drought's too bad here, I'm leaving, or some places are just the extreme heat is becoming so bad as people just can't live there anymore. they're not saying I'm moving just because of that but half of them were saying like yeah that was a factor that led to this whole mess right yeah and there's probably the most famous most well studied recent example of climate migration leading to violent conflict was the Syrian civil war between 2006 and 2010 there was a really really bad drought in Syria and the surrounding region and a lot of people had to move to the city or cities.

8:49And a lot of people were displaced and they joined people who had already arrived as refugees before from Iraq and from Palestine. And so all these people are there. The government is basically ignoring them, pretending like they're not there. Their farms are being lost. They're getting zero help from the government, which has become neoliberal under Bashar al-Assad, who took over from his father. And they start, the unrest gets bad enough that a civil war starts. Like there's a rebel insurgency to topple Assad. And it actually ended up working. It didn't at first because Assad famously used chemical weapons on his own people and he got everything under control.

9:32But then they made a second push this past, I think, December and ran him out of the country and actually took over. And you can trace that ultimately back to that drought that was created largely by climate change. And that's nuts. Like if you think about it, if that drought had never happened, there wouldn't have been a Syrian civil war. And that's probably the most extreme version, example of a climate crisis leading to violent armed conflict. But it's not like it doesn't exist. It's not like it doesn't happen. Like that happened. Yeah. I mean, over an eight year period from 2002 to 2010, the urban population in Syria went from just under 9 million people to almost 14 million.

10:20That's nuts. That is a lot of people to add. But and this isn't like to I'm in full agreement. So this isn't a counterpoint. But Syria mishandled that. And there are other countries in the region that suffered through the same drought, specifically Jordan and Lebanon that had a government that was more proactive and responsive. And they had policies that were put in place that they didn't have the same kind of, you know, destructive outcomes that Syria had. So it's, you know, it all depends on how you're handling the situation. We're going to talk a lot about countries, you know, people leaving countries and then especially the receiving countries, because that's really where the rubber meets the road.

11:01For sure. if the rubber hasn't melted by then. That's right. And if the road is still intact and not cracked to pieces. Yeah, it hasn't buckled. Yeah. There are actually some estimates all over the place about how many climate migrants there are going to be. And there was something called the Groundswell Report that the World Bank put out in 2021. And they are saying by 2050, 216 million people will have moved either to another country or within their own country because climate conditions have made where they used to live untenable. So we're talking 25 years, not even 30 years anymore, Chuck.

11:46We're in 2025. If my math holds up, that's just 25 years from now. That is a tremendous amount of migration. Some people say, nah, it's probably going to be more like 50 million. But it seems like that World Bank analysis is the most commonly cited, although you could also suggest it's the most commonly cited because it's such an eye-popping number. Yeah, true. Well, this is probably a good place since I promised to talk about something stat-related. One of the reasons it's hard or one of the reasons you get something like anywhere from 50 to 250 million people, this pretty big swing, is because we don't know how effective our efforts are going to be to curb emissions and to get things, you know, sort of on the right track again.

12:29how successful we're going to be at, you know, some wealthier countries doing things like seawalls and redistributing water resources and things like that. Because as you'll see, a lot of and we've talked about before that, you know, the most precious resource in the future is love. It is love. Oh, man, I needed that. Water, unfortunately. So, you know, there have been people that talk about, you know, the wars of the future will be fought over water. And as we'll see, a lot of climate migration happens either because of a lack of water or a lack of water that's useful for humans or too much water in other parts like rising sea waters and such.

13:09Yeah, for sure. Sure. So the World Bank broke it down that Sub-Saharan Africa is going to see by far the most. 86 million, followed by East Asia and the Pacific at 49 million. South Asia, 40 million. North Africa, 19 million. Although some people are like, it's going to be even more than that for North America and parts of the Middle East because it's going to get so hot that it will be uninhabitable by humans. Yeah, I think you meant North Africa, not North America. That's right. Yes. North Africa and the Middle East, not North America and the Middle East. I think people who listen to the show know us enough now to where we're like old pals.

13:49And they're like, oh, Josh, Chuck, you don't even need to point that out. We know what he meant. You know what, though? I think we should introduce a new device in the year 17. Whenever I misspeak, just cut me off in the middle by doing your egg color spot. Can we try one? So let's try that. All right. You ready? Yeah. So it's going to get so hot in the Middle East and North America that, what did I say wrong, Chuck? Nothing. I just like doing that sound. I think we've come up with something new that we really need to do. All right. Well, how about this? Why don't we take a break? You said Latin America was 17 million, right?

14:30No, I never got there. Latin America, 17 million. Don't forget Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Five million. So, you know, not nearly as many as the others, but there are, again, water scarcity. Yeah. In places like Mongolia and Kazakhstan. So now can we take a break? Yeah, we can take a break. I think you should take us out on your egg splat sound again. All right. We'll be right back.

15:20All right, so I kind of teased out the importance of, or I'm sorry, importance. I soften tease here in the South, everybody, if you haven't noticed by now, and you're 17. Receiving communities are very important. how safe these people are going to be when they move to this place. And again, A, they're still going to be vulnerable to the impacts of climate where they go, most likely, or almost, you know, with 100 % certainty. But just how safe they're going to be, period, because we talked about sometimes when they set up on the outskirts of towns and there's violence and they're more susceptible by being in a shanty or a tent or something to just even a hard rain.

16:03So it's almost like this, it's a vicious cycle that's happening where people are being displaced to places that also aren't safe. Yeah, and we should say that most of this migration and most of the migrants are going to be coming from or going, moving within what's called the global south. Yeah. And you don't use the equator as the dividing line for the global south. For example, Australia and New Zealand, squarely in the southern hemisphere, but they're not considered global south. It's a distinction between the developed and the developing world. So you have Latin America, Africa, India is usually included, China is included, and Southeast Asia.

16:44And these countries, ironically, if you accept China and India, most of these countries have put out the least amount of emissions that triggered climate change. and yet they're the most vulnerable to climate change in large part because they're developing. And if you're a developing country, you're probably still really reliant on agriculture. You're reliant on things like timber and other natural resources. And those are the things that are getting impacted first, right off the bat. And so if your economy is based on agriculture and there's a drought that covers your entire nation, your economy is in big trouble and your people are probably going to have to move.

17:27Yeah. Here's the thing, though, and this isn't like a bright side sort of thing. It puts a strain on resources when a lot of new people come to a place, but they can also be an asset because most of those migrants are going to end up performing a lot of very important jobs in that area. A lot of them work in agriculture, some work in construction, some work in child care. But those same people are also not necessarily, it depends on the receiving community, even down to that community level and how they're going to take care of those people. And what I mean by take care in this case is just see that they get a fair shot at like earning a wage by performing a job.

18:08If you face a lot of potential workplace abuse, if you're one of those migrants in the United Arab Emirates is a striking example. 88 percent of the population there is made up of migrants, mainly from Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh. And it's very hot there as well. And so they're not taking care of their migrant population of workers. And they can just sometimes some companies might be like, you know what, we're not going to pay you for that. What are you going to do about it? Yeah, there's a lot of examples of modern slavery, forced labor in the UAE and other countries, very wealthy Gulf states.

18:46and that is a good example of climate migrants, but really any kind of migrant being taken advantage of. And it's something that definitely has to be paid attention to. On the other hand, there are studies that say, okay, this actually might be good. Like, yes, we need to make sure that the receiving countries are not exploiting the climate migrants or any migrants, but the pressure that could be relieved from their home country if they're moving to more developed or wealthier countries that are more set up with infrastructure and social structure to absorb them, that actually could be a plus because all of a sudden the population is not swollen in an urban center where it's really hot and you're around people from an ethnic group that your ethnic group has hated for a thousand years.

19:35Like moving some of these people out to other countries could actually be a relief valve that could keep social upheaval from happening. Yeah, potentially. So under the United Nations, they have a refugee convention from 1951 that specifically defines, the good thing it does, it defines that refugees are entitled to legal rights, entitled to travel, some kinds of support, housing, that kind of thing. But I guess kind of the downside of what it did is it very narrowly defined what a refugee was in the wake of World War II, which was you have to be fleeing persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or group membership.

20:19And only if you're fleeing from one border to the next. We already mentioned that a lot of this is happening within their home country, so they don't have any of those UN guaranteed rights. But a lot of people, legal scholars, are saying, hey, we need to expand that definition to include maybe not necessarily only cross-border and people who are climate refugees. Yeah. Like, why not add the sun? You can be fleeing the sun. Yeah. And we'll consider you a refugee from now on. That's me every summer in Atlanta. Right. You just go down in your basement, right, and turn tasty. Yeah. So, yes, there are, like, I guess there's structure.

21:01There's like global structure that can be applied to climate migrants and climate refugees. It's just that's not necessarily happening right now. But it wouldn't take much, I think, is what we're saying, right, to just kind of expand the existing definitions. Well, yeah, and that's just, you know, that's the U.N. definition. There are other places in the world, the Organization of African Unity Convention and the Latin America, Cartagena. Is that Cartagena? Yeah. I know that from Romancing the Stone. We just watched that with Ruby last weekend. It's such a good movie. It holds up. And if you have a kid that's around that age that's into sort of like action-adventure kind of movies, which she is, it's a great one, man.

21:43She had a really good time. And it's not like super inappropriate for an 80s movie. That's really surprising. Did you follow up with Jewel of the Nile? Not yet. But, yeah, that'll be coming. It's just Danny DeVito, man. And what a national treasure that guy is. Yeah, he really is a jewel. So great. Ira! Ira! I forgot how much I love remains in the stone. All right. So back to Cartagena Declaration. They have an expanded definition of refugee that is more broad than the U.N., where they say events that are seriously disturbing public order, which obviously could include climate events. Yeah. The sun can do that.

22:25Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that a lot of these nations that are going to be most affected are saying is like, hey, we appreciate you guys thinking about this, but we don't really want to move. So is there like a version of this where we can stay and you wealthy countries who kind of got us into this mess in the first place can maybe help fund some of the mitigation efforts that we're trying to put in place? and so far the wealthy countries are like, well, I can't hear you. The connection's breaking up. But that may change as we get a little further down the road. Who knows? But there are some governments that are like kind of starting to plan because they're like, this is not 2050 for us.

23:10This is like 2030 that we're having to worry about. And in some places it's already started happening. Like Kiribati is a Pacific Island nation. It's 32 nations, about 130 ,000 people. and at best it's just about at sea level. Yeah. And when sea level is rising, Kiribati is going under the sea and apparently sea level is rising about four times faster than other parts of the world. Yeah, the writing is on the wall there, very sadly. For sure. So their government was like, okay, we have to figure out how to move people and we have to figure out how to do it right. And they started looking at Fiji, right?

23:49Yeah. Yeah, and Fiji kind of stepped up and were like, hey, we have some underdeveloped land. I guess it was undeveloped land that we can sell you. This is in 2014, and the president at the time of Kiribati was Enote Tong. I think that's right, yeah. All right. And Tong's, you know, was all over this. Like, let's buy this land. Let's move people, like, not just, you know, a few families. Like, let's start moving en masse over there because, you know, the writing is on the wall here. and these islands just aren't going to be around at some point. Right. He was calling it migration with dignity.

24:26And then in 2016, Tong lost the president to Taneti Ma Mao. And this, it was just, you know, sometimes when a new administration comes in, Josh, things can shift in radical directions. I don't know if you knew that or not. I could see Ma Mao basically running on this platform because I'm guessing 130 ,000 people in a 32 island spread is Kiribati. Like I'm guessing moving the entire country to Fiji is probably top of the mind of the voters there. So I'm guessing that Mao Mao or Mao Mao ran on a platform against moving and was like, no, we're going to figure out how to stay here. We're going to build seawalls.

25:11We're going to cross our fingers. We're going to use fairy dust. Who knows what they were running on, but they won because people don't want to move if they don't have to. If there's a chance of them staying where they lived, where their families have lived, they want to stay typically. That's what people who study climate migrants are finding. Yeah. Well, in that case, it was, you know, billions of dollars to like physically re-engineer these islands and build those walls. and they didn't have that kind of dough. So China stepped up and said, hey, you got that marine protected zone where you don't allow fishing.

25:48Give us those fishing rights. So this is just sort of another good example of the domino effect that can happen. All of a sudden, you're wrecking that part of the sea because it was a protected zone that's no longer protected because China said, hey, we'll help you re-engineer those islands if you let us fish there. But they only ended up giving a fraction of the cost of what's needed. I think New Zealand is also stepping up, right? Well, they tried to. They created a new visa specifically for residents of places like Kiribati who are like, we need to get out now. And New Zealand very kindly was like, you guys can come live here.

26:24We're going to make it as easy as possible on you. And the people of Kiribati just gave them crickets back. In New Zealand, within six months, like canceled the program because they had basically no takers. They did not need the special visa because people, again, don't want to move if there's any chance of them not having to move. I get it, you know. I totally get it as well, for sure. And, I mean, if you put yourself in that mindset, it suddenly is like, okay, I kind of get why people keep moving back after their house burns down from a wildfire or gets blown away by a hurricane or gets picked up by a tornado.

26:59That's where you live. and it just hasn't, I feel like it just hasn't gotten quite frequent enough for people, at least let's say in the United States, it's my frame of reference, to just be like, okay, this is not going to change. It's going to keep getting worse. We need to leave. Yeah, I mean, I think people are of two minds here and it seems like there are way more people that are so attached to their home they don't want to leave it. But I've heard just anecdotally stories of people that are like, I'm getting the heck out of California or I'm getting the heck out of a hurricane-prone area.