The Truth About Climate Migration – It's More Complicated Than You Think

0:07What if I told you there's a nation on Earth that is currently uploading its entire history, culture, laws and memories to the cloud? Now it may sound like fiction, but it isn't. That nation is Tuvalu and it's sinking fast. Scientists say much of it could be underwater by the end of the century. So its government has started building a version of itself that can survive without the land, a digital twin if you like. Every island scanned and rebuilt in 3D, every law, every ceremony, every piece of cultural memory backed up indefinitely so that nothing is lost, including the rights to its ocean territories, which are over 28 ,000 times the size of its land area.

0:57So the aim of its digital identity is to protect an area of land you could walk across in an afternoon, as well as an ocean territory roughly the size of Turkey. It raises an interesting question. What happens when a country has no land left to stand on? And what happens to its people, their sense of belonging, identity and connection to ancestral roots? In today's episode, we're looking at what it means to lose a country and how does an individual respond when their home is lost? Because we've all seen the headlines, Western nations could be swamped as refugees flee floods and drought. It's become one of the defining stories of our age.

1:38As temperatures rise, so too will the number of desperate people heading for countries like our own. It's a powerful story, but it's also a misleading one. So far in this series, we've looked at the warnings from a suppressed intelligence report that the government didn't want us to see. We've explored what climate and nature collapse mean for our ability to feed ourselves and what the implications are of a world facing water bankruptcy. Today we're investigating another claim in the report, that climate breakdown and biodiversity loss will lead to a significant increase in migration, with the implication that many will arrive on our shores.

2:17We'll look behind the headlines and discover a more complex reality. So, in this episode, we'll be asking, is climate refugee a useful term? What support for those fleeing climate devastation already exists? And what does it actually mean in human terms if you're facing the loss not just of your home or your town, but potentially your whole country? First, I'll be speaking with Alex Randall, a leading expert in climate-driven migration and displacement with climate outreach. And then with Aminath Shona, a former Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Technology in the Maldives, the lowest lying country in the world.

3:01Here's my interview with Alex. The idea that literally millions of climate refugees could be on the move internationally very soon is one that's got a lot of traction and you only have to look at the tabloid headlines to know that. And so I wondered if you could give me your understanding of what the truth is behind those headlines. Of course. So I think you're exactly right. This idea that climate change is going to produce this sudden exodus of people from one place to another, that people are going to move en masse, that millions of people are going to be crossing borders, getting into boats, traveling from one continent to another is a myth.

3:44But I think it's really important to caveat that with the fact that climate change is altering patterns of migration and displacement. People are moving because of the impacts of climate change, but it isn't in this very dramatic, apocalyptic way that it's often presented. It's in much more complicated ways where climate change usually plays a role in someone's migration or someone's displacement. it's very rarely the only thing that is going on that causes them to move. So it's always combined with other forces that drive people to move. So extreme poverty, conflict, human rights violations. And when these things combine with the impacts of climate change that we're all very aware of, with drought, with heat waves, with storms, hurricanes, typhoons that are happening with increasing intensity, It's when those things come together that we see these new patterns of migration and displacement happening.

4:44And what tends to happen, though, is rather than instantly packing bags and heading to the other side of the world from one continent to another, usually what people are doing is looking for the shortest route to find safety. Right. They're not looking to move to the other side of the world. They're looking for what is the quickest way that I can get out of danger or what is the quickest, simplest way that I can move to find a new livelihood and replace lost income, say from farming income that's declined because of a drought or the fastest, simplest, safest way to move out the way of a hurricane or a typhoon strike.

5:26And usually that means people moving internally, moving short distances, rather than this kind of myth of the idea of the climate refugee who packs their bags and crosses continents. So if it is a myth, then why do you think it's got such traction? I think there are a few reasons. One, it makes the idea of climate change, which is very abstract for a lot of people, visible, right? It's a way of saying, look, this is real. It's happening. It produces this incredible impact on humans. So I think the temptation is for people who care deeply about climate change, for people who have been, I know you have as well, been banging our head against the wall for decades saying, come on, everyone, wake up.

6:15This is happening. It's real. It's really dangerous. It's happening soon. The idea of something which is kind of politically salient, it's a hot button issue, everyone's talking about it, the mainstream media are obsessed with migration. To be able to say, hey, look, climate change could be a huge driver of migration is a very, very tempting way to try and put climate change in the headlines and to get people to pay attention to it. So on one level, I totally understand why advocates and campaigners want to do that. But it is also possible, it is also important that if we are going to talk about the links between climate change and migration, that we do that accurately, right?

7:02That we maintain that credibility, that we don't buy into these sort of false narratives and myths about the drama of it or the scale of it. It's really interesting hearing you say all of that because it just reinforces just the layers of complexity and complication there are in this subject. And I wanted to maybe make it more complicated because I wanted to talk about this term climate refugee because it's a term that quite often gets used by people who are absolutely in good faith and wanting to make sure that there is some kind of international protection for people who are on the move, notwithstanding that they might not be the majority.

7:37But I wonder what you think about the use of that term. Is it helpful or does it carry with it some risks as well? So in our work, we tend not to use it for a number of reasons. The first one is that in general, the people that we speak to who are sometimes on the move because of climate change or at risk of having to move because of climate change don't like the term, right? They don't like the idea of becoming a refugee. It's not a label that they want or a label that they actively try to embrace. Usually what people want, if their homes and their livelihoods are threatened by climate change, is to move with dignity, is to move to somewhere where they'll have a new secure livelihood, where they'll become part of a new community.

8:25So the label refugee is not something that they are keen to embrace necessarily. So that's the first reason. You know, this is a group of people that are, you know, we're talking about whose situation we're discussing. And like the least we can do is to kind of find some phraseology that they're comfortable with. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I think the phrase itself is part of the reason why we have these myths about kind of massive, chaotic, apocalyptic movement, right? It's very easy to grasp visually the idea of a climate refugee. I think for people in Western countries who see, from a kind of privileged position, see refugee situations on the news and in the media, it's very easy for us to kind of visualize the idea of a climate refugee.

9:26But that is not a particularly helpful thing to do in this situation, because as you've just pointed out, it's really, really complicated. Not everyone is moving in refugee-like circumstances. Not everyone is moving with just the things that they can carry and walking. People are moving to find work. They're moving temporarily and then returning. They're moving and finding a new job and sending money back to their families. And all of these patterns of movement that climate change is adding to are not necessarily refugee-like. So in some ways, it doesn't help us understand the complexity of the issue.

10:05One area of concern, obviously, is that with people on the move, having some level of international protection feels really important. And while many would argue, and I would agree with them, that opening up the Refugee Convention, for example, to suddenly try to create a new category of refugee would be incredibly dangerous as well as very difficult, because there'll be certainly people out there who would love to use that as an opportunity to weaken all of the protections. But if we're not going to do that, but we do accept that probably some greater level of legal protection is necessary, do you have any sense of what that could look like?

10:40Yes. So I think that's a really good point. The phrase climate refugee doesn't help us understand what kind of legal protection or international agreements we do need to increase the safety of people on the move in the era of climate change. And I think that's for a few reasons. I think if you say climate refugee, in quotes there, then it implies updating the refugee convention. And while intuitively that sort of makes sense, it is really not necessarily the quickest or the most straightforward way to do it. The first reason is that a huge amount of the mobility that we're going to see as a result of climate change is internal.

11:27People are moving within their own country. They're not crossing an international border. And therefore, the Refugee Convention simply doesn't apply. The Refugee Convention is about when you have crossed from one country to another. So if most of this migration and displacement is within borders, that's where we need to focus our attention in terms of thinking about how people can move safely. And there are some international agreements at the moment that govern that. So the guiding principles on internal displacement set out what states should be doing to protect vulnerable displaces during disasters, which can include disasters driven by climate change.

12:10So I think there's a lot of work that can be done to improve the implementation of those guiding principles. When it comes to people crossing borders, it gets more complicated. And the way that I look at it is there isn't going to be one big international agreement that every country in the world signs a big meeting and says, great, this is what we're doing. So the answer is probably that it's going to be a patchwork of smaller agreements, right? When people do cross borders, the likelihood is that they're going to move to a neighbouring country, right? And that means that there's a huge role for bilateral agreements.

12:56There are quite a lot in operation, aren't there? They're starting to happen, yeah, which is encouraging. They're not always perfect. They're often messy. They're often between countries with vastly kind of unequal geopolitical power. So there are all kinds of things going on. But it is those bilateral agreements from one country to another or small multilateral agreements where a group of states meet and agree certain provision that they will make for each other's citizens in the case of climate driven disasters and people needing to move from one country to another. I think it's those smaller agreements which are going to get us there quicker because you don't need the entire world to agree on it.

13:39You only need two or three or four states to come together and make an agreement between them. I wanted to speak to someone on the front lines of this complexity, someone who knows firsthand the heartbreak of watching her own country come to terms with its very fragile future. So I was delighted to be joined by Aminath Shona, who served as the Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Technology in the Maldives from 2021 to 2023. She led the Maldives delegation to the UN Climate Talks, and she played a leading role in the creation of an international fund to compensate countries affected by climate loss and damage.

14:18Here's our conversation. I wanted to come to the issue of migration because that's the focus of this particular episode, looking at the issue of climate-driven migration. And I wanted to ask you whether or not the phrase climate refugees is something that you think is helpful. Is it useful? Would you ever use it? Or do you think there are real problems with that as well? It's a very politically charged term. I mean, the truth is no Maldivian wakes up every day thinking that they want to become a climate refugee. And we want to, I mean, I want to remain in the Maldives. I want to live on our islands, speak in our language and protect in our culture.

15:06I want to be able to live with my family and with my friends as much as I can. So the real question is, for a country like ours, our contribution to climate change is 0.03 % of greenhouse gases. So the real question is, why do we have to leave our homes because the perpetrators have failed to act. I don't want to leave. No Maldivian wants to leave. It's a term that the term captures a very real risk. But I think we should be very, very careful about how we use the term climate refugees or environmental refugees because no one wants to leave their home. No one wants to become a refugee. So the aspiration of Maldivians is not to relocate elsewhere.

16:08It is to continue to live safely and prosperously in our islands and on our own terms. I think even thinking the possibility that this could be something that could happen in the future really takes away a lot of independence and the feelings of sovereignty that I have as a Maldivian. So I think rather than having discussions about climate refugees, do we still have time to focus on what could prevent such a situation? That is building resilience, that is spending more on adaptation and climate justice as well. So if communities are forced to move because our homes have become uninhabitable, not because of something we did, because of something some others have done, it raises huge, profound questions about legal issues and issues of moral questions as well.

17:26We really have to start to think about it and we really have to start making decisions to create conditions where we are not forced to leave our homes. It's a very tough question and tough term and a concept to think that I might have to one day leave my home, leaving everything I've built here, or even my children might have to leave one day. And the process of getting these visas is so much dependent on the political views of another country. I just wanted to come on to the issue, the difficult issue about what happens if best efforts to properly protect the Maldives isn't enough at some point.

18:17And I know, for example, that a country like the Pacific Island of Tuvalu, also very low-lying, has negotiated the world's first bilateral agreement on climate mobility with Australia. And I mean, it's not huge. It gives, I think, up to around 280 Tuvaluan citizens the right to migrate each year. Now, obviously, Tuvalu has a fraction of the population of the Maldives. But I wonder if you could envisage any kind of legal arrangements with other countries to host some part of the Maldivian population at some point? Or is that giving up to even begin to envisage such a scenario? And would you rather put all the effort into making the international community kind of step up to this moment while there's still time?

19:01I mean, to be honest, I don't spend much time imagining the Maldives disappearing. I spend my time imagining the Maldives surviving. And I mean, there are two possible futures. One obviously is where the world acts decisively and global emissions decline rapidly. And we're able to still change the direction of where we're headed. The other future is one where action continues to lag behind science. And the choices available to countries like ours become narrower and more painful. That's a very emotional decision to think about whether should I think about that possible future. And it's very real because as someone who believes in science and who follows what's happening in climate space, but also as someone who's worked in politics, I see how these two are very far apart.

20:13And if there's a real fear about what could happen to my five-year-old daughter's future when she is my age, would she be able to continue to have a life that is stable, that is just, that is where she has the ability to make the choices that she wants to in this country? I'm an optimist. The decisions that we make in this decade, I think, will shape whether countries like the Maldives can continue to flourish for generations to come. There is so much more that I'm going to be covering in this series, so don't miss it. Please sign up at therestispolitics.com.