IPCC report shines light on migrations triggered by climate change

Going beyond the headline figures of rising temperatures and sea levels, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) captures the full scale of the threat to human life in a heating world. It explains how extreme weather, drought, habitat and species loss, urban heat islands, and the destruction of food sources and livelihoods are all intensifying. And the scientific community is now more certain that climate change is having a direct influence on migration.

Climate-related displacement disproportionately affects people who have contributed least to the problem. Thanks to the repeated failure of the world’s major powers to address climate change, extreme weather in Central America, fires and storms in North America, flooding across Europe and Asia, and drought in Africa are forcing people to move. Last year, the Red Cross confirmed that it was already dealing with the consequences of climate change in all 192 countries where it operates.

The IPCC report recognises that migration is a form of climate adaptation – and that it is already occurring. This is an important correction to the widespread narrative of climate-linked displacement as a problem to be managed at some point in the future.

That view is often accompanied by fear mongering in wealthy countries about swarms of climate refugees. Across the Global North, ever more public money is being funnelled into a growing border-security and surveillance industry that promises to tackle the “threat” with a “global climate wall.” The industry’s lobbyists and political allies claim that advanced networks of weapons, walls, drones, surveillance technology, and lawfare will be needed to protect powerful countries against future waves of climate displacement.

But climate walls provide no such protection, even as they threaten civil liberties (in wealthier countries as much as anywhere else) and divert resources from meaningful climate action to the hands of crisis profiteers. Worse, these operators are closely linked to the fossil-fuel sector, global finance, and the arms industry, which profits from the conflicts that generate refugee flows.

These false solutions are already costing lives and livelihoods. In 2020-21, 2,000 people were killed in the Mediterranean due to illegal “pushback” policies in the European Union. People being turned away at the US-Mexico border are also fleeing extreme weather conditions, as are many now languishing in indefinite detention in countries from Britain to Australia.

The IPCC report is right to stress the urgency of decarbonization to prevent further displacement. But we must not stop there. The governments of major emitters of greenhouse gases must be pressured to support countries that face irreversible loss and damage from climate change. The global climate movement will fail if it focuses only on renewable energy and not also on ameliorating the suffering caused by the climate emergency that is already here.

What more should be done? First, we must safeguard both the right to move and the right to stay. Climate finance to help at-risk communities build resilience and limit migration is essential, as are improvements to disaster warning and relief systems. But we also need financing to facilitate the safe movement of people when it is necessary. Most displacement happens within countries, not across borders, so we must ensure that poorer countries have the resources to manage both short- and long-term resettlement.