Every Saturday we decipher climate issues with François Gemenne, professor at HEC, president of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Nature and Man and member of the IPCC. Saturday November 11: migration linked to climate change.
On Friday, Australia offered climate asylum to citizens of the island of Tuvalu. The issue of migration is central to the climate issue.
franceinfo: In France, the immigration bill was discussed this week in the Senate, yet the question of climate migration is absolutely not on the table?
François Gemenne: While other countries are dealing with the issue of migration linked to climate change. Australia, for example, which decided on Friday to grant climate asylum to the 11,000 inhabitants of the island of Tuvalu, an archipelago in the South Pacific, threatened by rising sea levels. But when we talk about climate migration, in France or in Europe, we systematically tend to talk about it in the future tense, as a risk that we could avoid. The entire debate is framed by future projections, which predict hundreds of millions of refugees by 2030 or 2050, and we wonder how we are going to absorb these migratory flows into our asylum and immigration systems. The reality is that these migrations already exist: for example, last year, there were 32 million displacements in the world which were linked to climate-related disasters: hurricanes, droughts or floods , For example.
It seems huge, is it the same every year?
It is considerable, in fact. We can say that today, climate change has already become one of the main factors of migration in the world. Every year millions of people are displaced, and each year the figure is higher than the number of people displaced by war and violence. So we should not talk about it in the future, but in the present.
But why don’t we take care of them, we have the impression that we don’t see them, at least not in France?
There are two reasons for this: firstly, unlike displacements caused by conflicts, for example, these are often displacements over short distances, within the country concerned: people seek to get to know each other. shelter, not to flee their country. And sometimes it is possible for them to return home after a few weeks or months, although some impacts of climate change also cause permanent displacement, such as rising sea levels.
The second reason is that migration factors often mix with each other. For example, if you live in a rural region and your income depends on your harvests, and therefore on environmental conditions – this is the case for 70% of the population of the Sahel, for example – this means that the economic and ecological reasons for migration merge. This is also the case for long-distance migration: some of the migrants who arrive in Europe and whom we call economic migrants, because they do not come from a country at war, in fact we could just as easily call ecological migrants, or climate migrants. But that would obviously assume that we are interested in their migratory journey, before they cross the Mediterranean…
Do climate migrants have no separate status? Are they confused with economic migrants?
“Climate migrants have no special status.”
François Gemenneat franceinfo
But we often imagine that this is a particular, separate category, distinct from other migratory flows. The reality is that the reasons for migration are often mixed with each other: in many places, the conditions of economic or political stability are intrinsically linked to climatic factors. And climate change will create situations of tension or poverty which will themselves generate migration.
But how can we make projections on the number of migrants linked to climate change?
The whole problem is there: these projections are in fact based on the number of people exposed to the impacts of climate change, and migration is only one of the possible responses to these impacts.
Yet we keep saying that climate change will cause a new wave of migration and that there is a risk of chaos?
And why do we say that? To scare people. We said to ourselves that the best way to convince Western governments to reduce their emissions was to raise the scarecrow of migration, as a strong argument that would convince them of their interest in reducing their emissions. But this type of argument especially risks serving the far right.
How so ?
By presenting migration linked to climate change as a terrible threat to our societies, we give credence to the idea that migration is in itself a problem, even a danger. While in certain cases, migration could be a solution for adaptation to climate change, for example, particularly because it will allow families to diversify their income. And that these are often short-distance migrations, which are either migrations within a country or directed towards the neighboring country.
“The reality of climate migration has nothing to do with the presentation that we make of it in the public debate.”
François Gemenneat franceinfo
Would you say this is a fantasy?
No, these migrations do exist, and number in the millions. But the presentation that is made is very different from reality, it is a political construction. And when we raise the prospect of a new migration crisis, in reality, we will mainly push States to close their borders, rather than to reduce their emissions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions…