Missing migrants?
Where are all the climate refugees we were promised? That seems
to have been the question
concerning much of the climate skeptic blogosphere over the
past few weeks, and the debate was been picked up by the
New Scientist and BBC Radio 4's popular statistics programme More Or
Less.
It began with a piece by Gavin Atkins for Asian Correspondent,
titled
What happened to the climate refugees? Atkins pointed to
a
map, made by newspaper Le
Monde Diplomatique and hosted on the United Nations Environment
Programme's website, which showed the geographical distribution of
likely climate impacts was shown. The map stated 'Climate
refugees will mainly come from developing countries, where the
effect of climate change comes on top of poverty and war.'
Atkins
compared the map with census data for the areas
highlighted at being of risk of climate impacts, showing that in
some of the areas highlighted on the map, populations were
increasing. Atkins wrote:
"… a very cursory look at the first
available evidence seems to show that the places identified by the
UNEP as most at risk of having climate refugees are not only not
losing people, they are actually among the fastest growing regions
in the world."
UNEP subsequently inflated the story by pulling the map from
their website in what was presumably either a too-late spring
cleaning or a botched attempt at PR, depending on how generous
you're feeling.
So how accurate are projections about numbers of 'climate
refugees'? And does population growth in areas of climate impacts
show that the issue is bogus?
The map referenced what is probably the most widely known
research on the issue, produced by Oxford environmental scientist
Professor
Norman
Myers. In a 1995 paper Myers
predicted [PDF] that by 2010 there would be 50 million climate
refugees in the world, and in 2005 he argued
[PDF] that by 2050
"there could be as many as 200 million
people [displaced] by disruptions of monsoon systems and other
rainfall regimes, by droughts of unprecedented severity and
duration, and by sea level rise and coastal flooding."
This would mean roughly ten times more refugees and IDPs
(internally displaced people) in the world by 2050 than there are
now.
New
Scientist noted that Myers had described his numbers as
a "first cut assessment", which had required some "heroic
extrapolations". However it does seem they have become widely
accepted, if only because of a lack of other definitive work on the
subject.
Myers' work certainly has its critics. The BBC's More or Less
programme spoke to Stephen Castles, associate director of the
International Migration Institute at Oxford University, criticized
Myers' work, saying "the figure is absolute nonsense. There's no
evidence whatsoever that anything like that number have been forced
to move by climate change." Castles claimed that Myers had merely
taken a map of the world, calculated the areas that would be
affected by a given sea rise, and assumed that everyone living in
the affected areas would migrate, many of them to developed
countries.
"There was no basis for it", he said.
Myers responded to More or Less rejecting
suggestions that the 50 million number is wrong, and noting that he
had interviewed "governments, agencies, scientists in the various
countries, on the ground" and visited refugee camps in order to
research the issue. The number was "very cautious", he
said.
So, why isn't there a clearer picture on this issue? We spoke to
Hannah Smith, refugee project manager for the
Climate Outreach and Information Network, for her view. She
told us that while Myers' work could not be taken as a
sophisticated prediction, comparing maps of climate impacts with
population change does not tell us that climate migration is not
occurring.
"The great majority of people working on
environment and migration issues have long regarded the numbers as
at best educated guess work. Though Myers' figure of 200 million
'climate refugees' by 2050 is commonly cited, it has long been
contentious within the migrant research community. It is notable
that Myers is an environmental scholar, not a migration expert. In
reality, his conclusions represent the population exposed to
climate change risk rather than an accurate displacement
forecast."
"But the fact that census data shows
population increasing in these countries does not allow us to say
no one is moving. Just as Myers' figures have long been contested,
so too has the idea that climate change will cause rapid, mass
displacement across borders. The vast majority of movement and
displacement will occur within national boundaries."
With climate change just one factor affecting migration, Smith
pointed out that it is likely to be impossible to identify
migration caused solely by climate change, because different
regions, with different environmental and social dynamics, will
respond to a changing climate in very different ways. In such a
complex system, she suggested, trying to come up with a single
'number of refugees' was an unhelpful approach.
"The obvious example here is cases of
Small Island States at risk of sea level rise … Islands are likely
to become uninhabitable long before they are submerged and we are
likely to see out-migration before this occurs. Some will move in
pre-emptive manner. In contrast, consider the potential role
climate impacts might play in migration decisions and displacement
in a country like Zimbabwe or Sudan."
Rather than fixating on numerical assessments of 'climate
refugee numbers', she suggested, we should view climate change as a
'threat multiplier', which "dramatically increases the burden on
already vulnerable communities."
"Politicians, the international
community and media consistently obsess over reducing complex
issues to quantifiable matters. Others must get on with the
challenge of better understanding the nuances of a complex
situation. Climate change is a very real threat and the necessity
for those affected to adapt their livelihoods through migration
needs careful understanding. It is misguided to think that alarmist
approaches lead to action."
Smith noted in 2008 alone at least 36 million people were
displaced by sudden-onset natural disasters that occurred in that
year. Of those,
over 20 million cases were climate related.
"There is an urgent need to move beyond
'numbers' in this debate. Rather the debate needs to concentrate on
how we protect vulnerable migrants. A person is vulnerable and has
protection and assistance needs not because there are 10 million
other people like them, but because of their individual
situation."
More information on the work on the
migration initiatives of the Climate Outreach and Information
Network here.