Changing Climate, Changing Migration

Africa may be the most climate-vulnerable region of the world, with drought, extreme heat and storms, and other impacts affecting millions across the continent. These environmental events have forced people from their homes and in some cases even contributed to conflict between different groups. By far, most climate-affected individuals who migrate stay either within their own country or go elsewhere on the continent, rather than migrating beyond Africa.

How prepared is the continent for a future of increased displacement? Governments are making some strides to accommodate displaced people—although there is often a gap between official rhetoric and the realities on the ground. This episode discusses climate-linked migration issues across Africa with Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, a senior research consultant at the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies.

It is not guaranteed that someone harmed by a natural disaster or other environmental change will leave their home. A complicated web of factors affects whether climate-vulnerable individuals want to—or even can—move. One of these factors is financial: How much money or other resources someone has at their disposal.

In this episode, we speak with Kelsea Best of The Ohio State University about climate (im)mobility and the economic and other factors that help shape futures amid changing climates. We also discuss the notion of “climate gentrification,” which occurs when wealthier people move into traditionally lower-income neighborhoods that are better shielded from natural disasters and other environmental harms.

Children are especially vulnerable to displacement linked to climate change. Each year, millions of young people are displaced by weather-related disasters, as schools and other services break down and adults send children away to find safety. Forced from their homes, children often face new challenges, including being unable to access education or medical care, and even heightened risk of violence and other dangers. Despite the unique challenges that children face in displacement, there are relatively few international laws or systems particularly designed to assist those forced to move because of environmental factors. We speak with UNICEF’s Laura Healy about this reality and the opportunities to better protect children in a warming world.

Within the next few decades, rising sea levels could wipe some small Pacific Island nations off the face of the earth. The prospect that the physical territory of countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu is no longer habitable raises the prospect that their nationals could lose their citizenship, becoming stateless. It also poses profound questions for international law and the obligations of other countries.

How likely is this possible outcome, and what can countries do to protect their sovereignty and their citizens? Join our discussion with Mark Nevitt, an international law scholar at the Emory University School of Law.

It is no easy task to say with certainty that a particular storm, drought, or other extreme weather event causes human displacement, or that those individual events are due to human-caused climate change. Hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, monsoons, and other sudden-onset events, as well as slow-onset ones such as drought, extreme heat, and sea-level rise, have happened for millennia. To attribute specific impacts to human-made environmental change requires scientists to parse through years of data and pattern detection. In this episode, we speak with climate scientist Lisa Thalheimer, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, to explain how experts untangle the connections between climate change and migration.