Changing Climate, Changing Migration

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.

The small island nations that make up the Caribbean are incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Many people and businesses are concentrated along the coastline, exposing them to intensifying hurricanes and rising sea levels. Are these hazards prompting greater displacement, either within the region or beyond? And could they reduce tourism, prompting economic shocks to countries dependent on vacationers? This episode discusses these issues and others with Natalie Dietrich Jones, a migration expert at the University of the West Indies.