Growing numbers of people are moving to escape the consequences of climate change. They face racist border controls imposed by imperialist states, and so much of this movement takes place internally, contributing to overcrowding rather than mass international migraton. This combines with centuries of colonial and imperialist plunder, leading to deteriorating living conditions in underdeveloped countries. The environmental movement must make it a point of principle to demand the return of stolen resources and to join the fight for the right to migrate and for equal rights.
Human movement is normal, but capitalism presents it as a problem. Throughout human history people have often adapted to changing environmental conditions by moving to a new place. Today, climate change is contributing to sea level rise, desertification, and droughts, and is increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters like typhoons and flash flooding. Climate change is the result of capitalism’s relentless and irresponsible drive for profits and is putting pressure on increasing numbers of people to move in order to survive. Compounding the consequences of this, capitalism’s systematic plunder of underdeveloped nations denies them the resources to adapt effectively to environmental changes, and racist immigration controls prevent those who have been displaced from taking refuge in the imperialist countries where most of the world’s wealth is hoarded.
Some within the environmental movement present alarmist predictions about masses of people forced by climate change to migrate the wealthy imperialist countries. But there is little agreement on the estimated numbers of ‘climate refugees’ or ‘climate migrants’, partly because migration can rarely be attributed to a single cause. Where environmental changes play a role this is often combined with political, social and economic factors. For people already struggling to survive because of poverty, persecution or war, small environmental changes may be the final straw that leads them to abandon their homes and move somewhere else. Most of those who move do so without leaving the country, with an estimated 25 million people ‘internally displaced’ by natural disasters just in 2016. Predictions of the total number of people who are expected to migrate internationally because of climate change over the next 30 years vary from 25 million to 1 billion.
Climate-driven movement takes many forms. Some environmental disasters hit fast, like the powerful typhoons and cyclonic storms that are expected to become more common as the planet warms. For example, Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, and was one of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded. Within a few hours it had killed nearly 6,000 people, injured nearly 30,000, and displaced almost four million. But within 24 hours the storm had moved on, and under such circumstances people don’t usually move far and return home soon afterwards to rebuild.
Climate change is also forcing people to move longer-term. Slow disasters, like the series of droughts in the Horn of Africa over recent decades, can combine with other factors such as wars and poverty to encourage longer-term migration over longer distances, although most people who move still remain within the same country. There is strong evidence linking climate change with increased prevalence of droughts and flooding. This can lead people to move back and forth, for example members of farming communities who respond to falling yields by sending family members to cities to work and send money home to supplement farming incomes, or entire communities who move seasonally in response to some periods of the year becoming inhospitable at home. Desertification has made some areas of the world that were previously fertile effectively uninhabitable, making life more precarious or totally impossible, forcing people to relocate. Land is degrading at 30-35 times the historical average rate, driven by a combination of urbanisation, mining, farming, and ranching, and compounded by climate change. Around two billion people currently live in areas that are vulnerable to desertification and some projections suggest 50 million could be displaced as a result within the next decade.
In some countries, climate change is pushing people into cities, contributing to overcrowding. Pacific island states are particularly vulnerable to erosion and flooding as a result of rising sea levels, together with changes to rainfall that lead to water shortages, and ocean acidification caused by rising CO2 levels that damages fisheries. For example, in the Republic of Kiribati, home to 116,398 people, 80% of households who were surveyed had been affected by rising sea levels over the period 2005-2015. 14% of people who moved homes during this period said they did so because of environmental change, in most cases moving to another part of Kiribati. For those who migrated internationally, most cited other reasons – 28% migrating for education, 46% for work, and 25% for medical or other reasons, compared to 1% due to environmental change. This needs to be understood in the context of the financial costs and immigration controls that make international migration very difficult for many people. Much of the internal migration within Kiribati has been to the capital city, contributing to overcrowding. This is being repeated in many other underdeveloped countries, for example Bangladesh, where many of those who have been repeatedly displaced from their homes by cyclonic storms are moving to the capital, either seasonally or permanently. This has made Dhaka one of the fastest growing cities in the world, with half of the population living in slums and one third of these lacking access to sanitation.
Wealthy countries are not immune to climate change, although the resources they have plundered from underdeveloped countries makes them better equipped to deal with its consequences, at least for the wealthy. Projections for the North Atlantic predict a 45% increase in the number of major hurricanes (Category 3 or above) for the period 2016-2035 compared to 1986-2005. As was graphically demonstrated by the response to Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005, the most oppressed sections of the working class suffer the most from such disasters, while landlords and developers seize the opportunity for profit. In another example, a recent study suggested that a 2 Degree Celsius increase in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels will result in the whole of southern Spain becoming a desert – this is what will happen if the Paris Accords targets are met, and the world is currently on course for a much higher level of warming within the next century.
Climate justice requires immediate reductions in carbon emissions to slow global warming, together with the return of resources to underdeveloped countries and reparations for centuries of colonial and imperialist exploitation. This will strengthen their ability to adapt to environmental changes. We must also fight for freedom of movement and equal rights for those who move internationally as a result of climate change, and against the racist immigration controls that seek to ghettoise the worst consequences of climate change within the underdeveloped countries. And we must fight for adaptations to climate change that are based on the needs of humanity in balance with the wider ecosystem, against all attempts to turn climate change into a new source of profit at the expense of people and the environment. This means the climate crisis movement must unite with anti-racists in defending migrant rights and opposing racist immigration controls.
Tom Vickers
