As temperatures rise around the planet, floods, drought and deforestation are forcing people in the Global South from their homes and livelihoods. The media likes to call them climate refugees, but is that accurate? This episode will unpack the catchy phrase and guide us through some of the nuanced intersections between the environment and migration.
First, we'll hear from Daniela Paredes Grijalva. In 2019, she was on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where, just months earlier, a strong earthquake had caused a tsunami and a rare phenomenon called soil liquefaction. The consequences for the islanders were absolutely devastating.
Here to help host Maggie Perzyna separate the myths from the facts surrounding climate-induced migration are Kathleen Hermans, head of the MigSoKo research group at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, and Robert McLeman, professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and a policy adviser on the effects of climate change and global migration patterns.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this podcast is Borders & Belonging. In it, Maggie talks to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notes Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art and documentary ‘Climate Refugees’, by Michael Nash, Multicom Entertainment Group (2010)
‘Fleeing Climate Change – The Real Environmental Disaster’, by Thomas Anders, DW Documentary (2019)
‘Planet SOS from Palau to Alaska: Where will climate refugees go when the tide rises?’, by Al Jazeera (2019)
‘The Age of Consequences’, by Jared P. Scott, STARZ Documentaries (2016)
Donate or get involved! ‘Hudara’: Standing with communities
‘Refugees International’
‘UNHCR’: Climate change and disaster displacement
Media ‘A new kind of climate refugee is emerging’, by Willem Marx, NPR (2 December 2022)
‘As the Planet Warms, Canada Faces an Influx of Climate Refugees’, by Hanna Hett, Wired (18 September 2022)
‘Beyond environmental refuge’, by Robert McLeman, TEDxUOttawa (18 October 2021)
‘Does climate change cause migration?’, by Daniela Paredes Grijalva, TEDxDonauinsel (21 July 2022)
‘How climate migration will reshape America’, by Abrahm Lustgarten, The New York Times (15 September 2020)
‘Human migration and global environmental change’, ‘MigSoKo project, YouTube (2 February, 2022)
‘Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change?’, by Gaia Vince (17 November 2022)
‘The great climate migration has begun’, by Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times (23 July 2020)
Research projects and policy ‘Internal Displacement Monitoring Center’, Geneva
‘MigSoKo’ Research Group, UFZ Leipzig, Germany
‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’, United Nations
‘Global Report on Internal Displacement 2022 (GRID): Children and youth in internal displacement’, Internal Displacement Monitoring Center
International agreements and conventions‘The 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol’, United Nations
‘Global Compact on Refugees’, United Nations (17 December, 2018)
‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’ (GCM), United Nations 10 December 2018
‘Kampala Ministerial Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change’, RCC Kampala, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Ministry of Water and Environment of Uganda (29 July 2022)
‘The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants’, United Nations (19 September 2016)
‘The Paris Agreement’, UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) (12 December 2015)
‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’, United Nations (1992)
Books Ginty, A. (2021). ‘Climate change solutions and environmental migration: The injustice of maladaptation and the gendered ‘silent offset’ economy’. Routledge.
McLeman, R. (2013). ‘Climate and human migration: Past experiences, future challenges’. Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges. Cambridge University Press.
Miller, T. (2017). ‘Storming the wall: Climate change, migration, and homeland security’. City Lights Books.
Behrman, S., & Kent, A. (eds) (2022). ‘Climate refugees: Global, local and critical approaches’. Cambridge University Press.
Rosignoli, F. (2022). ‘Environmental justice for climate refugees’. Routledge.
Academic works Ebi, K. L., & McLeman, R. (2022). ‘Climate related migration and displacement’. BMJ.
Groth, J., Ide, T., Sakdapolrak, P., Kassa, E., & Hermans, K. (2020). ‘Deciphering interwoven drivers of environment-related migration–A multisite case study from the Ethiopian highlands’. Global Environmental Change.
Groth, J., Hermans, K., Wiederkehr, C., Kassa, E., & Thober, J. (2021). ‘Investigating environment-related migration processes in Ethiopia–A participatory Bayesian network’. Ecosystems and People.
Hauer, M. E., Fussell, E., Mueller, V., Burkett, M., Call, M., Abel, K., ... & Wrathall, D. (2020). ‘Sea-level rise and human migration’. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Hermans, K., & Garbe, L. (2019). ‘Droughts, livelihoods, and human migration in northern Ethiopia’. Regional Environmental Change.
Hermans, K., & Ide, T. (2019). ‘Advancing research on climate change, conflict and migration’. DIE ERDE: Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin.
Hermans, K., & McLeman, R. (2021). ‘Climate change, drought, land degradation and migration: exploring the linkages’. Current opinion in environmental sustainability.
Høeg, E., & Tulloch, C. D. (2019). ‘Sinking strangers: Media representations of climate refugees on the BBC and Al Jazeera’. Journal of Communication Inquiry.
McLeman, R., Wrathall, D., Gilmore, E., Thornton, P., Adams, H., & Gemenne, F. (2021). ‘Conceptual framing to link climate risk assessments and climate-migration scholarship’. Climatic Change.
McLeman, R. (2019). ‘International migration and climate adaptation in an era of hardening borders’. Nature Climate Change.
McLeman, R., Fontanella, F., Greig, C., Heath, G., & Robertson, C. (2022). ‘Population responses to the 1976 South Dakota drought: Insights for wider drought migration research’. Population, Space and Place.
Wiederkehr, C., Ide, T., Seppelt, R., & Hermans, K. (2022). ‘It’s all about politics: migration and resource conflicts in the global South’. World Development.
TranscriptMagdalena Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration, and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. As global temperatures rise, vulnerable areas around the world are facing environmental disruptions and extreme weather events. Challenges like floods, drought, and deforestation are causing a fundamental shift in the daily lives of many in the global South. These kinds of environmental shifts are forcing people from their homes and livelihoods, creating climate-related migration. Today, we're exploring the idea of a climate refugee. It's a popular term in the media. But is such terminology accurate? Two researchers will help us unpack the catchy phrase and guide us through some of the nuanced intersections between the environment and migration. But first, we'll hear from Daniela Paredes Grijalva. She's a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna, and a member of the Global (De)Center.
In 2019, Daniela was on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a place where just months earlier, a strong earthquake had caused a tsunami and a rare phenomenon called soil liquefaction. The consequences were absolutely devastating.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
In February 2019, the death toll had been over 4000 and over 170,000 people were displaced. Financial losses, which are obviously also difficult to calculate, but they surpassed the $1 billion mark. The homes of 60,000 families were severely damaged or destroyed. Well, in short, it was a terrible time for the people of Sulawesi, especially central Sulawesi.
Magdalena Perzyna
Daniela wanted to learn about how these disasters impacted mobility on the island. She wondered, who left, who stayed, and why? So as part of her research, she interviewed a wide range of people.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
I started talking to humanitarian and development workers in Indonesia that had been involved in the post disaster response. I was trying to understand the logics with which these organizations operated on the ground, to try to identify if this intersection of environment and human mobility was something that they were doing explicitly or not.
Magdalena Perzyna
The more Daniela spoke with different actors, the more she realized that many organizations had very specific ways of describing who their beneficiaries were. For example, some would refer to them as "disaster victims". But Daniela quickly learned that these kinds of terms did not always reflect how Sulawesi residents described their own experiences. So, she kept asking questions.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
During one of my interviews, I kept on asking about, well, what about this term? And this is obviously a limitation, or more than a limitation. The angle with which I was coming, right from university. I want to have my categories clear, what words am I talking about? What concepts so I kept on asking, What about refugee? What about displaced person? What about internally displaced? What about international migrants? What words are you using in your work? And I did end up annoying the person on the other side [laughing]. And they got back to me saying regular people, just regular people.
Magdalena Perzyna
This response prompted Daniela to think more deeply about how environmental disasters are just one of many challenges people face. And it was an important reminder on how the environment intersects with other fundamental human rights.
Daniela Paredes Grijalva
These interactions, I heard of people who, those who hadn't registered births or marriages. And because of that reason could later not make any claims to disaster compensation or participate in relocation programs. That seems like a pretty basic or fundamental thing that also needs to be addressed. And I think that's a good reminder for those of us working in this field of environmental migration. Yes, it's a specialized field. At the same time, I guess the challenge is how do we connect it to basic human rights?
Magdalena Perzyna
Just as important a...