Climate migration will only be a crisis if we make it into one

However human movement does not have to be chaotic or problematic. Millions of people across the world are currently migrants. It may be that migration will also become a key way for some people to adapt to the worst impacts of climate change. This is very different to conventional adaptation projects, which usually focus on helping people adapt where they are now.

Migration as adaptation aims to help people move in an organised and dignified way to somewhere safer. This could potentially happen in a number of ways – for example by helping people finance their move, or by providing education and training to help them find work in new places. And by building infrastructure like decent housing in the places they could move to.

The hope is that by helping people migrate in a dignified way, they won’t suffer being forcibly displaced when their situation reaches crisis point. There is a vast difference between migrating in an organised way and being suddenly forced from your home by a disaster.

Climate and migration at the climate negotiations

States will discuss displacement, among a vast array of other topics, at this year’s climate negotiations. A new task force on displacement, established in previous negotiations, will also issue a report at this year’s gathering, but we don’t yet know what its recommendations will be.

We can hope that it might ask governments to consider the idea of migration as climate change adaptation. The remit of the task force is to “avert, prevent and minimise” displacement caused by climate change impacts. One of the key ways of minimising future displacement could be through the preventative medicine of helping people move in a dignified and organised way in advance. Whether governments will be open to this suggestion is of course another question.

A key issue the climate talks will struggle to address is the rights of people who have to move due to climate change. The climate negotiations are geared up for states to agree on cutting emissions and planning adaptation, but the question of the rights of migrants and displacees doesn’t sit neatly anywhere in the talks.

Not the only show in town

For this reason there are a number of other international negotiations dealing with this. This is a strange situation as only a few years ago climate-linked migration was not being dealt with by the international community at all. It is now the focus of several sets of global talks.

This means that eventually the issue of climate-linked migration will be addressed by a patchwork of international agreements, rather than one.

Hopefully the climate talks will deliver something useful on climate-linked displacement. However, the rights of people who move due to disasters are more likely to be addressed by the new Platform on Disaster Displacement. How states work together on dealing with the risks of disasters will be addressed by new Sendai Framework. The new Global Compact on Refugees recognised climate change as a driving force of migration, but it isn’t yet clear what this agreement will result in. Individual governments may also act alone. New Zealand, for example, has proposed the idea of new climate refugee visas for some islands in the Pacific.

There will not be a neat global ‘fix’ that deals with the entire issue. But given the global nature, and complexity of climate-linked migration perhaps this patchwork approach is the best option.