Covering Climate Now: The Plight of Climate Refugees

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now our climate recoverage meets the southern border. You probably know about the ongoing crisis at the southern border of the United States where there's been a surge of migrants trying to cross into the country. President Biden labeled it a crisis for the first time just the other day, the US Customs and Border Protection reporting taking over 171,000 migrants into custody for the month of March alone.

Some migrants are coming out of fear for their safety or widespread poverty in their countries, but experts are also pointing out that for many there is another underlying reason why so many migrants are coming to the southern US border right now, and that is climate change. As the Biden administration convenes its first climate summit tomorrow on Earth Day, April 22, let's talk now about the climate crisis and its effect on migration with a look towards what the future might hold if we maintain the status quo.

Our guest now is Abrahm Lustgarten, senior reporter investigating climate and our response to a rapidly changing environment at ProPublica, and lead author of a three-part Climate Migration Series published in the New York Times Magazine last year. Hi, Abrahm. Thanks for coming on the show. Welcome to WNYC.

Abrahm Lustgarten: Hi, there. Good to be with you again.

Brian Lehrer: Could you explain to listeners who aren't familiar with your three-part series, why you wanted to write this particular series, and what you found most centrally in your reporting?

Abrahm Lustgarten: Yes, absolutely. It started with the basic question, how would climate change affect where people live, how people live on the planet, and we talk so much about the science of climate change, and how that's changing the environment around us, but we talk a lot less about what we will do as a population in response to it.

When you look at it globally, climate change is going to make it much more difficult for a very large portion of the entire planet's population, maybe a third of that population to live the way that humans have lived on this planet for thousands and thousands of years. There will be some response to that and movement is likely to be a large part of that response.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones for anybody who thinks that you or your family or anyone you know had to leave your country or any country because of climate change. That could be crop failure related to climate change, water shortage related to climate change, sea-level rise related to climate change.

Does what we're talking about sound like your experience as a migrant or that of anyone you know no matter what country you originally came from as an immigrant? 646-435-7280. Even if you're not an immigrant, if you know anybody in these circumstances, we want to see if we can personalize this a little bit on this segment.

If anybody is out there who would consider yourself a climate migrant, or if you know anybody who you would consider a climate migrant. 646-435-7280. Or if you just have a question for Abrahm Lustgarten, senior reporter investigating climate and our response to a rapidly changing environment at ProPublica and his reporting on climate migration. 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. How directly can you relate this to what's going on at the southern border?

Abrahm Lustgarten: Climate and migration, it's important to recognize it, climate is one of many influences, and these things all get swirled together. We talk about it as an exacerbating factor or an additional push on top of economic draws, on top of violence, on top of all the other things that encourage people to migrate.

What we could say about Central America, where I spend a lot of time reporting for my series is that climate is increasingly making life really difficult. It's jeopardizing food security, it's leading to the risk of mass starvation. Last season, you see two devastating hurricanes, one on top of another.

Many of those people are migrating towards the US in response to climate, not all of them, probably a small number of them. What we could say about the push on the border now is that climate is a contributing factor, but we can almost be certain that that factor will grow over time.

Some of the modeling and reporting that I did as a part of my story suggest that it'll become an ever-larger proportion of migrants on the US border, and then we can expect that pressure-- The things that we're seeing this year on the US border to be consistent and to become ever larger in the decades to come so that it's not a temporary surge, and climate will ensure that it becomes a more regular and sustained surge.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about policy because the Biden administration, I see, issued an executive order in February to explore how the US could protect migrants specifically fleeing because of climate change from anywhere. He's expected to discuss this idea at this climate summit tomorrow, but according to international refugee laws, as I understand them, a person cannot say climate change as a credible reason yet to be granted international refugee status. Can you clarify international law on this first of all?

Abrahm Lustgarten: Yes. That's exactly right. Refugee is a legal definition defined by the United Nations, and it's technically meant, or it's historically meant to be people who have been displaced as a result of conflict. Climate hasn't quite found its way into that definition, and it's a controversial matter. There's a universal agreement that there needs to be some categorical capacity to talk about climate and migration. It's not really clear yet whether refugees in a legal sense is the right way to talk about that.

More broadly, it's great, I think, to see the Biden administration taking this on directly. I had the opportunity to talk with John Kerry and some of Biden's advisors just before he came into office.

They're clearly aware and thinking deeply about these issues. What you see in that executive order is a specific request for information that would follow exactly on what we're talking about, asking for suggestions for ways to both identify who's a climate migrant and to try to quantify how many of them there are. Asking for an assessment of its implications for US national security and for global security. Asking for possible solutions, what to do about it, both in terms of accommodating potential migrants in the United States, but also in terms of helping them in the countries where they reside now. As with many things, Biden and climate, it remains to be seen what actually translates into action, but that looks like a really positive step to me.

Brian Lehrer: Rosie in Queens, originally from Colombia. Rosie, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Rosie: Thank you for taking my call. Just to bring some attention to transnationals, and the way they have caused deforestation, polluted the water in the oceans, just ransack through the natural resources. They're not really being held accountable by governments.

In the situation of Latin America, which is where I'm from, I'm from Colombia, where Indigenous peoples are being killed every day, we see that there is no control of these transnationals on the part of governments.

Brian Lehrer: When you say transnationals, you're talking about multinational corporations?

Rosie: Yes. They're all over South America deforesting the Amazon. We have companies that are taking the water out of South America, mining companies, and all these companies are from outside of our region. Then we have our people left in barren fields with no water, no way to make a living coming into the United States. To maybe pay attention to just not saying climate change like it's just part of the Earth as a normal thing, but also to look at the amount of destruction caused on the natural cycles of life by these transnationals.

Brian Lehrer: Rosie, thank you so much for that. I hope it's understood at this point, when we're talking about climate change, we're talking about human behavior-caused climate change.

Abrahm, one layer of this directly related to Rosie's call is whether or not the United States has a moral obligation to let in climate migrants, because according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, in some stats that I have right here, the US is responsible for emitting 15% of the world's global emissions, second only behind China. I actually thought it was more than that, but okay, I'll accept that stat.

Doesn't that mean that the US is in a way more responsible for creating this climate migration crisis at its southern border, in the first place? As it pertains to the multinational corporations in Latin America that Rosie was talking to, if we're creating climate refugees, then do we have an obligation to take them in because we're emitting disproportionately so much more of the greenhouse gas pollution than other countries relative to our population?

Abrahm Lustgarten: By the numbers, the answer is yes, as you quantify it and it's roughly correct. The United States is disproportionately responsible for the warming that's happening around the world and all of the implications from climate change, including migration and so there is that direct line of responsibility.

Many, many of the academics and thinkers and researchers that I speak with in the course of my reporting do suggest that that means that there's a moral obligation to do something in response to climate and migration. Whether that translates to bringing climate migrants into the United States, I think is a different policy question, but there is a growing consensus that there's a responsibility to do something and that might include enhanced foreign aid.

It's also worth noting, the United States hasn't seen things this way, but many countries see an opportunity in bringing in additional migrants, many Northern countries, Scandinavian countries, Canada are facing a demographic decline but also have an opportunity for economic growth as the climate changes, but they'll need people to do that. Bringing in ever-larger populations is one way to achieve that.

Brian Lehrer: The numbers I had seen were the US has about 4% of the world's population, we had about 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Union of Concerned Scientists there has a little less than that, but it's still stark. 4% of the world's population, 15% of the emissions. That gives us some international responsibility. Ellen in Norwalk, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellen.

Ellen: Hi. Thanks for having me on, I absolutely love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Ellen: I just had a brief comment that I've worked in international development and disaster response for many years, and we have always recognized climate change-- When I say always, for 20 years. As the chief driver of refugees both within country and region, as well as driving them out of country and region.

Whether it's desertification of countries and continents or internal conflicts based on natural resources such as water, ranches of cattle and other livestock, and/or just freedom of movement because of climate change disaster. We've recognized it as, as I said, one of the chief drivers and we've long looked to the government to recognize it, not just for refugees, but as an international or national security factor.

Brian Lehrer: Ellen, can you give us an example of a country that you've worked in or with working in development that relates to this?

Ellen: We can point to continents. I'll say Africa is the chief example with many, many countries where you've had forced migrations within countries and regions because of water resources leading to desertification of formerly known as pasture lands and grazing areas. With lots of nomadic people, as well as governments who are teeter-tottering often on their own conflicts there, there's just greater pressure.

There are lots of statistics that have been gathered in the last 10 years, particularly by our government, looking at these factors and indicators to say, "Where are hotspots, where are we constantly running back through a cycle, an annual cycle or a bi-annual cycle to bring in aid, and how do we recognize this in the larger patterns?"

Brian Lehrer: Ellen, thank you so much for your call. To follow up on that, Abrahm, I see in your reporting project, you created a model to project the future of climate forced migration, which predicted that by 2050, 150 million people around the world would be displaced from their homes just by sea level rise alone. Which world regions would be most affected by that, according to your model?

Abrahm Lustgarten: Thanks. To Ellen's point, we found early on that there was a consensus that climate was going to force migration that was forcing refugees around the world, but a real lack of data and ability to quantify what that migration would look like. When and where it would happen and ways that could allow people to prepare for it.

The one group that had begun to do work like that is the World Bank. They actually first modeled potential movement of people within countries and identified a couple of global hotspots. Those hotspots are the Northern part of Africa as the caller mentioned. The Sahara region, in particular, is extraordinarily vulnerable to the combination of drought and its population growth.

South Asia which will send ever-larger numbers of people towards the Middle East and Europe and possibly North into China, and then in Central America. What we did in a quest to try to quantify that or put a little bit more of a fine point on it is build on the World Bank's model, and we used Central America as an example. Layered a couple of additional levels of sophistication onto that model and added in about as much environmental data and United Nations' climate data as we could get our hands on and tried to get a picture of how people would move across borders, which is something that the previous modeling hadn't looked at.

Just looking at our example for Central America, what that model told us-- The numbers that it puts out are deceptively imprecise. It suggests many millions of people coming towards the United States, but it's hard to know if those are accurate. What it does say clearly is that the warmer the climate gets, the more those migrants will move and that the way that the United States or other nations craft policy in response to it has a really significant impact in how many migrants move and how many migrants are displaced. The choice between opening borders and more aid and more trade or shutting things down and more protectionist nationalistic impulse of closing borders, or turning more inwards in terms of aid.

The latter leads to-- The more we close borders leads to larger population growth and more suffering and deeper poverty in the countries of origin that are going to suffer the biggest brunt of environmental change as the climate crisis unfolds.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more caller in here because Steve in Brooklyn wants to talk about climate migration even within New York City. Do I have that right, Steve? Hi.

Steve: Hi. Yes. Thanks so much for taking my call. I just wanted to flag the fact that even though, of course, this is a huge international issue, that this is not something that is only happening outside the US or outside New York City. In Hamilton Beach, parts of the Rockaways, the East Shore of Staten Island, these are parts of our city that are on the frontline for the climate crisis.

The East Shore of Staten Island has been cited as one of the first and largest examples of managed retreat from the coastline in the country. I would love to hear the conversation about climate migration within New York City and would love to see mayoral candidates speak more to this issue too.

Brian Lehrer: Steve, thank you very much. Before we run out of time, Abrahm, I just want to make sure we say the word "Syria" out loud, because that, of course, has been the country that's been the source of so many of the actual refugees in the world over the last 10 years or so. You've written about how climate played a role in that.

Abrahm Lustgarten: Yes, and researchers have studied how climate played a role in that, and it's a prime example of how climate is an exacerbating factor where you had drought making it increasingly difficult for Syrians to produce food or support their livestock. The failure of their livestock drove more people into urban areas in Syria, and that's what fed the uprising or at least provided a lot of fodder for the uprising. Climate isn't the sole driver of the conflict in Syria, but it's certainly been seen as a very significant driver, and that view is shared in the Biden administration as well, for example.

Brian Lehrer: Abrahm Lustgarten, senior reporter investigating climate and our response to a rapidly changing environment at ProPublica and lead author of a three-part climate migration series published in The New York Times Magazine last year.

One of his lines, "Northern nations can relieve pressures on the fastest-warming countries by allowing more migrants to move north across their borders, or they can seal themselves off, trapping hundreds of millions of people in places that are increasingly unlivable." The climate, one of the major climate conversations to come in coming years. Abrahm, thank you for setting us up for it.

Abrahm Lustgarten: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More tomorrow on Earth Day.

 

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