Climate Immigration is the Coming Crisis of Our Time
Ethan Gray / Dec 27 / Climate Crisis
The International Organization for Migration reports that in 30 years' time, the world will see anywhere from 25 million to one billion climate-related migrants, with most estimates zeroing in on a number closer to 200 million. For reference, at the height of the European migration crisis, about one million migrants landed on the continent's southern coast. A daunting humanitarian crisis is on the globe's doorstep amid a time of rising populism and ethnocentrism. This problem will disproportionately impact developing nations that lack the resources to manage their citizens' re-location adequately. Countries that have contributed little to that change in climate now face a threat to their very way of life.
Developing countries are not at fault for global warming, but their growth will fuel it further going into the 21st century. Climate change is primarily the fault of Europe, North America, and East Asia. They became rich, exploiting fossil fuels, but they cannot allow the next generation of emerging countries to do the same. It is their responsibility to shoulder an outsized share of the burden at home and abroad. Wealthy nations must address the issue on two fronts. They need a concrete framework to manage displaced persons that holds countries accountable for their commitments. They also must equip developing nations, and themselves, with the infrastructure and financial instruments to build a 21st-century economy with the environment in mind.
Unequal Development
How the world got here is a story of unequal development, but an essential preface for the sake of this discussion. Our World in Data reports on total historical carbon emissions by region. Europe lies first with 33%, closely followed by Asia and North America with 29% each. Oceania, Africa, and South America combined have contributed a paltry 7.2% of historical emissions. Countries with the lowest levels of emissions have contributed the least because they missed the industrial era, which has led to the development of European, North American, and Asian nations. That leaves them the least responsible, and similarly, the least equipped to deal with climate changes' impact.
The current share of emissions has shifted dramatically. Asia now represents 46% of global emissions, with China taking up a sizeable 28% of that share. North America rests at 18% of carbon emissions, and Europe has fallen to about 11%. Developing countries are growing in their share of emissions, with Africa, Oceania, and South America rising to 24% of global contributions, respectively. The rest of the world is catching up. The Economist reported that economic growth had lifted a billion people out of acute poverty in the last two decades. Globalization is the leading cause. It has enabled investment in emerging economies, trade and has allowed industrial production to move from western nations to the east in search of cheaper labor. Globalization has spread wealth over time, but growth will correspondingly lead emerging economies to emit more carbon as they fuel their growing industry, further complicating any potential solutions.
In his book, Rewiring America, Saul Griffith, one of the world's premier energy researchers, postulates some potential solutions. During the Great Depression, the US government passed the Fannie Mae act. It provides federally backed, low-interest loans for housing purchases, creating the modern mortgage that allows average citizens to buy expensive assets overtime and build personal wealth. A similar strategy can be pursued by wealthy nations domestically for retrofitting homes, powerplants, and industrial equipment. On an international scale, individual citizens in poorer countries could not afford this. International agencies like the IMF and WTO could still provide backed low-interest loans to companies that wish to invest abroad and the governments of developing countries themselves for green projects. In turn, those governments in developing countries could offer tax incentives or carbon credits for private green investment to those with the capital, which are cheaper mechanisms than loans.
The economic incentives are there for companies because they gain access to new markets while creating jobs in poorer countries. Intelligent investments often make a positive cycle of development. As countries develop green infrastructure, they provide gainful employment for citizens that raise their standard of living. They add more clean energy to their grid, fueling new industries and doing it responsibly. The world has work to do, but it is not insurmountable.
Unfortunately, like most international issues, politics stands in the way of progress. The rise in populist and ethnocentric leaders is the antithesis of what is needed. Donald Trump in the United States, and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, are two of the most prominent climate skeptic anti-immigration advocates who have held power in the last decade. Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the country and pulled the world's second-largest emitter out of the Paris Climate Accords. Bolsonaro pulled out of the UN migration compact and has cleared industry regulations to bulldoze more of the Amazon. The EU, as a whole, has followed a similar trend. Immigrant fears were a catalyst for Brexit, Italy has turned away rescue boats that save migrants at sea, and Greece is building a border wall with Turkey. The pullback of global leaders from migration comes at perhaps the worst time. Just as the expected number of displaced persons will grow at an alarming rate, the country’s most responsible for displacing them are locking down. If the world sees hundreds of millions of new migrants in the coming years, there will be deaths.
The leading global agency dealt with managing global migration is the International Organization for Migration or IOM. It recorded 12,753 migrant deaths in transit to Europe alone in the last five years. We know the coming decades will see millions of new migrants due to climate change rendering their homes inhospitable. Rising seas will sink coastal cities, drought will decrease water access and lower agriculture output, and extreme weather events will destroy homes. The IOM estimates there are already over 272 million international migrants, nearly double the number in 1990. Shockingly, the IOM only lists 30 million of that total as beneficiaries from the organization; this must change. As total migrants inevitably rise, deaths will follow. Will the world stand idly by when those numbers increase?
There are some causes for hope, but leaders must aim higher. The signing of the Paris Climate Accords in 2016 was a good step. IOM's mere existence is also an excellent place to start effectively and humanely managing large scale migration.
They must take the lead. Governments need to be ambitious. The IOM's 2020 operating budget is $850 million, a $150 million drop from 2019. For reference, the last Avengers movie grossed triple that sum. Funding is embarrassingly low. As a result, the organization is only helping three out of every 25 international migrants. Frankly, the IOM needs more financial support from individual countries. The IOM should assess its needs and request an adequate budget. Hopefully, UN member states rise to the occasion. It also needs to be given some real power to be effective. One solution could be countries voluntarily giving away a certain level of sovereignty and requiring signatories to take a proportional share of migrants relative to their population. It is doubtful that governments will reach an agreement this ambitious, but unfortunately, global issues of this scale require ambitious solutions.
It is also important to note that migration is typically quite good for an economy in the long term. If it wasn’t so politically divisive in this era, countries taking in migrants could benefit. In their book Good Economics for Hard Times, Nobel Prize winners Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo explain that migrants who move to a country and stay there do not lower the median wage for native workers because they bring raise demand for goods and services. They also carry a fresh set of ideas and often start businesses. Proof lies in the fact that immigrants or children of immigrants founded 44 of the top 100 largest US companies. The opportunity to take in more migrants may prove to be a mutually beneficial opportunity for wealthy nations, which typically have ageing populations, and migrants leaving untenable living conditions.
To stop the continuing degradation of our world, leaders will still need to address global warming. Advanced nations taking climate change seriously at home is paramount and has proved dishearteningly challenging, especially in the United States. Saul Griffith does not find the current technology or engineering challenges to be the problem. We have those instruments today. Finding the political will to enact change remains the tallest task. Assuming wealthy governments find their way, developing countries will need the investments and expertise to help them grow a green economy from the start. The financial framework touched on already can be managed abroad by organizations such as the WTO and IMF. Technologies that have already been developed should be dispersed before there are new investments in fossil fuel energy. Electrifying the global economy and powering it with green energy is the economic challenge of our time, but there are jobs to be created and money to be made. Even the selfishly motivated can find opportunity and indirectly help humanity.
Climate change is only getting worse, and the accompanying migrant crisis is already growing. It is not too late to act, but each day of inaction deepens the dejection we face tomorrow. Our current political climate is regressing from the solutions humanity needs. That mistake will bear a human cost that wealthy nations are primarily to blame for if they do not act.