Migration & Insecurity: What is the threat?

I never expected to find the relationship between migration and climate change a simple one. However, after attending a fascinating talk on the subject at LSE, I find myself to be slightly overwhelmed by the multitude of new concepts that this blog has not yet considered. Occurring less than a week after the terror atrocity in Paris, the topic of the debate seemed to take on a new level of importance. It also meant that, unsurprisingly, the issue of human security within the context of forced migration was a dominant point of discussion.  

The idea that ‘climate refugees’ constitute a major threat to national security gained significant traction around eight or so years ago. As described by Hartman (2012), forced migration was said to pose a threat to established social order; inducing a strain on scarce resources, social welfare and infrastructure. Migrants were also said to be a catalyst for political violence. The US defence think tank, CNA, went as far as to consider it ‘the biggest security threat that the US faces’.

However the first time that the IPCC explicitly addressed the issue of security was in their most recent assessment. They stated that the changing climate will progressively threaten human security by:

1. Undermining livelihoods
2. Compromising culture and identity
3. Increasing migration, which people would rather have avoided
4. Challenging the ability of states to provide the conditions necessary for human security

As one of the speakers, Mary Robinson, discussed; we know that climate change is projected to increase displacement of people and we know that it will do this very dramatically if we do not take the necessary steps now. Human mobility in the context of climate change will affect all countries, with the potential for knock on effects for human security. It therefore requires an international response, and to be immediately integrated as a part of global sustainable development.

However, she also mentioned that human insecurity almost never has a single cause, but instead emerges from multiple interactions. Therefore, whilst the influence of migration can evidently not be ignored, it cannot be individually recognised. A similar viewpoint is discussed by Gemenne et al. (2014), who take this one stage further. They suggest that this type of conversation is incredibly timewasting and that raising the spectre of climate conflict and ‘climate refugees’ obscures the real areas of importance within climate policy. This is not to say that it is not an important issue to discuss, but that considering it alone is inefficient. Instead the potential vulnerability, which may subsequently arise, needs to be better understood, to enable an appropriate adaptive response.

There is no doubt that the relationship between climate induced migration and insecurity requires serious consideration. However, continuously framing it in such a negative light detracts away from the positive aspects that a ‘migration as adaptation’ strategy can produce a strategy that is likely to become ever more important throughout the coming century. With this in mind, it will be incredibly interesting to see how COP21 discuss a subject with such current extreme political sensitivity in a few weeks’ time.