From the Bookshelves: Migration and Climate Change

 
“Migration and Climate Change” A UNESCO publication on one of the greatest challenges facing our time.

Climate change is becoming an increasingly significant factor in migration, even if nightmare scenarios predicting a human tide of “environmental refugees” are unfounded and counter-productive, concludes the first authoritative overview of the relationship between climate change and migration, published by UNESCO and Cambridge University Press.

“Migration and Climate Change” brings together the views of 26 leading experts from a range of disciplines such as demography, climatology, economics, geography, anthropology and law. They present case studies from Bangladesh, Brazil, Nepal and the islands of the Pacific, analyzing the often alarming statistics and tearing down the myths associated with one of the most-discussed but least-understood aspects of climate change.

The publication emphasizes that while increasingly important, climate change is only one of a range of factors that push people to leave their homes and sometimes their countries. Ignoring this “multicausality” has distorted and polarized public debate on the issue which has “become heavily politicized.”

The authors acknowledge that tropical cyclones, heavy rains and floods, drought and desertification, and sea-level rise are increasingly influencing migration. The authors stress the need for more research, but also point out the necessity for practical action at all levels.  They suggest a number of options, such as diversification of economic activity; changes in government attitudes to rural-urban and cross-border migration, by abandoning restriction and criminalization, and helping people to move in conditions of safety and dignity; and a “new, fine-grained collaborative effort to understand the real challenges and to find solutions.”

KJ