Climate Change and Migration: Thinking Beyond ‘Threat’ Narratives
▻http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/climate_change_and_migration_thinking_beyond_threat_narratives
There are important connections between migration and climate change. But they are often the opposite of what the simplistic myth suggests. Many people could be “trapped” by climate change rather than move. Forced to stay rather than forced to go. Moving usually requires money, and as climate change impacts force some people further into poverty, moving becomes more difficult. This is especially true for small scale farmers. Climate impacts like water-stress, drought and desertification lead to reduced yields and reduced income. This makes moving harder, or impossible. The risk is not that millions of people will flee as areas can no longer sustain people, but rather that millions of people will be trapped there.
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Rather than moving en masse and permanently, people are using temporary seasonal migration as a way of adapting to the climate change impacts. This [farmer in Mexico] crossed an international border (from Mexico to the US), but most evidence indicates that this kind of migration will mostly be internal.