What should we expect on climate change and migration at this year’s COP?
In the run up to every COP there is often a flurry of media stories about whether COP will “solve” climate-driven migration. Headlines ask whether COP will “help” or “save” people forced to move by climate change.
These are the wrong questions. COP isn’t where climate-driven migration and displacement will be fixed (whatever that means). But it is somewhere that important pieces of a jigsaw puzzle can fall into place.
First it’s worth understanding what COP can and can’t do when it comes to migration and displacement connected to climate change. Just because the COP process holds the potential to do something useful on climate-linked migration, doesn’t mean that it will.
COP isn’t going to create legal protection for people moving because of climate change. It isn’t going to create an international agreement that allows people fleeing climate impacts to cross borders. It won’t this year. It probably never will. Most negotiators arrive expecting to negotiate on issues like emissions reduction, financing adoption, carbon sinks, compensation for disaster-hit countries and lots of other things.
They’re not arriving expecting to negotiate on immigration, borders and asylum policy. Those issues are not on the agenda and the delegations probably don’t have the mandate from their governments to agree anything on them.
So the question of the legal rights of people moving due to climate change is simply not something that is going to be created at COP. Crudely - COP is about carbon, money and time frames. Not borders and the right to cross them.
When people ask “Will COP help climate migrants?” this is usually what they mean. Unfortunately the answer is “no”. But that doesn’t mean that COP can’t do other useful things when it comes to climate change and migration.
But other important issues connected with climate-linked migration are being talked about at COP. Countries in the global south who are worst hit by climate impacts have created the Loss and Damage agenda at COP. Through this they are hoping to secure compensation from high emitting countries for the havoc caused by climate change.
Amongst the losses and damages they are seeking compensation for are the costs of coping with displacement caused by climate impacts. So COP has the potential to help counties cope with the costs of climate-linked mobility even if it doesn’t provide a forum where the *rights* of people on the move can be negotiated on.
Understanding how climate impacts reshape migration and displacement is important. It helps prevent displacement and plan for safety. One strand of the negotiations is focused on this. The Santiago Network exists to help states cooperate and share data that helps them plan for disasters and reduce the risks faced by their citizens when climate impacts strike.
There is a specific strand of the negotiations related to displacement connected to climate change - called the Task Force on Displacement. It’s focus in on cooperation around preventing displacement connected to climate change
Cutting emissions is important too. But we can't pretend that emissions cuts alone are the solution. The heating we have now is already starting to reshape migration and displacement. So it’s too late to hope that steep emissions cuts will completely prevent new patterns of human movement. More heating will mean more dramatic climate impacts and more chaotic and distressing episodes of migration and displacement. So cutting emissions matters. Every fraction of a degree counts.
To understand the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of warming have a look at this.
Those are the areas where COP could potentially make a difference. The question is “will it?” Previous COPs have shown limited progress tackling even the areas that do fall into its remit.
That doesn’t mean progress isn’t happening. Important battles are being fought and sometimes won. But overall, the progress does not currently match the seriousness or urgency of the situation when it comes to climate-linked migration and displacement.