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On the numbers question:
This issue of quantifying climate-driven migration has been one of the biggest and most fraught questions of this field. I think it's worth taking a step back and asking what the purpose of this quantification is [Thread]
This issue of quantifying climate-driven migration has been one of the biggest and most fraught questions of this field. I think it's worth taking a step back and asking what the purpose of this quantification is [Thread]
2. It's possible to have a movement for migrant justice - including people with a climate dimension to their migration - without knowing the numbers. Most emancipatory movements in history have not won on the basis of being able to accurately say how many people are affected.
3. In the past, quoting numbers of migrants / refugees has served the political forces seeking to restrict movement and curtail the rights of migrants. Those numbers have often become part of a fear-inducing narrative - designed to stop migration, and fuel anti-migrant sentiment
4. Communication about migration and refugees which serves movements seeking justice tend to focus on individuals and their personal stories- illuminating the things that demonstrate what we all have in common - family, love, friendship, food, the desire for safety and community
5. In general, talking about migrants and refugees simply in terms of a mass, described by a single number tends to militate against seeing people as people. It tends to evoke the idea of a threat, rather than the lives and stories of individual humans
6. That's not to say being able to give some sense of the current and future scale of climate-linked mobility isn't important - it is. It is vital to understand how many people will be impacted, and what scale of action to protect those people is needed
7. But we shouldn't imagine that settling on an accurate number will unlock political obstacles in the pursuit of the just treatment of people moving due to the impacts of climate change
