In our increasingly interconnected world, the consequences of climate change reverberate across continents and ecosystems. In the United States, where I’m based, the recent influx of migrants continues to stoke alarmist reactions from all political aisles—much of which is overblown and politicized. In fact, the share of the global population who live outside their home country is just 3.6 percent—an increase of just half a percentage point since 1960. Most people prefer to stay put, and climate change is only one of the factors prompting migration. But both slow- and rapid-onset climate factors are increasingly contributing to voluntary migration and forced displacement—and domestic and international law has a lot of catching up to do.
To learn more about how the advocacy community is addressing climate-related forced displacement, we sat down with John Slocum, the executive director of Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), an umbrella association based in Washington, DC, comprising 39 nonprofits that work alongside refugees and other forcibly displaced people. RCUSA’s members include the 10 national refugee-resettlement agencies that the State Department contracts with to provide reception and placement services for initially resettling refugees into the United States. Its membership also includes 29 other organizations, many of which work with refugees, asylum seekers, torture victims, special immigrant visa holders, unaccompanied children, and other forcibly displaced people.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
About Into the Weeds
We at LEFF are, at heart, storytellers. We are dedicated to amplifying voices and causes from all over the world, regardless of gender orientation, race, or economic background. And the stories we tell as part of the Into the Weeds interview series are particularly important to us. We will be interviewing inspiring individuals whose work contributes to the achievement of the SDGs at every level; we’ll bring you insights from the leaders of global organizations, renowned experts and academics, and innovative local businesses.
Our goal for this series is the same one that underpins all of LEFF Sustainability Group’s client work: to use our storytelling skills to build awareness of the issues that threaten our planet and to draw attention to all the people, initiatives, and innovations that are fighting back.
Brittany: What’s the connection between migration and climate change?
John Slocum: It’s clear humans move as a result of environmental factors that can be attributed to climate change—but attributing movement directly to climate change is, in most cases, complicated.
There are both slow- and rapid-onset causes for climate mobility and displacement. The rapid-onset cause would be the things like floods and storms, for which the need to move and the inability to return are more obvious. But if it’s a slow-onset factor that accumulates impact—heat, drought, desertification, sea level rise—then climate movement can be, in some respects, indistinguishable from economic migration. A Central American farmer, for example, may say they’re moving because the coffee crop has failed, but the coffee crop may have failed for several years in a row because of a combination of hurricanes and a changing climate. Eventually the farmer may say, “This isn’t working out. We have to move elsewhere in order to make a living.”
Or think about a farmer moving from Mexico to the United States: NAFTA, the free trade agreement, may be at the root of that move. NAFTA did a lot of things in terms of opening up markets, but it also resulted in, essentially, the destruction of preexisting local networks of agricultural intermediaries. It made it harder for farmers to earn a living, especially when competing with farmers in the United States who have a lot more resources.
Is this migration environmental? If there were a drought that exacerbated the issue, then maybe yes—but maybe not. When you look closely, there’s often an intersection between climate change and some preexisting vulnerabilities, which could be economic, political, or related to a marginalized group. Climate is a threat multiplier that adds to the reasons why people need to move.
And then there are a few examples where it’s unequivocally climate change that is causing migration—or more precisely, forced displacement. Sea level rise is one example. In low-lying coastal areas and low-lying small island nations, the land people live on is literally being subsumed.
“A Central American farmer, for example, may say they’re moving because the coffee crop has failed, but the coffee crop may have failed for several years in a row because of a combination of hurricanes and a changing climate.”
Brittany: Outside of those clear examples, how do you tell climate refugees apart from other refugees?
John Slocum: It’s difficult. First, the term “climate refugee” itself is contested. While climate factors may be forcing people to move, neither international nor domestic refugee law recognizes environmental factors as grounds for refugee protection. One thing the advocacy community has done is work to ensure that when an asylum officer asks an asylum seeker why they are requesting protection in the United States and they say there was a hurricane or crop failure, the officer doesn’t close the case and say, “You don’t qualify for refugee status. You don’t have a credible fear of persecution.” If that happens, these people are not going to get refugee status in the United States. Instead, the officer needs to keep listening to the other aspects of the circumstances that prompted them to flee because the factors are often complexly interrelated. Someone for whom climate is a reason they’ve moved may also qualify as a refugee based on other aspects of the situation from which they’ve fled.
But a key point is the problem of attribution. In many cases, it is very difficult to attribute a given instance of displacement to climate change or to environmental factors generally. That makes it hard to develop clear policy responses.
About Refugee Council USA
Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) is a coalition of 39 US-based nonprofit organizations supporting and protecting the rights of forcibly displaced people. Their work focuses on advocacy, strategic communications, and programmatic coordination. Since 2005, RCUSA has served as the only national coalition devoted to forcibly displaced people in the United States. As a thought leader and convener, the organization’s focus is to advance collective learning and action to respond to crises, transform humanitarian systems, and help affected communities thrive.
Brittany: What do forced-displacement patterns look like globally, and how does the United States fit into that?
John Slocum: Globally, most of the movement we see is either within a country or across the nearest national border. Of the approximately 110 million forcibly displaced people in the world, more than half migrated somewhere else in their own country. So yes, the world is on the move, but it is also true that most people in the world would prefer not to move—or not move very far—if they’re given alternatives.
In the United States, we’re seeing a lot of migrants and a lot of asylum-seekers. But if you look at it in a global perspective, we’re not the world’s largest destination for refugees or forced migrants. Iran, Türkiye, Germany, Colombia, and Pakistan each host more than two million forcibly displaced people. Among that list, with the exception of Germany, the refugees those countries are hosting come from neighboring countries.
One of the most important things to understand about climate displacement is that it’s neither far away in space, on the other side of the world, nor far out in time. It’s a here-and-now problem. Many people are still displaced from Hurricane Sandy, which was more than a decade ago. There are still people displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 who haven’t found a permanent new home. And slow-onset problems are here too: there are low-lying coastal communities—in both cases indigenous communities—in Alaska and Louisiana that are losing their villages to sea-level rise and erosion.
Climate migration is already happening, and it’s going to continue to happen. We should react with humanity and solidarity because it could be us. It could be any of us that ends up having to move because of a climate factor.
“One of the most important things to understand about climate displacement is that it’s neither far away in space, on the other side of the world, nor far out in time. It’s a here-and-now problem.”
Brittany: Let’s dig into that more. How should the world respond to climate displacement?
John Slocum: We need to simultaneously not panic and take urgent action. Some earlier studies were just macro-estimates, and they provided a very alarming picture. The media would pick up on those estimates and say, “There’s going to be hordes of migrants at our borders because of climate.” That will only lead to a defensive, shut-off-the-borders kind of mindset.
As the studies on this topic have gotten more sophisticated with better methodology, it’s obvious that not everyone who falls into a large spreadsheet that plots temperature against population is going to move or is going to need to move. It depends a lot on their socioeconomic status and the resources they have at their disposal. To give a mundane example, in some places, farmers can switch from raising chickens to raising ducks, which can swim if they need to and are more heat- and cold-tolerant.
Most scholars, activists, and humanitarian and development organizations working in this space really believe that if people can stay in place, they should. Most people want to. In November 2023, the Kaldor Center for International Refugee Law came up with a set of principles for how we should think about climate mobility. The very first principle is that we should support communities to stay safely at home. It’s not just about keeping people away from our borders. It’s about keeping them where home is. The right not to move is something that’s being discussed more and more.
“The very first principle is that we should support communities to stay safely at home. It’s not about keeping people away from our borders. It’s about keeping them where home is. The right not to move is something that’s being discussed more and more.”
Brittany: What’s going on with climate-migration policy in the United States?
John Slocum: The current administration issued an executive order very early on in the Biden presidency: February 4, 2021, Executive Order Number 14013, Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.
That executive order admitted that this is going to be a problem, and we should start doing something about it. It called for an interagency report, which was released in October 2021. That task force has been somewhat anemic, though admittedly there’s been a lot of other issues—including in the migration field—for the administration to worry about. But there have been steps taken within the State Department and elsewhere to move this forward.
In November 2023, a bill called the Climate Displaced Persons Act was introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Nydia Velázquez of New York and in the Senate by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. This would provide a special humanitarian visa for no fewer than 100,000 people a year who are being forced to move because of climate change. Will that bill pass in this Congress? The answer is almost certainly no, but that’s not the only reason that legislation gets introduced. It’s to put a marker on the table and say, “This is an issue that we’re going to continue to pay attention to.” It’s actually a pretty good bill. It’s a good next step, and I think it will help move this issue forward.
Brittany: Where does the United States go from here?
John Slocum: We need a bit of serious individual and societal introspection about how to build a sustainable future. It’s very easy to scapegoat individuals—particularly when the numbers get bigger—for problems that are not their creation, both in their home and destination countries. This is true for climate displacement and for migration more broadly. I hope when people hear words like “open borders” or “illegals” they know that’s political speech rather than fact; it’s language designed to get clicks and votes, not solve problems.
There are important reasons we have national borders. But if your ethical and moral universe stops at the border, then that’s an issue in my view.
Behind the scenes
This interview is part of LEFF’s Into the Weeds interview series—a series that amplifies individuals whose work contributes to the achievement of the SDGs at every level. We’ll be bringing you insights from renowned experts and the leaders of global organizations and innovative local businesses. Brittany Williams (she/her) is the editorial director for LEFF, and Clair Myatt (she/her) is the manager of LEFF Sustainability Group, for which Katie Parry (she/her) is the director.
Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of LEFF or have its endorsement.
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